Embedded Files
THE AUTHORITY #2
Utopian
Written by GRANT MORRISON ; Art and Cover by GENE HA; Variant Cover by MICHAEL GOLDEN
Wildstorm, May 2007, Color, 32pgs, $2.99
Do you believe in superheroes? Something huge has been found in the waters of the North Sea, something from another reality where the supermen are real. Join marine salvage expert Kenny Kincaid as he meets astonishing beings both familiar and terrifyingly strange. Hawksmoor, Jenny Quarx, Apollo, The Midnighter, The Doctor, The Engineer and Swift. Who are The Authority, and what do they want with our world? Can the heroes of a parallel universe save Kenny's marriage and end war forever?
Commentary
Commentary
Ha's art in this issue is completely different to his work on issue one. Most of this issue is double page spreads of The Authority and the fantastical backdrop of the Carrier, in stark contrast to issue one's tight, nine-panel grids and claustrophobic submarine scenes. Presumably this is a deliberate tactic to accentuate the larger than life world of the Authority when compared to "our" world. Though given much more space to express himself, and despite a four month delay, Ha's art looks rushed here and isn't up to the high standard he set himself in the first issue.
Annotations
Annotations
Page 1 - Our POV shifts to inside the Carrier with The Authority themselves. The jagged balloons show the preoccupations of our world's news outlets - Bush, Blair, Terror, Celebrity, Drugs, Islam, War
Page 2-3 - Jack Hawksmoor, the King of cities, first appeared in Stormwatch #38 and was created by Warren Ellis. Swift, a Tibetan woman with wings, was created by Jeff Mariotte and Ron Lim and first appeared in Stormwatch #28. Both were charter member's of Ellis' original Authority
The Doctor as seen here is Habib Ben Hassan, the latest in a long line of shamans with the combined powers of hundreds of Doctors who have come before him. He was created by Ed Brubaker and Dustin Nguyen, succeeding Ellis' original, in 2004's The Authority: Revolution #9.
"The cities are asleep", Hawksmoor's special talent is talking to cities, kind of a super psycho-geographer.
"A low energy universe" - picked up and made a big plot point in Keith Giffen's continuation of the storyline.
No superhumans - except in stories. This is our universe, the Authority and their kin exist only in our comic books
Page 4-5 - Apollo, a bio-engineered gay Superman , provides some handy exposition. Created by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch, he first appeared alongside Midnighter in Stormwatch v2 #4 and was part of Ellis' original Authority line-up.
"...spotted by the space shuttle", is this a reference to a real UFO incident at the time?
A photo-realistic London, home of Ken, a Special Forces frogman and our POV character for this arc.
Page 6-7 - Midnighter, a Batman pastiche who Apollo's partner and possesses the ability to foresee his opponents' moves in combat. It was him using the door in the Submarine. He also first appeared in Stormwatch v2 #4.
"Blame my upbringing" - Batman's raison d'etre
Page 8-9 - The Engineer, a scientist who replaced her blood with nine pints of nano-technology. With an origin like that, how could she not be created by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch? She first appeared in 1999's The Authority #1.
"lots of porn" - a nice touch.
"baby universe energy", Keith Giffen seemed pretty dismissive of this plot strand when he took over writing chores.
Page 10-11 - Back inside the sub. Not sure what's happening here - are they all pulled through a door onto the carrier? If Ken and Dez have been pulled through on pg12, where are Tor and Stafford?
Page 13 - "What authority?" - setting up Morrison's thematic hook that was planned to run throughout - are they actually the good guys?
The Carrier is a Shiftship, able to travel through infinite parallel universes.
Submarines do indeed have catering staff, something that took me a little by surprise whilst reading up on this stuff.
Page 14 - 840 Broadway, this is Forbidden Planet New York.
The protagonists as comic book characters references the first comic book parallel earth story, Gardner Fox's The Flash of Two Worlds, from The Flash #123. It was retold 'post-Crisis' by Morrison in Secret Origins #50 and obliquely referenced in Final Crisis #1
The Authority: Relentless, the book Hawksmoor is holding here, is a collection of Ellis' first eight issues of the original Authority run (with an introduction by Grant Morrison!).
"Not the droids you're looking for..." A Star Wars reference, for anyone that's been in a coma for the last 30+ years.
"No World Trade Centre..." - in a super-human world how could 9/11 happen? A question that DC and Marvel are still uncomfortable dealing with.
Page 16-17 - Introduced as a child by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely in The Authority v1 #13, the first issue of their run, Jenny Quarx, is the spirit of the twenty first century, succeeding Jenny Sparks - spirit of the twentieth century and former leader of the Authority - upon her death. Quarx aged herself to a teenager (hence the 'supermodel' comment) in The Authority: Revolution by Ed Brubaker and was quickly reverted back to a child here by Morrison.
On her shirt is the flag of Singapore, in keeping with her predecessor Jenny Sparks' Union Jack shirt.
Midnighter and Apollo are Quarx' two dads, just like the eighties sit-com
Page 18 - Midnighter's questioning of the Authority's mission statement here is weirdly reminiscent of Batman leaving the JLA to form the Outsiders in The Brave & The Bold #200 from 1983
A pro-active rather than reactive stance to super heroics has been explored many times with mostly mediocre results (see Justice League Task Force, Marvel's Force Works, Justice League Elite, etc.). Its was most recently examined again in James Robinson's awful Justice League: Cry For Justice
Page 19 - For anyone reading this in one hundred years time, the West was engaged in a War Against Terror in Afghanistan in 2004... and still is when I write this in 2010
Page 20 - "Kev" A backhanded reference to Garth Ennis' special forces man, encountered by the Authority in numerous mini-series and one-shots.
"Whose side are you on?" "How do you know?" More development of the questionable morality theme.
After this issue's cliff-hanger, the story would be continued almost 3 years later in Keith Giffen and Darrick Robertson's Authority: The Lost Year
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