The Authority - Relentless

THE AUTHORITY: RELENTLESS - Warren Ellis & Bryan Hitch (DC Comics/Wildstorm 2000)

INTRODUCTION by Grant Morrison

THE AUTHORITY is the first great superhero team book of the 21st century. Beside it everything else seems pale and stale and repetitive. Be honest.

These words are like thoughts which ran through my mind when I read THE AUTHORITY number one back in early 1999: Warren peaking on pure intravenous Warren, self-generating. Hitch and Neary downloading and reprocessing epic DVDs to reimagine the way superheroes might look one more time for the hell of it, reaching higher again. Laura DePuy with God's own Paintshop splashing beauty across these pages. How could it fail to define the way everything felt? Warren knows what he's playing around with, and it's your head. Don't forget that. He harbors many a grudge, and a number of those are political.

Because traditional superhero teams always put the flag back on top of the White House, don't they? They always dust down the statues and repair the highways and everything ends up just the way it was before...

But what "IF"? What if the superheroes decided to make a few changes according to a "higher moral authority"? What if they started to act the way WE might act faced with impossible problems? What if every problem was a solution in disguise? What ifd WE began to think like superhumans, on a scale we never imagined before?

THE AUTHORITY dares to imagine a world beyond the post-modern ironic hoplessness of endless recycled TV quotes and retro-nostalgic feedback. Welcome to a superteam with an agenda, on a scale beyond the billion dollar budgets. A superteam whose headquarters looks like a dog's nose and still kicks ass.

At a stroke THE AUTHORITY has endowed the tired superhero archetypes with vigorous new meaning, pumping the volume until noses bleed and bass patterns register deep on the Richter scale in Norway.

Welcome to the first volume of continuing mind-battering adventures in a landmark series, ye lucky bastards...

Tell your jealous brats, the storm broke here...

- Grant Morrison

LA 2000