The Authority #7 (November 1999)

This looks majestic but Midnighter can't fly so they're not actually that far off the ground.

The cover to Issue #8 looks like a rehash of this cover but at night. I don't know if that means anything or if Bryan Hitch just had a bunch of generic covers ready to go so he wouldn't have to wait on Warren Ellis's scripts. It's a pretty decent cover for a generic "here come the heroes" kind of thing. At least they're not all looking at the reader Kevin Maguire style. For The Authority looking at the reader, you'll have to wait until next issue. Midnighter's pretty intense so I'm warning you now: wear your diaper, fam.

This issue begins with Regis and Yngvi discussing how their dicks don't work anymore. Maybe they work. I don't know. Regis loses himself in the nostalgia of days gone by when he wasn't a eunuch so it seems like not much going on down there. But then the discussion moves toward how the aliens fucked nearly all of Earth by turning it into an unlivable hellscape due to their conquest of it. The only place left with living things and a healthy biome was Albion and they fucked that too in 1953 with their bacterial attack to take it over. So now they dream of the days when they could procreate, sloppy flaccid alien dicks in their hands (unless their genitals aren't dicks? But I have to believe they are because they interbred with humans. Maybe they've just got a weird hole down there where their alien sperm crawls out across their belly like spiders birthed from an egg sac, scattering in all directions in search of an egg to fertilize?).

So the reason for invading Wildstorm Earth was a little more complicated than "lebensraum."

Part of the idea of "lebensraum" (a small part and — let's be clear — most of the parts were racist. Probably because they borrowed from that other great racist reasoning for expansion, "Manifest Destiny") was that Germany would have more Germanic territories to move its population to prevent overpopulation of any one area. But these aliens need more land because they're just shitting all over the land they already have. They're less about lebensraum than they are about toterraum. They destroy their territory forcing them to expand into a place where they can actually live and breed. But then they destroy that space while conquering it. And they don't seem to learn because they've done it to their entire Earth and now want to do it to another Earth. I wonder if they've considered that they're kind of a shit race and maybe aren't fit for existence?

Yngvi gives Regis the intel from their first invasion: inferior technology, unstable civilization, possibly nuclear weapons. And Regis responds with, "Oh how I loved fucking Asian women!"

"Do you remember the Chinese women before we destroyed their wombs with our virulent spider sperm?"

The last of Yngvi's intel concerns the appearance of Jenny Sparks and her entry into the field of battle through Door technology. Regis realizes Jenny and her team are using one of their shiftships and that they can track them via the Door technology they used. Do I have an actual memory of this story arc? Doesn't Midnighter go through some kind of Die Hard aboard The Carrier as it's invaded by Regis's alien army?

Currently not on The Carrier: Jenny, The Engineer, and Swift. They're busy interrogating Jenny's ex-husband, Lorenzo of the spider sperm.

If The Engineer were to spread her butt cheeks, would it be perfectly smooth or would I see a silvered butthole? Asking for the part of me that loves to look at buttholes.

In the interrogation, we discover that Jenny Sparks was married to Lorenzo for political reasons. But those reasons were lies because Jenny quickly found out the aliens were simply looking to take over Sliding Albion. Jenny wants to know how Sliding Albion survived the bacterial attack of 1953 and why they invaded her version of Earth. Lorenzo simply explains it was Regis. And Jenny is all, "What? I killed him in 1925!" And Lorenzo is all, "No, you merely castrated him." Oh. Well, that explains all that eunuch talk and not being able to fuck Chinese women. But now I want to know how you castrate somebody who just has a leaky spider hole in their crotch? Oh wait! That was just speculation on my part! The blue aliens could have any manner of tool down there that delivers sperm.

By Jenny's reaction, my guess is the blue aliens have a cigarette down there.

The Engineer and Swift get to learn some fascinating history about Regis and the Sliding Sicilians and all the various Sliding World Wars that Regis headed. She also mentions to The Engineer what happened to China.

Jenny's sucking on that cigarette like it was a blue alien dong.

It's a good thing Jenny mentioned that Regis murdered all of the men of China so that he could use the Chinese women as breeding stock to create more alien/human hybrids because I was on the fence about how I should feel about him before then. Kicked off nine World Wars? I don't know, maybe he had a reason. Decimated every continent with biochemical weapons? Everybody makes mistakes! Invaded Wildstorm Earth because he and his people have shit on every ounce of land on Sliding Earth? A guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do, ya know? But rape camps?! Man, this guy must be bad news!

Aboard The Carrier, just as Jenny ends her interview with her ex, multiple Doors open up and Alternate Universe UKIP members storm aboard on horseback. At the same time, shiftships Door in over multiple locations on Wildstorm Earth. All hell is breaking loose because Regis needs another, much bigger, rape camp.

Jack Hawksmoor displaying his favorite move: kicking people in the chin so that their spine flies out of their body.

After issue twelve of this series, Mark Millar takes over until the end. My theory is that Mark Millar saw that panel of Hawksmoor's extreme violence and thought, "I could write this!"

Millar probably jizzed his pants after this. He's a two-panels-of-Jack-Hawksmoor-kicking-people's-spines-out-of-their-body chump.

Later, Jack decides to try something different so he pulls the arm off of one guy and beats another guy to death with the arm. And Mark Millar is hard again.

Apollo collapses after taking out most of the invaders, drained of solar energy. The rest of the Alternate Universe UKIP soldiers rush off where they run into Jenny, The Engineer, and Swift returning from their London Holiday. They haven't been warned of the invasion due to some kind of technological interference by the invaders. The Engineer casually takes them out (and their horses! Sad!) with a flick of her machine gun wrist. The women decide Sliding Earth needs to be wiped of the multiversal map completely. Now they just have to let the guys know.

See? Planet Rape!

You might be thinking, "Tess, who would call a planet 'Planet Rape', you vile piece of shit?" But might I point out that we call one of the planets in our solar system "Jupiter" and, well, you know. Pretty much the same thing, no?

I just remembered who a bunch of idiots voted into office next year and now I'm thinking, "Shit. Probably a lot of assholes want to call a planet 'Planet Rape'. And their gonna try to drag everybody along with them." My entire life I've been unmanageable (which is why I have my own business now with zero other employees). I have no problem stepping that up to ungovernable soon.

Jenny sends Apollo out to fight an entire army by himself with Swift on comms giving him enemy movements and positions. Jenny and The Engineer will be moving The Carrier, possibly to Sliding Earth to re-castrate Regis. I don't know what the other fellows are going to do. Piss and moan, probably.

The Authority #7 Rating: A. Somehow Warren Ellis tells a tale with massive repercussions to Earth about one small team that's all that stands in the way of Planet Rape and it's believable. Aside from all the time spent fighting guys on horseback while an entire Alternate Dimension UKIP attack Northern Europe. I think we're supposed to believe that the shiftships haven't quite gotten around to destroying everything before the battle on The Carrier concludes. I'm willing to buy into it though because I'm a comic book reader and I've learned to believe in a lot of truly stupid and unbelievable shit so that I can keep being entertained. Questioning the sense of comics just leads you to not thoroughly enjoying the comic book. That's why so many readers used to always write in to Marvel and DC to offer their explanations for plot holes and inconsistencies. We didn't mind doing the heavy lifting to make this stupid hobby more believable when the writers and editors were busy shrugging their shoulders, collecting their paychecks, and, I'm assuming, calling us shitty names behind our backs! Jerkos!