I thought The Authority were making the world a better place to live? Is drowning good?
Speaking of drowning, I was recently wondering why I'm re-reading old comic books instead of attacking my huge pile of unread books and quickly decided I knew what the answer was: comic books are only 20-24 pages and every single book in my stack is like 500 pages plus! What a chore! Also, I waste a lot of time doing things other than reading that amount to basically doing nothing. The things that keep me busy in modern life are equivalent to sitting in a dark room and humming the first stanza of the last song I heard before shutting the door to my dark space. None of it fucking matters: it doesn't better me; I don't learn anything; my body gets no physical benefit from it; and my soul, which I know isn't an actual thing but a metaphor for, I don't know, ambition or achievement or passion, slowly rots. I mean drowns! I already forgot the initial metaphor I was riffing on!
Speaking of drowning as a metaphor for ennui, I just re-watched Ringu. So I was sat watching a video of people watching a video that drastically reduces their finite life and I didn't think, "Too on the nose?" I mean I did think that now, afterward! Having time to think about a movie after I got done watching it is probably why people think watching movies is "less passive" than watching television when actually they're both passive. Writing is active, dumb dumbs! Even reading is passive! But they're different levels of passive. In reading, you control the flow of time which enables you to stop at any moment to think about what you're reading. Thinking is active! So reading contains the illusion of being active because some people actually think about what they're reading and nobody just consumes a book in one sitting and follows it up with another book immediately without ever thinking about the first book. Whereas television is made to watch one thing and then go immediately into the next thing, and the next, and the next. No time to think about any of it! You just consume and forget and consume and forget! But then movies were always things where you had to make an effort. You went out, usually not alone, saw the movie, and then spent time discussing it with the people you saw it with as you spent time changing locations. Seems active because it gives space for thought! Of course now with streaming, who thinks about anything ever? We just sit alone in our dark room, or "well", and consume our "videos" while we seethe with an unconscious inner rage that burns itself into the fabric of space and time such that it curses teenagers to die within a week when they see you and realize just how shit your life is.
But I figured out how to break the curse! I copy down my terrible thoughts onto this blog and other people read them and then I get to live longer than seven days! Yay! Too bad y'all are fucking doomed now. Better paste links to my blog all over the place so you can stay alive and push that one-week-until-death turd off onto somebody else!
Anyway, the next four issues of this series (was there a Wildstorm mandate to make all stories four issues to easily package them as collections later?) contain the story, "Earth Inferno." It's not drawn by Frank Quitely which is a shame because even though I kept saying his characters looked like they had pudding injections, I actually adored his art. This new guy, Chris Weston? Is he an artist or just some intern who could meet a deadline?
Speaking of drowning as a metaphor for ennui, I just re-watched Ringu. So I was sat watching a video of people watching a video that drastically reduces their finite life and I didn't think, "Too on the nose?" I mean I did think that now, afterward! Having time to think about a movie after I got done watching it is probably why people think watching movies is "less passive" than watching television when actually they're both passive. Writing is active, dumb dumbs! Even reading is passive! But they're different levels of passive. In reading, you control the flow of time which enables you to stop at any moment to think about what you're reading. Thinking is active! So reading contains the illusion of being active because some people actually think about what they're reading and nobody just consumes a book in one sitting and follows it up with another book immediately without ever thinking about the first book. Whereas television is made to watch one thing and then go immediately into the next thing, and the next, and the next. No time to think about any of it! You just consume and forget and consume and forget! But then movies were always things where you had to make an effort. You went out, usually not alone, saw the movie, and then spent time discussing it with the people you saw it with as you spent time changing locations. Seems active because it gives space for thought! Of course now with streaming, who thinks about anything ever? We just sit alone in our dark room, or "well", and consume our "videos" while we seethe with an unconscious inner rage that burns itself into the fabric of space and time such that it curses teenagers to die within a week when they see you and realize just how shit your life is.
But I figured out how to break the curse! I copy down my terrible thoughts onto this blog and other people read them and then I get to live longer than seven days! Yay! Too bad y'all are fucking doomed now. Better paste links to my blog all over the place so you can stay alive and push that one-week-until-death turd off onto somebody else!
Anyway, the next four issues of this series (was there a Wildstorm mandate to make all stories four issues to easily package them as collections later?) contain the story, "Earth Inferno." It's not drawn by Frank Quitely which is a shame because even though I kept saying his characters looked like they had pudding injections, I actually adored his art. This new guy, Chris Weston? Is he an artist or just some intern who could meet a deadline?
Really wishing my father had bashed me over the head and kicked me into a well right about now.
Chris Weston should rest easy knowing that I'm not a good art critic. I'll give you an example: I don't care for Jim Lee's art. I know, right?! I also never liked the wave of artists that led to Image in the '90s. Artists like David Finch and Tony Daniels freak me out because all their men look fifty, covered in lines with weird Innsmouth fish mouths, while their women are clear-skinned angels who never look more than fourteen years old. Although I do appreciate that they always draw at least one scene of a woman coming out of a shower in a towel. Unless they're drawing a fourteen year old coming out of the shower in a towel and now I feel like throwing myself headfirst into a well.
I don't mind oddly drawn comics though! A person's consistent style can often win me over when their aesthetic isn't exactly beautiful. But not always. Take Chris Weston, as an example!
So what I was trying to say before Truth broke in with all her matter-of-fact about terrible art, was that Rome (and Vatican City which is sort of a subset of Rome) has been beset by tornadoes, smashing a bus right through the Pope either proving that God doesn't exist or God hates Catholics. Coin toss, that. The Authority, having made it their mission to make the world a better place, are all, "This is in our purview, right? We should look into this? It's 1999, are we worried about climate change yet? That's something huge we should fix!"
The Authority decide to send Apollo and one of The Engineer's to look into it. Yes, one of several. Angie has begun to duplicate herself to get more done and you also you know what else she's doing with her copies. Exactly what all of us would wind up doing with exact duplicates of ourselves: start a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
I don't mind oddly drawn comics though! A person's consistent style can often win me over when their aesthetic isn't exactly beautiful. But not always. Take Chris Weston, as an example!
So what I was trying to say before Truth broke in with all her matter-of-fact about terrible art, was that Rome (and Vatican City which is sort of a subset of Rome) has been beset by tornadoes, smashing a bus right through the Pope either proving that God doesn't exist or God hates Catholics. Coin toss, that. The Authority, having made it their mission to make the world a better place, are all, "This is in our purview, right? We should look into this? It's 1999, are we worried about climate change yet? That's something huge we should fix!"
The Authority decide to send Apollo and one of The Engineer's to look into it. Yes, one of several. Angie has begun to duplicate herself to get more done and you also you know what else she's doing with her copies. Exactly what all of us would wind up doing with exact duplicates of ourselves: start a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
Is one nipple on a horrific skeletal and incomplete torso enough to get me aroused? No comment.
Apollo's look in the above scan makes me think Weston's art is similar to Charlie Adlard's art. If Chris loves Charlie Adlard's art, he should take that as a compliment and then not read this next sentence. It was Charlie Adlard's art that made me stop reading The Walking Dead because everybody looked like everybody else and I couldn't tell who the fuck was doing what or who just died or who was just exploded by a tank while carrying, was that Rick? Or her baby? I know, you'd think I'd have stopped reading The Walking Dead because of every story was basically the same story but with a weirder and more aggro antagonist. No, it was Adlard's art. Which was a shame because I really fucking loved Tony Moore's work on the series. It's why I happened to pick up the first issue and write my first letter to a comic book which, I think, was printed in Issue #7?
The Doctor can't help with this thing happening to the Earth that's totally in his wheelhouse because he's on his honeymoon with his new rock star bride. Uh oh. He already had a predilection for the hard drugs. Now put a hot rock star into the mix? The Doctor's fucking done.
Meanwhile Jack Hawksmoor consults some blond guy in glasses and a white suit about The Authority's business, especially The Doctor.
The Doctor can't help with this thing happening to the Earth that's totally in his wheelhouse because he's on his honeymoon with his new rock star bride. Uh oh. He already had a predilection for the hard drugs. Now put a hot rock star into the mix? The Doctor's fucking done.
Meanwhile Jack Hawksmoor consults some blond guy in glasses and a white suit about The Authority's business, especially The Doctor.
Am I supposed to know who this asshole is?
Oh, um, that's Midnighter! I'd forgotten he loses about 70% of his sex appeal out of his leather costume. Who even knew he owned any other clothes?
During their conversation, Midnighter hands Jack a piece of paper which Jack reads and hands back to Midnighter. It doesn't seem like their discussion has anything to do with what's on the paper. Something's up! But for now, they need to deal with The Doctor. They crash his hotel pad in Sydney and find him unconscious from an overdose. His wife is nowhere to be seen. But before Midnighter can poke him in the right pressure points to wake him up or Jack can convince the city to grow a drug rehabilitation clinic inside the hotel room, Swift calls the entire team to New York for an emergency.
During their conversation, Midnighter hands Jack a piece of paper which Jack reads and hands back to Midnighter. It doesn't seem like their discussion has anything to do with what's on the paper. Something's up! But for now, they need to deal with The Doctor. They crash his hotel pad in Sydney and find him unconscious from an overdose. His wife is nowhere to be seen. But before Midnighter can poke him in the right pressure points to wake him up or Jack can convince the city to grow a drug rehabilitation clinic inside the hotel room, Swift calls the entire team to New York for an emergency.
Tidal wave!
The Authority #17 Rating: C. Hey! Hey! Notice how I didn't make a crass comment about the World Trade Center being destroyed by that terrorist wave? Something like, "The art team on The Authority got used to not having to draw the towers in New York a full year earlier than other artists!" I'm really proud of myself for not saying something like that! Really toning shit down on this blog! No more edgelord shit for me! Oh, and this issue was super average. Errors in the dialogue. Mediocre art. Pretty boring start to a story. It's like a really great series decided, "Sixteen issues of quality is all people need! Now we can just phone this shit in and let the reader's imagination and love of the previous sixteen issues of character development and exciting action make up for our lazy asses! Let's cash those checks, boys!"
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