The Authority #18 (October 2000)

Midnighter's point of view after making Apollo ejaculate.

At the end of the last issue, New York was hit by a tidal wave. It wasn't saved by The Authority because they're apparently cops now. How do you expect them to save lives when their main job is taking lives? What you want is a psychic who can tell you where not to be when the shit fucking goes down hard. Cops are just there to enforce mostly bullshit traffic laws and hand out fix-it tickets to poor people who already fucking know they've got a light out, officer, and how do you think fining them is going to help them pay for the fucking fix? Even when The Authority was stop Yellow Peril Terrorists, Cosmic Jizz, and Alternate Dimensional UKIP Soldiers, they were only stopping them after they'd killed thousands of people. It's tough to get excited about a team that stops end of the world threats when the threat destroys so many lives before it's over. I suppose that's a half full and/or empty glass situation. But it's also one of the reasons I've never liked wrath of nature action movies. As a member of the audience, why am I supposed to feel good that Tom Cruise and his family, or The Rock and his dumb kids, survive some huge natural disaster while watching dozens, if not hundreds, of people die all around them. "Oh, yay! The people the camera focused on made it to the end of the movie alive! Who the fuck cares about anybody else?!" But as an anybody else in the audience, I fucking care! I want to survive too! When do I get to be the main character?!

Anyway, have a look at New Yorkers drowning in a flood:

Most of them seem to having a nice time. Especially old "Holla Raise the Roof" in the lower left corner. Maybe a little bored but still partying!

That first page was basically the cover from last issue. So I guess the cover of this issue will be the first page next issue. That means this issue will end with Midnighter sucking off Apollo. Which is really nice in a symmetrical sort of way. Last issue ends in a tidal wave of seawater; this issue ends in a tidal wave of magma cum. Water and fire. So the next two issues will end in air and earth ejaculations?

The second page continues the "people drowning in agony and/or ennui" theme. Just loads and loads of people drowning. This is catastrophic! Millar must be going for a really dark tone in this one. Look how quickly life can end, and in such vast numbers as to be nearly incomprehensible. How does a mortal being look upon this kind of destruction and not weep high fashion two hundred dollar reusable water bottle?

No wait. It's a comedy.

Did you catch that joke? That male character has been in love with another male character since he first met him! Ha ha! Gays!

I think a better joke than revealing that one of these men is a homosexual would have been for the homosexual firefighter (who could be heterosexual in my joke because I'm not relying on his sexuality for a punch line) to be all, "I know you've been peeing in my coffee! Have you noticed how often I leave my mug unattended by the urinal? Can I get one more splash before we die?" Is that a funny joke? No? Well at least it's not homophobic!

Swift rescues the firefighters before they drown so now they're going to have to awkwardly work with each other without ever mentioning their near-death bed confessions again. I bet Billy is all, "You can keep boffing my wife, by the way. Really relieves some stress around the house. Also she kisses me after she blows you thinking she's getting one over on me. Although she always seems really confused by how much tongue I give her when she does."

The Engineer turns into 82 versions of herself to save some people from drowning. Swift saves the two firefighters. Apollo saves a few more. And Jack Hawksmoor, Jackson King, and Christine Trelane have teleported 40,000 New Yorkers aboard The Carrier to save some lives.

Are New Yorkers known for shooting at each other after they've been saved from near death?

Jenny Quantum needs to be taught about consent as soon as possible. She also needs to be drawn by somebody other than Chris Weston because right now she's the ugliest fucking baby in the world.

I'm not even sure she's technically alive.

That's not even the ugliest picture of Jenny Quantum in this comic. I just chose that one because I love the way Jackson King is just kind of holding her under his arm like a stack of books and the dopey fucking look on her face.

Everybody's upset The Doctor has overdosed on heroin because this is the kind of thing that he could fix up immediately. They're also wondering who might be behind all these natural disasters suddenly happening all over the Earth. None of them think, "Those two things are probably related, right? Take out the guy who can stop natural disasters in a heartbeat before you start seeding the globe with natural disasters." Also, Midnighter did say The Doctor's wife was a pain in the ass and causing tens of thousands of deaths via man-made natural disasters constitutes being a pain in the ass, I think. Let me check my Oxford English Dictionary. Yep. Pretty standard definition of pain in the ass.

The non-capitalized doctor wants to inject some of Midnighter's blood into capitalized Doctor because Midnighter's immune system has already fought every battle one million ways inside it's immune system mind and it knows exactly how the battle's going to end.

Don't you mean you beat HIV in six weeks? Words matter, sir.

The Engineer tells Apollo she wants The Doctor off the team because he coincidentally overdosed the exact same day a disaster happens that he could have prevented. Apollo does not say, "A-ha! I bet there's a connection there!" because Apollo isn't autistic. Am I wrong in thinking that every character in literature and television who can make "A-ha!" leaps of logic are autistic-coded? Like, um, Sherlock Holmes, Columbo, and House, M.D.? Probably others but I have an ass to scan and an apology to make to Chris Weston.

Half-ass all the faces you want, Chris, if you're going to full-ass all the asses like this. What's that thing Campbell Soup says? "Mmm, Mmm, Good"? "Never Underestimate the Power of Butt"? "It's Amazing What Butt Can Do"?

The Authority have done all they can for New York City so they leave it in the hands of the National Guard and some other heroes they picked up at Home Depot. If you think, because of that statement, that the heroes who came to help were Mexican, you're racist. I just meant they're heroes without regular jobs! Calm down, Internet. Sometimes looking for racism under every rock is the racist thing to do. Did that make sense? Did I sound wise?

Oh, also, there's an earthquake brewing in California that The Authority have tagged as an extinction level event. Please. A big earthquake in California isn't extinction level! It's fucking excitement for the Californian natives! Ain't nothin' like riding a big old fucking earthquake to make you feel alive. You know, if you survive it which most people do! It's not the earthquake that's dangerous; it's the shoddy man-made constructions we all scramble around in like gigantic pink and horny ants. I, a Californian native, missed the big Loma Prieta Earthquake in '89 because I was off at my first year of college like a big old stupid moronic idiot and I'll regret it until the day I die!

I don't get it.

Does Jack Hawksmoor equate prom night with rape? He can't seriously be suggesting people would peer pressure their virgin dates into a great big fuck and suck fest at the Red Lion, does he?! Or does he mean "sweating" as in "sweating between the legs because it's prom night and everybody is fucking horny and ready to go and nobody's actually nervous at all except for the guy who brought Wolfman as his date and felt Wolfman's huge rigid penis against his leg when they danced and now he's wondering if he has enough amyl nitrate to get him through until morning"?

Anyway, the brewing earthquake is in San Francisco because of course it is.

I don't remember any dormant volcanoes in the Santa Cruz mountains? But that's a nice shot of the Bay Bridge!

At least the people of San Francisco understand how to look terrified unlike the people of New York who met death with a hearty, "Enh. Whatever."

The Authority puts out an order to evacuate from Berkeley to San Jose. Oh no! MOTHER! I hope she gets out safely!

San Francisco won't talk with Jack Hawksmoor so he can't tell it to pull itself together. That means Apollo has to dive into the fissure that opened up beneath the city (which is different than the volcano? Or the cause of the volcano?) and convince it to close itself somehow. Probably with his heat vision!

Midnighter arrives to help although you can pull out the intestines of a natural disaster and feed them to itself so I don't know how much good he's going to be. He does announce The Doctor will be making a full recovery just as a bunch of trees suddenly sprout through the ground and swarms of locusts attack. I'm not sure why that was needed when volcanic eruptions and earthquakes usually don't result in instant trees and insects. Maybe Millar introduced the locusts because he wanted to do a bit where The Engineer creates a bunch of enormous bug zappers hanging in the sky?

This butt is a little too butty. But still acceptable.

Apollo shuts off the tap to the volcano after The Engineer clears out the bugs and San Francisco is safe! Now to figure out who's behind it all! Maybe The Doctor took some PCP and did all this himself? Or was forced PCP! I'm still voting on The Doctor's new bride as the main culprit.

The Midnighter gets a list of possible culprits from Christine Trelane's files and goes off to interrogate them. Eventually he happens upon an old Doctor from 1967 who began murdering everybody on Earth alphabetically by nation. After three nations, he was captured and put away in a prison complex, Before Christ, LTD, at the beginning of the world. He claims he has nothing to do with these disasters, being that his power was taken from him after he turned out to be a psychopath. But he does claim to know who the enemy is.

Oh, is this where The Authority have to stop saying, "We're saving the Earth," and start saying, "We're saving Mankind!"?

The Authority #18 Rating: B-. Well, this can't end well, can it? The Authority are going to have to kill the Earth to keep the Earth from killing every human but then where will all the humans live when Earth is dead? What a conundrum! Do you think maybe Earth liked being the home of Space Daddy more than humans? Then when The Authority killed Space Daddy God, Earth was all, "Fuck you, assholes! You killed my best tenant! You're evicted!" Does Earth have a spine that Jack Hawksmoor can kick out of it? Does it have a face that Midnighter can punch? How do you calm the Earth when it gets all riled up like this? I'm thinking they need loads and loads of sacrifices. And we already have a really good method of sacrificing the perfect people who don't bring anything but violence and pain to this world! Start building Wicker Men, everybody! Time for the cops to burn to appease Earth!