The Authority #6 (October 1999)

You can tell Jenny Sparks is cool because she smokes.

Was it still cool to smoke in 1999? Is it still cool to smoke in 2024? I've never smoked because I'm not an extrovert and it seems the only reason you'd smoke is so you could hang out with other people who smoke who only smoke to hang out with other people who smoke who only smoke to hang out with other people who smoke who only smoke to hang out with old people. See, the reason Jenny Sparks smokes isn't because she's cool; it's because she's fucking old as shit. You didn't need to be an extrovert to smoke when you were old because it was just one of like four things to do with your precious little non-working-your-ass-off-to-survive time. Plus you could do it while working your ass off! Introverts sometimes become smokers too but I don't know why. But I can make an uneducated guess as to why! When introverts try smoking for the first time, it's usually finding a cigarette somewhere and squirrelling it away to smoke later behind the garage all by yourself so you don't get caught doing something you suspect is naughty and adult. The intenseness of the experience and the knowledge of doing something forbidden turns the act into something masturbatory and full of arousing feelings. So if an introvert is a smoker, it's because they totally got off in their pants on smoking cigarettes in private until they were addicted and it just became another boring habit that doesn't actually fulfill any of their needs. It fulfills a ghost need that died many years ago but still haunts your every waking moment while the inside of your pants, sadly, remain dry of sexy juices.

Most of that is unresearched opinion but it's probably correct being that I thought it up and wrote it down and why would God allow that if it was all dumb bullshit and lies?! Hmm, could it be because God is also dumb bullshit and lies? I think I need a cigarette.

I know Bryan Hitch drew the cover but it strikes me that maybe Warren Ellis told him, "Can you make Jenny Sparks look like the women I interact with online whom I want to manipulate into weird sex situations, most of whom I hope won't ever compare notes with each other about my predatory behavior? Thanks! That'll probably get me laid a bunch at the next convention!"

A young Jenny Sparks with her science gun hijacks an Alternate Universe UKIP ship.

Jenny's currently writing in her diary. Or explaining her history to somebody. Or engaging in comic book exposition. She explains how she stopped aging at twenty years old, the year Sliding Albion's shiftships first visited Wildstorm Earth and she, being an adventuress young lass with a massive science gun, hopped aboard a ship, crossed into a new dimension, and fucked her way through a series of blue-skinned princes with a fart of alien DNA. She calls it an "age of scientific romance" because of all the science and all the fucking. Sounds like a good time!

By the '50s, Great Britain had an intimate partnership with Alternate Universe UKIP (or Sliding Albion, as I should probably get used to calling them) and Jenny Sparks was a Colonel in their military space program (being that alternate universes were part of "space" although are they really? Time, maybe? Harmonics? Music? But surely not "space" in the traditional sense. "Space" is the place stuff exists within your own universe. Another universe can't be your "space," surely! It's like two competing storage unit companies). I'm glad she's a Colonel and not a Lieutenant or else my brain would have to read "Lieutenant" as "Leftenant" and I just can't abide that. It's bad enough my brain reads "Colonel" correctly even though there aren't any "R"s in it. What the fuck is wrong with military people? Are they illiterate?

Oh. The space group is a cover story. Never mind.

Jenny Sparks smokes and she's a millennial child with the spirit of the century she's born into. Those combined made me think, "Was there a Jenny Tobacco?" I know there was a Jenny Freedom but that just forces me to think, "Spirit of the Century? That means there must have been a Jenny Slaver." Jenny Imperialism! 珍妮 Gunpowder! Jenny Christianity! Snake Water Two Reeds Pyramid! Jenny Aqueduct! Jenny Frontier! Jannah Algebra! I'm here for all the fucking Jennies! Except maybe Jenny Slaver. Gotta be a different spirit in those dark times, right? Maybe just tone it down to Jenny Imperialism (which is really stretching the meaning of "tone it down", I suppose). Maybe Jenny Revolution and she was born into one of the nations other nations tried oppressing but who fought back and gave them plenty of black eyes (as opposed to feathers in their caps). Like maybe Jenny Waylayer from Waziristan! Or Jenny Peyote, a shaman of the Rarámuri of North America who were never conquered by the Spanish or fully converted by the Jesuits! Or Jenny Herero fighting, perhaps in vain, against the genocide of her people by the Germans! Basically a thousand thousand Jenny Resists all over the continent of Africa in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Although I guess Jenny Resist would have had to make way for Jenny Sparks as Jenny Resist met Lord Quinton Itsfutile the Third.

I guess Jenny Resist was actually Jenny Freedom! So never mind yet again.

In 1953, Sliding Albion went to war with Sliding Europe. It was over in mere minutes but not before Sliding Albion, in a last ditch attempt to save themselves, tried to shift Sliding Europe's bacterial attack into Wildstorm Earth space. It didn't save them and, luckily, it didn't destroy Wildstorm Earth. I don't think. Not sure if there were any lasting repercussions from it. Maybe the bacteria caused a shift in consciousness that brought about the '60s? What it did do was cut the world off from Sliding Earth until 1999. It's why Jenny Sparks thought they were destroyed.

So back to the big battle in 1999 Los Angeles.

They're going to beat up an empty building?

Midnighter only smiles like that for two thing: Apollo's fresh out of the shower butthole and murdering people. I don't know what Jack Hawksmoor smiles about. Freely running sewage systems? Well patterned traffic signals?

The shiftship crashes through the building and crashes to the ground. The Alternate Universe UKIP terrorists inside prepare for their invasion which they don't realize will last about thirty seconds total, judging by their welcoming party.

With this greeting, it could be the actual Midnighter or just some guy in a costume from the sidewalk outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

Jenny Sparks becomes a massive, monstrous electrical field in the shape of Jenny Sparks and threatens to destroy every last shiftship that doesn't get the fuck off of her Earth. Those that survive her and Apollo and The Engineer and The Doctor and Jack Hawksmoor and Midnighter and, fuck, I guess Swift also, turn their ships around and Door back to Sliding Albion. Regis is going to be fucking pissed because there are still two chapters in this story.

After the invasion is repelled, Jenny Sparks gives her team a quick rundown on the history of Sliding Albion.

Jenny said she'll provide details later. Fingers crossed those details are how the aliens and humans fucked.

Jenny Sparks contacts her old friends in the British military because she needs some intel from an alien they've got locked away there: some blue guy named Lorenzo who was Jenny Sparks' first husband.

The Authority #6 Rating: A. Way better than the previous issue that just didn't have enough meat in the pages. That may or may not be a metaphor about plot. That may or may not be literal because I was eating a pulled pork sandwich when I first read this. This issue was entertaining with a few cute surprises. It might have received an A+ but The Engineer didn't flash a single nipple. I'm surprised I deigned to purchase Issue #7 back in 1999 after that lack of nip.