The Authority #26 (November 2001)

If I were afraid of being seen as gay, I wouldn't use a double-sided ribbed dildo as my weapon of choice, Last Call.

I might use a regular dildo with only one head because then people wouldn't think, "Why's it gotta have two heads unless you're shoving one side up yourself as you forcibly penetrate your opponent?" I'd also like to clarify that I wouldn't shove anything up the asshole of an opponent that I'm battling because I'm better than that (unless I knew for certain they had just gotten out of the shower and they were dropping flirty hints during the battle that they were kind of into it). Should I also clarify that I wouldn't beat anybody to death at all (unless they were freshly out of the shower and they had threatened one of my cats)?

Now I wish I was fighting Rush, freshly out of the shower, with a double-sided dildo and she was all, "Oops! my overalls just fell down!", as she bent over bearing her ass with a pinky up to her mouth and a sly wink.

Dinh, the leader of the Space Asians, has just resurrected The Authority out of the molecules of New Authority.

Please wish back Rush freshly out of the shower? Please oh please oh please!

David Finch isn't drawing this issue so I'm fairly certain Rush won't suddenly reappear in a towel so short you can see butt cleavage. Hopefully Jenny Sparks will be all, "I wish I was dead! Why'd you have to bring me back?! Didn't you learn anything from Season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer?!"

The Doctor, who can rewrite reality, doesn't want anybody else to have the opportunity to rewrite reality so he's all, "It's a bad idea, gang! The consequences could be catastrophic!" He then mumbles, "to my ego". Ultimately it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks because Jenny Sparks comes up with the wish almost immediately. Fingers crossed it involves Rush and a towel. No wait! Rush and no towel!

Terrible wish. Even an amateur genie would know how to fuck up that wish!

A smart-ass genie might remove all the limbs of all the creatures on Earth with a wish of "total disarmament." But a professional genie would be all, "Oh? You want every thing that can be used as a weapon to oppress other human beings destroyed? No problem!" Then all the human beings would disappear. Or if the genie didn't want to go that far, he'd at least remove every human's hands, feet, and teeth, and probably all the penises, just to make sure nobody could ever again hurt anybody else. But then Jenny isn't asking this wish of a genie! She's asking it of a dream machine that seems to understand the subtleties of her wish.

Gun nuts are going to go crazy on Jenny for this wish. They'll be all, "Now how will women in abusive relationships protect themselves? Are you anti-women?" But they'll quickly be chased away by a goose honking, "Protect them from whom? Who did they need protecting from?!" So fuck the gun nuts. They're nuts for a reason!

In celebration of Earth suddenly having no weapons which automatically means no conflict, I guess?, the team celebrates with lots of hugs. Apollo tries to hug Midnighter and Midnighter freezes up and then headbutts him in the face. Whoops! I guess homophobia is stronger than genie wishes!

I mean, I like women but I think maybe that's just semantics? I hope?

See? For Jenny's wish to truly have worked, everybody would have had to lose their heads as well as their fists and feet and teeth! The genie who just made all humans disappear would have been the only genie expressing the wish correctly.

After murdering Dinh, the Space Asian city in Re-Space begins to collapse around them. New Authority Door back to The Carrier but not before Colonel makes one last wish on the wishing lantern. He's probably wishing for lower taxes on cartons of cigarettes.

Just in case anybody too dense to understand what just happened didn't get it.

They're all so proud of Last Call's homophobia! Look at their cute little faces beaming down on him! What a joyous moment of hate and joy!

I've mentioned my Catholic, Republican friend from high school, Soy Rakelson, on this blog before. He used to get so angry at the term "homophobia" because he insisted he wasn't scared of gay people. Not at all! And yet, he was so fucking scared of gay people! I remember how he was raving about Peter Milligan's comic book, Enigma, right up until it was plainly stated that the main character was gay and wrestling with his sexuality at which point Soy stopped reading the comic, stopped talking about the comic, and just pretended he was never into it. He was always so into broad theories because specifics always fucked him up too much. Like he loved the John Barth short story from Lost in the Funhouse, "Night-sea Journey", when he thought it was just a bunch of non-specific existentialist philosophical thinking by a "swimmer." He brought it up to me once, and I responded, "Oh, the story about the sperm?" And he just looked gobsmacked. You could see his brain clicking away at the ramifications of what the story was about and how it changed everything going from broad philosophical ramblings to the very specific existentialist quandary of a spermatozoa pleading to all other sperm to end procreation. Being John Barth, there's a lot more to it than just that, of course. Like how stories get told, how they're transmitted, how they're created, and how they outlive the creatures that create them. But his Catholic brain just shit itself the moment I pointed out that the story was from the point of view of a sperm wanting to tear it all fucking down.

What I'm saying is that Soy didn't like specifics because often the specifics wound up conflicting with his specific beliefs. Like most Conservatives (and Comicsgaters and Free Speech Enthusiasts and Racists and Homophobes), they want broad stories so they can ignore any details that go against the things they believe. Because if something in a story points even half-heartedly in the direction of accusing them of being a terrible person, they'll firebomb it, claim it's woke bullshit, and go running into their safe space man cave.

Oh shit! It's this fucker that caused things to slide right! I bet he even thought Nigel Farage into existence!

I guess that's the end of "Transfer of Power". There's an epilogue where New Authority go to battle Doctor Krigstein's assassins whom we saw in silhouette an issue or two ago. But I think that's just to tie up that loose end since nothing really came of it. It looks like he created more gender-swapped versions of The Authority with a Jill Hawksmoor and a Woodpecker (male Swift) and an Aphrodite. But that's just a splash page and then the story ends with Colonel all, "I love this job!" I hope he loves it as much when The Authority and/or Seth destroy him next issue.

The Authority #26 Rating: B+. It was fine! Who doesn't want to see the day saved by homophobia?! I mean, in a normal comic book, it would seem weird. But this is the Anti-Authority comic book where the opposite of the usual takes place. Like how Swift is boring and I constantly forget about her in the main book but Rush is exciting and I can't stop picturing her fresh out of the shower in this book! Such opposite dynamics! Also Midnighter loves cock in the regular book but he hates cock so much in this book that Last Call has probably never washed his junk or wiped his ass in thirty-two years. I find it weird when people think touching their own parts is somehow gay. The sexiest thing I can think of is my own penis! If I could only shove it up my own ass, boy oh boy! What a world this would be! And I . . . LIKE . . . WOMEN!!

The Authority #25 (October 2001)

"No Homo!"

It has previously been established that Last Call shouts his name when he murders somebody by punching them in the face. It's also been established that he's completely terrified that somebody might think he's gay. So I've solved his problems by renaming him No Homo! Now whenever he murders a man by touching that man in a way that might cause some homophobes to think, "Ew! That man just touched another man!", he can scream, "No Homo!" and they'll think, "Oh, okay! I was unclear whether or not that was homosexual. I may have been distracted by how much my butthole itches because I'm too straight to wipe. The butt is the gay place!"

Last Call attacks a Space Asian who melts all over him and they both disappear into the Æther. Teuton distracts the rest of the space fleet by flying them to the jungles of some South American nation where their attack on Earth will help New Authority kill a bunch of drug runners. The rest of New Authority head back to The Carrier to discuss how much trouble they're in since they've discovered the Space Asians and the Poverty Bomb are their fault. They dumped the refugees in Re-Space and now they've Re-turned to get Re-venge. The Colonel gets pissed off when it's evident that he's the one who's going to get blamed since he's in charge. He also gets scared because punishment by his government masters comes in the form of a meeting with Hillbilly Assassin, Seth. And that guy doesn't just murder people. He also ejaculates himself inside people so he can explode out of their nether orifices. Sometimes he fucks and eats them and shits them out before fucking and eating them again.

Last Call finds himself caged in Re-Space where he gets a lesson on how it all works and why the attack on Earth happened so suddenly after dumping the bodies.

That's a lot of word to say, "We're going to fuck you the way you fucked us."

Speaking of fucking, this Re-Spaced Southeast Asian Refugee discovers Last Call's worst fear: being homosexual. So he's all, "I can think you homosexual and then you'll be homosexual and you'll just love dick so much!" And Last Call is all, "*drool drool drool*"

I don't know if the drool is from the ball gag in his mouth or the thought of what it will soon be replaced with. Dick. It's going to be replaced with dicks.

If Last Call had learned anything about psychic defenses, he could have fooled the Re-Space guy into thinking his worst fear was butt sex with a hot woman! Then the guy would have been, "Ha ha! I can imagine you having loads of butt sex with hot women for all eternity!" Then Last Call would have died from jizzing so hard at the thought. So maybe it's good he didn't have any psychic preparations for this attack.

I'm not going to discuss the issue with making Last Call gay as punishment because it's not like this guy is all, "Being gay is a punishment for everybody!" He's just all, "Being gay would be a punishment for you and I fucking can't stand you so now you're gay, sir."

Chaplain Action kicks Colonel's ass hard enough to make him understand that he needs to lead New Authority and they need to save the world. So they all buck up and head into Re-Space to re-murder the re-fugees they re-cently re-moved from The Carrier. They descend on the Space Asians who immediately unthink them out of existence. They then re-think up The Authority and they're back to life!

Couldn't they have at least have re-placed Swift with Rush?

How does Jenny Sparks know she missed anything? Does she remember dying? Shouldn't she be overwhelmed by confusion?

The Authority #25 Rating: B-. Hopefully this isn't how The Authority return to their world. It would be a major cop-out when obviously Mark Millar had something planned for his four part story before Frank Quitely quit. Especially since Jenny Quantum survived somewhere on Earth after Midnighter escaped with her and hid her. What would happen if the Spirit of the 20th Century and the Spirit of the 21st Century co-existed?! Plus Jack Hawksmoor was inside Seth's torso and I was really looking forward to Jack kicking Seth's spine out of him from the inside.

The Authority #24 (September 2001)

The Authority. The Monarchy. Now The Establishment? Will next issue introduce The Hall Monitors?

P.S. for the last review: So I read the letters page and it explained why The Authority was delayed from March to August. Frank Quitely quit. He got a better offer and possibly was exhausted from drawing so many decapitations. The new artist chosen to replace Frank Quitely, Arthur Adams, had some shit he had to finish up. And since the story was at a place where a New Authority had just appeared, everybody got the great idea to just throw in a story where they were the main characters. I don't know how anything works but I guess eight months was finally enough time to get the story, "Brave New World", back on track. So that's that story. Here's another one:

After Issue #29, Garth Ennis was meant to take over The Authority. And after that, Brian Azzarello. But it never happened and now those runs of The Authority only exist in Sandman's library. Maybe I'll try to read them in my sleep over the next few months so I can do reviews of them.

This issue begins with New Authority being led in prayer by Pope Ultimate Nick Fury. That's when I, being far less astute than the average comic book reader, realize each member of New Authority are nationals of each of the seven countries in Wildstorm Earth's G7 nations: Colonel from the United Kingdom, Machine from Japan, Streets from the United States of America, my girlfriend Rush from Canada, The Surgeon from France, Teuton from duh, and Last Call from Italy. Last Call is heterosexual, by the way. He mentions his girlfriend every chance he gets. I'm surprised he didn't take the name No Homo.

Machine, you foul temptress! Your ass will not make me forget my girl Machine! I mean Rush!

New Authority uses religion the same way Republicans use it: as camouflage for gullible jerks and/or selfish bastards who know better but appreciate the flimsy appearance of religiosity. I suspect that the reason Conservatives love the term "virtue signaler" so much is that all they do is virtue signal. They pay lip service to patriotism and faith to cloak their actual despicable selves. Knowing that all they do is virtue signal by wearing a cross, saying a prayer, and hanging an American flag in front of their house, they suspect that anybody who actually fucking cares about others and shows any signs of compassion must be doing it, like them, for show. We all know they don't understand comprehension of language so forget thinking they can ever rationally deconstruct anything correctly. It's why they're constantly telling on themselves by accusing others of doing what they do. It's probably because they don't read many books (and by "books", I don't mean self-help shit or get rich quick fuckery or The Bible (although The Bible is well worth the read, especially if you want to understand 95% of all Western Civilization literature (and that's the only reason to read it, really))).

Action Chaplain calls Last Call and Teuton aside to let them know that he's always available to talk about, well, you know.

Since he's so fucking touchy about it, he really should think about changing the name to No Homo.

It turns out it wasn't just Washington, DC, that got hit with the Poverty Ray. Every place else in the world was also hit. But only the top 1% of earners have been turned into poor refugees. New Authority steals food and supplies from humanitarian efforts in starving nations to redirect them to the now starving and poor rich folks. The problem with The Authority was that they wanted to make the world a better place for everybody. New Authority has fixed that and they're ready to make the world a better place for the people who already have everything better. Which, if you're able to comprehend anything at all, means making the world a worse place for those who already have it worse.

Sound familiar, you fucking Trump voting morons? Oh no! Did I call you a moron? I must be an elite! And now I've forced you to dig in and be an even worse person than you already were because I pointed out how terrible and dumb you already are! Although, why do you care if people can't stand you for trying to make the world worse for so Others? Why do you need to be liked by the people you despise? What's wrong with your mental health, my friend? If you want to be liked, there's a really fucking easy way to get that. Don't be an asshole. It's really pretty easy! Hey, I wrote a poem about it! Maybe you can benefit from my amazing poetry!

—————

Clubs
By Grunion Guy

I joined a club called "Fuck You, White Power Bitches"
It was a pretty easy club to join
It didn't cost me anything and I don't have to pay any yearly dues
Sometimes I have to speak up
So that, you know, white power bitches know I think they should go fuck themselves
But that's not too hard
It's even fun most of the time

The interesting thing about this club is that it accepts members from all sorts of other clubs
You can be both a member of the "Republican Club" and "Fuck You, White Power Bitches," if you want
I only mention that because it doesn't seem a lot of people in the "Republican Club" realize it
They seem to have a problem with the uncivil "Fuck You" part of the club title
When they should have a problem with the "White Power" people the club wants to go fuck themselves

I'm also well aware that some people have a problem with the "Bitches" part of the club title
But I'm part of the club "I Like Saying Bitches So I Refuse To Stop Saying It"
Even though it would cost me practically nothing to stop saying the word "bitches"
It's like how in high school in the 80s, I used to use "faggot" as a swear word
(Probably influenced greatly by Mark Knopfler's use of the word by his blue collar, computer animated characters singing "Money For Nothing")
Until one day, I finally realized how fucked up that was and, whether I meant it or not,
I was making the world a worse place by using that word when I could easily just be saying "shit"
Even members of "I Like Saying Bitches So I Refuse To Stop Saying It" are allowed to be a part of "Fuck You, White Power Dickheads"

You know what?
I just decided to stop saying "bitches" because I thought about it for like half a second and realized it still costs me nothing to try and be a better person to my fellow human beings
When you think about it, it actually costs less to stop saying "bitches" than to have to say, "I'm using it in a non-derogatory fashion because language is fluid and shouldn't be a person-sized saddle we've strapped to our own backs but a tool we can rationally and systematically change over time" every single time that somebody within earshot hears it and looks at you horrified
It's much easier to not say it than to get into a debate about free speech with everybody you offend after using it
And pretty soon, you just stop using it which lowers the amount of systemic bias towards women by a small but not inconsequential amount

It's like every time you refer to a large black man as intimidating
You're increasing the systemic bias toward the belief that large black men are dangerous
You're actively making the world a more dangerous place for large black men
No matter how many people you assure that you were just making a dumb joke

You know what's even easier than not saying a hurtful word or continuing a harmful stereotype?
Decrying white power
It's actually much more work to have to explain why you won't extricate yourself from ties to white power every time you wind up publicly embracing some tenet of white power

I suppose I can understand how much you love trolling the Libtards with your 4Chan nonsense
It can be hard to give up things that make you laugh, like making up white power signs and then flashing them constantly
Afterward, you get to laugh at all the libs you owned by making them think you're a white supremacist
Because you acted like a white supremacist in public
Which is so funny because did they think you were serious? How dumb are they?!
Acting like a white supremacist and causing oppressed and under-represented people to feel intimidated by your actions isn't actual white supremacy!
I mean, it's the definition of it, I suppose
But if you think about it at all for any length of time, it was a joke!
Stop being so hurt by casual, jokey racism, you free speech haters
Is probably what you're typing right now on your Reddit board and your Twitter feed

Anyway, I have to get to my "Fuck You, White Power Dickheads" club meeting now
It's not a scheduled meeting, really
It's just me going outside my front door
And making the world a better place for everybody
Fuck you, white power dickheads.

—————

Um, anyway, Colonel is all, "Don't be too quick about figuring out how to return the 1% because they suck and if we're lucky, Seth was turned into a refugee as well." Actually he doesn't say the bit about Seth but he should probably be thinking it. Why not kill Seth now when he's been transformed so they don't have to worry about the G7 eventually sending Seth after them? They can run the fucking world themselves if they take out Seth!

It's about time somebody had the balls to say it!

Remember that old guy, Doctor Jacob Krigstein? He's the Jack Kirby insert but instead of creating comic book heroes, he creates actual heroes (who are comic book heroes to you and me so, well, let's not delve too deeply here. I don't want to have to battle some Derrida-esque Balrog). The Authority hired him so that he'd stop destroying the world but the reader never saw how The Authority utilized him. Whatever he was doing, it's interrupted by his realization that Marvel continues to hold the copyright on all of his characters and continue to use them for their own ends, raking in the money while doing so. Oh, did I say Marvel? I meant the United States of America. He's especially upset by their creation of the New Authority even though he had nothing to do with the original Authority. That was all Henry Bendix, wasn't it? Anyway, Doctor Krigstein is still creating because he's dreamed up seven new characters to kick the shit out of New Authority. I won't scan in the picture because it wouldn't be any use. When they're revealed, they're all in silhouette. One of them is smoking though so maybe a new Jenny Sparks? Two of them aren't fucking though so they may or may not be a new Apollo and a new Midnighter.

Have I mentioned that Teuton cries at the drop of a dead Southeastern Asian (and anything else that can be dropped, apparently)? Last Call can't stand it because he thinks the public will think a man who can show his emotions must be gay and that, by association, they'll think he's gay too. Last Call's really fucking insecure, isn't he? The two of them are in Beverly Hills helping feed the new poorly rich when a bunch of spaceships fly through a Door (a blue door and not a yellow door so not from The Carrier) and begin burning everything in sight. Teuton tears open the cockpit of one to see who's taking advantage of the reverse rich pandemic to attack Earth.

Why not Space Asians?

Oh boy. Looks like dumping the refugees into The Bleed's really coming back to bite New Authority in the ass. Last Call's going to be really uncomfortable about that description of their fucking around and finding out. Hmm, he might not like that description either. If I were Last Call, I would be taking publicity pictures of me licking Teuton's balls based on the amount of money they're being paid to do this gig. They haven't actually said how much it is but even if it's only thirty ground, get those balls in my mouth!

I'm starting to think maybe I just want some balls in my mouth.

Streets and The Surgeon have a brief discussion about the Vietnam War (being that Streets is American and The Surgeon is French) and it's some really good chatter because I know a lot of Americans that would be butthurt by this kind of talk.

Ha ha! Losers.

Growing up in the '70s and '80s, basically in the shadow of the Vietnam War, it was always weird to hear people constantly talk about how America had never lost a war, and how great America was at defending the world, and how little discussion of how imperialist the USA was and how they wielded their power for so many reasons beyond that of "the good of the world" that I couldn't help but be constantly confused. If America was so great and honorable and good, what's up with Vietnam? Why is everybody ignoring this thing that we did and this war that we lost and the terrible fucking atrocities our country gets up to? Was everybody just trying to memory hole it because it actively argued against the United States being the greatest country? The first time I realized there were people out there who weren't confused and who knew what the fuck was what the fuck, I was standing in line at Togo's on Lafayette and Benton in Santa Clara, California. I don't remember the exact book I was reading but it was Kurt Vonnegut. And he was discussing how America had lost the Vietnam War. There was then, as I remember it, a break in the text like this:

* * * * * * * * * * *

Losers.

* * * * * * * * * * *

God how I laughed! It was just such a stark and simply stated version of what everybody constantly seemed to be denying. It's not that people around me didn't mention Vietnam, or sometimes discuss it. My father had fought in Vietnam (although that didn't help me understand it being that he left when I was two and never really talked about it). There were documentaries about it. Obviously while it happened (I was not alive for most of it and a baby when America fled Saigon), it was criticized and protested against and all-around a really fucking bad look for the country. But it seemed as the dust settled, the people who never really thought of it as a bad thing anyway took the stage, swept all the unpleasantness under the rug, and went back to normal "America is the greatest country" bullshit that the weirdest, most uncritical, and worst people of every generation (so, you know, Reaganites) want to be the narrative. Reading Vonnegut just outright take a moment to call the United States of America losers was a saving moment for my sanity. There were people who didn't flee from reality. They spoke the truth of things in simple ways. I kept reading Vonnegut and he rarely disappointed. I've been re-reading him lately and, in the way people who tell the Truth during their time always manage to nail, everything he says remains true or gets even more true with time. He writes with a clarity of vision that makes it impossible for people who label themselves Conservative today to ever actually enjoy his writing. If I ever meet a Conservative who proclaims Kurt Vonnegut is their favorite writer, or Star Trek: The Next Generation is their favorite television show, I'll simply call them a liar and be done with them.

Back to the comic book, Machine realizes the ships attacking Earth are from the area of The Bleed where they dropped off the refugees (a place called "Re-Space". I've just been calling it The Bleed in a general sense because "Re-Space" was fucking stupid and a total throw away "Look at the weird space The Carrier is currently flying!" line.

The Authority #24 Rating: B. It took these idiots long enough to realize that they caused all this. First everybody turns into Southeast Asian refugees and they go, "What caused this?" Then they realize it's the top 1% who have turned into refugees and they're all, "This will help us hide that thing we did to the refugees until we can figure out a good lie to cover our idiocy!" And then Earth is attacked by Southeast Asians in battle ships and they're all, "Weird. Space Asians!" But finally Machine is all, "Oh, those ships are from the same place we dumped the bodies. What a coincidence!" But then Colonel is all, "Oh shit." Seth gonna turn them into Fuck Doll Dessert.

The Authority #23 (August 2001)

New boobs. Who dis?

This issue has a cover date of August 2001 and is written by Tom Peyer. The last issue had a cover date of March 2001 and was written by Mark Millar. This is the first of a four issue story entitled "Transfer of Power." Millar's was the first of a four issue story titled "Brave New World." I don't know what happened between March and August of 2001 but it doesn't feel like this was entirely planned. I surmised that Millar's story, "Brave New World," was going to be delayed while this story, "Transfer of Power," gets told in a way reminiscent of The Book of A Thousand Nights and a Night but I didn't expect a four month delay between the stories. Was Millar suddenly not available for seven or eight months and couldn't finish his story so Tom Peyer had to step in to write a little tale about the new Authority? How long is the sentence for decapitating somebody in a bar brawl?

I have a vague, nagging memory of this delay in the series and my own confusion about the story arcs. I don't read comic books month to month anymore because I'm 53 years old and my brain can't be bothered to remember the details of a story that's told 20 pages at a time in 30 day increments. Hell, I had trouble back when I was 30 and reading this! It's basically why I stopped reading comic books the first time (before I restarted by reading every issue of The New 52 for this blog (which was started so that I could refresh my memory by reading my synopsis of the previous issue the month before)). Imagine reading the first issue of a four part story and then four months later, a new issue of the comic book comes out but it doesn't continue the story you had forgotten you'd been reading. And to top it all off, you've suddenly got a new Authority! The only reason I'd say I wasn't totally confused is that I was a thirty year old white super-duper heterosexual man (super-duper meaning my penis was constantly hungover from pussy sex) and I had just read the first appearance of the Hillbilly Assassin, the most shocking character to ever be written as a character expected to shock people, and I was certainly jonesing to read more about him. Then this shit came out and it didn't have the most homophobic, incestuous, rapey, inbred, racist, misogynist character to ever be written since Aquaman? You better believe I was all, "Dude! Dude? DUDE!"

From Page One, you can tell Millar's not writing this. And not just because the credits say written by Tom Peyer!

After Warren Ellis and Mark Millar wrote the crap on a stick out of this book, you'd never expect to read characters saying, "Crap on a stick." That's like a baby version of Ellis and Millar! Ellis would probably have had these characters saying, "Cigarettes! In a well-satisfied vagina!" And Millar would have been all, "Bloody diarrhea! In a dead whore's cunt!" Crap on a stick?! Who allowed these candy-ass virgins to be the new Authority?! This is fucking disgusting! I hope the Hillbilly Assassin gets them next!

What New Apollo and New Doctor are crapping on a stick about is a room on The Carrier full of dead and injured Southeast Asian refugees that everybody forgot about after The Carrier crashed. Too bad they found this room before the orgy room full of dead and injured hot naked people.

Man. Imagine crashing to your death with your penis inside a warm vagina or butthole? Hell, imagine your penis inside a warm vagina or butthole without the crashing part? Some people are so lucky.

One of the refugees startles New Midnighter.

I know Millar didn't write this but I can't stop the Decapitation Count while decapitations are still happening! Decapitation Count: 12!

Does screaming "Last Call!" when you punch a guy in the neck so hard his head pops off make sense? Would anything you could yell at that moment make any sense? "YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO HOME BUT YOU CAN'T STAY HERE!"

The most useless member of New Authority is named Rush. I'm not sure why the G7 nations who created the New Authority to do their economic bidding would recreate Swift. She's so useless! Maybe they only did it because Swift was a nymphomaniac who loves fucking teenage boys who can't satisfy her. But the old men running the G7 probably designed Rush to love fucking old men who ejaculate gray powder so slowly you'd think the limpest, most deformed bean bag had sprung a small leak. She is really cute and her first words in this comic are about how she loves flying The Carrier so much that she could cream. That makes me think dirty thoughts even if it also makes me thinking of Grease and now I want to fuck a Maraschino cherry for some reason.

I solved the mystery of why she's so adorable and sexy at the same time: the overalls!

I love a woman in overalls! Especially when they aren't wearing a shirt underneath and you get to see loads of side boob and cleavage! I failed Biology in college because a girl used to sit next to me who loved to wear overalls. I think that's a true story. At the very least, it's a true excuse.

New Jenny Sparks is some neo-Nazi British punk. Pretty sure he got the job because he's got the accent and loves to smoke and says "arse" instead of "ass". He also probably puts his ending punctuation outside of the quotes like I do even though I'm not British. I'm just logical. Although I think the Union Jack leather jacket is a bit over-the-top. His name is Colonel. Possibly Colonel Noun but the "noun" hasn't been mentioned yet.

New Apollo's name is Teuton which disturbs me for Hitlerian reasons. But never mind why he's called that because look at how adorable and hot Rush is being now!

This is just before Colonel throws melted metal into her eyeball.

Don't worry! Rush's eye is fine! She has super powers, remember?

New Doctor calls himself Surgeon; New Jack Hawksmoor calls himself Street; New Engineer calls herself Machine. They're the least imaginative people to have this job since the last batch who were killed by a rancid hillbilly. That doesn't mean the last group were unimaginative! It just means they're the only other Authority I can compare the imaginations of this Authority with and this Authority's imagination is so, so much worse. Remember, the previous Authority had members called "The Engineer" and "The Doctor". Pretty sad.

Oh shit. New Midnighter's name is Last Call. So he just screams out his own name when he kills people, like a homicidal Pokemon?

The New Authority dump the refugees (dead and living) into The Bleed because they don't want to have to do any paperwork or discuss problems with the G7 leaders. Also it's an easy way to establish that they're assholes who don't actually care about helping people. They're simply being paid to do whatever the leaders of the seven wealthiest nations tell them to do.

Whoops!

Meanwhile in Washington, DC, a meeting of the President and all the G7 leaders is interrupted by a reality warping explosion that turns them all into refugees themselves. Coincidence or does this have to do with the area of The Bleed the refugees were dumped in, a dimension called "Respace"? Who cares? I hope Rush wears even less clothing next issue!

The Authority #23 Rating: B. Not a lot happened and it's weird to start a new story in the middle of Millar's other story. But I love Elseworlds stories and this has the same kind of vibe (vibe used as it has always been used and not how the new kids use it!). My tummy feels funny when I read this because it can't handle not giving a shit about Swift and now being totally enamored by Rush. What is this strange feeling I haven't felt since that time that girl with the big boobs threw herself across my back and just leaned on me at the ice rink when I was like fourteen?

The Authority #22 (March 2001)

Sometimes orgies go wrong.

Just typing the phrase "orgies go wrong" makes me (and I suspect any of the few people who have seen the movie as well) think, "Eating Raoul". The synopsis of the movie is "Buck Henry kills swingers and then eats a guy in a surprise twist final scene that was blown by the title." I don't think Buck's wife ever eats Raoul's ass when they begin having an affair but that would have gone a long way to obfuscating the reason for the title and make the ending a little more surprising. Maybe.

The next four issues comprise a story called "Brave New World." That's a line from Shakespeare's The Tempest, something about a brave new world that has such people in it. But more people probably think of it as a referent to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, a book that I should remember better than I do. There's definitely people in it but I don't think that's why Huxley chose the Shakespeare quote as his title. I remember there was something about people not conceiving children in the regular way, and they took loads of drugs and maybe fucked freely a lot? And then this guy born from an actual vagina comes to visit their little temple and begins smashing tables and screaming a lot? It ends in — get this — an orgy gone wrong.

Having looked at the covers, I know the next three issues of this story take place on an alternate Earth or with an alternate Authority, based on the various characters and a nice graphic design element where The Authority logo on the next three covers does not use a bar over "Authority" which fills the space after "THE". Instead it uses a triangle. Does that mean that, judging by this cover, Jack Hawksmoor will become the savage who enters a new world and realizes the dystopian nature of what the populace believe to be a utopia? Will Jack take the role of both Miranda, first enthralled by the people of another world he never knew about, only to revert to the "savage" of Brave New World and attempt to tear it down?

Or was Mark Millar just all, "That sounds like a cool title for The Authority checking out another dimension!" Probably not that. Even for writers whom I disrespect (and, to be clear, I don't disrespect Millar's writing. Sometimes I disrespect Millar himself, or his mother, or the size of his penis. But never his writing (also if you find evidence of me disrespecting his writing, it was an, um, joke! For comic effect!)), I would never suggest that they are not aware of the literary references they've built their story upon, especially when they're European! An American writer, I might think, "This guy is too stupid to live." But a European writer? I've got my tongue out and their pants down before I even begin reading their shit!

One of my favorite genres of tumblr post are the ones where young people first discover major literary foundations in the wild and become fucking gobsmacked by a thing they had been reading one way only to realize, upon discovery of a new thing, what the author was referencing. I say "young people" because old people just can't get up the energy to be surprised by anything anymore. They read something new that changes the context of some other piece of literature they'd been familiar with and they just go, "Yeah, okay. I get it. Interesting." All periods, man! Not an exclamation point to be seen in the life of a fucking oldie!

That's probably why I use so many exclamation points. As camouflage for my elderly status!

Oh no! Midnighter is dead!

Midnighter is probably not dead. But that's how the comic book begins and I wanted to try to be an earnest reader reading earnestly. It's been so fucking long since I felt anything!

I thought that was Midnighter's mask in the sand but apparently it's snow because it was found in Antarctica. Now when I look at the vast panels full of this beige-colored whatever, I just think it looks like mashed potatoes.

A group of seven people trek across Antarctica to their new base. They are not The Authority. They may be the "new" Authority. One of them certainly has wings like Swift. But they're all drawn too small to really work out who they might be.

Some of them look familiar, right?

I just glanced at the next few issues of this comic book and discovered I'm probably wrong in my assumptions. The next four issues with the triangle in the name are all written by Tom Peyer rather than Mark Millar. So it seems like this four part story will be interrupted by Peyer's four part story? Will it be a kind of flashback story within a story, a little Scheherazade action in The Authority? Should I stop guessing at shit and just read the comic book?

It seems this new group were promised a base on the moon but were instead given The Carrier as their new base, since The Authority seems to have all been killed (or gone missing or pretending to be dead or decapitated). We'll find out what happened to them soon because after a double page splash of just The Carrier sitting partially buried in snow, the story does the whole "One Week Earlier" thing. Because if there's one thing you can count on in a comic book, the notion of "in media res" just gets doubled over and cream pied until it comes spastically, passes out, and the story eventually begins right at the beginning anyway.

One week earlier, Jack Hawksmoor was giving an interview defending The Authority's policy of destroying genocidal governments and threatening aggressor nations.

The Doctor has Jack snowed. All of that disaster was caused by The Doctor so he could get in Angie's nano-panties!

Meanwhile, something bad is happening on board The Carrier. Angie feels it but Apollo and Midnighter are too busy bickering to feel anything. They seem to be housing resentments towards each other based on one being a guy everybody loves and one being a guy everybody fears. Their argument's interrupted by a pizza delivery person (yes, delivering to The Carrier on her motorbike) who goes through her entire pregnancy right before their eyes.

Does pregnancy always end with the woman exploding into green goo?

Just in case the reader thought this alien exploded out of the woman's stomach, Frank Quitely draws the woman's torn underwear across the alien's back. Just to make sure the earnest reader knows exactly how this alien tore itself out of this woman. That's BodyHorrorWang!

Are there easier ways to sneak yourself onto The Carrier? Possibly but not when Mark Millar is writing the series. The only other way I can think Millar would have an alien sneak onto The Carrier is by exploding out of somebody's butthole. Or urethra!

"Bursting out of a woman's vagina just isn't shocking enough," thought Millar. "What if the alien declares they're a pedophile too?"

You might have noticed Apollo lying on the floor with his head and face on fire in that previous panel and been confused because I didn't mention how the first thing the alien did after pointing out that it didn't use a rubber (which means it came itself into this woman? How does that work? Did it turn inside out through the tip of its penis to wind up inside the woman?) was try to blow Apollo's head off. I'm assuming it didn't work or else I'd have brought up the Decapitation Counter.

I apologize for scanning this but I've been documenting how casually Millar loves to have characters taunt Apollo and Midnighter with homophobic slurs so I couldn't miss this huge one.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think Millar should be tarred and feathered for that panel. It would be nice if he'd left this out, sure. But for some reason, Millar seems to think the only way to show that a villain who just raped a woman, killed her by exploding out of her vagina, and then declared itself a pedophile is by having it call Midnighter a faggot. Okay, I guess this alien is a super-duper baddie? Because guess how Millar and Casey, in the Annual, felt they had to show bad guys being bad guys? By calling Apollo and Midnighter Marys and Queens and Poofs and Girls and Liza. It just never stops. It's almost as if Mark Millar and Joe Casey only cared about having gay superheroes so that they could have the bad guys use gay slurs.

I've definitely had my edgelord days. I'm a white heterosexual male. Of course I did! But reading vastly different types of literature in college, especially Victorian novels written by women, really helped tone that shit down. A lot of it still lingered for many years, in that way that "I'm joking!" types of shit continues to exist. And I still write some shit that's downright vulgar and tasteless and offensive. But usually I'm making a deeper point while looking as shallow as hell. It's a thing I do! But what I mostly stopped doing was using satire to lampoon terrible ideas and people by pretending to be one of those people. I still do it on occasion but in a way where I spell out exactly what I'm doing and how stupid it is. One of the main things that made me hyper aware of satire being done irresponsibly was The Colbert Report. I never really watched it much because I gave up cable around 2002 and never went back. But whenever I was some place that had cable, I'd watch one of two channels: The Game Show Network and Comedy Central. One time I was staying at a hotel in Los Angeles with my old, old, old friend Bobby Henline (you might know him as the Burnt Comedian now, or something like that). He was there to get another major eye surgery after being nearly burned alive in Iraq and I was there to support him in that and in his first attempt at stand up comedy. We had adjoining rooms and just kept the door open between our spaces. I was watching The Daily Show and laughing my ass off when Bobby came in and was all, "What the hell are you laughing so much about? I'm in my room watching Fox News and you're over here having fun!" So he sat and watched with me a bit and while he did, he said, "I really like the guy after this. That conservative guy." And while I didn't say anything, I just thought, "Does Bobby think Colbert is fucking serious?" And my mind just went, "Shit." I often say how anybody reading what I write who votes Republican is stealing because I don't want them reading my shit. I certainly don't want them thinking that I believe the terrible shit they believe so I try to stay away from satire. Like if I made a joke satirizing lazy, asshole husbands by saying, "Get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich!" To me, I'm laughing at the idiot who actually believes that kind of shit. But to people who believe that shit, they just read it, laugh, and say, "Right on, brother!" But I am not their brother and do not want to be thought of as their brother! They can go to fucking Hell!

Young Bob and me on that same trip. I was giving him bunny ears since his were burned off. Come on! He'd find that funny since 95% of all of his jokes are about his having been blown up and burned.

The alien kicks Midnighter in the stomach and he's out. I guess he was too surprised by the explosive birth to run the battle simulation through his mind computer one million times to figure out how to win the fight.

Also this "alien" is a redneck born of eight counts of incest, just in case y'all weren't shocked enough!

I guess this guy isn't an alien but some malformed experiment used as an assassin by world leaders who hate The Authority flexing their muscles on the international stage. I say "world leaders" but I mean "American president" because who else would use a redneck from . . . well, you know what state I'm thinking of. The one where incest is legally defined as "fornication between one hot ass family member with another." I don't want to get in trouble on picking on anybody specifically after I just ranted about picking on people specifically, so I will not mention the West Virginia I'm thinking of. I mean state! I said state!

Seth takes out The Doctor off-panel because Mark Millar just wrote a four issue story showing how impossible The Doctor is to beat. What the fuck could Millar possibly show in a fight between Seth and The Doctor that would get readers who just read "Earth Inferno" to believe The Doctor could be beaten in that specific way? Best to just do it off panel so readers could make up how it happened in their minds. Although it looks like he just riddled him with bullets. Doctor 1967 survived his body exploding and getting his brains punched out on the sun. But Seth takes out the better and more efficient Doctor by shooting him.

Is Seth the mascot of Comicsgate?

Do I need to mention how easily Swift gets taken out? And Angie just has her nanobots sucked out of her. Seth's still on his book tour for his autobiography, Who Am I? I Will Tell You as I Kill You, so he explains how the seven richest countries modified a hillbilly to become more powerful than the Earth, every Shaman, Space Daddy God, and every member of The Authority. Just one member left: Jack Hawksmoor. And just a little more explication for who Seth is and why he's killing them.

This motherfucker (literally?) got the super power to vomit up razor sharp Yu-Gi-Oh cards!

Seth opens up his torso and engulfs Jack Hawksmoor into it. Finally, he goes to eat Jenny Quantum (oh god please just eat her) but finds her stroller empty. That's because Midnighter was only faking having his neck snapped! He races off on the pizza delivery girl's motorbike with Jenny in his arms and flees out of Door, probably to return in four issues after the interlude story with the new, better, younger, more obedient version of The Authority.

Oh, also Seth calls Midnighter a faggot again. I wonder how many people read this and thought, "Jesus, Mark! Why have him call Midnighter that?" And then as they learned Seth was a hillbilly redneck, they were all, "Oh, okay. I get it now! Hillbillies and rednecks are just like that!", exposing their own bigoted ideas of the world while challenging another. Do you think that was Millar's excuse? "It's just natural hillbilly language! You have to publish it!"

Midnighter returns through the Door about thirty seconds later flying a jet plane directly into Seth. They crash through several walls before hitting something extremely volatile (probably not the Caged Baby Universe because that would rewrite the universe remember) and causing an explosion big enough to crash The Carrier into Antarctica. I'm guessing it didn't kill Midnighter or Seth. But we won't know because it's now a week later and we've returned to the new team, The Young Authority!

O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is!

The Authority #22 Rating: B+. It was action packed and thrilling! Sure, something in the world exists more powerful than The Authority who were more powerful than everything that was more powerful than everything else. But of course there is! Of course the people running the world have a creature like Seth! And of course they reward Seth for having killed The Authority (and not dying, of course) with "a harem of under-12s." I think in 2000, people were pretty skeptical of how much pedophilia was rampant in the halls of the rich and powerful. But we've seen some pretty gross shit over the years and I'm talking about real shit and not Pizzagate nonsense or Q-Anon finger pointing to distract from the actual conservative pedophiles. I mean Catholic shit and Epstein shit and Boy Scouts shit and Subway mascots! It's fucking crazy man! But ignoring that, this comic book was just kind of enjoyable seeing what the world's richest and most powerful would turn into a weapon that casually tears The Authority apart. And to think, "This is the guy enforcing all of the terrible shit in the world? This is why we can't have health care and living wages and equality for all?! This fucking incestuous, pedophile turd?!"