Wednesday, December 4, 2024

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!!

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