The Authority: Scorched Earth #1 (February 2003)

This cover looks like it was drawn by Simon Bisley and inked by that Spanish woman who restored the Jesus painting.

Some might think I was being overly critical with that caption but that's me saying I fucking love it! This cover is strange and odd and has The Penguin on it for some reason. I'm super into that! Plus Swift looks super sad which makes me laugh uproariously. Ha ha! You're sad, you useless loser! Get fucked!

Why am I so mean to Swift? Should I look deep within myself, searching my feelings until I find the source of my Swift hatred, boiling and viscous and rank and terrible? Don't answer yes to that because searching my feelings will send me into a spiral which might wind up in a leap from the Hawthorne bridge except I'll be so down on myself, having seen my life through my criticism of Swift as useless and disregarded by her peers, that I won't have the energy to walk to the bridge thus saving my miserable and unimportant life. Fuck. Look at what you made me do!

This issue begins with space sex.

Look at his right arm. He's definitely got a finger or two up his own asshole.

I should probably clarify since I didn't scan the credits: the "Morrison" on the cover is some guy named Robbie Morrison. I wonder how lucrative his career has been because people accidentally buy his comic books thinking they're by Grant? I know I was physically aroused right up until I turned to the page with the space sex. Not because I don't find space sex hot (although it's probably frigid). It's because somebody stuck the name "Robbie" onto my "Morrison"!

The two people having space sex are actually aboard The Carrier on the observation deck. They are Jack Hawksmoor and Angela Spica. When they come, the sun comes as well. I think it's some kind of visual metaphor. But it's also literal because after the fucking is over, The Engineer gets "dressed" and goes to investigate something amiss with the universe. That something turns out to be the sun's massive load which it ejaculated directly at the Earth. Has Jack Hawksmoor become so powerful that his body treats the solar system as a city and now he can't have consequence free space sex anymore?

Turns out the sun's about to go supernova in five days because, according to Angie, "some bastard dropped the biggest bomb in the universe in our laps." Does she mean Jack Hawksmoor spooging into her crotch? Because I saw the way the panels were drawn and I'm pretty sure Morrison and Irving were implying that Jack and Angie's sex caused this. Angie probably knows that too which is why she's using coded language that isn't a lie. A bomb was dropped in her lap. Jack Hawksmoor is a bastard.

Several cities on Earth are immediately annihilated by fireballs from the sun but The Doctor saves Amsterdam because it has loads of good drugs in it. Also maybe he's from there; I'm terrible at keeping lore inside my noggin. It's also possible, because of the way comic books are drawn, that he merely saved one sex worker and a building full of hash.

The Doctor does realize he has the power to save everybody, right? And I don't mean everybody just in Amsterdam. He can literally turn the fireballs ejected from the sun into Skittles.

I suppose Skittles raining down on the Earth might be a great day in marketing for the Wrigley Company, and probably a bit of fun for slightly clever people who think to shout, "Taste the Rainbow!", before their skulls are crushed in by sweets, but it's still probably an apocalypse. I guess I'd make a terrible Doctor. Except for the part of his job where he does loads of psychedelic drugs. I'd totally ace that shit.

Apollo saves a crashing airline full of people over the Atlantic. But then Midnighter fails to save a child in New York.

"I'm sorry. The fire somehow decapitated your child. Gotta go!"

When I went to see The Matrix in Lincoln, Nebraska, I was sitting next to a woman who suddenly broke down into tears at the scene where Neo assaults an office building by spraying automatic gun fire everywhere while wearing a black trench coat. She muttered something like, "Is this why they did Colombine like that?!" I'm telling that moment out of my life so you can understand why I just burst into tears and began rending my garments.

"Is this why that assassin killed that health insurance CEO?!"

The comic book adverts around the turn of the century go fucking hard, man. In an earlier issue of The Authority, there was an advert for a racing game that was meant to have realistic crashes. The scene in the advert was a live photoshoot of a guy with a clipboard standing over a twisted body on the pavement with a rolled over car nearby and another car nearby with two dead people in it. The guy was asking some question to the injured person on the street about how high their body bounced or something like that. Fucking crazy shit! What a wild time to be making comic book advertisements!

In Miami, Swift saves one child's life as he nearly falls from a burning building. I love to make fun of Swift but at least she fucking saved one person! Midnighter blew it because he entered a dangerous scene all tensed up and some kid ran at him from the flames scared for their life and he probably got startled and instantly chopped her in the throat. But then maybe he looked into his computer brain and was all, "I've been over this one million different ways and it always results in my reflexes acting before I can think and you winding up dead. I'm sorry. Gotta go!"

Angie does the best work by creating massive shields in orbit around the Earth which block the harmful rays and destroy the fireballs before they can penetrate the atmosphere. But then one fireball starts acting oddly and she notices there's something alive in it! Oh no! Did Angie and Jack somehow fuck so hard the sun got pregnant?

Angie gets hit and falls back into the Earth's atmosphere where Jack manages to catch her and uses the city to catch him safely.

I'm surprised The City listened to him, calling it "Frisco."

Jack explains that San Francisco is one of the few lady cities and it might get jealous if Angie gets all turned on by Jack holding her close. I want to know which other cities are ladies! Probably Paris, right? But not Rome. Definitely not Glasgow. Maybe Madrid? Oh, definitely Miami!

The Sun's baby boy winds up in St. Petersburg looking like a flaming man. Weird. I'd expect it to look more circular and globe-ish.

The Doctor tries to stop the flaming man by blowing cold air on it. But he's stopped by Mr. Ancestral Grumpypants, the guy who lives in the Garden of Ancestral Memory. He's all, "You can't harm it! It's the living embodiment of the sun! Which shouldn't be a thing but it now is for some reason. And since you're powered by the Earth and the Earth is powered by the sun, you're going to need to talk it down and find out what it wants." Hopefully the humanoid avatar of everything the sun is speaks English.

Midnighter stupidly attacks the living flame when he couldn't even defeat non-living flames in New York. He almost burns alive before Apollo finally thinks, "Wait! I'm solar powered! I should be the one fighting it!"

Plot twist: the sun is gay.

That might not have been the biggest plot twist if you're familiar with Hedwig and the Angry Inch (or, you know, Aristophanes) where we learned that the Children of the Sun were like two men glued up back to back (which doesn't sound hot at all).

Having discovered that the sun has delivered a petulant child unto Earth, The Authority decide to visit the sun and have a word with it.

The issue with The Authority plots seems to be escalation. Warren Ellis set them on the path of not only wanting to actually change the world in a way other heroes didn't. But he never really got around to that in the three stories he told. His initial run was about proving how bad-ass they were by having them fight a global terrorist then ramped that up to an invasion of Earth by a secret alternate Earth, and finally to battling God (in a way). Millar decided, "Okay. We've seen the kinds of threats they can face so we know they're as close to all-powerful as any heroes can get. Their next threat should be the governments of the world they're saving who feel threatened by their power." So The Authority depose the leader of a Southeast Asian nation causing world leaders and other secret powers to shit their pants because they all do so many corrupt things, which corrupt thing will eventually attract The Authority's attention? The first of those people was a Jack Kirby insert who the United States Government abandoned and who was eventually going to rule the world after it collapsed under the bloated weight of capitalism. The Authority forced him to move up his plans and he attempted to kill and/or kidnap Jenny Quantum. The Authority had to face super heroes of nearly their quality (unless it was just the vast quantities they had to fight?). Then they battled the Earth itself (unless it was a past Doctor? It became muddled and unclear by the end. This was when Millar was already getting bored). Finally, The Authority just fought a Hillbilly superhero who could not be defeated because the top seven nations on Earth had spent so much money on him, how could he be? Money equals power!

What I'm saying is that where do you go after you have The Authority kill God? Ellis decided nowhere and walked away. Millar sort of went sideways with it but then escalated things himself via superhero parodies. And now Robbie Morrison has decided, "What's the most powerful thing in the solar system? The sun! It's like the God of the Earth!" And here we are.

Did The Authority ever battle Santa Claus?

See? The Carrier continues the clues about the "bastard" who dropped the "bomb" in Angela Spica's "lap"!

The Earth's child/avatar realizes The Authority have left off battling it to go speak with its father/mother so it pursues them. It arrives just as they arrive at the sun. It re-enters the sun which manifests a gigantic head whose mouth engulfs The Carrier. This is probably what The Carrier wasn't happy about. It's a pretty powerful ship/creature but who wants to test their limits inside of a star? The only way it survives the ordeal is to stay partially in The Bleed while also partially in the sun.

The plan works (as far as I can tell) by luring the sun child away from Earth and back into the sun. After that, it forces it's way into and out of Apollo so it can battle the team on The Carrier. Turns out it isn't actually the sun's child. Nor it's avatar. Nor the product of Jack and Angie space fucking. It's some guy named Winter.

This revelation would have been way more exciting if I knew anything about the history of Stormwatch.

So this hero Winter sacrificed himself to save the Earth only to come back who knows how many years later to devastate Earth himself? Way to go, dumb-dumb.

Winter didn't actually survive his encounter with the sun. His transformation was more like Alec Holland's after Alan Moore got his hands on him. Winter is not Winter having becoming the sun; it's the sun having gained sentience via Winter's powers. It's less an existential crisis than Swamp Thing's though because this "Winter" never fooled itself into thinking it was a human turned into a sun avatar. But some of Winter does still exist in the mess of a creature it's become. And that part of it, the Winter part of it, is in a constant state of torture. It just wants to die and thought, "Hey! The Authority killed God. They can probably kill me too!"

Well, he's convinced me! Is there a bridge in our solar system big enough for the Earth to jump from?

Jenny Quantum saved this crew in the last story arc of theirs I read. I hope she's not going to do it again by being all, "Humanity has hope! Also I'm powerful enough to stop your pain by releasing you while leaving the sun intact. Also can somebody clean my diaper?"

Thankfully, The Engineer decides to save the day. She encases Winter in something similar to the thing encasing the caged baby universe. She describes caging him as "basically turning the sun into a gigantic reactor that'll power the solar system — under The Authority's control." So the important new thing is that The Authority now have control over not just Earth but the entire solar system because the sun was already a gigantic reactor that was powering the solar system. She's proud but Jack Hawksmoor's depressed. Because they've just condemned a hero to spend a billion years in constant burning pain so that Earth can live. They've basically just sent an actual hero to Hell for the sins of the Earth. Cool.

The Authority: Scorched Earth Rating: C+. It wasn't bad but it just felt like an annual and I'm even more biased when rating Annuals (which I don't rate, no matter what you've seen) than regular issues. It probably would have been a better story if I'd known anything at all about Wildstorm continuity. Sure, that's my ignorance and my fault which just lowered the grade of the comic. But what can I do?! I can only experience things through the lens of the knowledge of my past! My hands are tied! This was a mediocre story because who the fuck is Winter?! At least it had some space sex.