The Authority #12 (April 2000)

RIP Angie's nipples. Oh, and Jenny Sparks, I guess?

At the end of the last issue, The Authority flew The Carrier straight up God's urethra intending to fuck God's shit up from the inside. It's a good plan because they're not actually flying up my urethra but I've already been defeated just by imagining it. If I ever need a life saving surgery that depends on the doctor sending a surgical probe up my dickhole, I'm just going to die. That's because I'll only have two choices at that point: die from whatever needs the surgery, or die before that when a doctor shoves a hose up my cock.

Yeah, the main vein.

If The Authority really were flying through God's cock, would they be able to show it in a mainstream comic book? Is it only the outside of the cock that counts as sexually graphic imagery? Also, is a flaccid cock graphic sexual imagery? Doctor Manhattan spends the entirety of Watchmen with his flaccid blue cock showing and I don't think he was ever truly interested in using is for sex. Sure, he did, obviously, because Nightshade died of lady parts cancer, right? I know her name wasn't Nightshade in Watchmen but fuck you if you think I'm going to Google it or flip open the graphic novel that's probably within five feet of me at this very moment! I'm old and grumpy with an old person's memory and an old person's level of grump who has finally resigned themselves to never again seeing Angie's nipples in this stupid comic book. But I get to see the inside of God's penis! Hooray! So much more satisfying! That was sarcasm because I'm a stupid, sarcastic idiot with no original thoughts!

That last sentence sounded like I was reacting to recent criticism of my comic book blog and while I'd like to say it wasn't, it almost certainly was. The only twist is the criticism came from my own stupid brain. Man, I'd love to ice pick that thing! It's lucky my identity is so closely tied to it's life!

I dislike that they're still calling Space Daddy "God" even though The Ancestral Doctors disproved that it was God while trying to prove that it was God. Here's how that worked: they pointed out that the materials that became Earth were placed at that particular orbit around Sol so that it would form a planet fit for Space Daddy to live upon. But that orbit was not fit for human beings. A rogue planet collided with Earth and knocked it into an orbit that allowed Humans to evolve. So Space Daddy isn't God; the Rogue Planet is God! Man, I miss my God, Rogue Planet. Gee how I love him! He also gifted us the moon! What a loving God!

Jenny pretends she's asking her entire team for this model because she hates always leaving Swift out of every request of hers. Because Swift is useless. You know Jenny really means Angie or The Doctor.

I say that Jenny's not talking to Swift here but isn't this exactly the kind of thing Ellis throws into each issue so that Swift can prove she should be a part of this team? She's currently "flying" The Carrier even though The Carrier is alive and basically flies herself. So now would be a good time for The Carrier to deliver the 3-D model and Swift to report on it, acting like she had something to do with it and thus earning her spot on the team for one more issue. I have a bad feeling when Mark Millar takes over, Swift is going to lose her head.

Oh, and just like that, right on time, Swift comes up with the information. See, me? She's not totally useless! Because the thing can fly (or maybe some other reason), Swift can tune into its "biorhythms." I put "biorhythms" in quotes because I grew up in the '70s and that shit is stupid. But Swift uses it to determine that God has over four thousand hearts. That means Jenny can't just rip its heart out; she'll have to find its one liver or whatever.

This is my biorhythm right now. Everything is way up! But I'm crashing. And why does it say "Astral Hell" in the corner?!

If you can figure out my date of birth by my biorhythm, I will be coming for your four thousand hearts, you genius God you.

Midnighter reminds Jenny that they're basically HIV and Space Daddy's white blood cells are gonna come calling soon. Yeah, I could have used some other immune disease but I'm guessing The Authority is going to kick ass on all of God's blood cells so HIV seemed an appropriate choice. Midnighter doesn't want to be fired into the blood stream to fist fight God's white blood cells so he's looking for some high tech weapons already aboard The Carrier. I think he also hopes to figure out a different way to kill God than Jenny's way: blow The Carrier up inside its brain. Jenny only has a few hours left to live so she's all, "Let's fucking go!" Everybody else is all, "Calm down! We've got forty or fifty years left to kick ass and smoke cigarettes and fuck each other black and blue! Let's maybe put that plan down as B? Or C? Maybe M or N?"

Jesus Space Daddy Christ, Angie. Just say you've got cannons!

Jenny gets annoyed at Angie for bringing up history because Jenny is about to be history in ten hours. Also she has at least one last brag for the team before she goes.

I was about to say how much I envy Jenny when I remembered that time at X parents' lake house when we drank the absinthe she smuggled back from Europe in the Volvo Mark bought from the factory and then went skinny dipping. So, basically the same, n'est-ce pas?

That reminds me of the time I was riffing on Ghost World (one of my favorite movies and/or comics) and posted to Facebook, "My only regret when I die will be never wandering away from my home town on a mystery bus, leaving everything in the past forever." And my best friend Paul from high school replied, "Didn’t you do that in your Volkswagen?" And I realized on that day that had done that and I will die without any regrets. I absolutely left the town I grew up in my 1972 Volkswagen bus basically forever. When I left, I told my mother, "Well, that's it. I'm gone for good. I won't be returning." I didn't mean I'd never visit! I was just letting her know her baby was actually moving out. Not to anywhere particular, mind you! Just leaving in a bus forever to figure shit out on the road with a van full of comic books, graphic novels, and Fortean Times!

Can somebody get Jack a clean shirt?

Jenny's plan probably involves Dooring them all out while she goes down with The Carrier. Poor The Carrier. I hope she gives it a choice!

Jenny and Angie head down to the engine room which is simply a plexiglass cylinder with a baby universe inside. So not only will Jenny, Space Daddy, The Carrier, and any other fool member of the team still on the ship die in the explosion but also every single living being inside the caged baby universe? Maybe the term "baby" is supposed to express that it hasn't been around long enough for life, or even planets, to form. It's just all suns burning away and powering The Carrier.

The Engineer warns against releasing the baby universe to kill Space Daddy because it'll likely expand at faster than light speed to overwrite the current universe. Jenny doesn't question how that would work because she's smart enough to know she's the layman and an expert just gave her an answer. I respect that even while I'm over here typing, "HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE THAT'S SOMETHING THAT CAN HAPPEN YOU STUPID IMBECILE WARREN ELLIS I AM SMARTER THAN YOU BY FAR EVEN THOUGH I'VE NEVER ACCOMPLISHED ANYTHING IN MY LIFE EVER! STUPID JERK!"

When I pretend to be some raging Comicsgater who is way too invested in the comic book they're reading, it makes me super sad to realize some people actually think that kind of shit. Relax, man! Learn about whimsy and fun! You don't always have to be above everything and smarter than everyone and unable to just fucking chill and laugh at yourself. I feel like one major deficit in the character of angry people online is their need to never be fooled by anybody. They question everything and refuse to take anything at face value which other people readily accept. And yet they're constantly fooled by the dumbest propaganda and stupidest ideas. Like how they think "woke" (using the term as they would and not how it really exists) comic books can't be sexy and that a comic book with loads of huge boobs somehow indicates actual free speech. It's almost as if they don't understand that loads and loads of "woke" comic books are ridiculously filthy and horny! Their problem is not understanding the difference between male gaze that is simply horny (like most of my comic book reviews!) and male gaze that is harmful and full of systemic internalized misogyny (like only some of my comic book reviews!).

In 1999, we were apparently still fighting the drug war because there's an anti-drug advert in this comic book. Take a look:

Weird advert because all I see, absolutely leaping out at me from top left to bottom right, are the letters LSD.

Life is hard but drugs have never made my life harder. Probably because I did them in moderation. And probably because I exclusively did mushrooms and acid. I can't speak for hard life becomes on other drugs. But then that was always the problem with the drug war, wasn't it? Treating all drugs as equal by plastering simple statements like this all over media when the actual discussion about how every drug works and affects your life would have been way more useful to the general public than frying eggs in a pan or filling out scantron forms like an absolute mental patient.

Instead of running into antibodies, The Authority stumble upon a civilization of sentient tape worms. They're all, "Fuck outta here, humans! This is our home!" And Jack Hawksmoor is all, "Why is my cock getting so hard? Oh shit! A fucking city! We're in a city! I need to kick a spine out of a torso!" Midnighter asks Swift about those weapons and Swift is all, "Did I ever tell you I'm a pacifist? Sure, sure. I've killed because somebody needs to do it sometimes. But I draw the line at killing Einsteinian Tapeworms." And Midnighter is all, "WHUT?"

My cat Gravy doing her best Midnighter impression.

Shen (you know, Swift!) decides to speak with the tapeworms by using some mathematical code that can translate her speech and ideas into their speech and ideas. She lets them know they mean the worms no harm and just want to kill the host the worms are living in. The worms prove not to be as smart as The Doctor surmised because they're all, "Oh? Okay! That sounds fine! I guess we'll be fine! We'd probably kill the host eventually anyway, right? Once we reached the level of civilization where we have the capacity to kill ourselves with weapons of our own design. So why not just let these fine folk do it instead? Bye! We'll probably be fine in a dead God, right?"

After the tape worms leave, a gargantuan flood of antibodies swarm after them. Swift needs directions to the brain and fast!

The Doctor is absolutely taking the piss, right?

How the fuck is "North" supposed to help?! Y'all are in space and not a fucking Infocom game! I'm just going to assume that Space Daddy has its own magnetosphere and The Doctor is using that to determine compass directions. But even then I'm really straining my suspension of disbelief because is the brain directly north as headed toward the horizon? Is it north but up 45 degrees? Down 30? How is "North" going to fucking get them to the brain?!

Apollo Doors out of The Carrier to battle Space Daddy's immune system while the others flee toward the brain. Jenny consoles Swift for some reason beyond my ken. Is she sad because I guess they're leaving Apollo behind? Is she upset at the destruction of antibodies? Did she just realize that they are Space Daddy's HIV? Maybe she detected Jenny Sparks' biorhythms which are screaming, "END OF THE FUCKING LINE!"

After some minor battles that seem worse than they are, The Carrier arrives at the brain before Jenny drops dead of End of the Century Disease. She gives Space Daddy a little speech, the kind she saves for all aliens who created Earth only to return to find new inhabitants squatting on it and are threatening to destroy them all.

I probably would have went with, "We already killed Space Mommy and all your children. You got nothing left, pal. Maybe go find a singles bar in Alpha Centauri?"

Jenny murders God by electrocuting its brain. She uses all the power she has left and drops to the floor, dying. But wait! Before Jenny dies, I have something important to show you!

Is that a nipple?!

Jenny has to explain to everybody as she dies why she's dying. Shen is all, "But the century isn't actually over until 2001!" And Jenny is all, "Don't blame me. Blame the ignorant masses that create the false consensus of when the century ends!" So that's got to be the worst way to die. Having to explain to everybody why you're dying at the wrong time. Jenny dies and then lightning flashes across London while a mother kisses her newly born baby. What's that about?!

The Authority #12 Rating: A+. Come on! They killed God! Batman's never killed God. Or has he? Hmm. He probably has. But only after The Authority did it, I bet! The only real problem with the ending of this series is that Warren Ellis left deciding the Spirit of the 21st Century's power to fucking Mark Millar. Gonna wind up with fucking Hit Baby.

The Authority #11 (March 2000)

Jenny shows off what I'm assuming to be the egg of her next incarnation: Jenny Climate Catastrophe.

Bryan Hitch must love drawing The Engineer because most comic book artists hate drawing clothing. They usually draw naked people devoid of genitals and the colorist just paints the naked person the appropriate colors to make them not actually naked. I guess this was way too apparent at the beginning of this series which is why Hitch was instructed to stop drawing Angie's nipples. I know I discuss Angie's nipples a lot but to be fair, I also talk a lot about how Booster Gold has no cock. He must not because his costume is so skin tight that you can see the outline of every single muscle ever invented by '90s Image artists but you never see a hint of the head of his cock. Also, here's the reason I was thinking about this:

See? I'm not obsessing! I'm commenting!

Angie's sudden lack of nipples has me thinking about the rise of digital manipulation of media. Some people think it was a blessing but for those of us who loved nipples showing through shirts, it's been fucking hell. An apocalypse of suddenly nippleless women in pseudo-porn rags like Maxim and FHM. I don't even know if those exist anymore but they were heavily edited. And the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue was suddenly barely worth buying! Not that I ever bought it. I wouldn't dream of reading pseudo-porn when porn was right there on the top shelf of the rack behind the greasy clerk at the corner gas station. But then I also thought about all the digital manipulation they've been doing to television series by changing aspect ratios and adding or upgrading effects. Do you think they'll ever get around to removing Chrissy's nipples from Three's Company?! Christ. What a terrible time to be alive.

Okay, you know what? Now I'm obsessing. I thought the hole in Jack's shirt was a nipple.

The object Angie's watching still hasn't reached Earth orbit. It's larger than the moon and it's organic. It must be Space Daddy, the owner of the cosmic jizz. I'm guessing Space Mommy lives in the center of the moon. The Authority is in big trouble if they were almost just beaten by the spermatozoa and eggs of these creatures. I guess the Doctors were right when they referred to them as Gods.

Jenny needs a cigarette and a moment to consider what's happening.

More turd talk! These are definitely my people.

Apollo continues to be in space so I guess he's like a plant getting all he needs from the sun and maybe a glass of water or two per day. He's waiting for Angie to join him after she figures out how to turn her body into a spacesuit with nipples. They're going to go investigate Space Daddy. Their confidence seems out of bounds for a couple people going on a mission where Midnighter can't save their asses when they get in trouble. I suppose they could Door Midnighter into space for a few minutes and he can kick ass before he pops. He'd do that for Apollo. And Jack Hawksmoor would probably do that for Angie but he'd pop immediately being that their aren't any cities in space. Although the organic structure is so big and probably teeming with jizz, it acts as a city with a large population. Jack would probably be fine on it.

The world is in serious trouble so Angie takes some time to play on the moon with Apollo. At least during this time, we learn that Apollo can exist in space because he doesn't breathe. Not that he never breathes. He's just able to not breathe for as long as he wants, I guess.

The Doctor explains the last three issues in way less horny imagery than I've been using.

Oh sure. Sanitize it for the queasy who don't want to imagine what fighting cosmic space jizz smells like.

The Authority must fight and kill a God whose home humans have colonized. It's a confusing issue because Space Daddy was gone for so long that humans didn't exist when Space Daddy left and humans certainly must have obtained squatters' rights by now! But to murder the creature that built the home humans are now squatting in? Maybe The Authority chooses violence too quickly. Couldn't they have The Doctor make Space Daddy think Earth has disappeared? Can't The Doctor dose it with hallucinogens? Can't somebody have a chat with it and point out that Venus is quite lovely this time of year, if you love unlivable balls of acidic gases?

Well, Jenny Sparks has a plan. It's probably her final plan because she only has one year left to live. I mean one day! I keep forgetting Jenny Sparks' calendar goes by ignoramus rules.

The team convince The Carrier to leave Earth orbit through a bunch of calm petting, hocus pocus, and Swift pretending to be useful. They guide it straight toward Space Daddy for the final confrontation.

Look at Jenny's mischievous grin and sign language. You know what orifice she's looking for.

And that's Jenny's big plan to be executed next issue: fly up its massive dickhole and destroy it from the inside. I suppose it's going to work because this series goes for 29 issues.

The Authority #11 Rating: A-. Did Warren Ellis want to end the series after this issue because how do you escalate any further? Global terrorist. Alternate dimension invasion. God returning to Earth. I guess any worse battles than this have to be fought on the inside. Also Jenny's supposed to die in less than 24 hours. That seems to demand a change in writers. But did the change of writers have to be from Ellis to Millar?!

MILLAR'S SCRIPT FOR AUTHORITY #12

Jack Hawskmoor as he kicks the head off an alien: "Uhh!"
Midnighter as he decapitates three changelings in the guise of sweet little girls: "Unh!"
Apollo as he lasers fifteen giant lizard creatures through the abdomen, spilling their guts all across Nebraska: "Arp!"
Jenny Sparks: "Hey guys! I'm not dead! What do you know?! But I've got this tiny me to take care of now: Jenny Terrorism!"

The Authority #10 (February 2000)

Remember, The Engineer is completely nude. So this is technically hentai.

Bryan Hitch cropped this cover where he did because of freaks like me. "Yeah, I bet you want to know what's happening beneath the lower edge, don't you, you sicko?" he certainly said out loud as he was drawing this. "Look at the way the miniscule tip of that lower tentacle caresses The Engineer's belly button, as if seeking a nice, juicy orifice to explore." At this point, overcome by his own taunts, he probably pulled his dick out and continued to speak: "Look at her grimace. Is that pain? Pleasure? The middle of an intense orgasm? Being that this is 1999, I can ask those questions without first having to be burdened by the question of consent on a fictional comic book cover." I bet after he sent this image to Warren Ellis, Ellis replied, "Send me the rest of the image beneath the lower boundary ASAP you absolute filth mucker."

Personally I don't actually like cartoons with tentacle sex. Not because it's usually octopus rape because that's not really a thing so I don't get angry about things that aren't real things. I just can't help smelling fish while I watch it. And having to gag every few strokes really makes me lose interest in my masturbating.

TMI yourself!

The issue begins with the space eggs crashing into Japan. If I were an intelligent reviewer of comic books who could explicate the themes and deeper meanings inherent in plots, then I'd probably discuss things like the negative birthrate in Japan and how this entire invasion is emblematic of, well, I don't know! I said "if I were an intelligent reviewer"! But since I'm just a dumb asshole who writes down my thoughts as I read the comic when I should be reading the entire thing before forming an opinion, this is the kind of thing I usually write:

World War II if Fat Man had been turds and Little Boy had been pickles.

I blame the pickles for making me think of Bronies just now [Pickle : Pickle Rick : Rick and Morty : Szechuan Sauce : My Little Pony McDonald toys : Bronies] but since they're in my head, let me just say this about them: they want to be known for battling against gendered toys, which is a good thing, but we shouldn't let them claim that ideological space. Where were they for all the rest of time and space when shit was being gendered left and right? Where have they been since? Probably at a convention fucking each other with horse heads on (which, again, is a good thing. I'm just non-judgmentally speculating where they might be right now!). What they were really angry about was having to order food in public and then answer the questions, "Boy's toy or Girl's toy." And they fucking wanted that girl's toy. But they didn't want to have to say it. I'm sure some were fine with it! But the majority strike me as the kind of person who sings a song at karaoke by a singer of the opposite gender and then switches all the pronouns as they sing. So bourgeois!

On a tangential note, I'd probably fuck a pony. But it would have to have great tits and an ass that doesn't quit. Or I would just need a blindfold with a pony drawn on the inside while whoever or whatever eats my dick. I'm not picky!

Your mom is TMI!

Apollo and Midnighter arrive in Japan as the turds are falling.

I don't want to know what a regular night out is like for these two if giant turds falling from the sky is normal.

They haven't actually seen the pickle turds yet having just arrived at street level where they don't close the Door immediately so I'm assuming a Japanese taxi crashes through The Carrier a few seconds from now.

Midnighter notices the falling pickle turds from the ground but Apollo has to fly up to get a closer look. He notices each turd has dozens of little windows on it. And inside each window, a little xenomorph homunculi. Aw! It's exactly like how humans conceive!

I learned about sex from the Atari 2600 game, Custer's Revenge.

Apollo tries to save the day by performing multiple sky abortions.

Hey, while I'm over here busily getting the concept of abortion wrong, I should quickly state that every anti-abortion piece of shit who still thinks eating a chicken egg is an abortion should simply shut the fuck up until the end of time. Or at least until they do a little research. And I mean research in the fucking library or with somebody who actually knows shit. Not research via their absolutely fucked-up YouTube algorithm.

Now instead of giant turd-pickles raining down on Tokyo, giant flaming turd-pickles are raining down on Tokyo.

No, wait. Giant flaming turd-pickles and hundreds of xenomorph homunculi!

Just make a tally for yet another city on Earth completely destroyed by some kind of invasion! The Authority seem to be exactly like Earth cops. They don't actually stop death and destruction and crime from happening. They just beat the shit out of anybody they think was responsible for it.

Midnighter agrees with Apollo about belaying his last order that The Authority send back-up. But not because they've defeated the alien sperms and eggs. He orders them to seal off Japan because things have gone so sideways. Midnighter, who can calculate every possibility in battle, has just calculated that Japan is fucked. Or should I say royally bukkaked? Just sperm everywhere, man. It's like an explosion in a Cinnabun. Every single person is now caked with writhing alien DNA. I don't know if I'm disgusted or aroused.

Jack Hawksmoor arrives to help out because Jenny Sparks doesn't respect Midnighter's opinion. I don't know what Jack is going to do. How do you kick the spine out of a sperm?

Jenny, Swift, and The Engineer Door into Central Africa to investigate the cosmic jizz that landed there. It's turned the surface and the atmosphere poisonous, meaning Jenny and Swift have to return to The Carrier. But The Engineer grows some extra lungs to compensate. I didn't know she could do that! So sexy! Not the extra lungs! But the idea that she could grow extra body parts! You know which body parts I'm thinking about! The good ones!

Well, well, well. The smartest person in the comic uses the word "turd" too! I'm too hard on myself!

I wrote "I'm too hard on myself" after writing about The Engineer growing more buttholes and now, well, I don't have to tell you! Legally, I think I can't tell you!

The Engineer (whom I keep wanting to call Angie but then I think, "I don't call her Angie enough. Will it be confusing? I'll stick with The Engineer!") finds the creature that was birthed when the cosmic sperm impregnated Africa. While she confronts it by herself, Swift announces that the sperm and eggs in Japan came from the moon. So the new plan is to send Apollo to the moon to burn it with fire while everybody else kicks back on The Carrier. Except Angie, of course, because she's fight-fucking the tentacled thing.

The Doctor remains inside his Mushroom Induced Magic Space learning all he can from the past Doctors. These Doctors tell him ridiculously stupid things.

This is as embarrassing as Ray Comfort pointing out that a phallic banana is proof of God because look how he can hold and suck it.

The kind of faulty logic the old Doctor uses here is based on presupposing that mankind was inevitable in this solar system while only taking into account, as evidence, other objects in this particular solar system. But the truth of the matter is that life will only arise on a planet that's the perfect distance away from the star it's orbiting. Life is on Earth because Earth happens to be the right place for it. Earth wasn't made to support life; it just wound up in the perfect orbit to sustain life. If Earth had formed at the wrong place, life wouldn't have formed here to wonder how so many coincidences had to happen for life to form here. The real logic supposes that since life happened on Earth due to all the conditions being correct then life has happened all over the fucking universe whenever a planet accidentally formed at the exact right space. It's irrational to believe that something had to be behind to formation of the Earth simply because mankind eventually evolved there. We're here because life couldn't have formed anywhere else (aside from all the other infinite planets in the correct orbit around the correct star with large gas giants protecting it from constant bombardment and a magnetosphere and whatever else is needed that I can't think of off-hand).

Anyway, The Doctor learns these creatures sculpted Earth just so. But for themselves! But then the jizz shot off into space on a hundreds of millions of years elliptical orbit around our sun. While it was off looking for cosmic strange, a rogue planet collided with Earth which is how the moon was formed. You know that story! Well, guess what? The mother full of eggs waiting for the jizz to return with some cosmic cigarettes was in the material knocked off Earth that became the moon! So now that the jizz has returned, the eggs got super horny and flung themselves from the moon. It's just a big sexy sex tale (which I'd totally already guessed thanks to Bryan Hitch drawing all the aliens exactly like sperm and eggs).

Oh, also, when the moon was formed by the collision, Earth was knocked slightly out of orbit which is why algae and plants happened which is why an oxygen rich environment was created which is why life exploded. Life stole the Earth from the jizz and egg aliens! I still don't think they're particularly angry though. They just want a nice comfortable world to fuck on after all these millions of years of not fucking.

On December 30th, 1999, Apollo finishes sterilizing the Earth. Looks like they're going to get everything taken care of just in time for Jenny Sparks to be all, "Hey guys! It was fun! ACK!"

An abortion reference from Angie as well as saying turd and butt too? Are we the same person?! Probably not since I don't have huge nipples and as many buttholes as I choose.

After killing the cosmic jizz, Angie decides to terraform Africa back to its natural state. But before she can begin, the ship the Australian First Nations guys saw coming out of the sun ominously arrives.

The Authority #10 Rating: A. Do you think the name The Authority has any relation to the Comics Code Authority? It has to be a bit of a thumbing his nose at them from Ellis, no? Sure, it could just be literal: here are a group of heroes that answer to nobody but themselves. But can't that be Ellis's point? "I'm writing a comic that knows no other authority, especially a two-bit, prudish, ancient bureaucracy that wasn't in touch with pop culture even when it was formed? A demon summoned into our existence by Frederic Wertham and other easily scared dorks? A demon that Ellis was exorcising as hard as he could by having the team battle a Yellow Peril villain straight out of the time Wertham would have been ranting, followed by an Alternate Universe Imperialist Britain (and the blue lizard people running it), and then introducing a dessert course of loads and loads of alien fuck imagery? Maybe it's just me.

The Authority #9 (January 2000)

So angry at the editor who demanded Bryan Hitch give The Engineer nanotech pasties.

I've been remiss in mentioning The Engineer's nanotech pasties until this cover demanded I stop being remiss in mentioning them because they're front and center now and you can't fucking miss them. After the first couple of issues where The Engineer nipples were alerting readers to how cold it must be onboard The Carrier, they simply disappeared. But they didn't just stop poking out and getting into everybody's business. No, it was evident in every carefully drawn picture of The Engineer that she had pasties covering up her nips. When and why did this happen? Was it a demand by Trelane and King (mostly Trelane, I'm sure) that she cover up if she's going to be saving the world for them? Probably not because nobody demands anything from The Authority! Perhaps Warren Ellis has an untold story left in him where Jenny Sparks pulls Angie aside and is all, "We can't have Jack Hawksmoor's super boner banging up this ship every time he glances at your tits and butthole. Can your nanotechs manage a little bit of modesty?" But I doubt that would be canon anyway because why would Jenny ask The Engineer to cover up in that situation when she should be asking Jack Hawksmoor to maybe control his cock a bit more. Plus I don't think Jack Hawksmoor can get hard unless he's smack dab in the red light part of a major metropolitan area. And then he just fucks a manhole or a sewer grate.

Ha ha! Manhole.

I don't know why pasties became part of The Engineer's outfit. But I do know that I want to go on record as saying it's not right and probably due to the patriarchy. I grew up in the '70s and let me tell you, it was the best of times; it was the most nipply of times. Feminism had unleashed the nipple and everybody was more free than they'd ever been before! I still don't know how there were men in the world who were all, "Gross! We don't want to see your nipples! Put a bra on! Or three sweaters!" What self-hating heterosexual man would ever want a world with less lady nipples?! I blame fucking Reagan. Why not? Everything wrong with society today can be traced back to that fucking shitberg.

Oh shit! Two days left to live!

In two days, we'll discover how a "Spirit of the Xth Century" dies! And, more interestingly, how one is born! Except I don't seem to remember it being that abrupt. Isn't there some wishy-washy bullshit about how the spirit of a century doesn't exactly begin and end on the exact date of the calendar? If I remember, Jenny Sparks has some overlap with the Spirit of the 21st Century. Does Mark Millar get to create and build upon that character? If so, I'm going to guess it's power will be Decapitation. I'm not saying I think that's a huge part of the Spirit of the 21st Century. I'm saying that's a huge part of Mark Millar's writing.

The first death in this comic book is the Voyager I spacecraft. Some unknown and seriously disrespectful alien entity flies right through it on its way to Earth. If they wind up having to pay for it, do they pay the original cost to create it and put it into space or the cost due to inflation? Either way, tons of people are going to be upset about the death of the little guy. Even though he's destined to fall kaput in 2025 (although, as an American, who isn't, amirite?!), it somehow still gives me hope and joy to know his little body's floating out there, continuing to travel and explore our little neighborhood.

The Doctor senses something old, something ancestral returning to Earth, something that recognizes and remembers man. But he senses it way too late for the American astronauts currently in orbit around Earth.

My last words will be, "Oh my Gatos! I don't want to die! How will reality continue to exist if I, the only real person, die?!

I imagine the scene back at NASA after hearing this was pretty chaotic.

NASA Employee: "Holy shit! What's happening?! Make you sure get his final message for his family!"
Way-Too-Literal NASA Employee: "Okay! Okay! Got it! I recorded his final message!"

Later, playing the message back for his family:
Final Message: "HHHOOOGGHH BLEHK GGGL HGGLOHGGGBBBPP"

The load of black space sperm that killed the astronaut while, I'm assuming, it was trying to fertilize him splats into Central Africa and begins burrowing into Earth. Is Earth an egg? Is our universe just the huge womb of some God that the members of Planetary will wind up killing one day?

The Doctor isn't the only member of The Authority to feel the cosmic load bukkake Africa. The Engineer manages to feel it as well via atom-sized nanoparticles that constantly surround her and note changes in the environment.

Ah! Bryan Hitch pulls a classic David Finch and draws a woman coming out of the shower. Although Hitch lets her have more clothes than Finch usually does.


Although not a whole lot more.

Well shit. Bryan Hitch can't do this to me! He can't put in a scene where Angie transforms while wearing clothing and we see that her clothing remains unaffected by the transformation. What am I supposed to do with the knowledge that she's completely naked whenever she's The Engineer? Basically every shot from the back, I'm looking at her butthole! I'm already constantly distracted by my cat sitting on my arms and keeping me from typing. Now I have to worry about the constant boner I'm going to sport while reading this?!

Meanwhile in Australia, a couple of First Nations men spot something huge and dark against the sun. But even scarier, the reader learns the moon has got Morgellons Disease.

Gross.

I think the moon was the egg the space sperm were supposed to fertilize. Hitting Earth is like blowing your load right up the butthole. Pretty close for such a cosmic blast but since you're beginning on the wrong path from the start, this is a hand grenades and horseshoes situation. I think.

The Doctor gets taught a lesson that most of the Doctors from his past have decided wasn't important enough to teach him earlier. But once they sense the cumshot, and remember the date is a few days from 2000 which is still a year away from the end of the millennium. But you can't fault cosmic shit from happening a year off the actual end of the millennium date when you're discussing numbers going from 1999 to 2000. That's way more exciting than 2000 to 2001. Boring! Although Arthur C. Clarke got it right. There's a reason he called his book 2001 and not 2000. Because he's a smart ass smug bastard.

Oh shit! I went on a tangent and forgot to explain the lesson the Doctor learned! Here, I'll let you see it for yourself.

It probably would have been easier to just type that out.

It was especially daunting to scan that picture because my scanner has a hinky wire that makes it lose connection to my computer if the slightest thing around it moves. And right now, my cat Gravy has the fucking USB cord between the toes on her back foot as she's crashed out behind my laptop. I giggled the entire time the scanner was scanning which made the situation even more precarious because she kept opening her eyes and looking at me every time I giggled.

Jack and Angie report Angie's weird feelings to Jenny and she contacts the Doctor to see if he's feeling anything weird and huge and apocalyptic as well. He is because the owners of the Earth have arrived. Hopefully they're just here to pick up the rent check and not to evict. But never mind that. Something even bigger is happening that needs to be noted.

Homina homina homina.

Angie also slips out of her underwear but not on panel because Bryan Hitch knows how much his readers can take before their pants simply explode.

Since the space sperm missed the target, the moon takes upon herself to blast her eggs to Earth. It's become a full on alien invasion. And all just before Jenny Sparks kicks the century bucket.

The Authority #9 Rating: A+. This issue was far better paced than some of the previous issues which seemed to spend far too many pages on inconsequential battle. But every moment in this issue plays up the invasion, even when not much is going on. Some Finlanders see parts of the moon exploding. The Australian First Nations guys see something coming out of the sun. The moon explodes in gross tentacles and then shoots eggs at Earth. Voyager I is ripped apart by some mysterious being. All purely visual moments but build the tension of the story happening around The Authority as they take showers, drink, learn lessons, and — I'm guess because Apollo and Midnighter did not appear in this one — assplay.

The Authority #8 (December 1999)

Hey, hey! We're The Authority! Love to watch us kill and slay!

If The Authority were The Monkees, Midnighter would be Mike Nesmith, Jack Hawksmoor would be Mickey Dolenz, Apollo would be Davy Jones, and The Doctor would be Peter Tork. The three women would be women Davy Jones fucked because whenever a woman appeared on The Monkees, Davy Jones fucked her. It was a running gag that wasn't maybe such a funny gag when you listen to the song "Cuddly Toy." At that point, you want to both vomit and call the police every time you see Davy interacting with a woman. To be fair to The Monkees (which I feel they need because they just seem so innocent and whimsical and carefree (even though they were punk as fuck)), the song was written by Harry Nilsson. I bet Davy Jones never even thought about the words he was singing. He probably took it literally because who has time to deconstruct the lyrics of a song when you're banging every woman who says hello to you? I'd be so much more stupid than I am if women were throwing themselves at me constantly. I probably would have read three books in my entire life and those books would have been Where the Red Fern Grows, The Autobiography of Jim McMahon, and Rambo: First Blood.

When we last left The Monkees, their Earth was being invaded by Alternate Dimensional British Racists (you know, UKIP!) and they were all out of songs to sing to confuse the baddies and win the day. But Jenny Sparks had an idea to buy them some time: throw Apollo out of a Door over Northern Europe where he may or may not fall to his death as he recharges in the sun. The only person who is okay with that plan is Apollo. Not because he wants to die but because he knows he's the only one who can stop the invasion. It's a theme we'll see often in The Authority: the members do heroic and deadly things not because they want to but because they're the only ones left who can. Most of them could retire if they just found a way to make Midnighter fly.

While Midnighter slowly walks Apollo to the Door, interdimensional shiftships are fucking the shit out of Northern Europe.

Midnighter has time for a quick blow job before he pushes Apollo out the Door and possibly to his death. I would have Doored Apollo directly into the sun with a boomerang Door to Northern Europe waiting just a few seconds drop beneath the first Door. But what do I know? Like is that even more dangerous to Apollo? Could he survive on the sun? He's a Superman insert so I guess it depends on what version of Superman we're talking about. But this is The Authority so it's probably the greatest and most powerful version. What I mean to say is I'm right and my plan would work out better than Jenny's plan.

As you can see in the first panel, Jack Hawksmoor gets the job of cleaning up the corpses and throwing them into a Door which probably exits on the sun. Man, if they were only smart enough, one of them could be saying that two birds pap right now!

Swift stays on Wildstorm Earth to help guide Apollo to the ships he needs to destroy. The rest of the group head to Sliding Earth with the help of The Carrier.

Who modeled this ship after the head of a blow-up doll?

I'm not criticizing Bryan Hitch by saying that The Carrier looks different from earlier issues but does The Carrier looks different from earlier issues because Hitch is terrible at his job?

Calm down! That was a symmetry joke! Hitch isn't terrible at his job at all. My guess is that it took Hitch a few issues to realize that the whole vibe of this comic book is technological kinky sex addiction.

The Doctor uses his magic to help heal The Carrier after all the damage it suffered at the hands of Apollo and the Sliding Albions. Maybe that's why it now looks like the head of a sex doll. It's transitioning into its chosen form. I hope Regis's shiftship looks like a massive cock (which makes sense! He lost his to Jenny so he'd want to own a vehicle that says, "I've lost my cock but this makes up for it, right?!") so that The Carrier can just ingest it and bite it off, thus castrating Regis yet again.

Meanwhile on Earth, Midnighter is about to be very, very, very, um, very sad.

Byyyyyyyyeeeeeeee!

Once The Carrier enters Sliding Albion airspace and stops moving at Bleed Speeds, it seems to regain its proper shape. I failed to take into account that it was just moving quickly in that other scan so it was slightly distorted. Man, Bryan Hitch is super good at his job!

The Carrier's so massive that it blocks out the sun over Sliding London when it arrives and a bunch of blue aliens shit their reverse spider holes just before Jenny Sparks Independence Day's Sliding Parliament.

Byyyyyyyyeeeeeeee!

Maybe I should have said she "Reverse Guy Fawkes' Sliding Parliament"? Reverse in that she actually blew it up while he didn't and also she blew it up from above instead of from below.

Unluckily for everybody (but especially Regis), Regis was inside Parliament at the time. He comes running out, every spider orifice ablaze. You know why I said unluckily for Regis. I meant unluckily for everybody else because Jenny wanted to re-attach his dick before ripping it off again and the others probably wanted to, I don't know, watch that? Maybe I should have thought the beginning of this paragraph through a bit more before typing it and then shrugging and thinking, "Why edit anything I write ever? What's the point? Why was I even born?"

Quick Wildstorm Earth check-in: Apollo wakes up before hitting the ground and destroys loads and loads of Sliding Albion shiftships. Swift gives him some advice on how to read the wind so she doesn't seem as useless as every reader knows she is. I can't think of a worse description than "Hawkman without a mace." Oh wait! "Green Arrow with a bow!" Fuck. If somebody called me that, I'd have to eat out their asshole and call them God.

No, it doesn't count if you say it to me now that I've put it out there, you kinky bastards!

Is he more ominous because he put raping and killing in that order? Or is it worse the other way around? It probably depends on if you're the victim or somebody watching from nearby.

Regis kicks Midnighter's ass but I don't know if that's because Regis is more powerful than Midnighter or the plan calls for Midnighter to get his ass kicked as a distraction. Either way, it works because Jack Hawksmoor's able to climb into the city's bowels and explode up through Regis.

Does this count as a second castration? Or just dead?

Jack Hawksmoor is like a Magic the Gathering creature that gets more powerful for every land you control. Except by land I mean city and by Magic the Gathering I mean what is that? I'm too cool to know what that is.

After Regis is dead, The Doctor takes care of the alien base in Italy. He does this by putting Italy on a timeout while the rest of the Earth keeps on orbiting the sun. Everybody in Italy dies a frozen popsicle after everything inside them bursts. Jenny tells Sliding Earth that they can have a second chance now that the alien regime is gone. She didn't destroy the rape camps in China or clear out the bacterial infection from every single piece of land in the world. I think she's a little bit pissed off at the whole place right now. She'll come back if Mark Millar runs out of ideas during his run on this series.

The Engineer freaks out a little bit about how much power they have to manipulate an entire world. But everybody else is all, "This is what we do! We make things better! Not everything. Just some things. Like killing Regis and destroying Italy. What will that do in the huge scheme of things on a planet where aliens and alien hybrids still run rampant doing whatever they want to the human populace? Who knows! We didn't even touch the rape camp that is China. Why should we? They weren't trying to invade our Earth and nobody asked us if we would! Not our problem. I mean, it's kind of our problem since we declared we're going to make Earth a better place. But it's not like we said 'every Earth!' And we certainly didn't say Sliding Earth! Fuck this place. We're going home. Have your existential crisis there, Angie!"

The Authority #8 Rating: A. The Authority are meant to be a bad-ass team with loads of cool and somehow Warren Ellis got that pretty much right without it feeling likes he's trying too hard. Yes, he does try too hard at times. But it's forgivable because how can you not love Midnighter and Apollo being all sweet on each other one moment and destroying the fuck out of anybody they look at the next? How can you not love Jenny Sparks, so casual and cool and above it all because she's more than a person; she's an idea. And Jack Hawksmoor who runs around barefoot kicking people's spines out of their bodies because he's some kind avatar of urban landscapes, strengthened by dirty alleys and massive freeways and corner delis and fucked up sewer systems? And The Engineer who's mostly nanotechnology but retains more of her humanity than any of the others (mostly because half of the others are barely human)? And The Doctor who channels the power and utilizes the knowledge of every Doctor who came before him, every shaman who mastered the magic of Earth and who's always fucked up on some psychedelic because he can't help it, being too in tune with nature? And that's it! That's all of the members of The Authority! There aren't any more that I love!

The Authority #7 (November 1999)

This looks majestic but Midnighter can't fly so they're not actually that far off the ground.

The cover to Issue #8 looks like a rehash of this cover but at night. I don't know if that means anything or if Bryan Hitch just had a bunch of generic covers ready to go so he wouldn't have to wait on Warren Ellis's scripts. It's a pretty decent cover for a generic "here come the heroes" kind of thing. At least they're not all looking at the reader Kevin Maguire style. For The Authority looking at the reader, you'll have to wait until next issue. Midnighter's pretty intense so I'm warning you now: wear your diaper, fam.

This issue begins with Regis and Yngvi discussing how their dicks don't work anymore. Maybe they work. I don't know. Regis loses himself in the nostalgia of days gone by when he wasn't a eunuch so it seems like not much going on down there. But then the discussion moves toward how the aliens fucked nearly all of Earth by turning it into an unlivable hellscape due to their conquest of it. The only place left with living things and a healthy biome was Albion and they fucked that too in 1953 with their bacterial attack to take it over. So now they dream of the days when they could procreate, sloppy flaccid alien dicks in their hands (unless their genitals aren't dicks? But I have to believe they are because they interbred with humans. Maybe they've just got a weird hole down there where their alien sperm crawls out across their belly like spiders birthed from an egg sac, scattering in all directions in search of an egg to fertilize?).

So the reason for invading Wildstorm Earth was a little more complicated than "lebensraum."

Part of the idea of "lebensraum" (a small part and — let's be clear — most of the parts were racist. Probably because they borrowed from that other great racist reasoning for expansion, "Manifest Destiny") was that Germany would have more Germanic territories to move its population to prevent overpopulation of any one area. But these aliens need more land because they're just shitting all over the land they already have. They're less about lebensraum than they are about toterraum. They destroy their territory forcing them to expand into a place where they can actually live and breed. But then they destroy that space while conquering it. And they don't seem to learn because they've done it to their entire Earth and now want to do it to another Earth. I wonder if they've considered that they're kind of a shit race and maybe aren't fit for existence?

Yngvi gives Regis the intel from their first invasion: inferior technology, unstable civilization, possibly nuclear weapons. And Regis responds with, "Oh how I loved fucking Asian women!"

"Do you remember the Chinese women before we destroyed their wombs with our virulent spider sperm?"

The last of Yngvi's intel concerns the appearance of Jenny Sparks and her entry into the field of battle through Door technology. Regis realizes Jenny and her team are using one of their shiftships and that they can track them via the Door technology they used. Do I have an actual memory of this story arc? Doesn't Midnighter go through some kind of Die Hard aboard The Carrier as it's invaded by Regis's alien army?

Currently not on The Carrier: Jenny, The Engineer, and Swift. They're busy interrogating Jenny's ex-husband, Lorenzo of the spider sperm.

If The Engineer were to spread her butt cheeks, would it be perfectly smooth or would I see a silvered butthole? Asking for the part of me that loves to look at buttholes.

In the interrogation, we discover that Jenny Sparks was married to Lorenzo for political reasons. But those reasons were lies because Jenny quickly found out the aliens were simply looking to take over Sliding Albion. Jenny wants to know how Sliding Albion survived the bacterial attack of 1953 and why they invaded her version of Earth. Lorenzo simply explains it was Regis. And Jenny is all, "What? I killed him in 1925!" And Lorenzo is all, "No, you merely castrated him." Oh. Well, that explains all that eunuch talk and not being able to fuck Chinese women. But now I want to know how you castrate somebody who just has a leaky spider hole in their crotch? Oh wait! That was just speculation on my part! The blue aliens could have any manner of tool down there that delivers sperm.

By Jenny's reaction, my guess is the blue aliens have a cigarette down there.

The Engineer and Swift get to learn some fascinating history about Regis and the Sliding Sicilians and all the various Sliding World Wars that Regis headed. She also mentions to The Engineer what happened to China.

Jenny's sucking on that cigarette like it was a blue alien dong.

It's a good thing Jenny mentioned that Regis murdered all of the men of China so that he could use the Chinese women as breeding stock to create more alien/human hybrids because I was on the fence about how I should feel about him before then. Kicked off nine World Wars? I don't know, maybe he had a reason. Decimated every continent with biochemical weapons? Everybody makes mistakes! Invaded Wildstorm Earth because he and his people have shit on every ounce of land on Sliding Earth? A guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do, ya know? But rape camps?! Man, this guy must be bad news!

Aboard The Carrier, just as Jenny ends her interview with her ex, multiple Doors open up and Alternate Universe UKIP members storm aboard on horseback. At the same time, shiftships Door in over multiple locations on Wildstorm Earth. All hell is breaking loose because Regis needs another, much bigger, rape camp.

Jack Hawksmoor displaying his favorite move: kicking people in the chin so that their spine flies out of their body.

After issue twelve of this series, Mark Millar takes over until the end. My theory is that Mark Millar saw that panel of Hawksmoor's extreme violence and thought, "I could write this!"

Millar probably jizzed his pants after this. He's a two-panels-of-Jack-Hawksmoor-kicking-people's-spines-out-of-their-body chump.

Later, Jack decides to try something different so he pulls the arm off of one guy and beats another guy to death with the arm. And Mark Millar is hard again.

Apollo collapses after taking out most of the invaders, drained of solar energy. The rest of the Alternate Universe UKIP soldiers rush off where they run into Jenny, The Engineer, and Swift returning from their London Holiday. They haven't been warned of the invasion due to some kind of technological interference by the invaders. The Engineer casually takes them out (and their horses! Sad!) with a flick of her machine gun wrist. The women decide Sliding Earth needs to be wiped of the multiversal map completely. Now they just have to let the guys know.

See? Planet Rape!

You might be thinking, "Tess, who would call a planet 'Planet Rape', you vile piece of shit?" But might I point out that we call one of the planets in our solar system "Jupiter" and, well, you know. Pretty much the same thing, no?

I just remembered who a bunch of idiots voted into office next year and now I'm thinking, "Shit. Probably a lot of assholes want to call a planet 'Planet Rape'. And their gonna try to drag everybody along with them." My entire life I've been unmanageable (which is why I have my own business now with zero other employees). I have no problem stepping that up to ungovernable soon.

Jenny sends Apollo out to fight an entire army by himself with Swift on comms giving him enemy movements and positions. Jenny and The Engineer will be moving The Carrier, possibly to Sliding Earth to re-castrate Regis. I don't know what the other fellows are going to do. Piss and moan, probably.

The Authority #7 Rating: A. Somehow Warren Ellis tells a tale with massive repercussions to Earth about one small team that's all that stands in the way of Planet Rape and it's believable. Aside from all the time spent fighting guys on horseback while an entire Alternate Dimension UKIP attack Northern Europe. I think we're supposed to believe that the shiftships haven't quite gotten around to destroying everything before the battle on The Carrier concludes. I'm willing to buy into it though because I'm a comic book reader and I've learned to believe in a lot of truly stupid and unbelievable shit so that I can keep being entertained. Questioning the sense of comics just leads you to not thoroughly enjoying the comic book. That's why so many readers used to always write in to Marvel and DC to offer their explanations for plot holes and inconsistencies. We didn't mind doing the heavy lifting to make this stupid hobby more believable when the writers and editors were busy shrugging their shoulders, collecting their paychecks, and, I'm assuming, calling us shitty names behind our backs! Jerkos!