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?!"

The Authority #20 (January 2001)

The Earth from the top rope.

This is not the last issue of The Authority (that'll be Issue #29). But you think it would have to be. They're fighting the Earth. If they win, the Earth is destroyed and they have nothing left to protect. If they lose, well, that's obvious. The comic is over, right? At least that's what somebody who didn't read last issue might think and I read last issue so I know better. The Authority aren't actually battling Earth somehow! They're battling the psychotic Doctor from 1967 who somehow talked the Earth into killing everybody. I'm still not super clear on that part because Mark Millar never made that part super clear. At some point he just went from "The Earth got scared and it's lashing out at humans" to "the Earth was convinced to lash out at humans by The Doctor from 1967 and now he's the only one who can ask it to stop." Once the leap from plot one to plot two happened, it was easy to understand that's where the story was going. I just don't know why Millar decided to make it a leap without any explanation between jump and landing instead of at least one page with an easily followed path between the two points. But then I'm not worth multiple bajillions of dollars so I probably read the comic book wrong somewhere.

As it stands now, The Doctor has given his powers to 1967 Doctor for one hour in exchange for him calling off the Earth's attack on people. They have no idea what he's about to do but think they're prepared to defend themselves against him. Have they not been paying attention to The Doctor's powers? If he wants them to stop existing, they're going to stop existing. Even Midnighter can't super think his way through that problem.

We get it, edgelord writers. Some of the characters are gay!

That was the first panel of this issue. I guess that means Doctor 1967 plans to destroy The Authority with his powers?

I'm sorry. After Doctor 1967 called some of the members of the team "poofs," I started thinking about how stupid this story arc is again and now I'm dumber than I was before I started thinking about it. The first two issues when natural disasters were happening were shit issues and that was before the story stopped making any kind of sense at all. The Authority didn't know who was causing the disasters but Angie or Jack or somebody came up with a list of possible culprits. That led to Midnighter blaming it all on Doctor 1967 because he was a psychotic who maybe could do all this shit if he still had his powers and also wasn't in 20 million B.C. But he doesn't have his powers and he wasn't in the year 2000 and why they listened to him at all doesn't make a lick of fucking sense. And then the ultimate problem: why the fuck did they suddenly believe he was the only one who could convince the Earth not to kill all the humans by basically committing suicide? Without that bit of the story, which Mark Millar definitely did not provide, having The Authority give the verifiably insane Doctor 1967 the god-like shaman powers, even for an hour, to end the threat is fucking stupid. Better to try themselves until the last second to stop the Earth throwing its fucking tantrum than end everything by giving a nutjob the power to, you know, end everything! Millar never shows nor tells why The Authority felt their hands were tied and they were desperate enough to try this out.

Maybe if Millar had thrown in a decapitation or two, I'd understand what the fuck was going on.

Fine, call them queens. I expect a Millar character to do that. But fat?! Where the fuck is he getting fat from?!

Reading this story arc is the first time I'm glad I've been giving my "reviews" grades because it proves that I thought the first two parts of this story were mediocre before I even got to this fucked up nonsensical finish.

Doctor 1967 beats Apollo in two pages and kicks Midnighter all the way back onto The Carrier. Midnighter decides not to go back to a useless fight (remember his head computer! He knows he loses every iteration of the battle!) and comes up with another plan to fetch somebody who can defeat Doctor 1967. But that means Jack Hawksmoor, The Engineer, and *snicker* Swift have to keep him occupied for another 57 minutes. Apparently at the end of that time, The Doctor (the real Doctor) gets his powers back automatically and the world is safe. I say "apparently" because if Mark Millar cares to explain why The Authority felt this was their only chance, he hasn't explained it yet.

That's what I said!

Just repeating myself yet again here: the reader was never told how Doctor 1967 was the only person to convince the Earth not to reverse its magnetic poles (and who cares if it did?!). Hopefully Millar will at least have Doctor 1967 explain why he wanted the shaman powers back for an hour. Surely it wasn't just to kill a couple of fat gay guys. He must want to fuck a black hole or something.

Also, if The Doctor was cut off from his powers, how is he visiting the Garden of Ancestral Memory? Can Door reach it?

The Ancestral Doctor also mentions that Doctor 1967 could stretch the hour to infinity which is also something I pointed out last review! Which I guess means I should be praising Mark Millar for such good writing! And I will as soon as The Doctor's plan is revealed and it's so fucking awesome and contains so many decapitations that I'll literally shit my pants from excitement. At that point, I'll only slightly be disappointed that Millar didn't explain why The Authority feel they couldn't stop the Earth and only this psychotic Doctor could.

Jack Doors Doctor 1967 to Mexico City so that Jack can be as powerful as he possibly can be anywhere on Earth. He fights with him a little bit before asking the rest of The Authority for some Goddamned back-up and somehow he doesn't laugh himself silly when Swift is all, "I'll save you!"

I have no issues with Swift's boobs but if she spent 20 grand to get them to where they are now, what the fuck kind of mess were they before?! Were they square with tangled nipples?!

I have no problems if an Asian person wants to refer to themselves as "Oriental." But it is a bit fucked up for a white guy to write an Asian person who refers to themselves as "Oriental"!

Swift does the one thing that Swift does that's impressive: she explodes Doctor 1967 by flying directly through him. It's why she's useless in large fights but when there's only one enemy, I can see the benefit of having her on the team. Plus the way Frank Quitely draws it, I think we've got a +1!

Decapitation Count: 11!

Swift should have blown through his head and exploded his brain so his dying mind wouldn't have time to put himself back together. But she fucked up and winds up flying face first into a concrete fist. Jack was taken down some other way, maybe Doctor 1967 turned his organs into traffic cones. He defeats Angie by going back in time and molesting her as her high school doctor and then being all, "Hi! Remember when we last met!" Then when she's freaking out, he blasts her through a building.

Just to be clear: I didn't make that up. The Doctor molests Angie in the past just to rattle her during their current fight. So, yeah, giving this psychopath God-like powers sure seemed worth it, right?

Next, Apollo has picked himself back up and Doors himself and Doctor 1967 to the surface of the sun where Apollo proceeds to punch his face off.

That's for calling him fat!

Apollo doesn't defeat him even when he punches his brains out across the face of the sun. Doctor 1967 beats the shit out of him again and they return to Earth where Doctor 1967 turns a light sprinkle into a shower of aborted fetuses just to prove he's the biggest fucking edgelord this universe has ever seen. He only shuts up when Midnighter pisses on him from a tiny Door over his head. And remember how awesome Midnighter's blood was? That probably means his piss smells fucking disgusting.

Midnighter's plan wasn't just to piss on Doctor 1967; it was to bring with him all the gender-swapped heroes of that alternate Earth they visited. The plan doesn't work because Doctor 1967 snaps his fingers and they all disintegrate. Then he decides to reverse the poles because that seemed to be a super scary thought in 2000. Doctor 1967 just thinks it's funny because they gave him the powers to stop the Earth from doing that and now he's going to do that. Ha ha! Good one, Aborted Fetus Rainman!

But before he can do it, that's when The Doctor's plan finally kicks in! Doctor 1967's fully enlightened brain finally catches up with his raging homicidal behavior and he can't commit genocide anymore because he's overwhelmed by empathy. Yeah. That was the plan. Captain Aborted Fetus Rainman suddenly feels a twinge of empathy for every living creature in the universe and he just stops killing cold. Sure. Whatever.

And it happens at 59 minutes so, um, great plan? He did all that harm and he only had about 15 seconds left of his power before stopping willingly? Get the fuck out of here.

So no explanation as to why Doctor 1967 was the only one who could stop the Earth. And I guess the only reason he wanted one hour of power was to get hard from genocide? That's the only way he can feel aroused? Not much of a motivation but then this is Mark Millar. He probably just thought, "That's hilarious! Great ending!"

Oh fuck. This was The Doctor's plan all along! He caused all the fucking natural disasters and blamed it on Doctor 1967 because he knew it would lead to fucking Angie! He's a monster!

That's the only way this story makes sense! The Doctor was behind it all because he knew he'd fuck Angie at the end. The Doctor is the one who convinced The Authority that Doctor 1967 was the only one who could stop the Earth! But The Doctor had that power all along, obviously. He has unlimited powers! Of course he could stop the Earth. Part of the switch of powers included stopping the Earth from destroying itself which means The Doctor was the one to stop it. He probably also used his powers to convince Doctor 1967 that he was somehow behind it all. The Doctor is a diabolical sex pest!

Fucking and smoking with Jenny Quantum in the room is okay though, right?

The Authority #20 Rating: C-. So The Engineer basically gets molested by two different Doctors in this issue and The Doctor is all, "All's well that ends well!" And Angie is all, "I don't know why I'm fucking you but I guess it's my choice, right?" And nobody questions reality anymore when they witness just how much control The Doctor has over everything. Somebody needs to fucking murder that guy.

Decapitation Count: 11!

The Authority #19 (November 2000)

The rare and elusive upper thigh window.

Had Thanksgiving Dinner with the family members I like last night because of some scheduling issues. So today, on the only proper day to acknowledge that we could never live without community (as opposed to the other days of the year where everything we have was due to our own indomitable spirit and hard work), I re-watched Ralph Bakshi's Wizards while wearing my Wizards t-shirt and eating chips and queso. I wonder if people today would just shrug at the message of the movie that fascism must be fought because, you know, that's difficult and dangerous. Better to be like the Mountain Fairies and just sit it out and wait, or the religious nuts living in the ancient past whose prayers effectively do nothing. It's also pretty harsh on love, in that love is great but it doesn't beat a fucking gun up your sleeve. I imagine there's a pretty large percentage of fascists who haven't seen the movie in some time and believe they love it even though it's pointing out that they're demonic assholes ruining everything for everybody? Hell, some of those fascists probably love the film because of that (and all the Nazi symbols and Hitler sound bites). They probably just stop watching before Blackwolf's defeat.

It's weird to think I grew up on Wizards. It came out in 1976 when I would have turned five. Obviously I wouldn't have seen it then but I did watch it every time I noticed it was on when it wound up on Showtime (at my Aunt's house because she was always on the cutting edge of technology. I don't know when we got cable and any pay channels in my home). Some of y'all younger folk familiar with the movie might be thinking, "Your parents let you watch that?" It was the '70s, man! Nobody looked twice at constant nipples on characters and the movie shat all over the Nazis, so I'm sure our parents were all, "Fuck yeah. Suck that shit down, kids. Nipples and love and fighting fascists are good. And religion and centrism might seem like a smart choice but they've never fucking saved the world. Be sure to come back home when it gets dark! And even if you're late, we probably won't notice! We'll be in the kitchen drinking boxed wine!"

I haven't been updating the Decapitation Count over the last two reviews because no decapitations have taken place. But I'd also like to point out that the last two issues were the worst two issues of the series so far. Is that vindication for me joke replying to a boring fact tweet by Mark Millar that his writing suffers when there are no on-panel decapitations? I think he owes me an apology for blocking me when I was just being astute!

This issue begins with The Doctor pulling a tapeworm out of his own ass with his teeth.

That isn't what's really happening but it's a story by Mark Millar so it could have been happening! Most of you know what's actually going on in that panel. For those of you too boring and vanilla and uncool, I'll explain it to you: The Doctor is doing *gasp* the heroins!

The image of The Doctor doing heroin comes from a video that was released to the press. I imagine the only person who could have taken that video was The Doctor's new bride. If The Authority doesn't finally fucking realize they need to look at her as a suspect, I'm going to pull a fucking tapeworm out of my ass with my teeth.

The media has a field day with The Doctor's video. Politicians begin calling for laws registering or banning super heroes. Things are going full Watchmen here because so many people died before The Authority could act. See? This is what happens when a writer writes stories where the heroes save the world but millions of people still die! It gives that writer an excuse to write characters who question the need for super heroes! Most people wouldn't call this masturbation but I would because it only serves to satisfy Millar and I'm getting sick watching it.

Back in 20 million BC in the Jail Before Time, Midnighter tortures The Doctor from 1967 for more information than "The Earth has begun killing people." What more does Midnighter need? When has he ever needed to know the motive of a murderer before he began killing that murderer? Just because the culprit is the Earth, he's being a bit more cautious? Is Midnighter afraid of punching the Earth to death?

Midnighter learns the Earth just got really scared when Space Daddy's cosmic jizz began terraforming Africa a few issues ago. So now it blames humans and wants them dead.

In seventy-two hours and 20 million years, you mean.

In 1999, were people still afraid of the Earth's poles reversing? Haven't we learned that's no big deal now? Or is the big deal the amount time before the poles fully reverse, where we might lose the magnetosphere? If only there were a technological tool where I could find this information instead of discussing things I'm entirely ignorant about like some meat-headed podcaster who pretends having an open mind means believing and being fascinated by anything said to me in the moment (except actual facts because it's way cooler to believe in shit nobody else has ever heard of).

After learning about the imminent death of everything on Earth, The Authority decide to visit gender-swapped Earth in dimension 838.

So this is going to be like that episode of Red Dwarf where they all fuck their gender-swapped opposites? Except Cat, of course. Unless he eventually did fuck that Dog?

I just realized in the Red Dwarf universe, they're doing the meme where "cat" and "dog" are genders!

Oh, I just remembered that Apollo and Midnighter are gay so they probably won't fuck their gender-swapped duplicates. But The Doctor definitely will. The two Doctors will be fucking forty seconds into this meeting.

Imagine having a massive flaccid dong hanging off the statue that greets immigrants to our country? As seen here, it results in a much better Earth! "Look at the size of that cock, son. America!"

The Authority are visiting alternate universes to evacuate the population of Earth while they try to calm Her down. This is 2000 and not 1950, so their solution probably won't be building a gigantic hand to slap Her. Although this is written by Mark Millar so, um, maybe?

What plan worked? Did I miss something? How is this Doctor responsible for Earth's murder spree?!

Either Millar left out some important details in his story or my comic book is missing a few pages. It sounds like I only added that second ridiculous option to make it seem even clearer that Millar fucked up but I did not. I never actually read the entirety of Neil Gaiman's Sandman until sometime in the 2010s when I realized my collected edition of The Kindly Ones was missing about fifteen pages. I also once purchased the first issue of Terry Moore's Five Years that had about five blank pages. The first time I encountered a blank page, I thought it was part of the storytelling. But the fifth page, I was pretty sure, although not quite positive, that it was an error. I'm slow to learn shit.

Filling in the gaps in Millar's story for him, I guess 1967 Doctor convinced the Earth that humans were why it was suddenly so scared? And he was able to communicate with the Earth because The Doctor was comatose? Is that what happened? I'd ask Mark Millar on Twitter but he blocked me.

The Doctor lets 1967 Doctor know that they'll do whatever they want if he'll only convince the Earth not to kill everybody. But 1967 Doctor wants to be the main Doctor again. I guess that's what's going to have to happen even though it still makes no sense! At least he only wants the powers for one hour. And The Authority is all, "What harm can he do with near limitless powers in one hour? Pretty much nothing, right? He can't warp time to make an hour infinite, can he? Oh, he can? Well, he probably won't do that, right? Let's do this!"

Once 1967 Doctor gets The Doctor's powers, Earth calls off Her attack. And then there's one more issue to go in this stupid story. Hopefully it's full of decapitations so Millar's more passionate about the script!

The Authority remembers that The Doctor can just think people into wind, right?

The Authority #19 Rating: C. Decapitation Count This Issue: 0. 'nuff said! No wait! I actually have more to say! Do you think Stan Lee hated that whole "'nuff said" thing about a year after he began doing it? I bet it haunted his life until the day he died! "Honey, you want to go make love?" "No. 'nuff said!" Although he probably used it to his advantage to, like when he was telling Jack Kirby that he wasn't going to ever get any residuals on any of the characters he created. "'nuff said, Jack! 'nuff fucking said! Get off Stan's dick, why don't you?!" Oh. I just realize I didn't really have much more to say since it was all about the "'nuff said" and not about the comic book. Whatever.

Shit. I just realized The Authority never looked into The Doctor's wife as the cause of all this trouble. Now I have to Google: "how do I get a tapeworm" and "how do I lure a tapeworm out of my butthole."

The Authority #16 (August 2000)

Generic cover? Generic comment.

I almost went with "Generic cover with tits" but then I thought, "There are only four tits on this cover which roughly half the population probably don't even think about when they look at this cover. The other half of the population has this thing called 'male gaze' (also 'lesbian gaze' but I think it's less salacious and disgusting (I mean, I hope it isn't. But guys are gross)) which makes the viewer's focal point the tits. If the shot was from behind and it was a bunch of asses being shown, we'd all be in the same boat because who, no matter the gender or sexuality, doesn't love looking at a nice ass?" I also thought that maybe I should stop sexualizing characters as often as I do but then I anti-thought, "Why can't I sexualize fictional characters who wear skin tight outfits and who were almost certainly drawn with their sexuality and attractiveness at the forefront of the artist's mind? I understand that's going to be a percentage on a continuum dependent on the artist, from Frank Cho to Becky Cloonan. I apologize to Becky Cloonan if she's actually been drawing characters to exude horn dog levels of hot pants but I really couldn't think of an artist that doesn't draw characters in a way I want to fuck them. Oh, maybe Frank Miller?!"

Last issue began with what I think were Jacob Krigstein's version of The X-men attacking New York City while other Krigstein-version of Marvel heroes were attacking Paris, Berlin, and Beijing as well. The Authority happened to be in New York City investigating the location of Krigstein's The Hanger which is why I know the heroes attacking there. I'm sure the Fantastic Four are attacking Paris and the Inhumans are attacking Berlin and the Avengers are attacking Beijing.

"Why am I so full of pudding?!"

I passed up scanning a picture of Swift looking like "Fuck Me Hard" Black Canary Barbie (you can see half of one tit!) just to scan Jack Hawksmoor as a good example of something I mentioned in a previous review: Frank Quitely draws people as if they've had subdermal pudding injections. Look at that squelchy motherfucker. LOOK AT HIM! He's even leaking pudding out of his pores!

Midnighter calls dibs on murdering every single alternate X-man so the other members of The Authority have to fuck off to other capitals to have their fun. They say Krigstein is attacking every nation's capital at once but I have a feeling he's only attacking the four I previously mentioned for two reasons: 1. those are the only cities being shown with portals opening in them last issue; 2. there are only five currently active members of The Authority (Apollo is pouting because he was almost kicked to death but he'll come around when he hears Commander Fascist and Storm Dog have come back out of hiding).

See? Teenagers! They are the X-men.

Paris comes under attack not by the Fantastic Four, as I wrongly guessed (stop reminding me of my flaws, me), but Nick Fury and the Agents of SHIELD. The reasoning behind allowing Fury to destroy France is that Nick Fury is a super racist patriot who super hates the French for all the reasons people who hate the French would know about. Me, I don't know about any of them. What's wrong with the French?! They fucking stand up for the right and the liberty to sit around drinking coffee while philosophizing about the ennui of existence. And they fuck a lot because fucking makes them forget about the ennui of existence even though it reminds them of death because they call an orgasm "a little death" for some reason.

Okay now it just feels like Mark Millar decided to write comic books so he can have other characters espouse his terrible beliefs!

Jack Hawksmoor defends Paris by instructing Paris to consume Fury and his agents. Previously, Jack Hawksmoor just got his strength from cities and could "understand" them, feeling their pain and such. But now he's like the Aquaman of cities where he can give the cities instructions and they're all, "Right on it, Mr. Hawksmoor!" And since we all know Aquaman was fucking the sea life, I'm guessing Jack Hawksmoor loves to stick his dick into water taps and sewer grates (the water tap is the vagina; the sewer grate is the butthole).

Once Jack gives the order, Paris suddenly gains the ability to suck people into its concrete. Is that how the Paris catacombs were created? Are the catacombs the intestines of Paris?!

The Doctor defeats the team attacking Moscow off-panel but we do get to see the results of the fight.

The Inhumans? The Brotherhood of Evil? That deflated lady looks like both Medusa and Blob.

In Beijing, The Engineer must face off against the Fantastic Four with Silver Surfer and some gigantic guy with a burning pool cue. Angie deals with them by using them as guinea pigs for an experiment she's been working on: opening Door to alternate dimensions (sure, it already does that. But maybe she just wasn't any good at it until now). She teleports them to a world that's just big black men because that's the scariest thing she (read: Mark Millar) can think of? Be better, Angie. But also the population of that world have exterminated all white people so Krigstein's racist white supremacy heroes are in for a bit of an ass pounding (I mean that in the pugilist sense and not the rape sense, you sickos!).

The team has run out of heroes to protect places because obviously Swift can't be trusted to fly through more than one person before being all, "I'm a pacifist! I don't want to do this anymore!" That's when The Engineer realizes nobody has gone to Washington, DC. But Jack is all, "Oh, don't worry about that! That's where Commander Fascist and Storm Dog landed. Pretty sure they've already been Apolloed. Did you catch that? I used Apollo's name as a verb to indicate that they've been tortured relentlessly, probably de-limbed, and burnt to cinders as slowly as possible!"

Oh duh! Swift does have a job: one specific old-as-fuck man to fly her quite appealing ass through!

Krigstein shits himself when he sees Swift just stroll on into his hidden complex. Jenny Quantum simply smirks. Oh, and she also does a doody.

I just remembered I need to be on the look out for decapitations! I hadn't seen any by The Authority but had forgotten to look for civilian decapitations by the enemies. And I found some (by both the bad guys and Midnighter, just FYI)!

Midnigher only decapitates on X-men as far as I can tell before he has The Carrier target all of the rest save one, obliterating them all. The last one, a little Beast wannabe motherfucker, gets what we all expected he would get because Midnighter loves sharp weapons and close combat and, well, you know.

No not cock! I was thinking decapitations! But, I mean, sure, cock too.

Meanwhile in Washington, DC, Apollo incinerates every single one of Krigstein's army except for Storm Dog and Commander Fascist. He kills Storm Dog with one punch but goes easy on Commander Fascist, merely paralyzing him from the waist down, because after what he did to Apollo, Midnighter called dibs on giving Commander Fascist an ass pounding.

I meant that one in the rape sense and not the pugilist sense this time! The sicko!

Swift approaches Doctor Krigstein who cradles Jenny Quantum in his arms to prevent Swift from flying straight through him. He still believes he can win even though The Authority called up all of the other superheroes in the Wildstorm universe to help battle Krigstein's monsters. Swift assures him that he will not win, no matter how long he keeps it up and how much of the Earth's population is killed in the battle. Swift suggests he stops his attack and offers him an alternative to outright losing.

How dare you add Pokemon to that list? Kill him, Swift! Kill the blasphemer!

I'm assuming Doctor Krigstein joins the team because he's super old but he still doesn't want to die. Also it's a nice idea to have Jack Kirby on The Authority, right? I also suppose he calls off what's left of his superheroes and brings them back to The Hanger. Does this mean The Authority have access to an army of pseudo-Marvel characters?

The comic ends during another party on The Carrier so I guess the world's at peace once again. For a bit. The Engineer and Jack discuss the future while a dress shoe spies on them from around the corner. I mean a person in a dress shoe not the actual dress shoe. You understood that, right? Plus Midnighter receives a letter from Tank Man about how he's become a normal person with a family and he's happy.

The Authority #16 Rating: A+. Swift the pacifist does the thing that needs to be done more often and brokers peace through discussion. Sure, they hired a gross little old man to the team but he's got a lot of resources that come with him! Even though The Authority basically won through ultra-violence and one horrible case of pneumatic drill ass rape, Swift gave the ending a greater meaning. Finally some heroes so serious about changing the world that they hire a racist, fearmongering, baby-kidnapping, end-of-the-world prepper to help make it better instead of following their baser instincts and just murdering him out of vengeance and revenge. Commander Fascist, on the other hand, didn't fare so well. Shrug emoji.

One last decapitation: Doctor Doom Boobs. Decapitation Count for the comic: 5! Total for the series: 10!

The Authority #15 (July 2000)

"Hello 9-1-1? I'd like to report a crime against humanity."

I'm not sure to whom I'm reporting the crime against humanity. Doctor Krigstein? Frank Quitely? My eyeballs and brain? Probably Mark Millar. I'm sure his notes for the cover just read "A human testicle grips baby Jenny with decaying sausage mummy fingers. His skin is less paper thin from age than melted like pork rotting in the desert. Make sure a tube goes directly into his crotch for added mystery." Boo, Mark Millar! You're the super villain of making me throw up! And Frank Quitely's your sidekick.

Doctor Krigstein was mobile in one issue but this cover makes it look like he needs every part of his body replaced. Neck brace to hold up his large, decaying head. Catheter and butt catheter. New blood being pumped in; old blood being pumped out. I'm not sure he should be allowed to hold an infant. Especially an infant that, if he drops it, will destroy the world.

Commander Fascist, Storm God, and Surgeon Weird return with Jenny Quantum and hand her off to Doctor Krigstein who looks at her, drools, and exposes his ignorance of the Spirit of the 21st Century.

I don't think that's how it works at all!

Jenny Sparks mentioned to Swift that she was sort of at the mercy of the collective ideals of the people. It's why she died on the fake turning of the new century a year earlier than the actual turning of the new century. Because the mass of people believed that. I've got a feeling what Jenny Quantum winds up believing, the ideas she ultimately represents for the coming century, cannot be sculpted by one person feeding her his beliefs. Jenny Quantum reflects the movement of the new century; the new century does not reflect what Jenny Quantum believes. And even if I'm wrong in how I believe this whole Spirit of the Times thing works, hasn't Doctor Krigstein ever heard of rebellious teenagers? She'll never continue to believe what you teach her, even if you forbid her from interacting with any of her peers. It's the classic Conservative belief that they somehow own and control the minds of their children instead of seeing them as individuals, and loving them still.

The powers-that-be try to spin the disaster in Singapore as a result of The Authority overreaching by ending the reign of a genocidal leader. The main powers-that-be who want the world to believe this are the powers behind the United States of America because anybody who threatens their grip on world power is the enemy. If The Authority will act to take down a leader abusing his power, how long until they act against The United States of America's interests? So they pepper the media with reports that this was all because of The Authority.

But The Authority aren't a group to sit back and rend their garments in frustration. They get on their bully pulpit to let the world know that the damage was caused by an American Black Ops superhero team who kidnapped the most powerful baby in the world and plan to use it against The Authority. Maybe the world won't care much about that part but The Authority assures the world that they were going to use the baby to make the world a better place. Now whose side would you be on? The people exploiting a baby to kill other people or the people exploiting a baby to make the world better? I mean, obviously the second one. But they're still exploiting a baby! Just try to remember that.

Trelane contacts Jack Hawksmoor with the intel on where to find the intel on who these super-terrorists are and where to find them. They're a super secret group that are so black ops and covert that nobody should know about them at all. But Trelane does for reasons. I think the main reason is to keep the comic book moving forward. Oh, and there's always a paper trail! Always! Probably something like Doctor Krigstein loves Twinkies and somebody has to pay for those Twinkies so somewhere there are receipts for tons of Twinkies being purchased and shipped to a location where nothing supposedly exists.

Back on The Carrier, Midnighter doesn't keep his mouth shut when he probably should.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

I usually love to separate the art from the artist and allow the artist to express things through the art, or through characters, that they don't actually believe. But why else would Midnighter say this if it wasn't something Mark Millar believes? It doesn't sound like a Midnighter thing to say, does it? It sounds like the kind of thing a Brexit politician would say. "Sure, theoretically, you're all for helping refugees and foreigners. But try having to live amongst them! So gross!" The main reason I want to blame Millar for this stupid fucking thought is that I don't want to dislike Midnighter. I don't mind disliking Mark Millar! Plus he had an evil character kill babies last issue. Does Millar want to kill babies? Man, Millar's probably the one who makes fun of kidnapped children, not Commander Fascist!

Now's the part where I make excuses for Midnighter so I can keep liking him!

Maybe Midnighter's just feeling overwhelmed by all the strangers aboard The Carrier. He's starting to see his annoyance at the refugees smells and food and noise as aspects of their race itself. Maybe that's why he says it. He doesn't mean, "Hey, I'm racist now! I hate Southeast Asians!" He's just expressing how he realized how quickly he started to not just be irritated by all the people simply as an irritation of other people but labeling that irritation as "Southeast Asian." And seeing that in himself, he was all, "Ugh! I didn't realize I was racist but look at the way I'm reacting to this inconvenience! That's something I really need to examine about myself!" There! Fixed it.

Apollo seems to be doing okay. The only wound still seeping is the one in his psyche that's screaming, "I am going to utterly humiliate Commander Fascist and his pet dog Storm Dog before I end their existence so painfully that their psychic trauma will haunt the spot they died and I'll be able to come back, night after night, and fuck up their ghosts."

Apollo wants to sit and brood so he skips The Engineer's upcoming meeting in a virtual space she calls The Hive Mind. It's here where she lets everybody know the intel she discovered at the super secret secret location.

Well it took his first name, a drawing of him as a younger man, and basically stating it outright for me to realize Doctor Krigstein is Jack Kirby.

To be fair to myself, if they'd called him Jacob Krigstein from the start, I might have had a chance to make the leap of logic. But as it was, Jack Kirby isn't always in the forefront of my mind. And Marvel itself remains mostly a mystery to me, apart from a small number of years around the late '90s and early '00s when all my favorite writers wound up working there.

The United States and the Soviet Union were involved in a superhero arms race (which means even more superheroes in Russia. Are they based on DC characters?). But then the Soviet Union collapsed and the heroes were no longer needed. But Krigstein wanted to use them to control the world after capitalism eventually collapsed (so around 2026, I'm guessing). But Bush laughed in his face and Krigstein disappeared with all his heroes, a bunch of government money, and the keys to five super secret hangars. And that's where he's been for the last ten years.

So many characters have Jenny wrong that I just have to assume Mark Millar got it wrong.

Of course Mark Millar got the whole Jenny thing wrong! He didn't even remember that Jenny's successor was born in London the night Jenny Sparks died! Duh!

Yes, yes. I'm ignoring The Doctor's definition of "hippie liberals" as ultra-violent crime fighters who mostly see violence as the solution to the world's problems.

Swift has an idea on how to defeat Doctor Krigstein. But she doesn't say what her idea is because then nobody would buy the next issue. Instead, the team continues to look for Krigstein's hidden Hangar. Jack learns of one in New York when New York tells him that a squatter has been living in it. A great big empty space government squatter. They bring The Engineer to New York who uses her nanocrap to detect an enormous building built around and inside all of the other buildings in downtown. I guess it's some kind of alternate dimensional space. But right as they find it, Krigstein's super army attack Paris, Berlin, Beijing, and New York. They all happen to be in New York so they get to see the attack first hand.

Are these the X-men? I was hoping for The New Gods.

The Authority #15 Rating: A-. There wasn't a single decapitation in this issue! Not even a single moment of ultra-violence! Not even normal violence! I'm so upset that I had to rate this issue nearly a B. Also Midnighter is racist.

The Authority #14 (June 2000)

"This is my ultimate version of the Avengers." -- Mark Millar as five thousand light bulbs explode over his head

Mark Millar has made a lot of money as a comic book creator so a lot of people are going to rightfully but also wrongfully call me a jealous (wrongful) asshole (rightful) when I criticize his career as a writer. But this is my career as a, um, "writer"! Well, writing is my hobbyhorse anyway and that's a lot more important than a career. Granted, I haven't read everything Mark Millar has ever written (like everything he ever wrote for 2000 AD because what am I? British?) but I have read like six things he's written! So I'm pretty much an expert on Millar.

I suppose the first thing of his I read was The Authority. It's possible I read some of his earlier Marvel or DC stuff (like his run of Swamp Thing. If I read it, I don't remember it. But I'll eventually review it if it's in one of my dozens of short boxes!). One thing I've always thought about Millar's writing which he's never proven me wrong about: he loves the ultra-violence. If this series was the first thing I ever read by him, I was introduced to his ultra-violence passion five panels into his first comic after taking over for Warren Ellis: a panel with a man being decapitated by a flying piece of glass while another gets his head completely crushed into his torso by a concrete block. You can bet that made me hard! I mean a fan!

With this second issue of Millar's, I learned another thing about him: he loves to fucking re-imagine The Avengers! In Millar's mind, The Avengers were cool but not "kill a maternity ward full of babies" cool. He was here to fucking fix that shit! What's worse than a wasp? A hornet! What's more dangerous than a man of iron? A man of tanks! What if the God of Thunder had a flail instead of a stupid hammer?! What if Giant Man killed people by smashing them with his cock? Um, that hasn't happened yet but I'm assuming it will. Either that or Hornet will get him off by flying up his urethra and/or his rectum. I don't know what's going on with his version of The Hulk but I'm going to assume he eats people and wears a diaper full of human shit (not shit by humans but shit made of humans). I don't even know the name of this version of Captain America yet. It's Commander Something but I can't guess what that "something" is. Commander Black Ops? Commander Cannibal? Commander Don't You Fucking Look Me in the Eyes? I guess we'll find out soon enough.

The third thing I learned about Mark Millar (unless it's also part of the other two things) is that he thinks super hero stories are more interesting when the super heroes are corrupt bastards and the villains whom they beat the shit out of should be the characters readers empathize with. Maybe that's the fourth thing because Kick Ass and Hit Girl happened before Jupiter's Legacy and Supercrooks. The only thing I learned from Kick Ass and Hit Girl was that ultra-violence and making a young, innocent girl into The Batman could earn you tens of millions of dollars.

This issue begins where the last issue left off which was The Doctor saying, "Oh shit," as Gigantic Man appeared from crouching behind a nearby skyscraper for his surprise entrance. The Hulk Thing also shat itself.

Holy shit! They make fun of missing and exploited children? They really are bad! Even worse than the type of people who would gleefully kill every baby in a maternity ward!

I probably shouldn't toot my own horn and compare myself to these assholes but I'm pretty sure I've sat at a breakfast table eating a bowl of Fruity Pebbles while looking at the side of a milk carton and said, "Who would want to take this uggo?!" Don't judge me too harshly! I wrote "pretty sure" which means I almost certainly didn't do that and I'm trying to look cool now by pretending I'm a horrendous douche! It's really hard to walk the tightrope of trying to gain compassionate readers and Comicsgaters! I'd also like to point out that I've never once killed all the babies in a maternity ward nor have I ever even thought about it!

The Doctor has found himself surrounded by all the Avengers, even the ones that didn't appear on the cover, like Purple Arrow and Scarlet Bitch and 20/20 and some guy in a beret. Was there a French Avenger? I have no idea why they've let him live for so many panels when their mission to kill Jenny Quantum was so important that they just murdered an entire hospital full of babies and cancer patients. They've cut The Doctor off from his magic so this confrontation has already lasted over five panels too long (and it's going to go for many more). Why doesn't Gigantic Man just step on him? Were they just bluffing when they told him he can't do magic now and they're actually afraid that the bluff hasn't worked? None of them want to be the first to attempt to murder him because none of them want to be turned into a four foot high pink double-headed dildo.

Oh, well then, by all means, just go ahead and leave with the baby. I'm sure Doctor Krigstein will go easy on us when we return to The Hangar as failures.

Tank Man tries to talk some sense into The Doctor instead of just running him over with his iron body in the shape of a man. Look, I don't get where the tank shit comes in. Maybe he farts artillery? He approaches The Doctor and puts his massive arm around him without crushing him into paste topped with Jenny Quantum crème fraîche. The only reason I can imagine that he's not killing The Doctor to kill Jenny is that Doctor Krigstein forbade them from murdering any of The Authority for some public relations reason. So the best defense The Doctor can come up with is holding Jenny Quantum so close that they can't kill her without also killing him.

I've never identified more with a character than I do with The Doctor right now.

Anyway, whether they kill The Doctor or not, I think it doesn't matter. I'm sure The Doctor isn't holding Jenny Quantum at all. He probably created some kind of living loaf of bread that puts out Jenny Quantum level power signals every time he squeezes it. Midnighter probably snuck off with the real baby through the sewers.

Apparently one of the members called Titan has been blocking The Doctor's powers. Titan could be Thor, or Giant Man, or The Hulk. Commander Fascist doesn't give out more information than he needs to. He also explains that they're letting him live because they think it's funny. They want The Doctor to kill the baby and then they promise to let The Doctor go. Weird suggestion from a guy they already know almost killed himself when his cat died. Pretty sure he's not killing a baby just to save his own fucking life. I guess when you're a bad-ass, don't-give-a-shit-about-anything, ultra-violent super hero, you can't help suffering from the drawback of being "interminably stupid." It's basically a proven theory thanks to seeing what happened to Twitter! The worst people in the world paid to have their posts be given priority and to also show everybody (because of the priority posts) just how motherfucking dumb and unimaginative they all were!

Fuck! I just fell off the tightrope and lost all the Comicsgater readers!

The Doctor refuses to kill the baby so Commander Eatsadick commands Titan to finish the job. Titan winds up being Giant Man. Oh! I guess his power to control ants has been modified in a way to control the brains of other creatures as well. If Giant Man is also Ant Man, does that mean Titan is also Tan Man? Or Tit Man?

Titan grabs a plane and proceeds to smash it into The Doctor and Jenny Quantum. But Jenny Quantum, not being a loaf of bread at all, decides she doesn't want to be smashed into crème fraîche and explodes in a blast of white light. It's also possible it was a huge coincidence and Jenny Quantum just took a Quantum Shit. The Killvengers throw up some kind of shield around themselves but I think Titan takes the full force of Jenny's blast in his stupid dick and face. With him dead, that enables The Doctor to get the hell out with Jenny Quantum.

Back on The Carrier, Shen gets her fuck on.

I've often complained that comic book artists can't help making characters look extremely sexy, even when they're dead or dying. Frank Quitely has the opposite problem. He can't make anybody look sexy enough because they all look like they've had subdermal pudding injections.

So she's slept with loads of teenagers?

I don't care that Shen has slept with a bunch of teenagers. I'm going to assume they were all 18 or 19 which makes it technically legal. But I do care that she's slept with enough teenager boys to know that they never satisfy her in the bedroom and yet she keeps fucking doing it. Also she claims to have assaulted him by smashing him in the head and dragging him up to her room. I'll assume she's joking before I convict her in the court of my opinion of committing sexual assault and normal assault and rape. As we saw last issue when she blasted through a brick wall and a man's body, she's plenty powerful enough to have given this guy a serious enough concussion to question whether he gave consent for whatever she did to his dick and butthole and probably face.

Jenny Quantum's blast has alerted The Authority to the fact The Doctor needs their help. They were all partying and fucking and fartying and pucking all night so they probably didn't even know The Doctor had gone to secure Jenny Quantum. Now they need to wipe off their genitals, suit up, and go save the day.

With that kind of power, I'm sorry Jenny didn't get Titan in the dick and face. Also surprised, being Millar wrote this.

The Doctor's powers have returned because Titan can't stop thinking about his lost feet. But instead of using his powers to turn them all into the purest cocaine and snorting them all up his nose and then writing fifteen truly terrible poems about his left testicle, The Doctor just telepathically gives all the intel on these jerks to his ultra-violent teammates. That makes sense since he's got a baby to protect and doing loads and loads of cocaine while holding a baby is almost certainly a terrible idea. I wouldn't know for sure, never having done cocaine and also never having taken care of a baby. I'm so ignorant on both subjects that maybe it's the exact opposite and the best way to take care of a baby is to be fucking sky high on coke. I should do a double blind study!

Was the totality of The Doctor's telepathic message, "Decapitation probably works." Decapitation!

I'm not sure who just got their head cut off but I suspect it was the guy in the beret who may have been a Black Panther stand-in. Was Black Panther ever in the Avengers? Was Wakanda within a country that was colonized by the French? I know so little Marvel trivia!

Titan begins crawling to the fight and then chastises The Authority for showing up to a battle drunk and with hangovers. That's when Apollo shows up to blast a hole through his head with his own body. I hope he kept his mouth closed or he's going to get Mad Titan Disease. I wish he'd exploded his head so I could count it as an explosive decapitation but Apollo's simply too precise. Darn it!

On the opposite page of the page where Titan's brains are splattered all over Singapore and Apollo's hair is an anti-drug advert. What was it with this comic book that the anti-drug people were all, "The readers of this funny magazine are definitely into mind altering substances. But they also see themselves as being too cool for the status quo. How do we make them understand that you can still be cool and not do drugs?!

Bingo! They just never knew how to not do drugs while also staying cool!

One of the ways to say no and still be cool is "Top three answers on the board, survey says . . . NO!" Does that mean "NO" wasn't a top answer on the ways to answer if you want to smoke some pot? So the top three answers were like, "Hell yeah!," "YES!", and "Can I suck your dick too?"? Or did it mean "NO!" was one of the top three answers and the other two answers were "YES!" and "Maybe?"? Maybe I'm not cool enough to understand. I'm certainly not cool enough to refuse to do drugs with any of their super cool suggestions. Although "Not now. Maybe in the next Millennium" is a crazy answer seeing how there were just six months until the next millennium when this advert came out! So that's a hard maybe then?

Seriously though, I think at least half of these answers would wind up in your ass being kicked, even if it were your close friends offering you the pot.

Meanwhile, Doctor Krigstein explains his change of plans to his underlings.

I mean, that was always a fucking option. You just didn't want to be saddled with a baby who couldn't decimate armies.

Thor Stand-in blasts Apollo with lightning and he crashes to the ground while Jack Hawksmoor, in the foreground, twists off Hercules Stand-in's head. But it's not twisted all the way off at the moment caught on panel so do I count it as half of a decapitation? I probably should, right? Look at it!

This is kind of worse, right?

I don't know for sure if that guy's supposed to be Hercules but he's topless and he's got big bracelets so probably? Swift also drops somebody from the sky to fall to their deaths but she's too small in the panel to determine who it is.

The Engineer has to fly up to catch Apollo to make sure he doesn't land on an innocent Singaporean. But as she tries, she's tackled by The Hulk Stand-in, Boom Boom. Or whatever. I don't know his actual name in this comic book because none of the other characters seem to want to acknowledge his existence.

He's got a self-loathing problem. Oh, and also I'm offended, I think?

Fuck you, Mark Millar! You blocked me for an innocent joke on Twitter?! Well I block you from life for calling me a retard! You're blocked! Blocked, I say! Double blocked even!

Hmm, for some reason, Mark Millar isn't acknowledging my existence and doesn't seem to know I exist! That's probably because I just double blocked him! Ha ha! Take that, rich guy with a satisfying life!

Why am I angry at Mark Millar?! It was his character who said that terrible thing about people who like comic books! Just more proof that these guys are the worst of the worst! Killing babies, making jokes about kidnapped children, and calling the very people who have made Millar rich "retards." They're so despicable!

The Engineer can't find a way to hurt Boom Boom but Shen gives her an idea. She flies Boom Boom into space (without having to build a rocket pack on her back like last time she flew into space because she probably perfected her technique for reaching escape velocity. Once she's in thin enough atmosphere (or space? Who knows how high she goes), Boom Boom swells from the internal pressure of all the human beef lodged in his colon and he pops like a disgusting balloon. That's what you get for hating on comic book readers, you jerk!

Pretty gross but not a decapitation!

Angela Spica was born in Queens, New York, but she gives Boom Boom the British flip-off, or the two-fingered salute. She probably learned that from Jenny Sparks or watching The Young Ones and didn't do it that way because Frank Quitely is Scottish.

Oh! I bet the fake Hulk's name was The Bulk! So obvious!

Thor's name is Storm God which yawn. I still don't know the Commander's name. Also, there are way, way more Marvel characters than I realized on this mission to kill one single baby that Doctor Krigstein didn't even know had any powers. Jack Hawksmoor is about to fight four more: She-Hulk, Quicksilver, Vision, and some other guy.

Okay! That 1/2 a decapitation just became a full decapitation!

The Vision creature (or whoever it's supposed to be a duplicate of. Probably Doctor Strange) follows The Doctor into the Dreamtime where he went to stash Jenny Quantum. I suspect this robot thing will kidnap Jenny because the cover of Issue #15 shows Doctor Krigstein cradling Jenny Quantum in his decrepit hands. Stupid spoilers!

Tank Man goes about the job of killing Midnighter but Midnighter, having been a member of a Black Ops team like this, knows what he's feeling psychologically. He breaks him down with a quick bit of psychoanalyzing, hugs him, and sends him on his way. Tank Man leaves his helmet with Midnighter and wanders off to try his first Slurpee. I won't count it but it's a metaphorical decapitation. Midnighter gets in his head, fucks it up so that it's not actually the same head, and is left with the symbol of Tank Man's head in his hands, his helmet. That's my favorite Millar decapitation so far!

Doctor Krigstein's people successfully retrieve Quantum Jenny from The Doctor and the whole operation is called off. Commander Fascist and Storm God leave off murdering Apollo (leaving him comatose at best) and flee the scene. Almost all the other Marvel heroes are probably dead. Everybody else is pretty much fine. The Doctor did lose one tooth. I wonder if you can bury his teeth and they'll grow into some kind of monster and/or hallucinogenic plant?

The Authority #14 Rating: A+. This easily could have turned into a low panel, low dialogue, spectacular visual fight that a person could read in five minutes (yes, even when really looking at every panel like one of those people who consciously look at every panel for a specific amount of time to show how much they appreciate the art). But it was balanced well with fun dialogue and absolute carnage. I love to make fun of Millar because of his penchant for ultra-violence but, come on, his shit is really entertaining. It's why I own so many of his comics!