Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #18 (First Week of April 2018)

E!TACT #18
Story Time!, Deadman #5, Kick-Ass #2, Cave Carson Has an Interstellar Eye #1, Justic League #41, Batman #43, Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews, and Letters to Me!
By Grunion Guy!

STORY TIME WITH GRUNION GUY
"What If Pickle Boy Was the Writer and Grunion Guy Was the Assistant?"
By Grunion Guy

Grunion Guy was playing hockey like he loved to play because he was so physically fit. All the beautiful women were watching him and swooning. Also the ugly women who thought they had a chance with him because he was so sensitive and caring. He never pretended they weren't talking to him when they talked to him because some of them had really hot bodies. But then just as Grunion Guy was making the big play, he was hit in the head with the hockey thing! And even though Grunion Guy was super tough and rugged and manly, the hockey thing was hit with such tremendous force that it knocked him out for like no more than three seconds. But during those three seconds, he had the most horrific fantasy in his head!

[This is the part where the screen goes wavy and dark before opening on a brand new scene. Audiences should be a little bit confused but they've seen this kind of thing before, so you probably won't need to add a voice-over or captions to explain that we're now in Grunion Guy's fantasy!]

"Hey, dumby! Wake up and edit my new book, dumby!" Pickle Boy was standing over Grunion Guy, his bald head blinding everything around him which was a good thing because everything would be puking if they could see all of the sausage and egg bits that fell out of his breakfast burrito stuck in his goatee.

"Yes sir!" shouted Grunion Guy as he saluted and grovelled too. "I was just getting on that!" Grunion Guy sat up and glanced around for the book he was editing that had put him instantly to sleep. He finally saw the page on the floor, picked it up, and got back to editing it.

Eastworld
by Pickle Boy

"I am getting vacation!" sparked the protagonist who wasn't a robot. He robot danced to his suitcase and only malfunctioned twice on the way. "I go Eastworld today!" His name was Rob.

Tpn [svlrf yjtrr yord smf yep [sotd pg imfrterst/

"Oops!" thought Rob as he readjusted his fingers on the home row. "That's better!"

Rob decided to use the bathroom before catching the bus because that's what humans do. He pulled out his huge pecker which was totally a Mary Sue version of the writer's penis, just in case you weren't sure. Boy was it big! Pickle Boy big! It was the kind of pecker that peckers dream of having! Some would say it was the greatest and most human pecker of them all.

Before Rob could catch the taxi but after he had put his pecker away, the family pet died. It was so sad that the reader got super emotional. It really connected the reader to the story in a way that not having the family pet die doesn't do.

"Take me Eastworld," Rob told the train conductor. "Choo choo, righty-do!" said the Train Conductor. But then there was drama. "Wait. Are you sure you're a human? This train is only for humans!"

Rob smiled humanly. "What?! Of course I human! That almost insult but I think robots are nifty so then it complimentary!" Rob did the robot and winked. Choo-Choo the Train Conductor blushed. He could tell Rob had a great pecker.

The plane landed at Eastworld and Rob fell down the stairs. When he stood back up, half of his face hung off the metal frame but he hadn't noticed yet. But the audience noticed and were all shocked. This is dramatic irony! I learned about it from Grunion Guy who is the greatest writer of them all except when he's unconscious due to a hockey thing hitting his face.

"One ticket for human!" said Rob at the turnstile. The ticket taker was looking at the ticket in the way that ticket takers do. Then as the ticket taker handed the ticket to Rob, he saw Rob's robot skeleton. He screamed! Unless there have been too many male characters so far and then she screamed. Unless that's sexist and then I don't know what to do. Whoever directs the movie version can figure it out.

"What wrong?!" asked Rob, panicking as he did five million calculations in his head the way humans certainly must be capable of because wasn't he human? Wasn't he? Rob reached up and touched the part of his face that was hanging off the other part of his face. Then he felt the metal underneath and the horror dawned on him like the sun dawning on the day.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!" screamed Rob as he fell to his knees in front of the Statue of Liberty sunk in the ground. "NOOOOOOOO!" The Eiffel Tower was also there and maybe a pyramid. "NOOOOOOOO!"

His last thought before he died of shock was this profound thought: how do any of us ever lmpe ejp er trs;;u strz@

The End!

Grunion Guy woke up because the story was so bad! All the hot girls and the ugly girls with the hot bodies and even some hot girls with gross body odor were standing around him. "Is his pecker okay?" one of them asked as she was trying to pull down his hockey pants.

"Wait!" yelled the referee! "Grunion Guy won the game because the hockey thing bounced off his face and into the score!" Everybody cheered and Grunion Guy's pecker was just fine.

The Real End!

Comic Book Reviews!

Deadman #5
By Neal Adams

Each of the previous four covers of Deadman have had some sort of gimmick to them. One glew in the dark. One had a see-through lion image. One had secret writing. One had The Spectre formed from other characters or something. I don't totally remember that one for sure.

This one is apparently an homage to Highlights for Children.

When I first saw this cover, I thought Neal Adams had finally finished having the stroke he started having while writing The Coming of the Supermen. "Deadman find Ra's al Ghul!" It's not like it was any less coherent than most of his tweets on Twitter. But then I realized the tagline was a command and spent all of three nanoseconds searching for Ra's al Ghul. Couldn't Neal have made it any harder? It's obvious that Ra's is up Deadman's ass.

Now comes the real chore: trying to understand what's going on in the fifth installment of this comic book. The first issue was really confusing because it was poorly written. But every subsequent issue has been exponentially harder to understand, both because I have to first comprehend what is going on and because I have to remember it too! It would probably help if I gave an ounce of shit about this story. I'm surprised I don't since I like DC's mystical characters. But Neal Adams isn't really writing about them. From what I can tell, he's just colored a whole bunch of dog turd bags the same color as Spectre, Etrigan, Deadman, and Zatanna.

Deadman uses the adjective "Brobdingnagian." I bet Neal Adams was jerking himself off while writing that line. "This won't be wasted on a bunch of illiterate comic book readers," he probably thought to himself as he jammed the butt plug a little further up his ass. I hope later, Deadman meets a horse-faced woman and uses the adjective "Houyhnhnmian."

Everybody is gathering outside Nanda Parbat for a reason I've completely forgotten to try to remember. No, that's a lie. I actively tried to forget to remember. That's different, somehow.

According to some samurai that I don't recognize, the army attacking Nanda Parbat (why is it attacking? I don't think Neal Adams explained that part. Maybe he explained it. But poorly) is composed of armorers, yeti, deformers, robotoids, zombies and, um, "stupid things." Checking my Who's Who comic, I don't find an entry on Stupid Things.

I wonder how Neal Adams writes a comic book in which he's also the artist. Does he do the art first, drawing whatever strikes his fancy, and then tries to make a coherent story out of the panels? Judging by how incomprehensible the entire story is, I wouldn't be surprised if that was his method. But even if he plans the story out, his dialogue is terrible. At one point, the samurai attacks a deformer and says, "Remove the bones before you swallow the fish, deformer. They tend to get caught in your throat." Why does he say that? What's he referring to? Does the samurai get his strength from giving out life hacks?

It took me way too long to understand why Doctor Fate said that last thing. But I still don't get why Neal Adams would write it.

Rating: This was one of those issues that gets shoved in when DC Comics demands a six part story from a writer who only has two to three parts in them. It's just a nonsensical brawl that keeps the characters from entering Nanda Parbat one issue too early. Plus the dialogue is worse than Pickle Boy's dialogue. I don't mean the dialogue he writes. I mean the dialogue he comes up with over a few beers. Talk about strokes!


Kick-Ass #2
By Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.

Today is new comic book day so let's count how many comic books I read last week. One! That was easy! It also might be telling. Is it time for me to stop reading comic books again? There are a handful I still enjoy, like Batman and The Wild Storm. But the main reason I can't stop reading comic books is that I'm afraid to break up with my comic book store again. It's too much pressure going in there and telling them to cancel my subscription box! Last time I cancelled back in 2003, Debbie acted hurt and shocked, as if it were something the comic book store had done. So I actually told her, "It's not you; it's me!" What excuse do I give this time?! Maybe I should just have the Non-Certified Spouse call up and tell them I died?

As of right now, I'm three weeks behind on my comic book reading. In a few hours when this week's books come out, I'll be a full month behind! I'm getting my ass kicked by comic books!

Oh! Speaking of ass kicking, I found my way back on topic! Let's just rate this thing and move on to the next one, shall we?

Rating: Patience steps up her Kick-Ass game by caring about the little guy. This is how you become a superhero in real life (because this comic book takes place in real life. You can't forget that. Not because you need to remember it to understand the comic book. You can't forget it because Millar constantly says things like, "This isn't like a comic book!" and "This isn't like in the movies!" and "This isn't like a book written by [Google famous author to put here before sending newsletter]!"). You begin due to desperate circumstances and then project your problems and needs on to everybody else. If extreme violence can solve your problems so easily, why can't that be used to solve all of the other people's problems too?! Nothing can go wrong with that philosophy, right?!

Anyway, it was pretty good. Not $3.99 good! But what can you do? Comic books are ridiculously priced these days. I guess you can stop buying them. But then you have to do that break-up thing and my stomach is hurting just thinking about it!


Cave Carson Has an Interstellar Eye #1
By Rivera, Oeming, and Filardi

The last Cave Carson series was about his impotence. It's a pretty sweet read if you're smart enough to figure that out. If you aren't as good at reading comic books as I am then you might have missed the significance of a man obsessed with drilling over and over again into deep caves. Now you're thinking, "Grunion Guy, that doesn't sound like impotence at all! Don't you know how to do it?" And I'm return thinking, "Pshaw! Of course I know how! Why would I even feel the need to write fake dialogues where I assure readers that I've totally done it a lot? So ridiculous!" Also you must not have read the series because it was about how Cave Carson couldn't spelunk anymore. I think "spelunk" is short for "sperm dunk" with an "L" added for some reason.

Since the first comic book's title was an anagram for "I c-ca-can see a very-y chaste boner," I bet this title has an anagrammatic clue as well! Let's see. Cave Carson Has an Interstellar Eye is an anagram of "An anal character's eye is never lost". Methinks I'm most of the way to figuring out what this comic book is really about!

Also I've apparently become one of those people who says "methinks!" Get me a fedora, stat!

Rating: It's weird in that way things are written when they want to be weird. That's a harsh critique and not a compliment. Also maybe it's not as harsh as it could be. Maybe it's not harsh at all? Anyway, that scathing review doesn't mean the comic book is uninteresting. It's just not as interesting as it was when it was about Carson's impotency. I'm not yet sure what this series is about. Maybe about loss and maturity? The entire thing might be about grieving the loss of one's favorite pet. That isn't as sexy as a limp ding-dong! But I'll probably give it at least one more issue.

P.S. I wrote the ranking before reading the back-up story. After reading the back-up story about Cave Carson's podcast, I can confirm the series is about loss. And still maybe about the loss of a pet! I'm sure I can force that view into the narrative.


Justice League #41
By Priest, Briones, and Cox

Rating: This comic book deals with super powered people and aliens and space travel that ignores physics and the Justice League trying to deal with international conflicts and the entire team's institutional racism yet the most unbelievable moment was when some guy was excited to see Aquaman. It took me right out of the comic book. Otherwise, it was a fun read! Especially the part where Wonder Woman was somehow shot. Priest doesn't think she blocks bullets simply because they can actually hurt her, right? Ignoring Kerry Callen's take on Diana's bullet bouncing, she probably deflects them in specific directions so that they don't bounce off of her body and kill an innocent bystander in the way they just bounced off of Superman and killed her. My guess is one went into her open mouth while she was yapping about saving children. I bet the inside of her skin isn't invulnerable. How else could she derive pleasure from fucking Steve Trevor?


Batman #43
By King, Janin, Petrus, and Chung

Rating: I haven't discussed the last few issues of Batman because I've simply been enjoying them. I suppose if there are people out there who can't stand King's Batman, I can't be bothered to mind. Contrary to the evidence presented in thousands of pages of comic book criticism over the last few years, I actually do understand what 'subjective' means. And I can live with people not liking Tom King's writing style because that means Tom King's writing style is there to be experienced. He reminds me why I once loved comic books. He doesn't write a person in a costume. He writes a character who happens to wear a costume. His dialogue is fun and serious and touches one in a way that I thought was a bad touch but I think it's actually the kind of touch most people crave. The current arc is a love story disguised as a villain taking over the world story and it couldn't be better. That's hyperbole because of course it could be better. All of the characters could be drawn naked and aroused.

Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews

Get Your Shit Together by Public Enemy
There's something incredibly Shakespearean about Public Enemy's music. It's like when Chuck D is rapping, you're all, "Fuck man. Fuck. This is profound! This is fucking American truth man! This is crazy." Then Flava Flav starts singing and you're all, "Oh yeah! This Shakespeare loved cock jokes too!" Mostly you forget Flava Flav is a part of this group when they're singing about serious shit like this. Occasionally you'll heave Flava Flav's high-pitched, sidekick exclamations ring out and I can't help laughing. Then I feel terrible because somebody might think I'm laughing at the serious lyric, "What you gonna do? What'ch you gonna do? If you'd been on that plane, both sides would've killed you too!" Mostly though, Public Enemy really understands when to play up Flava Flav and when to downplay him. He's barely even a blip in this song. I imagine he was just bopping along in the studio as this track was recorded without ever realizing his mic wasn't turned on.
Grade: A.

Never Say Die by Jon Bon Jovi
Most Americans think Bon Jovi was a huge punchline to the joke of 80s rock music. But we all know why Bon Jovi survived the death of that 80s hard rock genre; it was because he was a master of sex appeal and also wrote really catchy songs! This song is from the soundtrack to Young Guns II which was almost as good as the movie itself! This might be the worst song on the album (aside from the one without lyrics, "Guano City." Who listens to songs without lyrics?! What a waste of time!) and yet I still don't skip it when it comes up on my shuffle. Because even the worst of the best is still good! Some might say I'm a Jovi Lover and they have a right to their totally correct and non-spurious opinions. Let me share the glory of some of Jon's triumphs in lyrical beauty:

"Once I was afraid of love
But when it's your brother those things change.
Love is just another word for trust!
So hear me when I say, 'Never say, "Die!"'
'Never say, "No!"'
You got to look them in the eye and don't let go!"

Wow! That just gets right to the heart of sex shop glory hole culture! It's right up there with "Love is a Social Disease" and "Shot Through the Heart" (not to be confused with "You Give Love a Bad Name" which uses the lyric "shot through the heart")! I'm not sure why Bon Jovi included an anthem for living with and fighting AIDS in the Young Guns II soundtrack. But it works somehow!
Grade: B.

Saturday's Child by The Monkees
"You'll be called 'The Monkees!'"
"What? Why?"
"But not monkeys like you're imagining it! Monkees with two 'e's!"
"What? Why?!"
"You don't like it? The other three guys we're interviewing for the band probably love it! You should to!"
"Well, as long as we play catchy pop tunes that make all the girls go wild."
"You mean 'pretend to play!'"
"Wait. What? Why?!"

That's probably how Mike Nesmith's job interview went, right? Anyway, what about "Saturday's Child", you're probably thinking. Well, I'm probably thinking, "What about it?! It's kind of stupid." I don't even know what a Saturday child is supposed to be! Did people used to not only believe personalities were formed by astrological signs but by days of the week as well? What makes Saturday's child not break your heart like Thursday's child? Why is Wednesday's child so aloof?! And Sunday's child is way too into commitment. I guess Saturday's child is the one that will sleep with you on the first date and not care when you never call again. Is that love?

It's also a bit weird to be singing about loving a child.
Grade: D+.

Ubangi Stomp by Alice Cooper
This is Alice Cooper's version of an Elvis dance song. Alice Cooper did a lot of versions of other people singing songs that already existed. People don't realize this but Alice Cooper was basically Weird Al Yankovic drunk out of his mind. This song is from Lace and Whiskey which is an album that most people could hear any song from, be told it was Alice Cooper, and they would say, "Fuck you that's Alice Cooper." I guess maybe "Road Rats" or "It's Hot Tonight" wouldn't get that reaction. But that's just twenty percent of the album. Nobody would hear this or "My God" or "I Never Wrote Those Songs" or "King of the Silver Screen" or "You and Me" or "Damned If You Do" or "Lace and Whiskey" or "(No More) Love at Your Convenience" and think, "I know who sang that!" Except maybe "You and Me" since it was basically Alice Cooper's last big hit of the seventies and also because he sang it to Miss Piggy on The Muppet Show. This song is catchy and I would dance to it if I actually knew how to do the Ubangi Stomp. It probably involves a lot of stomping and racism.
Grade: B.

The Simpsons Halloween Special End Credits Theme ("The Addams Family" Homage)
I don't know why I haven't deleted this from my iTunes. I don't know why I haven't deleted all of The Simpsons special themes from my iTunes. Probably because I'm lazy. I'm not too lazy to hit skip every time one of them comes up on the Shuffle though. If you hear a "song" like this and think, "I need to hear more of that a lot of the time I'm living this finite life," then we don't have much in common. I mean music-wise! We probably have more in common in other ways, like how often we masturbate or how many burritos we can stand to eat in one day.
Grade: F.

What Am I Currently Reading?

This week, I finished reading Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers. Mostly it was a rehash of a few of the first series episodes with some minor and not so minor differences. Lots of the dialogue was the same in places but Red Dwarf's captain was a woman named Kirk rather than a bloated man with a pockmarked face. We also learn how Lister became a crew member and that his breaking of quarantine by smuggling the cat on board was done on purpose so he could be in stasis for the entire trip back to Earth. It was an easy and enjoyable read that actually made me laugh out loud in places which the television show doesn't really do any more. Well, maybe it does. But the way laugh tracks have aged makes viewing of old sitcoms really fucking difficult.
    What reading this book has taught me is that maybe the Xanth books aren't such quick reads after all! Either I'm not as big a fan of fantasy as I was at twelve when titillating descriptions of naked creatures caused me to take a short bathroom break (and that scene where Dor and Irene rip each other's clothes off in the moat in Centaur Isle probably fueled more bathroom breaks than any other bit) or the Xanth books just aren't as entertaining as I remembered them being. It's a slog to get through a Xanth book. I had to force myself to try to read at least one chapter every morning before bed (I work nights!). But I kept going back to the Red Dwarf book even when I could have been playing Fortnite! If you don't know what Fortnite is, that was meant as high praise!
   Next up on my to read list is Spiral by Koji Suzuki. It's the sequel to Ringu which everybody knows about. I think I'll reread Ringu first because it took so long to find the second book. Ringu was written in 1992 and it might be the best book on memes I'll ever read. Mostly because I'll never read another one.

Letters to Me!

KB writes: My mom took us to see Godspell on multiple occasions. ::shudder::

My reply: Ick! I hate when people equate Jesus Christ Superstar with Godspell. Although I think I owe my love of Jesus Christ Superstar to Godspell. At some point as a kid, I saw the end scene of the Godspell movie where Jesus Christ is crucified to a chain link fence by a bunch of clowns while the World Trade Center sits in the background mocking modern audiences. I was all, "What the heck was that?! It seems awesome!" The visual stuck in my head for years. I also knew the title song of Jesus Christ Superstar thanks to grocery store background music. I assumed the two were one and the same. After years of having that song and image stuck in my head, I eventually dug out my mom's VHS copy of Jesus Christ Superstar (taped from television, of course) and watched it. It was not the movie I remembered but I fell in love with it anyway. I loved the music and was fascinated by the sympathetic take on Judas.

Eventually I watched Godspell as well and was not taken in the same way. I also saw Godspell at least once in the community theater version because my friend Doom Bunny was doing the lights for it.

KB:

"took nine hundred and ninety nine comics but Superman finally realized that throwing criminals into the Phantom Zone was a dick move. His first (and possibly only?) step in correcting this attitude is letting Hank Henshaw out. After which Superman immediately imprisons him in an Inertron cell (unless it's Adamantium) and puts him into a hallucinatory state so he won't cause trouble. Jurgens seems to be telling this tale to show that Superman is too good to be corrupted like, in the other half of the story, Sam Lane fears."

So, using Black Mercies is evil, but a hallucinatory condition isn't? Though there is an interesting discussion to be had about whether it's merciful to let people live in blissful delusion. Even if you were to construct a hallucinatory setting where Hank Henshaw could grow as a person until he decided to foreswear evil, what happens when you yank the rug out from under him and tell him it's all been a lie? I guess that's an argument about practical application more than about morality, but it's still a question.

"Although, to be fair in a fairer way, Superman's foes always seem to escape from the Phantom Zone just like Batman's enemies escape Arkham. So Superman can either follow the law and the villains he captures will still escape, or he can imprison people illegally while they still manage to escape. Since nobody can keep a comic book villain locked up, Superman should at least choose the option that doesn't make him look like a fascist."

Gold kryptonite used to be a solution, yet Superman almost never used it. "Look, you lived your whole life on Krypton without super powers, you can live here on earth just fine without powers too. Trust me, you'll love the Denny's Grand Slam. And you can probably get rich going into tech companies. Stay away from Lex Luthor though, he'll probably want to vivisect you."

Me: Basically, I think DC's view is that if Superman does it, it's okay. If some other character who we aren't told by DC that everybody but Batman and Lex Luthor can trust implicitly for some reason does it, it's terrible and should be stopped immediately. That Gold Kryptonite solution seems particularly troublesome and hypocritical. If Superman thinks Kryptonians who abuse their powers don't deserve them, shouldn't he take the same hard line on himself? As soon as he realizes that he's constantly being manipulated to use his powers against Earth through magic or hypnosis or Joker serum or Doomsday viruses, shouldn't he also expose himself to Gold Kryptonite so he loses his powers forever? I suppose he has an imaginary whiteboard in the Fortress of Solitude where he keeps a list of all the pros and cons of keeping his powers. Once that list tips too far into the cons, he probably has a Gold Kryptonite suppository set aside.


Upright writes: Did you ever check out Anthony’s Bio of a Tyrant series? The only thing I remember is that Jupiter was the U.S., Saturn was the USSR, and Earth was India (weird). And a missile crisis, because Saturn, of course. And the guy was a tyrant but totally misunderstood like so many of them are! We can’t think beyond the present unless you can and then you’re Philip K Dick and he’s crazy until he’s absolutely not at all.

My reply: I never did pick that up. Which is weird because I read almost everything else Anthony churned out (for some reason. Let's not be too hard on twelve year old me! He may have been a smelly, know-it-all jerk but...well, maybe we should have all been harder on him, actually). Maybe since I'm reading all of his terrible stuff again, I should read some of his terrible stuff that I never read before!

Speaking of Philip K. Dick, I'd read more of his stuff but I can't remember what I've read of his and what I haven't. I really should have kept a list. Since he became so popular again in the whatever years he became really popular again, publishers seem to reissue his stuff over and over again. It's hard to tell when I see a bunch of new covers which ones I've read. Maybe I should just hit the library and go through them all. Then when I recognize I've read one, I can just return it without costing me anything! Except for the late fee I'll almost certainly accrue.

And that's a wrap on this week's newsletter! Goodbye, jerkos!

The Authority #29 (July 2002)

Pshaw! If I had nanobots for blood, I'd have a body like that too. Literally. Just like that. So fucking hot.

I have this theory that sex is 10% as good for men as it is for women. It must be! Why would heterosexual women put up with men if dick wasn't so fucking awesome? Hell, I'm 100% a real man who does women and everything and I find the cock the most appealing part of other men! Sometimes I watch porn that's just a guy getting jerked off because a fat hard dick is fucking sexy. Wait. Is it gay to like dick? Maybe I'm 72% real man? Bah, what is a real man anyway? Probably somebody who likes naked women and erect cocks and occasionally things inserted into their buttholes. Why am I putting percentages on who is and isn't a real man anyway?! If you say you're a real man, that's good enough for me! Like what you like, daddy! Why would anybody spend their lives trying to satisfy other people's ideas of who they should be instead of going all in on your own needs and desires?! Can you imagine how boring it must be to be one of those guys who's afraid to enjoy anything because somebody might think they're gay?! Don't they know how much better life is when you accept who you are and embrace that shit? Oh! I bet they realize exactly that which is why they're always so angry at people who defy convention and just do what makes them happy! Imagine how angry you'd be every time you saw somebody happily doing something you want to do but you're afraid some other fucking jerk will make fun of you for doing it?

The above paragraph may or may not have been trying to convince myself that I should embrace only wearing women's underwear. It makes me feel special! Sometimes so special that I have to immediately change my women's underwear!

Enough about whoever wrote all that nonsense! Who was that person who totally wasn't me? So weird that hackers can hack a blog and then make it so I can't delete any of it! I'm just here to talk about comic books!

This is the final issue of The Authority. Mark Millar killed it by being too lazy and too edgy and too whiny when editorial said things like, "You can't have racist slurs all over Last Call's dorm walls," or "You can have that weird fleshy fringe on the front of Seth but you can't overtly refer to it as 'his penises.'" I'm pretty sure Millar kills every comic book he winds up writing on because there's only so many ways you can decapitate characters in your script before you finally get bored and begin spending over a full year to write four issues of comic that are mostly violent battles and Rush showing her bottom. If Millar hadn't slacked off, we would have had a Garth Ennis run on this book followed by a Brian Azzarello run. It's possible we don't really need those runs because we can all pretty much imagine exactly what Garth Ennis would have done and taken a good crack at what Azzarello would have come up with. But they would have been fun to read!

Oh, one more thing: Arthur Adams only managed to hang around for two issues before he huffed off in a huffy huff. Am I categorizing that correctly? I have no idea because I don't like to research behind-the-scenes shit. I wouldn't even know where to find that kind of gossip!

This issue begins with Swift coming to rescue Angie from her terrible fake memories and worse fake marriage. She explains how when Machine died, the implants in their heads that gave them their false memories were destroyed. Swift got her mind back just in time to hear the bigwigs discuss Seth's kill switch. She also brings an example of what eventually happens to anybody who fucks with her while she's being written by Mark Millar.

Decapitation Count: 15!

Gary Erskine's art reminds me of a combination of Chalie Adlard and Steve Dillon. If you love their art, consider that a compliment. If you find their art lacking, congratulations on seeing reality correctly. I sincerely apologize about that comment made toward Steve Dillon. I've never been a fan of his but I know a lot people are. I always thought most of his characters looked like they all had the same face but were wearing different wigs.

On The Carrier, Seth has ripped out one of Midnighter's two hearts and is about to poke his finger through Jenny Quantum's skull. Apollo decides he doesn't want that to happen even though with Midnighter probably dead, maybe Jenny being killed would be easier than being a single parent? No, no! Even I'm not that cynical! Obviously a dead baby is worse than a living baby even if that living baby makes me think of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" for some odd reason.

Apollo tackles Seth out of a Door, leaving Jenny Quantum and old Midnighter One-Heart alone on The Carrier. Apollo and Seth wind up in the Arctic Circle (the top of the world location and not the restaurant) to do battle.

I bet Arthur Adams quit when editorial wouldn't let him draw the panel where all of Seth's dicks fire off at once, spraying a bunch of government officials in rancid hillbilly jizz.

Swift and Angie pick up Jack Hawksmoor and they all head back to The Carrier. The Doctor wakes up in the Garden of Ancestral Memory with no memory of how he got there. They discover Midnighter nearly dead so Angie and The Doctor set to work on saving him. But that's when Seth returns with the near-corpse of Apollo and uses one of his 1200 super powers (Larynx-freezing Vision) to keep them from saying the code word that activates Seth's kill switch.

Before all of that is a scene where Angie takes her nanobots back from the corpse of Machine. Normally I would scan a picture like that because we get the return of Angie's nipples. But Gary Erskine fucks it up so bad that it amounts to body horror. I will not be exposing anybody to that nipple, not even with a content warning!

Seth kicks the shit out of The Authority yet again by using all of his super powers that Mark Millar made up on the fly: Thought Defecation, X-ray Strength, Rainbow Breath, Speed-Squared, Shame Vision, and Nuclear Poop-Vision. I'm not sure who gets hit with what but I do know Jack Hawksmoor gets hit with simple Big Fucking Muscular Foot Action.

Millar knew he could get away with this in an American comic but just remember: to Millar and his UK brethren, fanny means pussy.

Seth is about to rape Jack Hawksmoor with one (or all of?) his three dicks he was born with (as opposed to the other 597 he added later for more rape) when Jenny Quantum decides to say her first words. They are, of course, the kill switch phrase and they're pretty fucking stupid on the face of things: "Welcome to the oval office, President Gore." The phrase is supposed to be something that nobody would ever think to say so Millar thought, "Ha ha! That would be a funny phrase that nobody would ever say because Gore never would have become president!" Which, if I want to give Millar the benefit of the doubt, could be a clever way of saying, "Gore could never have won because everything was already written and pre-planned by the terrible choads who actually run everything and, well, it actually happened that way what with the Supreme Court handing Bush the victory when Gore would have won had the votes been allowed to be tallied correctly in Florida." But as a phrase that nobody would ever think to say? I guarantee that phrase was said multiple multiples of times in really fucking sarcastic voices by tons and tons of filthy power-loving bastards. So basically Seth was just lucky he never had the kill switch thrown.

Tell me Seth minus all of his super powers doesn't look exactly like somebody outta Preacher? Fuck, and The Walking Dead!

The Authority punish Seth by having The Doctor turn him into a chicken and set him loose on Seth's uncle's (father's?) farm. Those hillbillies obviously love fucking chickens so that's the punishment. To be cloaca-raped until he's eventually eaten by the men who fucked his mother and made his incest little ass.

I'd just like to point out that I went really easy on critiquing Mark Millar's writing when I said it loses something without any on-panel decapitations. I could have said his writing loses something when there isn't any implied rape.

The Authority decide to leave tear in The Bleed to non-super powered Earthlings while they take care of Midnighter. In the spaces between pages, regular humans somehow survive whatever apocalypse just almost happened due to the tear. They're all super happy about their ability to not have to rely on super heroes. And The Authority are happy that they've changed the world somehow. I'm not sure exactly how. I guess because they showed the world that heroes shouldn't give a shit about bank robberies and muggings in alleys? They should stop actual systemic injustice and genocidal violence? Sure, that sounds great if you're not cynical. But to a cynic like me, it just sounds like Mark Millar is shitting in Batman's open mouth. Not that Batman doesn't deserve it! I just hate to see Millar so smug about making a comic book that's about more than just heroes stopping crime. It's about heroes making a difference! And also about having the bad guys act as racist and homophobic as possible while the good guys consistently see violence, rape, and threats of rape as means of punishment to make the world better.

The Authority #29 Rating: C. Oh yeah, I almost forgot: Midnighter and Apollo get married at the end, right after Midnighter sends George W. Bush through a Door to Iraq to, I'm guessing, be raped by Saddam? I'm only guessing that because I'm trying to put myself in Millar's writing pants! The main theme of the entire series was that heroes should be working to make the world an actual better place to live instead of being street cops. And that makes sense for heroes powerful enough to get that shit done. Let guys like Batman and Green Arrow keep stopping alleyway muggings and coffee shop hold-ups though. Within that theme of making the world better was always the question, "Who gets to decide what makes the world better?" Kind of a riff on the "Who Watches the Watchmen?" thing. The Authority generally seem to want to move the needle toward more justice and freedom for everybody. But generally the people who want to be the world's "authority" do so because they want to be in control. And they want to be in control because they fear what would happen to them if somebody more powerful were in control. But they never seem to worry about how they abuse their "control." They mostly run things by thinking, "If these other people we've oppressed ever take control, we're fucked. So we have to do the most fucked up things imaginable to never lose our power." We're seeing that writ large by Israel right now. They'll never willingly let go of control because their fear and need to control things in the name of their own safety (safety which they themselves harm the most by the way they apply their power and control) wind up ramping up the harm they do. Too many people want pure freedom but they fear what other people with pure freedom will do. Living with the fear of what other people might do if they're not controlled properly isn't freedom. It's like I wrote earlier: suck a dick if you want to suck a dick but you also have to allow other people to suck or not suck dicks as they please. You can't fucking live with the fear of how other people choose to live differently from you. That need for control just means your life will always feel out of control. Let it go, man! What do the Taoist's say? "I'll try to pay you Tuesday for a gallon of wine today. But if I can't, well, no biggie, right?"

Total Decapitation Count: 15!

The Authority #28 (April 2002)

You're not allowed to show one naked penis on a comic book cover. But if it's a bundle of three or four dozen? No problem!

I'm beginning to think that Frank Quitely quitting this comic over a better job offer wasn't the reason the comic book was delayed for four months. Once Tom Peyer and Dustin Nguyen took over, it came out every month for four months straight. But then when Millar came back? It was two months before the 2nd part of "Brave New World" (nine full months after Part One!) was published. And now the 3rd part just took 3 more months after that. It's been a full year and Millar has only put out three issues of his four issue story arc. I think I might know why this comic book was cancelled after part four! Garth Ennis was scheduled to take over after Millar's run but he probably got sick of waiting and moved on to other comics.

Last issue, we got a glimpse of Rush's ass. This issue, I'm hoping for half a labia!

This issue begins with The Surgeon putting all of the world's Gods to the firing squad while introducing a new God for the pop culture oriented man: Religimon.

These are the Gods after editorial got through with them: Gandalf, Mr. Spock, Doctor Who, and, um, Scarlet Witch?

The main feature of Religimon is that the G7 nations of the world own the rights to the new religious imagery (which, I'm assuming, is composed of hundreds of cute and various other Gods. Gotta worship 'em all!) so I can seen how it wouldn't seem weird to have them killing the other pop culture heroes which Religimon will replace. But apparently the soldiers were supposed to be killing Jesus and Mohammad and Buddha and Yahweh which makes more sense, especially considering this soldier that interrupts The Surgeon during his introduction of Religimon.

I think to fully kill Jesus, you have to consume him before he resurrects. Like a troll in Nethack.

Back on The Carrier, the readers learn that Colonel not only has a shit fetish but he's a rapist as well. It's not surprising being that Mark Millar hadn't explored every corner of degeneracy yet.

Um, no?

Turned on by all the megalosalmon shit splashing across The Carrier's windshield, Colonel does a sex attack on Rush. By that I mean he throws a soccer ball at her face and then threatens to electrocute her when she calls him a lunatic. If he's this out of his mind from horniness by seeing some fish shit, what happens when the Colonel lifts the lid on an unflushed toilet? Does he instantly jizz himself? Does he fuck whatever's nearby, like the drain in the sink or a toilet roll tube? Does it matter since he's going to be dead by the end of next issue, if not this one?

The Surgeon interrupts to let Colonel know that something terrible has happened on the ship: Street has been run over by a pizza delivery motorcycle.

I should stop reading so I always remember Rush like this, adorable with everything still intact.

I don't know how Street was killed by being run over by a motorbike that's mostly moped. I guess if Midnighter is riding it, it becomes more deadly than usual.

Last Call checks on The Carrier's caged baby universe in the Engine Room because Machine felt a disturbance in the whatever. He doesn't notice Jenny Quantum sitting beneath it manipulating it to her will. I guess that means Jenny Quantum can render herself invisible to homophobes.

If at any time during the year long wait for this story to continue, readers were thinking, "I hope when the story comes back, it'll have more attempted rape than normal," they were in luck! Because the next scene has Teuton telling Apollo he was always interested in fucking guys but didn't want word getting around. So now he's got a gay guy tied up and helpless who will be dead soon and so won't tell anybody that Teuton fucked him!

Luckily for Teuton, the good guys don't fuck the holes they make in the bad guys' heads. Even with Millar writing.

The rest of New Authority hold a meeting to figure out who's going to battle Midnighter. If I were them, I'd lock myself in some out of the way storage closet and just wait for Seth to beam aboard and take care of him.

Seth appears before any of them can find a closet to hide in which saves some of their dignity. Luckily, they don't have to pretend they want to fight Midnighter because Seth has four dozen raging hard-ons throbbing at the prospect of finally killing Midnighter. Too bad Midnighter finds them before Seth finds him.

Noooooo! RUSH! Um, I think?

I think the lone feather and possibly some blood stains indicate that Rush was strung up by Midnighter when the lights went out the first time. Then The Surgeon was shot and/or stabbed through the chest. Elsewhere on The Carrier, Apollo blew Last Call's head off. So now it's just Machine, Colonel, and Seth left to fight.

Colonel gets taken out in two panels just like everybody else. New Authority put up nearly zero fight, as expected. Hopefully Seth will put up more of a fight.

Why's the focal point always gotta be Seth's multiple dicks?

Apollo kills Machine while Seth tears out one of Midnighter's hearts (yeah, yeah. Apparently he has a back-up). Now it's just Apollo, Jenny, and Seth facing off at the end of reality (because The Bleed is hemorrhaging).

The bigwigs have a meeting while Swift waits on them in her underwear. They discuss how Seth needs to be terminated now that he's taken care of The Authority (um, what? He hasn't even!) and, right there in front of Swift, they mention how Seth has a kill switch! That makes sense because Swift always has to prove her worth in the smallest way possible every story arc. In this one, she gets to find out the means to kill Seth! Unless the means to kill Seth will just be Seth finding out the government's going to terminate him and Swift asking Seth to join them like she asked Doctor Krigstein. That would be really fucking disappointing though.

The Authority #28 Rating: B. Too many New Authority members died too quickly. It wasn't any fun! Now I suspect the battle against Seth next issue will be just as anti-climactic. I think maybe Millar was either getting bored by this point or super annoyed at editorial putting a stop to his super edgelord shit. Whatever the case, Arthur Adams doesn't even make it to next issue! They laid part of the blame for the delay on waiting for Arthur Adams to finish a job and catch up on the script and then he only hangs around for two issues anyway! Christ, what the fuck was going on at Wildstrom in 2001?!

The Authority #27 (January 2002)

Millar's note to Arthur Adams on this issue's cover: "Have you ever heard the term 'gay-bashing'?"

Don't accuse me of being the insensitive one! Wait until you see why Apollo's had the shit beaten out of him here! Just you wait! Remember, Mark Millar wrote the script, not me! Stop telling the messenger to KYS already! It's really taking a toll on my psyche and my ability to keep writing edgelord blog entries!

This issue begins by asking the question, "Is it possible to crush on Rush even harder than you already are?"

The answer, according to the noise that came out of my body when I turned to the first page, is, "Unnhhhohohunh."

New Authority are flying into Qatar where a huge post-human battle rages. It might be the first double-page splash in the history of this series that warranted a double page splash. Usually it's just a large picture of The Carrier, or a bunch of ships zipping across the page. But this splash reminds me of the best of Sergio Aragonés' work. I'm not going to scan the entire thing but I should probably scan my favorite bits of it. Starting with this surprise pick:

My girlfriend!


Gigantitty-fuck!


The Engulfer!


The Bizarro Twins!


Punisherine? The Wolfisher?

I almost just scanned Rush and then a bunch of close-ups of Rush's body. I mean I did do that but then I saved them to my secret folder and scanned these other weird heroes to cover my tracks.

The characters attacking Qatar are Wildstorm's version of the Team Titans. They're from the 27th Century and they've come back to punch the people in the face responsible for their ecological apocalypse. Ha ha! That's pretty funny. Millar thought it would take 600 years for an ecological apocalypse to take place? Ha ha ha!

New Authority murders the future teens in the amount of panels it takes to give a short description of every member of New Authority. What did the future teens think they were going to accomplish? Since the ecological disaster in the 27th Century happened, they obviously didn't complete their mission back in time. Fucking idiots! Don't they get how time works?!

I would love to be dropped into helicopter rotors by Rush.

Why is Rush so adorable and I find Swift as appealing as a blank white sheet of A1? I bet it's because she's Canadian! One of my first huge celebrity crushes was Stacy Mistysyn, Caitlin Ryan from Degrassi Junior High. It can't possibly just be the overalls as I surmised before, can it? Am I actually just in love with overalls?

Oh shit! I almost forgot Millar was back! Decapitation Count: 13!

I just spent the last four issues complaining that I was never going to get a shot of Rush coming out of the shower because this comic book wasn't being drawn by David Finch or Tony Daniels. Well, it seems I can add Arthur Adams to the list of artists who mandate at least one coming out of the shower scene in every comic book they draw.

At least I can rule out that it's only about the overalls now.

New Authority throw a quick meeting to analyze the state of the world. Everything's cool except that Midnighter tore a hole in The Bleed when he flew a plane into some critical part of The Carrier and crashed it. Machine says something about every other reality in existence (so infinite alternate realities?) are coming for their Earth. It's not explained better than that and I don't have the brain power to spend on it because Rush decides to disrobe in the middle of the Map Room.

What the fuck is she doing? Not that I'm displeased!

This issue, Mark Millar gave a little bit of background to the various members of New Authority. We found out Rush is a Canadian singer/songwriter. And Colonel is a football star from the United Kingdom. He may, in fact, be a quite famous footballer.

I know I usually scan these for the half-naked women but pay attention to their convo! Colonel is David Beckham!

Meanwhile, Last Call works out by using Apollo as a living body bag. Yes, Seth failed to kill Apollo! I imagine he failed to kill every single member of The Authority who he was rewarded for killing a few issues ago. I feel like treating Apollo this way will be bad for Last Call's health in the long run. But he doesn't think that because he's a fucking idiot. Last Call blabs to Apollo that the other members of The Authority, except Midnighter, are not dead and they were never meant to be killed. You know Apollo's not sad about hearing that. Of course Midnighter would want them to think he was dead! That's how he's going to save the day!

Swift's mind has been wiped and she's now living a domestic life as the wife of a gigantic asshole. The Doctor's powers were stolen by The Surgeon who keeps The Doctor in his pocket as a little action figure. The Engineer's also going to have her mind wiped soon so that she thinks she's the mother of a bunch of shitty children with an abusive husband.

This is the trouble with evil villains. They always need to keep the heroes alive to satisfy the sadist inside of them.

Oh but wait! There's somebody in the organization who thinks differently! This guy and Seth watch footage of Jack Hawksmoor whose mental capacity has been diminished so that he can't access his super powers. He now begs on the streets for beer money. And this guy is disturbed by the way management didn't just kill The Authority.

I don't give a shit about this guy but at least he understands what would have kept them from all being killed in two issues.

Meanwhile in the sewers of New York, Midnighter and Jenny Quantum plan to murder one fucking hillbilly with six hundred dicks. No, seriously. He's got like six hundred dicks.

The Authority #27 Rating: A. The build up is fantastic! I can't wait for Midnighter to murder them all in terribly gruesome and visually horrific ways! Also Rush got fucking naked in this issue! She was all, "Hey, Machine, now that the guys are leaving, will you look at my vulva?" And Machine was all, "Wa-OOOOOOGA!" I don't know what happened after that. At least not in canon. I know what happened in head canon though and it's incredible! But if you think I'm going to describe it to you, then, like the Japanese bouncer told me after inviting me into an ichya-kyabakura and he asking me if I speak Japanese which I said no to, "Too bad for you!" Man, that was simile was a fucking mess!

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!