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!

The Authority #13 (May 2000)

Of all these new members, I'm most curious about the trucker holding up the decapitated head.

It's a whole new era! Not just because Jenny Sparks has been replaced by Jenny Baby but because Warren Ellis has been replaced by Mark Millar, Bryan Hitch has been replaced by Frank Quitely, and Paul Neary has been replaced by Trevor Scott. They're still putting the colorist's name on the cover but I traditionally ignore the colorist and the letterer and the editor. I'm not saying I'm right. I'm just pointing out that my bookkeeping and organizational efforts only extend so far before I get fucking bored of them.

This story is called "The Nativity" so it'll probably be about a virgin birth followed quickly by four or five people being decapitated. This sentence will act as my content warning for as long as Mark Millar writes this series (until the end, I believe): I will be scanning in every panel of gratuitous gore and violence! If Millar happens to stay away from that (and with Jack Hawksmoor who loves to kick spines out of bodies front and center on the cover, I'm not particularly worried about it), I have no idea what I'll be scanning. Maybe Angie will get her nipples back?

The issue begins with The Engineer super duper far away from the reader blasting nanotech eyeballs all over the place and saying, "Why do super-people never go after the real bastards?" She's so far away that I can't tell if she got her nipples back.

Look. I don't like to call myself a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader. At least not anymore. But sometimes, just, you know, sometimes, you have to yell at everybody to call you one or else you're gonna do it yourself.

It took five panels into Millar's run for the first decapitation. FIVE PANELS.

For those who haven't been reading the entire run of The Authority reviews, I assure you that I've mentioned it no more than twelve to twenty times that Millar's run will be full of heads coming away from bodies. It's such a True thing (capitalized!) that he blocked me on Twitter for making a joke about how his writing suffers when there aren't any on-panel decapitations. You just can't say such True things to people without them feeling awkward and afraid. So I get why he blocked me! I'm super scary!

Also, and probably more True, Millar just didn't think I was being funny. But after he blocked me, I had a friend take a screenshot of his Tweet and my Reply so I could remember what the fuck I wrote and let me tell you: I stand by what I wrote. It was fucking funny!

Oh fine. The entire story is told in my Scarab #7 review. Go check it out if you're curious. If you don't care and just want me to get back to the Decapitation Counter, let's continue!

The guys crushed (and decapitated!) were killed by Jack Hawksmoor commanding two blocks of buildings to fall on the soldiers. So he's got that power now. He can speak with and control urban landscapes. Another member who has gotten more powerful (possibly? I actually have no idea her power levels): Swift!

Bursting a body from the knees up? Not a decapitation!

The Doctor walks past a bunch of soldiers who all turn to stone as he goes by. Apollo flies about blowing up jets. Midnighter spends his time winging throwing stars into dicks and faces. They defeat an entire army in Southeast Asia before all of them gather together so they can burst in on the leader of the army as a team.

Hoo boy. So much going on in these four panels!

In the first panel, we see that Frank Quitely has decided Angie's nanotech would give her a camel toe. That answers a question I had in an earlier issue about whether or not her butthole would be a little silver pucker or just a smooth patch (silver pucker!). In the second panel, all the scared assholes point out the guy in charge which guarantees that they all die. What were they thinking?! In the third panel, Angie indeed has her nipples back. And in the last panel, at least one head honcho lost had his head completely obliterated by gunfire. Decapitation!

The Authority take the leader to look at the slaughter his soldiers committed in an attempt to stop people from democratically voting to try to shame him. But he can't be shamed. He simply points out that if he's killed, some coalition of interests will just institute another figure head. Sounds like The Authority are about to decapitate a whole coalition of interests!

After saving the world from several off-planet threats (one of those being a God), The Authority have now turned their attention to making Earth itself a much safer place to live by doing all of the things Superman never allows himself to do because he doesn't want to be seen as a fascist. Batman would do it but he's more of a local guy and also, you know what, maybe he wouldn't do it because has he ever, in the history of ever, cleaned up Gotham by reducing poverty and ending police corruption?

Oh, too good to shit next to a refugee?

The Authority used to hide on The Carrier and only respond to Earth invasions. But now they have to do a ton of press to explain how stopping the genocide by a nation of Earth is just as good as stopping aliens from impregnating Tokyo and Africa. Why is it nobody seemed to care when they murdered Kaizen Gamorra and all of his clones? Was it because it was an Asian terrorist attacking Western cities? Everybody was just fine with that, hunh? But now they're wondering if The Authority is overstepping their power when they stop the leader of a Southeast Asian country murdering his own people? I guess what all the pundits are trying to say is, "Who watches The Authority?" No wait. "Who has authority over The Authority?" That's better.

Do these people know The Authority killed God? Like the actual creature that created Earth? God? Do they? Because you'd think a fuckton of people would have a problem with that!

Sure, technically it wasn't the Christian God. But also, it kind of was? Since it created the Earth? Come to terms with that, Pope!

During some down time when the "bastards" are all too scared to do anything bastardly, Jack Hawksmoor and The Doctor visit Jenny Sparks' grave where The Doctor provides some unsettling news.

Well, it's unsettling to me! I hate zombies!

The Doctor, of course, is talking about her replacement, The Spirit of the 21st Century. His reasoning that it's Jenny (or partially Jenny) is that nothing ever dies and she had so much energy, it had to go somewhere. Obviously he's never heard about entropy. Everything dies, dude. Energy is constantly lost and wasted in systems! Heat dissipates! And even if it is Jenny reincarnated, what the fuck does that even mean? Nobody actually remembers their ego from past lives so even if some part of them is reincarnated, it's simply like recycling an aluminum can. The new aluminum product doesn't remember that it used to be full of Dr. Pepper! So the new Jenny isn't the new Jenny even if it's somehow made with some of the energy of Jenny.

Oh? She's been born on the Pacific Rim? So not London then?

Remember how last issue they showed a baby being born in London with lightning in the background after the stroke of midnight and I said, "What's that about?" and you all went, "It's the new Jenny, you stupid fucking idiot"? Remember that? Well, it wasn't the new Jenny because The Doctor says the new Jenny was born on the Pacific Rim. So I was fucking right to be confused, you dumb jerks!

The president of the United States (who, it surprised me for some reason, is Bill Clinton. Oh 1999. How I miss you) warns The Authority that they're being reckless and endangering the United States, opening them up to terrorist attacks. Jack is polite and doesn't tell him that the United States does a great job of that already and any terrorist attacks on American soil will certainly be because of American international policy and not The Authority stopping violent regimes from killing their own people. Bill snarks off and Jack basically tells him to mind his own business and that's that. For now!

Meanwhile, some clowns in The Hangar, a secret military location so many levels above presidential clearance that it's forty-two, believe they have discovered Jenny Quantum in Singapore. The guy bossing these clowns around is Dr. Krigstein, a little Martian looking bald guy who loves to stay in the shadows. I don't know if he's a new character or part of the previous Wildstorm universe. They send in a strike team to kill the baby because they think they have the kind of power you'd need to kill the Spirit of the 21st Century just a few days in.

The strike team is a Wildstorm version of The Avengers with Commander America, Tank Man, an unnamed version of Thor, an unnamed version of The Hulk, and Hornet. Tank Man kills every baby in a Singaporean maternity ward but misses Jenny Quantum because, I don't know, she's in a box. Is she dead? Is she alive? We don't know!

No wait. The Doctor escaped with her. But not for long as Big Boom Boom and Electro Godhood stop him before he can escape. They've cut off his ability to open Door and also, somehow, cut him off from his ability to do magic. There's no explanation how they accomplished that because any explanation would just be met with my eyes rolling out of my head. Millar did the right thing by just saying it happened somehow.

Oh, and Gigantic Ass Man.

The Authority #13 Ranking: A. Millar takes over with Warren Ellis's main concern for the team firmly established: make the world a better place. Ellis had The Authority make the world a better place by killing Earth's landlord, God, and giving humans complete ownership of the planet (which they thought they had anyway but The Authority did that). Now that humans are completely responsible for fixing the place up and paying for any damages or incidents, The Authority's like a neighbor who helps out here and there. I guess saving Jenny Quantum from a maniacal bunch of baby killers is part of that. All in all, Millar keeps his eye on the ball but changes things up in a significant way. The Authority will make the Earth a better place, no matter what the leader of any country thinks.

Decapitation Count: 3.

The Authority #12 (April 2000)

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

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

Yeah, the main vein.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can somebody get Jack a clean shirt?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My cat Gravy doing her best Midnighter impression.

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

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

The Doctor is absolutely taking the piss, right?

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

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

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

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

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

Is that a nipple?!

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

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

The Authority #11 (March 2000)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More turd talk! These are definitely my people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MILLAR'S SCRIPT FOR AUTHORITY #12

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

The Authority #10 (February 2000)

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

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

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

TMI yourself!

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

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

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

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

Your mom is TMI!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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