This is not very good.
The third collection of The Authority includes the story arc "Earth Inferno" and three single-shot stories.
"Earth Inferno" is average at best. It has some good ideas but does not do much with them.
The political intervention is good, continuing to play out the notion that The Authority does things to change the world beyond fighting supervillains. It had a bit more flair in the Jenny Sparks days, but I cannot say if that is the author or the characters.
The Engineer continues to be good. Mark Millar is good with this character, and you love Angie. She is useful, getting involved and fixing things while demonstrating her new ability to be in more than one place at one time.
The villain is good. He has a look that could be Silver Age silly but instead comes across as dignified and slightly mystical. He exhibits and exults in power and cruelty. The unnecessarily coarse elements added to his background and characterization are appropriate to the comic, if a bit unfortunate in the sense of reveling in being a "mature" comic.
The Earth Inferno itself does not entirely work, and it takes up a lot of time. Maybe it is my own suspension of disbelief that is problematic, but I should not notice it while reading a comic book, and I kept thinking, "the planet does not work that way." If nothing else, trees do not spring from the ground like that. Oh well, it gives The Authority a sort of conflict other than punching people in the face.
The villain is wasted. When you have some explicitly that powerful, making him completely ineffectual is a problem. The book lampshades this by discussing how he lost last time, but he does not need to be at full power to write The Authority out of history. The ending is good, classic with a series-appropriate tie-off, but I expect more from the villain who is literally more powerful than God, whose threat demands the evacuation of a dimension. Introducing red shirts to sacrifice does not make up for anything, and having one of them be more powerful than Apollo/Superman makes one wonder how anyone else survived.
This relates to the continuing problem of power fluctuation. The Doctor can make his enemies out of existence, turning them into ravens or stone or music. He can destroy entire continents. And he can utterly fail at very basic things. And someone with the same power set and more experience can be similarly useless. Oh, and Apollo gets eyebeams to complete the Superman set.
I initially found it problematic that The Doctor is using heroin. If he can do anything he can imagine, he can just alter his mental state directly or cause whatever state he likes to actively exist. But if he really is in-touch with the planet as much as implied, maybe he actively wants to dull his senses and ability to access his abilities. Still, overdosing?
The single stories are just poor. The first is explicitly a big-lipped alligator issue, fighting zombies for no purpose and with no explanation. Bad guys show up, they fight, done. Generic comic book story. The second is weak characterization of The Engineer, yet another version of the difficulties of not being normal. You have seen this better elsewhere, with superheroes or not.
The third is good but a retread. It is Jack Hawksmoor's characterization, touring him through The Authority's first arc as he ruminates. It covers no new ground, but it gives time to reflect, which does not usually appear in The Authority's cinematic style. And, surprise, it was written by Warren Ellis. Well, that explains the quality. It is too short to make the book a 2.5.
With respect to the art: I don't like it. The Doctors work well under this art style, but the rest did not. My main recurring question was, "What happened to Apollo's face?" And it is not even an issue of a differing art style. His face looks differently mutated in many different places. He ranges from Superman noble to clunky brute, and putting one of the worst as a cover picture does not help. Maybe he takes a lot of punches to the face and needs a while to heal.
Amazon link
0 comments:
Post a Comment