Pretty good! I think I prefer Planetary but I enjoyed this. My one complaint is that at four issues a piece of 20 pages, the two arcs in this were not long enough. I really wanted more with Sliding Albion!

I hadn't read this material in a while and was worried that it mite not be as enjoyable 13 years later. I was wrong. I still loved this stuff. Ellis is in there with his controlled chaotic take on thing and his effortlessly fun and smart character dialogue and Bryan Hitch does a fantastic job bringing the characters to visual life with the coloring help of Paul Neary.We get massively powerful supers dashing around the globe to put down evil megalomaniacs, stopping extradimensional invasions, and...

Second time I read this. First time was about 20 years ago. Bryan Hitch presents widescreen action, something he perfects for ‘The Ultimates’ some years later. Ellis does what Ellis usually does : deliver mind blowing stories.I wish the colouring was less dark, but generally : still a great read.

Mildly disappointed as I was expecting something much better than an alternate (albeit darker) Justice League from this. But, it was good fun nevertheless and wildly imaginative in short bursts.

This was, frankly, a disappointment. The premise is excellent: a bunch of individuals with superhuman powers led by an English lunatic acquire an orbital fortress and inform the world that they are now in charge, and they will prevent bad things from happening. What they decide are bad things anyway . . .You can see the promise. The whole idea of a small group taking it on themselves to legislate for everyone else what is good and bad without being answerable to anyone is the stuff of nightmare

If you enjoy hard sci-fi in your superhero stories, then the Authority is the book for you. It's a darker, more proactive version of the JLA at its core, but to simply write them off as yet another superhero team isn't fair. This book has deep science fiction roots. For example, their base is a giant spaceship that exits in the same "space" as Earth, just in another dimension. Therefore, they simply step through a door and can be anywhere on Earth in seconds. Also the characters are a little mor...

Goddamn awesome comic, and stays good through the next two volumes (though with a variety of creative teams, and diminishing returns). The Authority is a team of badasses, protecting earth from all the assholes who would do it harm.True to form, Warren Ellis breathes life into some pretty unique characters, including Jenny Sparks (a century baby who is the spirit of the 20th century - imagine what she's seen: she was Hitler's muse!?), The Doctor (who is, at his core, junkie, who just happens to

Chances are if you’ve ever read a Wildstorm comic it was this one.Created back in the late 90s by Warren Ellis, The Authority was an attempt to follow up an idea introduced in Stormwatch: Superheroes actively trying to actively improve the entire world. While Superman might take down Lex Luthor every week and Captain America might rail against unjust governmental acts (thanks for that Tony) they’re rarely displayed as characters attempting to actively reshape the world. They’ll preserve it, try

This is one of those rare superhero comics that you can pick up and enjoy without knowing anything at all about 70 year long convoluted soap-opera history of superheros.That's just what I did about a decade ago. Didn't read superhero comics. Picked this one up and loved it. Years later, after I'd read a lot more comics and knew a lot more about the standard Marvel and DC sets of heroes, I read these again and saw the subtle (and the not-so-subtle) satire running through the series.That's the mar...

One of the best superhero team books ever. Yes, this carries over from Ellis' run on Storm Watch, but it's not essential to have read that series to appreciate this one. Ellis is a past master of tossing off mind-blowing concepts as casual asides. He may not have read every single journal on the bleeding edge of technology and science, but he certainly gives that impression. If this book doesn't make you a Warren Ellis fan for life, then nothing ... well, I guess it couldn't hurt to try Planetar...

3.0 stars. I liked this first volume of The Authority but I must admit I was hoping to like it a bit more than I did. I really like the "attitude" of the story and Midnighter is on my list of favorite comic characters so when he is on the page, it is always interesting. I just thought the overall story-lines were a bit disjointed and didn't flow as well as I thought they should. That said, I will certainly pick up the next volume in the series as I think the good aspects of the title far outweig...

Not as impressed by this as I had hoped to be. It doesn’t seem that different from other superhero comics, and thus far, at least, I felt the characters were less well-developed than in many other titles. And the villains—painfully clichéd, including a ridiculous Fu Manchu knockoff. Though actually, none of that bugged me as much as the fact that whoever drew this (I’ve already given my copy to Wychwood) has obviously never looked at a photograph of L.A., much less visited. There are several maj...

Volume 1, "Relentless," contains two (seemingly unrelated) story arcs: "The Circle" and "Shiftships."The story (stories?) was interesting, very weird, a little bit confusing, and definitely different. This is volume 1, but the action picks up where another series, Stormwatch, left off. There is enough exposition for me to keep up, however.It was overall kind of meh, because whatever evil was thrown at The Authority, they countered it quickly and with apparent ease (although with extremely high c...

Well, I thought it was brilliant! Art is ok for me, but different from the usual super-heroes at the time.

Kinda missed out on these the first time around. I remember sampling the WildStorm thing when Jim Lee was involved right at the beginning, but I soon lost interest so that when these titles and characters were evolving, I wasn't really paying attention. Came to The Authority through Garth Ennis and Kev and found the first two volumes going relatively cheap. This was good enough, I suppose, apart from the weirdly racist villain of the first arc. Refreshingly violent and mildly fascist in a way th...

Buzzword readathon #10I first read this two years ago and was worried going into my second read that it wouldn't live up to my expectations. I shouldn't have worried because I loved it even more the second time!This is maybe the most underrated series and team in comics history, and I'm not over-exaggerating. The Authority are on the surface just a gritty version of the Justice League, but underneath that there's a lot of really smart commentary about power and some amazing characters. I really

I missed out on big things during the years I'd abandoned comic books. Evidently, Wildstorm Studios had developed into an uber-mature version of its original self and hired on comic-kind's greatest talents- Mark Millar, Dustin Nguyen, Warren Ellis, Ed Brubaker. The list goes on and on. In The Authority, Ellis gives us gratuitous violence and literary writing, making the book supremely mature and not just adult. Although The Authority is made up of a team of what seems to be unbeatable supermen w...

I'm willing to forgive quite a bit in a first trade paperback, just because of the necessary set-up drudgery and the way most writers seem to need an issue or eight before they feel comfortable with their characters. The Authority has the added advantages of a manic colorist (I think this title would be sweeet on acid) and two queer characters who aren't (gasp) villians beaten to bloody pulps and pissed on every third issue by a hairy-chested blonde wearing an Amerikan flag. And I'll admit -- se...

Having a lot of fun re-reading these Stormwatch/Authority books. First time through was early in my re-introduction to comics; now after six years and 500+ graphic novels, I feel an old nostalgia and some ambivalence towards Ellis' Authority.The art is good, widescreen action but the faces are weirdly distorted (especially Jenny Sparks). The writing is at times hilarious, at times expansive, but sometimes through this book I find it's...spartan, not the mind-blowingly imaginative work that Ellis...

Warren Ellis creates a super team that is a great mix of the Justice League, a really good summer comic book movie and a spoonful of wit and sarcasm.Lots of big action scenes, larger than life menaces and adventures, a couple nice character moments and, because it's Warren, some real bitting humor.Warren's run on the Authority is the only one worth reading. Learn from my mistake and walk away after the first 12 issues. There was never a creative team that was able to capture the magic of Ellis a...