Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
By Austin
OK, so - I’m pretty excited about the way Authority is going in the next few months. If the Barrionuevo art teases we’ve been posting here weren’t enough to get a WSU fan excited, I don’t know what would be, really.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read a lot of these comics, I’ll admit. Thanks to a bit of digging around the offices, I was finally able to track down the two Authority paperbacks I’d been missing. These next couple weekends will be about kicking back and brushing up on my Authority continuity. Hell, I may start with Ellis’s StormWatch run and go straight through to the Authority from there. (Just looking down the spines, it’s amazing just how many outstanding writers and artists worked on these books over the years.)
Because it’s bound to come up, and I just have to ask: What are everybody’s all-time favorite Authority runs?
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Tags: al barrionuevo, authority
10 Responses to “Open Thread: What’s your favorite Authority run?”
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Well, I still think Ellis’ is the best but I’m really loving DnA’s run though.
Stormwatch:Change or Die is probably my favorite pre-Authority run.
There have been so many great stories and I think you need to start with STORMWATCH #37 (collected in “Forces of Nature”) to get the tone and point of the characters.
Warren Ellis did Serious Things with the SW crew, crafted The Changers (from “Change or Die”) which was like The Authority v1.0.
The first twelve issues of THE AUTHORITY from Ellis, Bryan Hitch, Paul Neary and Laura Martin were superhero action comics at their best. It was three arcs of mayhem done with elegant simplicity.
It’s the best of the bunch, for sure.
I think my favorite Authority story was Millar’s ‘Nativity’ story, but Stormwatch: Change or Die is fantastic as a proto-Authority story
Austin, I think you should start with Stormwatch before jumping into re-reading Authority
Chris - I definitely will!
Issues 1 through 12; the original Ellis run.
As much as I loved reading them I could see that the escalation of the opponents’ power levels were going to make it difficult to create suspense in future stories. For a while there things go pretty slow (When The Authority took over the U.S.), but the End of the World storyline is pretty interesting. I’m glad The Establishment is back, but bummed that the wuss from Sliding Albion co-opted them so quickly. I’m glad that they are now free of his sniveling.
Ellis’ Sliding Albion!!! I loved seeing the Doctor destroy half of Italy by holding it in place while the rest of the world turned on it’s axis.
Original by Ellis and “Revolutions” by Bru.
It has to be the original Ellis/Hitch run. It set up everything that’s great about the Authority - the characters, the moral complexity, the snarky dialogue, the expectation of jaw-dropping grandiose artwork. It’s all there, it’s the benchmark.
Joint second place, Brubaker/Nguyen’s Revolutions and DnAnColeby’s World’s End. I think that if the artwork on World’s End had been consistently Simon Coleby’s, with no fill-in (Badeaux’s #10 excepted, ’cause he’s awesome), it would definitely be edging out Revolutions in my list.
(p.s. Not that I don’t like Drew Johnson’s art, I really do. I just like Coleby’s better).