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?

Over at Newsarama, writer Brandon Thomas has taken up the brave task of reviewing all 27 issues of Planetary individually in two columns. He highlights a lot of his favorite moments in the series, which echoes yesterday’s open thread discussion about the series here on The Bleed.

And, now that the finaly issue’s out, I have to ask… What’d you all think?

In preparation for the last issue (coming out tomorrow, in case you’ve been lost in another universe for the last couple months) I’ve been spending my last few mornings re-reading all of Planetary over my regular three cups of coffee. (And believe or not, that counts as working for me - add that to the list of job perks.)

This series is just chock full of unforgettable moments. Where am I supposed to start when choosing my favorite part of Planetary? A few segments pop into my mind immediately - the monsters on Island Zero, and the Hong Kong cop chapter that feels like a supernatural John Woo/Chow Yun-Fat flick are particularly favorite issues of mine. It’s really hard for me to choose.

One (short) segment that’s always impressed me the most, however, is the martial arts segment with Anna Hark at the beginning of chapter sixteen. In a series full of wonderfully-composed homages to pop culture genres, this one, to me, is above and beyond. Warren Ellis nails the mystical martial arts flavor of the Wuxia genre at the beginning of the scene, and then gives John Cassaday eight nearly dialogue-free pages to really shine - and boy, does he shine. He’s one of the biggest artists in the business right now, but this has to be among his masterpieces.

In those pages, Cassaday silently captures the graceful choreography that makes the wire-fighting kung fu films so magical. Kinetic, beautiful, violent - these are the qualities that make the filmwork of Yuen Woo-Ping and Zhang Yimou so fantastic. Every time I read this, I’m amazed someone was
able to pull it off in a comic.

Best-choreographed fight scene in comics? That’s a big claim, but I’m one fan who’d take that argument. (I really, really can’t wait to see this scene blown up to Absolute-size.)

But, enough from me - what say you? What are your favorite scenes/issues from Planetary?

At Comic Con this year, Adam Beechen said he and Tim Seeley will be making their upcoming run on WildCats one of the biggest team-up books we’ve ever seen, and it sounds like they’re holding to that promise. If you read Shannon Eric Denton’s editorial post last week, he mentions that “[he has] asked Tim to draw at least 70 characters on each page and so far he’s doubled that every time.”

Wow.

Please, Shannon - please, please send me those pages when they’re ready.

I can only guess who’ll be popping up - including a few characters that have been MIA for a little while.

Which WildStorm Universe characters are you most hoping to see?