Stocking Stuffer: The Authority: Relentless
When I read The Authority: Relentless, the first trade paperback collection of Warren Ellis' sequel to StormWatch and stronger than that title in every way, I was left practically breathless. It was so good that I was re-interested in superhero comics for the first time since my abortive childhood attempts to get engaged in the absence of material to read. It made capes interesting even though The Authority spoofed other superhero titles and so rarely interacted with the other residents of their own publisher's narrative world that they were essentially in a universe of their own.
The book itself is both fun and challenging. The characters are allowed to be good at what they do, which is always refreshing. The dialogue is snappy and clever and the characters are interestingly unique: a team leader whose power over electricity is the manifestation of her role as "the spirit of the 20th century," a gay couple whose relationship answers what it would be like for Superman and Batman to fall in love, a tracker biologically adapted to urban environments. Characters are unafraid of the phrase "whatever it takes" and relish the fight as much as they savor the victory. Abilities are sufficiently varied that there's a hero for every favored archetype in the mix. If cyborg super-engineers with nanomachine blood are your thing, The Authority: Relentless is for you; same goes if you're into goth super-warriors who can calculate every possible move of a fight at super-computer speeds.
Warren Ellis is a writer I've mostly stopped enjoying, his work too scatter-shot in quality and publication for me to see him as a reliable source of the good stuff. Ignition City was everything I don't like about him right now and he ended my subscription to Astonishing X-Men by trashing its schedule and bending the cast into service of a storyline he can't stop retelling. However, The Authority: Relentless is Ellis in his unquestionable prime, buoyant and snapping in the morning breeze of a promising career. It's Ellis reminding us that the world still has room for heroes and for big ideas.
The '90s were an era that really enjoyed the deconstruction of the superhero and I could probably put together an argument that this first volume of The Authority is what happens at the other end of the same decade that saw Superman die and the Sandman conquer comics stores by claiming the world of dream-life as his own: it's a story about how fun it is to have fun again, how good it can feel to make the world a better place. It's everything I endured watching get torn down and broken apart over the decade that followed, both in comics and out.
I won't lie to you: it's a little depressing to realize it's ten years old. On the upside, that gives me room to call it a classic without sounding like I rushed to hang that laurel around its neck and I consider its persistent presence on bookstore shelves as confirmation of that status. If you have a friend who likes superheroes but gets tired of the same old same old, or if you're buying gifts for someone who thinks all superhero comics are the same, this is virtually certain to warm their hearts.
Klarion
Posted to Trade Paperback on 11 December 2009
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: Stocking Stuffer, The Authority, Warren Ellis
Oh that book is so good. All the early Authority stuff was gold.