Planetary/The Authority: Ruling the World

The Authority

by Warren Ellis, Phil Jimenez

They are the shadows and light of the WildStorm Universe: Planetary, the mystery archaeologists, quietly unearthing the world's dark secrets and hidden splendor; and The Authority, Earth's self-proclaimed personal protectorate, hitting hard and fighting dirty in the name of a finer world.
Now, the teams are brought together against a power so immense it threatens entire universes. But will the combined force of the world's most powerful heroes and the world's smartest be enough to stop it?

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Comic Book, Superheroes, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Fantasy

48 pages, Prestige

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Warren Ellis is the award-winning writer of graphic novels like TRANSMETROPOLITAN, FELL, MINISTRY OF SPACE and PLANETARY, and the author of the NYT-bestselling GUN MACHINE and the “underground classic” novel CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, as well as the digital short-story single DEAD PIG COLLECTOR. His newest book is the novella NORMAL, from FSG Originals, listed as one of Amazon’s Best 100 Books Of 2016.

The movie RED is based on his graphic novel of the same name, its sequel having been released in summer 2013. IRON MAN 3 is based on his Marvel Comics graphic novel IRON MAN: EXTREMIS. He is currently developing his graphic novel sequence with Jason Howard, TREES, for television, in concert with HardySonBaker and NBCU, and continues to work as a screenwriter and producer in film and television, represented by Angela Cheng Caplan and Cheng Caplan Company. He is the creator, writer and co-producer of the Netflix series CASTLEVANIA, recently renewed for its third season, and of the recently-announced Netflix series HEAVEN’S FOREST.

He’s written extensively for VICE, WIRED UK and Reuters on technological and cultural matters, and given keynote speeches and lectures at events like dConstruct, ThingsCon, Improving Reality, SxSW, How The Light Gets In, Haunted Machines and Cognitive Cities.

Warren Ellis has recently developed and curated the revival of the Wildstorm creative library for DC Entertainment with the series THE WILD STORM, and is currently working on the serialising of new graphic novel works TREES: THREE FATES and INJECTION at Image Comics, and the serialised graphic novel THE BATMAN’S GRAVE for DC Comics, while working as a Consulting Producer on another television series.

A documentary about his work, CAPTURED GHOSTS, was released in 2012.

Recognitions include the NUIG Literary and Debating Society’s President’s Medal for service to freedom of speech, the EAGLE AWARDS Roll Of Honour for lifetime achievement in the field of comics & graphic novels, the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire 2010, the Sidewise Award for Alternate History and the International Horror Guild Award for illustrated narrative. He is a Patron of Humanists UK. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex.

Warren Ellis lives outside London, on the south-east coast of England, in case he needs to make a quick getaway.

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine an endless corridor of doors...each door leading to a universe...and there is constantly a sound of knocking... someone has to answer before what is knocking just kicks the door in...and that is what Planetary/The Authority do - answer the door and kick back hard! Super creepy and violent - great art!

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty good story, but it's too short... there's no room for much in the way of character introduction, much less development. The time travel element is fun, if understated, and the Lovecraft pastiche is interesting. There's no interaction between the two teams (except for one awkward and notable flashback), but what story is there is well and economically written. I very much liked the art by Jimenez, particularly the two-page spread inside the title page that shows a Cthulhu-like beast eating a town in Rhode Island.

[Joni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pequeña historia de dos super grupos que fueron furor a comienzos del 2000 aunque la mezcla de potenciales en este caso no garantiza la calidad.
Los equipos no llegan a cruzarse y esta aventura puede pasar desapercibida para ambas colecciones.

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

A team up book where the heroes never actually meet, and in fact actively try to avoid each other.
Doesn't quite work, as the two teams are so very different that placing them on the same earth only draws attention to the fact that they don't work together and Warren does that annoying thing where the Authority come across as only semi-competent and hints that they may be as big a menace as the bad guys.

Why create your own Justice League and then keep telling us they are a bunch of of jerks? You end up not rooting for them after awhile and then not having any interesting in reading about them.
Might be why there isn't an Authority comic series anymore.

The art is beautiful, but the story is a hodge-podge of weird ideas that are interesting but never quite click for me.

Warren and company get points for effort, for the attempt of trying to put their own twist on what is basically a pretty traditional silver age comic book hero team up story but it's a bit of a wasted effort.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, but very short. It's Warren Ellis, so you know it's good, but one can't help thinking that it really should have been more epic. The story seems hardly begun before it's over. Don't get me wrong. This is excellent work. I love the Lovecraftian bits at the beginning. It's definitely in keeping with the spirit of both titles. It just needs to be ... longer or something.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anything with Jenny Sparks in it reminds me that I am quite proud to be British but it is clear that Ellis' superhero teams are thoroughly sociopathic. They certainly snipe at each other in a old-fashioned workplace way that makes one question just how much of a team are.

This story has the Planetary team (which is suspicious of its rivals as potential threat to the planet) and the apparently planet-protecting inter-dimensional Authority converging to deal with a Lovecraftian threat that has evolved from the biological to the digital-mechanical.

In fact, Ellis, who tends to the obscure and relies on the fan base to make the leaps required to comprehend his stories, is less impressive here than the amazing graphics of Jimenez and his team. The imagery explodes to the point where you get the possibility of dimensions crashing together.

The base story line is simply that hoary old one of the defenders of ourselves from an existential threat holding within themselves the potential for becoming an existential threat to ourselves in their own right - a fairly common trope reflecting real life concerns about earthly power.

The Lovecraftian element is played lightly but we have to complain at Ellis' 'wokish' caricaturing of Lovecraft's alleged racism. Jimenez beautifully portrays the 'writer' at the beginning in a way that allows Ellis not to have to spell out who he is but the crassness of the portrayal stands.

One thought emerged from reading this 'text' a quarter of a century on. While the critique of power if rather obvious is not silly, the narrative once again turns humanity into a passive by-stander of its fate at the hands of existentially-theatening monsters including an 'evil' variant of the Authority.

This acceptance of impotence now looks increasingly 'right-wing' and inadequate. One wonders whether a whole generation may have been seduced into introverted angry passivity by the Anglo-American superhero tradition which reaches its psychopathic apogee in the omniverse.

If I am right, the fantastically exciting and violent narratives of Ellis and others might both express a reality of impotence and create the conditions for impotence by encouraging the young (now middle aged) simply to sit there, take it and seethe with anxiety at these greater forces 'protecting them'.

As the protection collapses in the general ineptitude of Western liberal states, no collective human structures of resistance have been allowed to emerge, leaving the space perhaps for a populist Planetary to use popular rage to seize power from a collapsing Authority. It is otherwise in Palestine!

Seen in this light it is probable that both Planetary and Authority would consider human self-organisation in defiance of their claims to be an issue ... much as today's earthly authorities have created a narrative designed to crush the self-organisation of the weak and vulnerable.

Interestingly this same core hoary narrative appeared in the conflict of Black Adam and the Justice Society of America in 2022 but DC (well before the 2023 Hamas attack) allowed sociopathic accidental resistance hero Black Adam to help build popular resistance in an obviously exploited Kahndaq.

In this relatively rare case, the people (humanity) start to develop agency and so a degree of autonomy even if Black Adam had to consciously commit to not becoming their ruler and so a tyrant. Even here, a power is granted from above and not allowed to be taken from below.

Somehow you know that what DC was doing for the Middle East (as Marvel had brilliantly done for Africa in creating Wakanda) would have been spiked if production had been slated for a date after October 20th, 2023. Something slipped through the net there!

Ellis' graphic narrative is interesting in this broad context - the context of power relations and the will to power. To decode this and so many such stories is relatively easy. The subject is presented with absolute existential threat and is to be 'saved', if not by Christ by Superhero as proxy for order.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just didn't work for me. Presumably because I don't know The Authority. But you can write a cross-over that has just enough to work both sides and be a good story. And this wasn't it. But this made the Authority intriguing at least. It could have made me want to avoid it. 2.5 of 5.

[Đenis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Síce akčný príbeh plný boja a akcie, ale prišlo mi to moc nahustené a chaotické. Naviac The Authority mi prišlo také divné, možno si musím vyhľadať ich príbehy s ich pohľadom na svet.

[Jedhua · Rating 3 out of 5]

ABSOLUTE RATING: {3+/5 stars}

STANDARDIZED RATING: <3/5 stars>

[Andy Hickman · Rating 3 out of 5]

PLANETARY / AUTHORITY – Ruling the World
“Mr Snow, I presume.”
Dr Who-ish!

[Ostrava · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Lovecraft cameo is amazing lmao. Everything else is meh, I don't like the Authority, they're boring. Unless you do, this one's a skip.

[Mohan Vemulapalli]

The Authority super team and the Planetary organization engage in a clandestine conflict with each other while reacting to all too familiar extra-dimensional invaders. This book could serve as good introduction to fans of either series who are not familiar with the other. This book is recommended for fans of either series but not for readers who are unfamiliar with both.

Look for Easter eggs and definitely read the creator biographies at the end of the book.

4.5 stars rounded to 4.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

As this "crossover" issue has no relevance to Warren Ellis' main 27-issue Planetary run, and is in fact never even referred to in said run, this book is more of a curiosity than anything else. Nothing of consequence happens here, and only completists need apply. And even then, maybe they'll want to score Planetary: Crossing Worlds, which contains all three out-of-continuity Planetary crossovers (the other two being Planetary/JLA: Terra Occulta and Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth).

Interesting but also inconsequential: Jenny Sparks and Elijah Snow apparently once had a fling. Boo-hoo.

[Fugo Feedback · Rating 3 out of 5]

Siempre y cuando estén bien hechos, me gustan los crossovers en los que los personajes cruzados apenas interactúan entre ellos. Y aunque no me pareció de las mejores historias narradas con los personajes de ambas series, este especial cumple a la hora de expandir ambos "universos", más el de Planetary que el de Authority. El dibujo está bastante bien, muy rico en detalles y con buena narrativa, pero me sigo quedando con Cassaday. Cuando me relea esta historia dentro del tomo de Mundos Cruzados seguro le rerreseñe alguna parte.

[47Time · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not how I remember the Authority. They come off as arrogant, as usual, but this time is stupidly arrogant. Planetary seem like pussies, working from the shadows because, I don't know, they're scared of the Authority or something. Since when is Elijah violent with his own team? They never threatened each other so overtly. It just doesn't feel right. And, oh, look! Elijah slept with Jenny back in the day. That sure added absolutely nothing to the story. It added cringe. And subtracted stars from my rating. Why would you dump on your own characters like this?

[EOB · Rating 3 out of 5]

It would have been hard for Ellis to make a Planetary / Authority crossover I wouldn't like, though this was not nearly as satisfying as I had hoped. There were some odd characterization things going on, and dare I say it having the two teams in one book felt more redundant than additive.

[The_J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Living in the same neighborhood sometimes you bump into each other
4/23 & 12/25 A fine conflagration of such impressive threat allows a blending story of the two groups, emphasizing their strengths while solving the problem separately

[bluetyson]

Planetary/The Authority: Ruling the World by Warren Ellis

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

After finishing the full run of the main story, this was a bit of a let down.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

there must be a couple storylines leading up to this book. didn't really figure out the who and why until near the end.

[Devowasright · Rating 4 out of 5]

big cthulu monsters, robots, and much snarky commentary. what's not to like?