I know this is a beloved series, and I remember enjoying this back when I read it in high school, but holy shit this book actually fucking sucks. The Authority’s first volume together after Warren Ellis’ Stormwatch is a complete dud for me, with artwork by Bryan Hitch that I loved at first, but grew to hate the more I saw of it. Basically, you could say that’s how I felt about this.
The story is about this team which is basically a super liberal Justice League that tries to change the world for the better and has no qualms about killing. They have cool technology like the Door, a portal system letting the team travel any and everywhere, and the Carrier, which sits in the Bleed, an interdimensional plane, letting the Authority have a headquarters in a tactically sound location. This is all awesome lore used by authors in later Authority books, but that’s all this book feels like: Setup until better writers came to write the team.
Here’s my main problem with this book: There are three arcs here, all of which start with The Authority having to go up against some foe that seems impossible to defeat who kicks the shit outta them at first, and the rest of the arc plays out like “How can we possibly defeat X” before a final issue of the team just punching the shit out of the villain until it is defeated or dies. That’s this whole book, and it happens three fucking times, all of which are lame as hell frankly. Hitch’s art is super weak as well, with most of its flaws coming down to action pages looking crowded and like a bunch of random figures flying at each other. Some of the splash pages are fine, but I just don’t like his style. To me, it look like those old sidescrolling fighting games, like Streets of Rage, when all your friends would jump attack on the same pile of enemies in weird directions as the charcters make these static ass animations. That’s his art.
I completely get why I liked this in High School, but now? This book does not hold up at all. For me at least. I usually don’t rate stuff this low, especially about teams I like, but I will literally never touch this book again. I did not like it. Millar’s run is a million times better than this.