The Authority/YMMV

• Designated Hero: In the beginning, the Authority were hardline with their ideals and used violence reasonably. With Jack Hawksmoor as leader receiving the position after Jenny Sparks's death, the Authority became increasingly predisposed toward unyielding moral positions and merciless brutality as time went on, but the entry of another character , Jenny Quantum/Quarx, as a member of the team softened them somewhat. Now, their level of violence is about par for Wildstorm's post-apocalyptic world, so they're no better or worse than any other group.
  • Right from the start, this was the case. Ellis has said on more than one occasion that he wrote the Authority as villains, just ones who happened to fight even bigger villains. The first story arc does end with Midnighter plowing a giant swathe through a populated city just to reach one person, after all. If that's not enough for you, one arc later the Authority stops an invasion from a parallel Earth by totally and indiscriminately destroying a whole country to eliminate enemy's infrastructure, even though by that point it is clear that the invaders are completely outmatched by them anyway. Starting from Miller's run, however, the comic increasingly turned into a vehicle for political Author Tracts, where the Authority were indeed designated to be heroes, although, obviously not all readers were convinced.
  • In the "Utopian" arc, their actions kill off an entire alternate earth.
• Fanon: Artists have given Midnighter several different hair colours, probably because he keeps his cowl on so much that none of them know any better. Fans have used this to draw the conclusion that the otherwise Hard Gay Midnighter just loves to dye his hair.
  • In a Stormwatch: Achilles comic, Midnighter admits that he's a natural redhead. He just likes to dye his hair.
• Mary Sue - Jenny Sparks\Jenny Quantum are basically God Mode Sues. They only die after living 100 years but they don't age after becoming women, nothing can kill them otherwise... doesn't help that Sparks is considered an Author Avatar.
• Idiot Plot: Whenever the Authority is supposed to successfully solve a real-life problem (by their usual and almost the only method, namely killing or threatening whomever they don't like) the current author seems to know only as much as he saw in the news on his favorite TV channel.
• Did Not Do the Research: Whenever an author attempts to directly address events in 'the real world'. a few examples from the Millar/Quitely issues #13-16 alone:
  • The portrayal of 21st Century Singapore (birthplace of Jenny Quantum) as some sort of grotty 1960s South East Asian military dictatorship where nothing is over three stories high, while still drawing in its modern skyscraper-filled skyline in the long shots.
  • The Authority's assassination of Indonesian President B.J. Habibe (censored by DC, but it's him alright), the hapless fellow who in the real world (and contrary to the article linked to above) could be charitably described as a caretaker president (less charitably as a seat-warmer), served only one year in office, and who was not in fact responsible for Indonesia's human rights abuses. The Authority would've done better to go after his predecessor, Suharto, who ruled for 32 years before stepping down.

---

Back to The Authority