The Authority : Human on the Inside (Authority)

Rating:
Summary: Rescued from Self-parody
Review: As much as I love the Authority, they were on the verge of becoming self-parody: odd balls that excelled in being odd and who cracked more off-color jokes than did good deads. There's a certain teen-fun with that, but the Authority was never a teen comic. Thankfully, with HOTI they've returned to their Ellis/Stormwatch origins. This is a pretty adult offering, adult in that it's more about human nature and loss than about ripping people's heads off. Although, people's heads get ripped off. The prose is fantastic - this writer apparently does novels as well, and a bunch of movies that weren't very typical either - that threads in past Authority archs without having the reader be dependant on them to understand what's happening. The art is really solid comic-art, and I'd love to see more of B. Oliver. I think this one's going to be a toss for some readers. If they're looking for more of the same, they'll be disappointed. But I guess they can just go buy some back issues. Frankly, I'm glad to finally see something new.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent art with little other redeeming value
Review: This latest offering from yet another writer helming Warren Ellis' take on the superteam is - unsurprisingly - watered down and rather disappointing. Which each successive shift in scriptor, The Authority loses momentum. "Human on the Inside" is no exception.

When The Authority rose from the ashes of Ellis' spectacular Stormwatch run, it turned mainstream comics on their collective head. Finally, a title and universe in which the controlling characters cared nothing for the status quo. What a concept, right? Interestingly, Ellis picked some curiously inoffensive ways to show this - the elimination of a terrorist government; the genocide of a facist alien race from another dimension; and the execution of an alien superbeing which might have been God. It wasn't until Millar took over that the team starting really doing pre-emptive "social" work, and while the story arcs remained intriguing, they set the groundwork for the eventual watering down of the title.

Early on, the pattern of The Authority (hilariously parodied by Gail at Comic Book Resources) consisted of:

Crisis Exposition -> Initial Encounter/Potential Setback -> Cool Utterances By Team -> Stunning Victory -> More Cool Utterances By Team

All in four issues. Not bad. With Ellis and Millar's topics (somewhat typically super-herioc), the arcs could be reasonably fleshed out and explored with some variety before closing. However, keeping to this rhythm over the last several shifts in writing has made what was once fresh and effective now predictable and somewhat trite. Some of this is momentum, but much of it has to do with the heavyhanded political commentary that sometimes substitutes for plot in the title.

So we get this one-shot, "Human on the Inside." It seems like a reasonable premise - the future of the world is brought to crisis because there's no hope. The current superpantheon is brought to their knees because they're shown how human they are beneath the tights and BAMF speeches. A mere mortal saves their collective butt, but Swift has been disappeared for some Very Nefarious Subplot Involving Victimizing A Woman And Familial Vengeance. There's potential here, right?

Well, as we all should know, potential doesn't mean execution. "Human On The Inside" makes the mistake of oversimplification and rush. It turns out that everyone's suffering from collective existentialist angst; the entire team gets whiny; the very cool mortal can see into everyone's psychological and tactical weakness (and he's sexy, too!), yet they keep him around. There's no exploration of anything - no nuance or transition that would have made this a story instead of a treatment. You're introduced to the cause of the planetary angst and say, "WTF? Where did that come from?" The big twists that turn subplot into plot points come almost out of nowhere. Characters have changes of heart without reason. And worst of all, everything returns to status quo at the end.

That's right - at the end of the story, everything is peachy-keen hunky-dory again. No one experiences any sort of shift in character from being exposed to their vulnerability. If that's the case, then what was the point of this story? If the world inside you doesn't move forwards or backwards when you're faced with your limitations, what was the point of having faced them? As such, the story becomes a wasted opportunity.

Now, having griped about the story, I have nothing but praise for the art. The work is solid, and I have always enjoyed a slightly "pencilly" feel and somewhat muted color tones. I don't know if the book was painted, but Ben Oliver's art has that feel. While staying faithful the original character designs, Oliver has brought freshness to The Authority's artwork, which frankly has been suffering since the departure of Quitely (whose work I don't particularly like but is at least distinctly interesting).

And so this is where "Human on the Inside" earns its two stars - Oliver's art. I don't know if Ridley (the author) was confined to a page count, but for the story he started, he wrote more of a treatment than a comic. Combine that with the waste of narrative arc, and no points are earned for writing. Two stars are where it stands, solely on the merits of Ben Oliver.