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Discuss the latest Article by @Charles EP M. here
Great article. Sorry for being angry for being reminded of Mark Millar who I have....complicated feelings towards him.
Fascinatingly for me, this is only coming about a week or two after Lewis Lovehaug over on Atop the Fourth Wall did his review of the Superman comic you mention briefly at the end- Whatever happened to truth, justice and the American way?; so this is an interesting one to go back and forth between.
I remember hearing about The Authority through tvtropes - Ellis' comment on them being stealth villain protagonists makes it make a heck of a lot more sense, though obviously they seem to have got misaimed fandom.
Flashback ensues.tbf his "Day in the Life of Doctor Robotnik" is definitive.
tbf his "Day in the Life of Doctor Robotnik" is definitive.
The JLA Classified thing I have read and remember thinking "but Grant, there's no reason given in-comic why the JLA are so much better and competent than your Authority distaffs, outside of It's Our Comic". Very much felt like disgruntlement. (There's an alleged Mark Waid quote that a crossover would see the JLA jail the Authority on page one too)
I've never read that one all the way through, but have seen the scans of it people shared to go "YEAH SUPERMAN SHOWED THOSE LOSERS" and they were very... uh...
Given that the Authority's MO is interventionism cranked up to 11, that seems pretty hypocritical all by itself.not considering Jenny Spark hypocrisy as he lament how bad she feel to have save Clinton life after he ordered the launch of missile at terrorist camp
Given that the Authority's MO is interventionism cranked up to 11, that seems pretty hypocritical all by itself.
One of my favorite comics stories is in fact the G7 Authority. They are just... so awful but that weird thing where their focus is on status quo and ensuring the world stays the same seems really on the nose to me.
It still deserves saying that as Ellis was writing Authority he also was churning out some of the best issues of Planetary.
Given that the Authority's MO is interventionism cranked up to 11, that seems pretty hypocritical all by itself.
re Sudan, it's the bombing of the drugs factory that's the problem isn't it?
Unlike Red Son Superman cannot be everywhere at all times. This is the more modern superman and not the silver age that Red Son is supposed to be. In The Authority... they kill the government and when faced with refugees they toss them onto their giant mile long ship which supplies all needs without issue. So in a way The Authority has big ideas but someone should have pointed out they never follow up beyond "do it again and we kill you!"
My main issue with super heroes is they're very hard to respect because the plot requires them to be useless despite Godlike powers.
the Boys ... Uber
So in a way The Authority has big ideas but someone should have pointed out they never follow up beyond "do it again and we kill you!"
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If we speak of superman and godlike powers the above I feel is important but never treated as canon.
Superman decides to feed the world. So he does. He arrives and the government explains they get the food to hand it out. If Superman does not obey maybe they will shoot those villagers. Couldn't superman stop them? No, cause he has to leave and the government will arrive. Maybe he can get rid of the government... but then what? Superman cannot stay there and fix things. Superman cannot muscle his way out of it. And while it is not a satisfying ending it does show the things which Superman thinks of and why he cannot just fix things in an instant.
Unlike Red Son Superman cannot be everywhere at all times. This is the more modern superman and not the silver age that Red Son is supposed to be. In The Authority... they kill the government and when faced with refugees they toss them onto their giant mile long ship which supplies all needs without issue. So in a way The Authority has big ideas but someone should have pointed out they never follow up beyond "do it again and we kill you!"
Golden Age Supes is strong and fast and jumps real good. He can make a difference in one town that makes sense. When it comes to the demi god who can survive a nuclear blast and fight Gods and has a whole league of similar demi gods and like the world's richest man. Its really telling that they can't fix basic stuff.
We could probably fix a lot of that today if we cared to. They definitely could. So why don't they care?
There's a very interesting commentary I saw when it came to this intersecting with the whole 'why not just kill the Joker' side of things. For the latter, the question surely is not 'why doesn't Batman (a guy with a code of honour who recognises he's teetering on the edge of villainy at times and puts hard boundaries on what he allows himself to do as a response) kill the Joker. It's why doesn't the State of Gotham just send him to the electric chair?
And if the answer to the latter is because the death penalty is illegal, or because society has decided that's not right morally regardless of the crimes involved, then what right does Batman have to say otherwise, other than to allow people to sidestep the question by just having the guy in the bat costume answer it for them.
Which then brings you to Superman, and the fact that where he really works best is 'this thing is beyond the ability of any government to control or plan for (aliens invade! Time-travelling robot from the future! Earthquake toppling buildings!) so it's up to somebody with superpowers to step in. But on the ordinary day you start getting into more complex stuff. Because it's all very well going for just 'deliver the food why is that so hard', but then you get into the question of whether that solves the issue of why the food needs to be delivered. If it's a temporary blip due to a sudden heatwave, that's one thing. If it's government policies or entrenched power systems however? That's the sort of thing that you actually need local people to solve.
And ironically this is almost where the concept of a world-of-heroes starts to work again, because suddenly it becomes obvious that the only way you can really solve the issues of the gangs of Johannesburg (to take an example) is by having people in Johannesburg sorting it, and maybe that means you get some local vigilantes cropping up here now, and maybe this means you've got local superhero dynamics with all the things that brings up.
Although one thing I really did like in the Blue Beetle comics was where the invading aliens are scanning Earth and basically just go 'what the hell, how are there so many superpowered beings defending this place? I mean they've got two Green Lanterns? And a Kryptonian?'