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Underground > Comic Books >

GRANT Morrison and Gene Ha on The Authority

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14:21 / 22.07.06

And that's taken from this article, which also features some new info on Morrison's Wildcats.

16:20 / 22.07.06

Sounds like the Ultramarines in Qwewq to me. Good-oh.

02:50 / 03.10.06

Gene Ha talks about Grant's scripts and the upcoming run...

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

16:46 / 19.10.06

The set up was disturbingly similar to the latest issue of Casanova and it came across as a little more of a "psychological thriller" than I was expecting. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but there is this crescendoing wave of bland "meh" to the whole affair. But maybe I expecting a little more whiz-bang.

Gene Ha makes things pretty, though.

19:40 / 19.10.06

I rather liked this, quite a lot more than the Wildcats issue.

There's something appealing to me about a #1 issue of a major superhero title where the big mid-issue splash page event is someone's wife quietly leaving them.

The Ultramarines in QWEWQ certainly sounds about right. Morrison's said that in his effort to make the Authority into proper adult superheroes, they'd encounter our reality and get tasked with making small changes to save the world, the first of which would be saving a man's marriage. I'm curious to see where that goes.

23:07 / 19.10.06

Complete departure for the G-Mozz. Decompression? Realistic dialogue? Wow.

But aside from the lack of the title characters (and what's up with the cover? Are all of the covers going to combine into one giant image, maybe? Hmm), I liked it.

00:09 / 20.10.06

I wonder if George isn't spreading himself a bit too thin though, these days. I didn't mean to read the whole thing in the shop, but before I knew it two minutes had gone by, and somehow I'd reached the end.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

01:32 / 20.10.06

Even though it seems geared toward being more humanizing - the breakdown of a marriage as centerpiece, etc - this comic didn't feel like *dinner* in the way I'd quite like. It barely felt like a snack, more like eating the slightly stale pieces of a fortune cookie.

If the aim of the comics is as stated, then I'm curious to see where it goes - in particular, with regard to Angie/Engineer's characterization. Being able to help a seperating couple's marriage would be interesting with her, as some good stuff has been written about her losing her sense of perspective with humanity, and the dubious flaws in her capacity for relationships...

Qwewq maybe, but it could almost be like what "Secret Identity" did for Earth-Prime...

Haus of Mystery

09:40 / 20.10.06

Cananyone say ... Warren Ellis?

Big meaningless full page spreads? Panel after panel of NOT. MUCH. HAPPENING.
Sorry, but this was waaaaay to slight. I know it'll get better, but this was really a prologue section worked into 24 pages. I mean it was nice enough (although Ha's overworked Compute art was a dissappointment), but really. I have to wait two months to get more?
Not good enough.
I far preferred the sci-fi pop splat of Wildcats. Time will tell with the Authority, but this was a let-down.

yawn - thing's buddy

10:55 / 20.10.06

yeah, last night after scoffing my dinner and settling down for a thrillpower blast i picked up wildcats off the floor before thissun here.

art:

blur effects in comics are sHyTe - why do artists persist with this garbage effect?

felt like I was reading a comic which was immersed in muddy water. true, I'd just cocktailed zero zero with white widow and was half watching the extras on der box, but I could only manage four pages of this before giving up.

I will approach again, perhaps tomorrow.

tho I've always felt the authority was of its time and that time was 1998-2001.

best authority: that batman crossover. (which was best ellis too)

11:26 / 20.10.06

haven't had the opportunity to read it, but...

Our Man Morrison doing an Ellis... who would have thought? maybe he's too into doing sympathetic magick with th writing styles in different titles.

but my best bet is he's getting burned out by the workload. this is a bit similar to what happened when he was dealing with INVISIBLES, the best-selling JLA, co-writing VAMPIRELLA and FLASH with Millar and anything else that was offered. one can spread oneself so thin.

I love Da Mozz's will to play with all the toys people let him with [and still waiting for his run in SPIDER-MAN and many others at Marvel in the far future], but DC could have scheduled this better.

7SOLDIERS' brilliant for most of it, BATMAN is very cool and above-average fun - yet not that impressive for a GM title - and ALL*SUPES is nothing less than superb if you as a reader buy into the [nostalgic] stuff. 52 is, like most of the above, good Saturday morning fun but too generic. I can't even tell which segment each one of writers did and I used to be able to say who - him or Millar - was in charge of a given month's Flash script.

I'm still waiting for my pure dose of Grant On The Rocks with the future creator-owned Vertigo projects but I'm starting to fear the man's getting tired, like the Ambush Bug said in the latest 52: "The weekly grind is tearin' me apart!".

14:22 / 20.10.06

The reference to the Pope's speech insulting Muslims (even down to a specifically offensive quotation used in said speech) struck me as being far too recent to be included in a comic which must have started production about 4 months ago - didn't the Pope make his speech about 2 months ago? I guess changing a word balloon at the last minute to make something more relevant/timely isn't that difficult, production-wise....

14:24 / 20.10.06

best authority: that batman crossover. (which was best ellis too)

yawn, that was Planetary.

Anyway, hmm, I kinda like it. It's a bit depressing, and maybe that's the only route out of the high-bombast, 'widescreen' comics of the 98-01 period you mention. Coming from the exact opposite end of the spectrum. The Authority's challenge is, by necessity, to remain contemporary and relevant so I'm right behind this plugging it into 'real life' notion. Slight, though, yes.

yawn - thing's buddy

14:34 / 20.10.06

oh yeah!

the authority crossover thing with planetary was massively shite tho.

authority is meaningless now, dont you think, seeing as bats and supes are being well written.

I shall read this bugger properly in about an hour.

15:09 / 20.10.06

Authority meaningless? I guess you can condense what they mean to me into that few pages Millar started his run with; some liberal vengeance, sorting bastard dictators and genocide out in East Timor - it was a different sort of power fantasy, wannit? I was a young stude at the time, and definitely empathised without thinking through the ramifications.

Always about the 'real-world' problems (not the Ellis/R. Morrison stuff, that was rubbish,) so this is some next level we're moving into here. I'm intrigued in any case, and I think the shifty art (it's like Big Numbers or something) and stuff, inc. lens flare &c. definitely carries it, looks great, is actually, as promised, a very realist comic.

18:58 / 20.10.06

>>>blur effects in comics are sHyTe - why do artists persist with this garbage effect?<<<

I think that when used sparingly it can work, but you hit the point when you're even adding motion blur to a shot of mail dropping through a slot...yeah, it's a bit much.

22:35 / 20.10.06

the blur effect, muddy coloring, übber-decompressed storytelling, "natural" dialogue, constant grief and lack of the main character's presence made this a contestant for the worst comic by Morrison I've ever read.

yet somehow I feel it's intentional. the Authority will bring some fun, Comics' Style, to this boring Realistic Paralell World. in a couple of issues, that's it.

when the divers crack open the Carrier, like explorers opening up an arcient chamber of otherworldy and the colorful godly entities will bring joy to them in a violent way.

I live in hope.

Cowboy Scientist

06:27 / 21.10.06

Ha, Grant is doing the complete opposite to the Ellis/Hitch Authority; while that was all super-wide-screen, this is mostly told in close/detail shots; most of the time, you can't even completely see the characters' faces.

Janean Patience

08:00 / 21.10.06

my best bet is he's getting burned out by the workload. this is a bit similar to what happened when he was dealing with INVISIBLES, the best-selling JLA, co-writing VAMPIRELLA and FLASH with Millar and anything else that was offered. one can spread oneself so thin.

This is exactly my opinion of G's recent work - rereading Seven Soldiers, the density of information and the clever transistions and everything else falls away after the first few issues and you're left with first-draft stuff, far too many wasted pages and unexciting double-page spreads and storytelling errors everywhere. It begins to remind me of the ten or so consecutive issues of Claremont's X-Men I read, full of portentous lines that are forgotten and subplots that go nowhere.

I'm still waiting for my pure dose of Grant On The Rocks with the future creator-owned Vertigo projects

Yeah, that's the good stuff these days. The rest I'm happy to ignore.

13:57 / 21.10.06

far too many wasted pages

unexciting double-page spreads

storytelling errors everywhere

Really? Examples for each, please.

Janean Patience

14:32 / 21.10.06

I was referring to Seven Soldiers rather than The Authority, if that clarification's needed. Haven't read the latter.

Given that, this thread isn't the best place to give examples... I've thought of starting a Seven Soldiers Sucks thread before, to bring together negative opinion from the other eight or more threads on the series. If you'd like me to do that, I'll try to put it all together and post it tomorrow...

17:32 / 21.10.06

I've thought of starting a Seven Soldiers Sucks thread

If you build it, they will come.

I say; go for it.

20:56 / 21.10.06

Or you could put it in the Seven Soldiers thread as a valid piece of critique.

22:51 / 21.10.06

I say go for it. Wolf's criticisms don't chime with my experience of the series but I've only ever read most of it the once (with the exception of the Guardian), and I'm kinda intrigued.

I like to whinge about the Morningson's lax technique, but I think we might be dealing with some arsetalk here. Or, you know, maybe not.

Janean Patience

09:23 / 22.10.06

I'll create a separate thread later today, and explain why at the top. Will it be valid critique? Will it be arsetalk? You decide.

13:57 / 22.10.06

well, for what it's worth there's a "what happened to Grant?" thread now...

Regrettable Juvenilia

21:05 / 22.10.06

This is definitely the weirdest comic I've read all year. It's as if Morrison had thought "what's the last thing you'd ever do with a first issue of an Authority run at this point?", and then decided that was the only approach to take. Whether or not this is a crazy idea that might just work or just a crazy, bad idea remains to be seen.

21:20 / 22.10.06

*lol* That's actually a great way of putting it!

13:37 / 24.10.06

I'm having to wait until next payday before I can have a flick through this, but as an inveterate Ellis fan I'm looking forward to decompressed Mobelsin.

All I need now is "I'm the god-damn Midnighter!"

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

13:52 / 24.10.06

Have a skim through in the shop before you buy, Scientist. I don't think I've even looked at it since the first read-through...

04:19 / 24.02.07

I talked to Gene Ha today at the NYC ComicCon, and he said he's still waiting for a script from Grant Morrison for issue 2. Ah well....

05:04 / 24.02.07

Ha!

I'm curious as to how such a situation works. Ha obvioulsy committed to six issues in a one year time-span, but has not recieved scripts, therefore (?) he has not recieved the income from the project. I'd imagine he can pick up other work or has non-comics work to bring in the bacon, but enduring a delay in income must suck. Unless he's DC exclusive and gets a salary equivalent of the contracted AUTHORTY income. This is all conjecture and is Ha's business alone, but I am curious how artists handle such delays.

Janean Patience

11:56 / 24.02.07

Ha!

You could write notes to Gene Ha with that on the top, if you knew him.

HA!

PLEASE PICK UP DRY CLEANING!

12:07 / 24.02.07

If I was Gene Ha, I would kill myself.

13:05 / 24.02.07

That's odd, as this was posted on the CBR forums a couple of weeks ago and is fairly contradictory. The colourist says that he's just about finished issue two and there's pretty much no reason why it shouldn't be out soon. Are you sure Ha wasn't talking about #3?

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