Here it comes, the next entry in the Final ’90s Countdown of YOUR top votes for the best comics of an otherwise maligned decade in the industry. We’re almost done with the one-vote getters, and it’s kind of a two-fer — or four-fer — here:
Stormwatch #37-44 (Image 1996-7), Stormwatch #1-#11 (1997-1998), WildC.A.T.s/Aliens one-shot (1998) and The Authority #1-12 (Wildstorm 1999-2000)
This breaks format just a little, and it’s more than what was actually submitted, but they are of a piece, as one title flows right into another. The connecting thread here is writer Warren Ellis, currently kinda persona non grata in the business, but at the time was a cutting edge writer of interesting and influential comics.
But anyway, as you can see from the list of titles there, it’s bit of a complicated road to follow. Starting with #37 of the original Stormwatch series, Ellis, along with artists Tom Raney and Randy Elliott retool the book into a more “real world” (relatively speaking) setting, with more of a political edge, versus the 1990s “Image Style” book it had been previously. (Think of when Alan Moore took over Supreme, turning it from…whatever it was into the Silver Age-y deconstructive tribute it became.)
The Ellis storylines wrapped up the original Stormwatch series with #50, leading into a second volume of Stormwatch that ran 11 issues, all written by Ellis and joined by artists Oscar Jimenez, Joe Phillips, and Jason Gorder in the first issue, plus other aritsts along the way. Eventually Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary come aboard, and suddenly it’s a whole new game.
Now I have to jump in here and admit…I have not read this particular period of Stormwatch. I’m just sorta cruisin’ around, picking up details and overviews from hither and yon upon the internets. So, I do not have specific first hand knowledge of these books, beyond selling them when they were new. (And noticing the huge jump in back issue demand for these once Authority got rolling.)
So when I say “Hitch and Neary were a new game,” that comes mainly from my knowledge of their art. Bringing in a more cinematic and exciting depiction on the comics that they draw, bringing a more mature form of the energy that early Image tried to produce with their crosshatching and movement lines.
Oddly, right after (or during the conclusion) of this second Stormwatch series comes the WildC.A.T.s/ALIENS one-shot by Ellis and Chris Sprouse, in which some Stormwatch characters were done away with. Interesting that a book crossing over their characters with another company’s licensed property would be the place to make changes like this, given the unreliability of availability in future reprints, but here we are.
And now, finally, we get to The Big One, The Authority, where Ellis and Hitch take the pieces from what had come previously, and reweave them into the very end-of-the-century comic that we know and love. And I did at least read this title, so I’m not completely out of the loop here. It was for this series in particular that I believe folks first started batting around the “widesceen comics” descriptor, based on the, again, cinematic storytelling of the artists and the large scale action scenes/set pieces presented via that style.
It was edgy, political, brutal and effective, making each issue into a real page-turner. It took what should have been a clichéd and childish joke idea, a “what if Batman and Superman were gay lovers,” and actually made those characters’ analgoues on the team, Midnighter and Apollo, enjoyable and fascinating. Jenny Sparks, the “Spirit of the Century” created by Ellis in his initial Stormwatch issue, gets the conclusion of her story as the series approaches the millennium. (More or less, but I think this is addressed in the comics if I remember correctly.) The stakes kept rising, with Ellis and Hitch’s final story on the book involving the team fighting “God.” It was a wild time.
These comics were very much Of A Time…it’s easy to look at these and say “oh, yeah, that’s definitely the early 2000s.” Several folks tried to emulate the art style, and Ellis himself would go to this “tough bastards versus the world or whatever” scripting again and again. Mark Millar, who took on writing chores on Authority after Ellis’s departure, had attempted to follow in his footsteps, but it felt as if the proper “balance of bastardry” was off as the characters seemed to lean a little too hard in one direction. Nice Frank Quitely art, though.
Reprints: all this guff’s been reprinted in that convenient trade paperback/hardcover format over the years, but most recently there was a papperback Authority TP Book One, which reprints all the Authority issues by Ellis and Hitch, along with the crossover Planetary/Authority that mixes the team with another of Ellis’s properties. A large omnibus includes all the Ellis work, as well as Millar’s run, and a short run by Tom Peyer (which I liked!).
All the Stormwatch comics by Ellis have been most recently reprinted in Stormwatch: The Raod to Authority Compendium.
Odd man out is the WildC.A.T.s/Aliens one-shot, which, by its nature, makes it hard to reprint in context with the work around it. A paperback from 2001, Stormwatch: Final Orbit, reprints the story with Stormwatch Vol. 2 #11, and DC/Dark Horse: Aliens from 2016 includes this along with some of the other DC/DH Aliens crossover titles. Neither is currently in print, far as I can tell.
So someday I may get around to reading those Stormwatches, though my current ambivalence toward Ellis may put that off a bit. But the ultimate payoff to those, Authority, did have an impact, at least for a while, on how we thought about superheroes and how they could be presented. That proposed Authority movie might have been interesting, though I suspect some of the edges would have been smoothed down for maximum box office…a moot point now, since it’s been moved to the back burner. Ah well, someday we’ll see a DC movie where our heroes fight God.
I reread the thing pretty recently and TBH I think I much prefer Stormwatch over Authority. The storytelling’s the same but the tone is different – Stormwatch aims for “serious stories about superheroes”, but Authority is all “I’m so edgy and watch the ‘splode”
I found that to be the case when I was reading the comics. I had started with the Authority because it was so popular at the time. I decided to eventually go back and read the Ellis Stormwatch issues. I was kind of hesitant, thinking they might be more ‘90s Image-style, but was surprised that they read better than the Authority. The Authority is certainly of its time. The early-2000s style is definitively defined by Ellis’ Authority. It was a groundbreaking series, although I don’t think it was necessarily a good thing looking back 26 years later. Stormwatch had superior storytelling without trying so hard to be edgy and groundbreaking. While the 1990s styles in comics had changed quite a bit (the early-‘90s style was nothing like the late-‘90s), with the Authority the ‘90s were officially over.
I was reading THE AUTHORITY and bought two trades of STORMWATCH.Buying the recent HCs of TA does really date the stories. But I bought them anyways, along with the beautiful omnibus of PLANETARY.
Two things: I right away perked my pointy ears when Frank Grillo mentioned Planetwatch in PEACEMAKER. That’s the analogue for Stormwatch, I am betting Mike Sterling one dollar. Okay, seven.
There was another book, THE MONARCHY, that I barely remember. But it seemed to have references to the other WildStorm books and was published in the late 90s/early 00s. I think all i can remember about the book is the damn logo.
I thought Stormwatch was okay, but I loved The Authority and read it over and over again.
One of the best parts for me was watching the characters revel in their powers. They were required to do more and more as the threats escalated over the course of the series, and they legitimately felt joy when they discovered new abilities they didn’t realize they had.
It was the opposite of grim n’ gritty. No one was brooding or felt put upon. The entire team did what they had to do and grew in the process. Was what they did good or fair? That’s another question.
Ellis reimagined the team again, along with a bunch of other properties, in the more recent The Wild Storm, which I highly recommend. You should be able to find it in back issues pretty easily. While I enjoy his writing, I find it difficult to actively give him any of my money.
Also, I should dig out WildC.A.T.S./Aliens again. I remember that story being a huge shock at the time.
One of my favourite things about the Wildcats/Aliens crossover is that Gil Kane drew a cover for it with a generic alien that then had to get redrawn.
More info in this old column: https://www.cbr.com/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-129/
Stormwatch v1 37-50 was my one of my 2 or 3 favorite monthly super-hero comics when it was being published. It was the perfect super-hero comic for 19 yr-old me: dark, smart, and cynical. Tom Raney’s art fit the tone of the stories perfectly.
Stormwatch v2 started off with… no idea, can’t remember. All I know is it wasn’t as good. Then, Hitch became the main artist and it got better. WildCATs vs. Aliens was a delightful shock.
The Authority started off great. The art was excellent, and the stories were dumb fun. The problems mounted as the scale increased, however-going from “super-heroes vs. a country” to “super-heroes vs. a world” to “super-heroes vs. God” didn’t work with the 4-issues/story, widescreen & decompressed storytelling. The last Ellis/Hitch arc didn’t work for me. Reducing the characters to archetypes meant I didn’t care much about, say, the Doctor or Swift. It was an interesting and influential experiment with super-hero comics, but it didn’t entirely work.
Yeah, the character deaths in WildC.A.T.s/Aliens were shocking along with, as you said, taking place in an intercompany crosover.
Editor at the time Scott Dunbier explains how it came about here:
https://scottdunbier.blogspot.com/2007/10/only-real-drawback.html
Ellis said later the concept was “bloody stupid” until they said he could kill any character he wanted.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090319020113/http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=76010
I voted for Gen 13. The Final ’90s Countdown has been so sporadic that I lost track, but I don’t think it ever got discussed yet. Or did it get three votes, and that’s why we haven’t got there yet?
“final story on the book involving the team fighting “God.” ”
Why would anybody wanna fight Alanis Morrissette?
” Mark Millar”
Good writer, leans into “bastard” too much.
“The Authority”
There were also two stories by Garth Ennis, starring a Tommy Monagan 9″Hitman”) type, and Midnighter and Apollo.
Sean: Looks like Gen 13 got two votes.
Snark: Ennis did four(!) “Kev” series in the 2000s.
The Authority: Kev (one-shot)
The Authority: More Kev (4 issues)
The Authority: The Magnificent Kevin (5 issues)
The Authority: A Man Called Kev (5 issues)
And he wrote the first six issues of the Midnighter ongoing series. He was followed by Brian K. Vaughan, Christos Gage, and Justin Gray, who each did an issue, and then Keith Giffen wrote the final 11. I have no memory of this series even existing.
I do remember the Garth Ennis issues, but I didn’t follow the series. It was when DC was going to relaunch WildStorm with the best creators to turn WildStorm back into the popular publisher it was when Ellis was writing Authority. They got Grant Morrison to relaunch Wild CATs and Authority (I did buy these two while they lasted), which lasted for exactly one issue and two issues respectively before Morrison decided to not continue writing either series. Ennis only lasted for six issues on Midnighter. I thought maybe the series was cancelled after Ennis left. Eventually, DC just pulled the plug and tried relaunching the WildStorm properties over once again.
“four(!) “Kev” series in the 2000s”
That’s it! I don’t remember which 2 of those I read.
Years ago I said to someone that Millar’s Authority run was Fletcher Hanks with overt sexual violence, and I stand by that.