Comic book review: The Authority: Human on the Inside
Despite being a superhero book that's mostly plot-driven with political themes, The Authority was always rife for a character-based story. The team is lead by bad-ass, tough-talking Jack Hawksmoor, who is dating the most brilliant woman on the planet, The Engineer. Husbands Apollo and The Midnighter have opposite personalities and loads of emotional baggage, and a baby to raise. The Doctor struggles with drug addiction and the scorn of his teammates, while Swift's love of life and people is sometimes challenged by her teammates' bloody methods of superhero-ing. Putting all that together, The Authority always had loads of potential to do more than scratch the surface of its characters' relationships, ideals, and thoughts.
So, when I heard about Human on the Inside, a story focused on the team as people, I was very interested. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a better idea than actual book.
When The Authority messes with world government one too many times, a humiliated American president plots revenge by sending someone after their humanity. This planted "spy" (for lack of a better word; he's not there to kill them, just to gather information and attack them), starts fights between Apollo and Midnighter, Jack and The Engineer, and reduces The Doctor to a drooling mess. But where's Swift?
While the idea of making The Authority deal with their issues was a good one, the execution was rushed and sloppy. The Engineer talks about feeling like "a machine" in this story, but she's never had any problem with that before; quite the opposite, being part machine connects her to things. Midnighter's issues with his powers also don't make sense; they're written to be totally reactive here, which goes against what we know and gives him angst that doesn't fit with his character.
Much worse than a little out-of-character writing, though--after all, each writer will have a different take on the characters--is how quickly everything got resolved. Problems and emotional issues are brought up over the course of the story, and then it was like writer John Ridley ran out of room and had to wrap the story up on a deadline. Actually, the whole thing was a rushed mess; the spy gets into The Authority by, uh, showing up. And then they invite him in, with no look at anything like his background or a physical scan to see if he's DANGEROUS in any way.
Even worse than that was the horrible dialogue that infected the entire story, making it impossible to take even good scenes seriously. At one point, when Midnighter is trying to tell Apollo that the spy kissed him, he sniffles, "I'm, I'm confused. I don't...I've never felt like this....He was so strong, so forceful...I can't...." To which Apollo replies, "What do you mean you can't? You can tell me anything, Love." Gag. Just as bad were the action scenes: "These Cats were just the undercard. Things are only getting started." And: "Whatever. Let's stretch 'em out like two dollar whores." It was like Ridley read a lot of bad comics from the sixties and added profanity to try and make it modern.
On the positive end there's the art by Ben Oliver and Wendy Broome, which is beautiful. Everything moves; the faces, the bodies, the machinery, the clothing. I could see fabric rippling as bodies turned, and tell when each character's mood changed by posture or expression. It's not typical superhero fare either, being less overdone.
I recommend Human on the Inside to art fans or Authority completists, but don't worry about it otherwise; no other writer ever references this book again, and after reading it, I can see why. If you're a new fan of The Authority whatever you read first, DON'T let it be this.