#shoutout to midnighter saying he's 'as queer as a three dollar bill'. that was really funny.

[buds-and-baubles]

welcome back to florian comic reviews i guess? today we will be discussing the authority: the lost year.

i wanna preface that this time around for the review i'm including images so you can see exactly what i'm talking about.

what was my final thoughts about it? i believe it was 'yuck yuck yuck, what the fuck'. let me explain below about it with the warning that there will obviously be spoilers.

the authority: the lost year takes place during the worldstorm arc for wildstorm aka after the events of captain atom: armageddon.

it has the authority traveling through the bleed desperately trying to get back to their earth, seeing many alternate universes on the journey. for some reason like midway through giffen just stopped including rose tattoo in it.

the first two issues were written by grant morrison, set in the alternate universe that is ours. they're in a 'low energy' world but as it turns out, a cthulu like entity attached parasitic worm style is connected to every person are the reason for this. not even kidding.

their baby universe is also somehow missing? which they never explain how in the whole series.

a random english dude named ken is for some reason elevated to super duper high importance for a random oc, and he sacrifices himself trying to save his world but they just kill everybody because the worm thing.

parts that bothered me in it was the weird fucking dream ken had that he had sex with shen (no not kidding here) and also the fact that midnighter was 'surrogate father' while apollo was 'uncle apollo'. this is just to name a few of the problems from this arc.

this panel however, was hilarious. when your 6'5" husband looks itty bitty next to you.

next arc i refer to as the 'bleed invaders attack the carrier' arc. that's essentially what happens. weird creatures from the bleed attacks the carrier, which said creatures apparently are the ones who who lead the carrier's alien shiftship species to near extinction.

they try to have apollo get rid of them from the outside in his very cute space look but they get in and are quickly outnumbered.

the characters aren't portrayed in the worst way but not the best either? that's all i got. i thought habib with the hammer saying star trek references was adorable though.

since they're outnumbered and can't currently save the carrier, they leave the carrier in hopes of finding a baby universe to get them out of there since that could help them fight back.

here's space look apollo for y'all before the next arc.

then we get to the next arc. when i tell you that this story somehow progressively gets worse, i mean it!

this is the first one that has alternate universe authority. except in this one, they're referred to as 'absolute authority'.

before i get into the bad shit, this page. hawksmoor running in the background for his life like 'HELP HELP HELP, I'M IN FUCKING KANSAS!' is really funny to me.

apologies if it feels like i'm rushing, i'm trying to summarize each arc as quick as i can since there's so many.

other authority became the absolute authority and rules over everybody. there's no other teams on this world but somehow the first ever doctor is alive as is jenny sparks.

once they achieved this rule, tension began to rise. the doctor and angie fought over magic vs. science and everyone ends up taking sides. other doctor was also keeping it 1999 for 9 years which is why jenny sparks was still there. what really got the ball rolling was someone dying.

apollo died. not just died but he was assasinated supposedly by shen. midnighter shockingly never takes revenge over it, and it's really just thrown into people's faces, especially apollo.

apollo who was kidnapped at the start of this arc by the alternate universe's doctor, who is for some reason married to shen (who is heavily pregnant for literally no reason).

alternate doctor told that him that the version of him in this world was killed by shen. the doctor's plan was to keep him as a 'memento' for old times. not to worry though, midnighter and habib come to rescue him. which i'm quite frustrated by the damsel in distress scenario but at least our apollo wasn't killed.

i'm so sorry to shen for this arc and all the other arcs for how they treat you. alternate universe doctor kills alternate swift shortly before apollo got rescued because she was panicking over how seeing our apollo was for her since she killed that universe's apollo.

also, it's implied that that at least one or more alternate versions of the authority visited this alternate universe authority. this leads me to believe a high likelihood of death for these other versions of the authority (apollo and shen in particular).

after other doctor was sent to this universe's carrier when he fled during the rescue for apollo and was killed by other jack, the new year was finally rung in and jenny quantum urges an angry midnighter to 'find me, dad'.

habib disguises himself as alternate doctor to address the nation in hopes things will be better, but ends up triggering a bloodbath amongst the population.

it ends with our authority in an all out battle so they can storm the alternate universe carrier for their baby universe. possibly everybody on this earth dies but midnighter and baby jenny quantum, who he found.

also wanna state for the record that almost every panel apollo is on page is an ass shot of him. it at first thought reminded me of how huntress' first appearance in my tim reading list was treated, where any angle of helena was somehow an ass shot. or how modern dick grayson is treated. wildstorm apollo sexualization walked so dick grayson's sexualization could run i guess. ugh.

here's happy page before we move on because the jenny reunion with apollo made me so so happy.

also, i wanna state for the record that while the other midnighter never goes to avenge his apollo, our authority (especially midnighter and jenny) refused to give up looking for apollo when he was missing. even when other mid said not to, he refused to stop looking.

next one was actually not the worst one and was objectively funny. very sitcom esque and nobody dies in it. the giffen racism remains which i'll cast become trout on him later for it because fuck that guy.

with the baby universe in the carrier and the bleed invaders from one of the previous arcs all dead, they're cleaning up when they have jack check to see if it's their earth. it's not obviously.

the alternate authority shows up and after jack asks for help to get back home, they attack him due to distrust. distrust because they (alternate authority) dealt with past evil multiversal versions of themselves. the rest of our authority shows to help jack with fighting the other authority.

it vaguely reminded of how really old comic books were like since this alternate universe authority doesn't kill anybody and they schedule their fights with their villains on the calendar. i can't explain it any other way.

there's also midpollo. well, pre-midpollo. they're money scamming unreliable homophobic in the closet versions of apollo and midnighter but in the way that they're.. well, let me just show you.

they call eachother middy and polly and it's literally so cute how in denial they are. everyone on their team knows (except shen but it's really fucking racist the reason why).

when they reach a truce after fighting, the alternate universe authority's enemies show up, aka the league of nasty bastards. they team up to fight against these enemies and our authority is literally just using this to blow off steam due to the frustration of not finding home yet.

our authority eventually says fuck it and leaves without the help so they can look for a more competent version of themselves to help them get home. on the bright side, alternate universe apollo on last appearance sounded like he was gonna ask midnighter out so yippiee!

interestingly enough this arc told us that jenny quantum at this point is 10 years old (since it's 2010) and she states that 'i'm only 10 years old. i should be watching cartoons and having sleepovers' and 'okay, so i'm a lot more evolved than the average ten year old but i really wouldn't mind some downtime to just be.. well, as normal as an embodiment of the 21st century can be'.

she's expressing wanting to just be a kid here so it makes me even more excited for my future authority to dc transfer so these words of jenny quantum's can come true.

some bonus panels that i thought were silly and neat regarding how strong apollo is before we move on to the second to last arc.

this next arc our authority encounters a facist version of the authority in this alternate universe, who had rose tattoo's soldiers invaded and surrounded them on the carrier. they surrendered due to it being jenny's decision rather than fight and are imprisoned in an anarctic prison alongside all the other superpowered people who survived in this universe.

i wished to never see krigstein again but unfortunately, a flashback about him appears in this. when this world's authority took jenny quantum from krigstein, it upset things in the world since in this krigstein was considered a balance between all the governments and superhumans.

when alternate authority found out about this, they took out every government and became rulers of the world in only twenty four hours. engineer took technology, doctor aka jeroen took whatever, hawksmoor took cities, and the rest 'just took lives'.

all other superhumans went into hiding when they were taking over, but were either killed, dragged to the prison in antarctica, or the horrible third option with this alternate universe's doctor.

with other engineer's domain over technology, she put in nanite implant surveillance systems into every person. she had started this with the imprisoned superhumans.

guess what happens to this alternate apollo? he's the first to die again. jack is who killed him this time, after apollo was the first to question what they've done and their authority. that apollo was 'stepping out of line' and 'was taken down by the man apollo most trusted other than midnighter'.

it broke other jack so badly inside that he was the second or third to die, at his own hand. he never forgave himself for killing apollo. shen dying was second or third, by midnighter's hands. she just wanted out after seeing everything that was going on.

before i move on, i wanna state that it's said that two other versions of the authority encountered this facist alternate universe authority. one like ours possibly, and the other where they're essentially just like. earth-11 versions. it's implied none of these teams survived and i don't even wanna think about what jeroen was implied to do to some of the earth 11's other alternate universe authority team.

rose tattoo is present for this arc by the way as said further up, but only for the alternate universe version. when other midnighter permits our midnighter to begin a break out of the antarctic prison, he stands by and lets it happen. other rose tattoo kills the alternate midnighter version for this.

also, other midnighter for some horrible goddamn reason is a nazi so i'm not broken up too much about it. which is something in my personal opinion that midnighter would never do in any universe.

before i delve into even worse stuff, here's one of the panels in this arc that i found cute.

alternate universe jenny quantum is now officially an orphan and remarks as such which the angie says 'she has always been an orphan'. which is cold to say if you ask me.

after starting the massive break out of the superhuman prison, the authority meets up and discovers that habib was not held with them.

this is because jeroen is holding him captive and saying this other doctor is awful is putting it lightly. unfortunately, they demonize him for his drug addiction again but it's the whole making him a rapist that made me seriously go like 'what the fuck'. it's also stated that he killed anybody on this alternate earth that had the chance to become the doctor. which obviously includes this universe's habib.

the reason he grabbed our doctor to ask him to kill him. he knows that other authority will come to do it anyways and wants to die on his terms. however, habib refuses. it's during reminiscing that other doctor who tells us what happened to the rest of this alternate authority.

alternate engineer appears and kills jeroen, trying to kill habib. after apologizing, he asks the past iterations of doctors that he brought forth to hold her, other engineer either being killed or sent somewhere else. he's then sent to our carrier.

meanwhile, other rose tattoo is trying to get our authority's carrier under her thumb when shen and angie arrive to stop her. our engineer works on cleaning up the carrier while shen fights alternate rose tattoo, the end result being rose tattoo's death after angie sends her through door to the sun.

at roughly the same time, our jenny quantum, apollo, midnighter, and jack are helping the superhuman survivors fight rose tattoo's soldiers. during a break from the fighting, midnighter insists that they leave because it's not their fight and jenny argues with him that they can't. before anything else happens, swift drops the rest of the team in the carrier.

with enemy ships still around them, it's revealed that jenny already had a plan in motion to destroy said ships so they could leave. she merely wanted to argue so the superhumans they were helping would think they were heroes. apollo insists that 'we are heroes' to that, and i believe personally that he's insisting that jenny quantum as well as habib are heroes. however, less so for the rest of the team.

this arc ends with our authority teleporting away as the alternate universe jenny quantum cries on her carrier since she's the last one alive supposedly as the rest are dead and engineer is missing in action. she's looking at a picture of her apollo and midnighter's wedding and wearing apollo's shirt in her final appearance.

as for the very last arc, i'm showing the panel i like from it before i start talking. this arc had me very angry.

they've finally made it back to their earth, but not without wounds from seeing so many different versions of themselves end up as they did.

after it's assured it is their world, they all go different places to recuperate. shen and angie talk about everything they saw, where swift is worried about that what she saw she could become. engineer reassures her by bringing up her own alternate universe versions of herself and what they did.

doctor consults with the garden of ancestral memories and talks with jeroen, expressing a similar worry. that seeing the last universe's jeroen made him afraid he could go down a similar path. jeroen tells him it's based on the decisions he makes that will make him who he becomes. whether right of wrong decisions.

jack goes to new york city and talks to the city, reassuring that he'd never end up like the alternate versions of himself. that he'd never hurt any of them, that they weren't him.

it's the apollo and midnighter portion that pissed me off. apollo rightfully expresses concerns regarding that he is dead in every alternate universe while midnighter lives to become worse minus the 'horrible sitcom one'. for this, midnighter insults him over and over again saying he's stupid blond and even grabs him by the throat to choke him.

they have a somewhat better talk near the end and hug but it just didn't sit right with me after the previous panels. considering that it was an abusive response to conflict, which midnighter would never fucking do.

jenny quantum they for some reason let ruminate alone despite being literally ten years old, so she doesn't have anyone to talk to about it. not even her dads'. thanks, giffen.

it cuts to weeks later where they have their first conflict they're involved in. everyone is on the ground fighting minus jenny and doctor, who are still on the carrier.

seeing the screens and listening in to the fight, habib questions why they are still doing things how they do them after everything they saw, which jenny vehemently defends her actions. out of both wanting to help end the conflict the rest of the team is fighting and to avoid further arguing, jenny leaves the carrier.

she ends up confronting and killing the person that is the root cause of the conflict but not before a series of sexist things are said to her by a character written in a racist way. which again, fuck you giffen you fucking racist. i don't think turning you into a trout is good enough. you need to be turned into a sea snail.

by the way, this is the second time jenny quantum is shown killing someone in my authority reading list and it felt so wrong. it was extremely out of character for her, especially because she had no remorse over it.

and.. that's the end of the authority: the lost year. a shitshow snowball that kept rolling all the way to the end. i tried to summarize and explain as best as i can but there was so much so i apologize if it's a little messy.