Posted in: Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: bryan hitch, dc comics, james gunn, the authority

Bryan Hitch Still Drawing The Authority- But For What?

Bryan Hitch has been pencilling, inking and tweeting a double page splash of The Authority, after James Gunn's news... what could it be for?

Published Wed, 01 Mar 2023 10:57:12 -0600

by Rich Johnston

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A few days ago on Bleeding Cool, we looked at what we presumed was a new Authority piece being drawn by Bryan Hitch, posted to Twitter.

I replied with a tweet, "Ooh, is that Apollo" and got in response from Bryan, "haven't you got some news to report…?" Well, I mean, I did, didn't I? Bryan Hitch returning to The Authority, with news of an Authority movie helmed by James Gunn?

Bryan Hitch returned to the piece, and to Twitter, stating "After a great day's work and a nice dinner (with lovely wine) I stayed up when the family went to bed and spent a couple of hours turning that previous scribble into something ready to ink. 17 x 22 inches."

Which he then proceeded to ink.

Adding "Nearly done with this Authority DPS, which I'll be offering for sale. Always fun to draw." Where it will go, what will it end up a part of, will DC Comics be bringing Bryan Hitch back to an Authority project, that is still all up in the air. But James Gunn has been posting more, this time with Frank Quitely's work on the title and the tag #TheAuthority.

Say, any chance we could get Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill for Midnighter and Apollo? Just thinking out loud.

The Authority was created in 1998 for the comic book studio WildStorm, owned by Jim Lee, which was bought out by DC Comics, with Jim Lee becoming VP and now Publisher/CCO of DC. Coming out of a series and using characters that Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch had worked on for DC/Wildstorm's series Stormwatch, The Authority was different. It jumpstarted the trend for what would be called "widescreen comics", using the comics page in a more cinematic fashion, and decompressing stories to take place over more pages, the series was adult in nature, political, and pushed against traditional ideas of superheroes. It featured prominent queer characters, with Midnighter and Apollo as a couple based on Batman and Superman, and included wisecracking characters, substance-abusing characters such as Jenny Sparks and Jack Hawksmoor, in the John Constantine model. As a team, they were hedonistic, debauched and all-powerful, taking down the big bad guys trying to control, or invade the Earth, but in doing so, revealed themselves as immoral and lacking in principle. Before The Boys, there was The Authority. The title of the comics, The Authority, was meant to be a note that however much you enjoyed their actions, they were the bad guys. Just the bad guys who happened to be needed at the moment.

The themes and tones established in The Authority would be taken by artist Bryan Hitch and the series' next writer Mark Millar when asked to do similar with Marvel's The Avengers in the comic book series The Ultimates. It was that series, with its roots in The Authority, that would most inform the tone of Marvel's Cinematic Universe, specifically in Iron Man, Captain America and The Avengers movies, with Ellis' work on Iron Man also heavily informing that franchise.

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