Superman & The Authority Review (Grant Morrison, Mikel Janin)

In an alternate future where the Justice League aren’t around for some reason, a sexy older dad Superman, whose own powers are nearly gone, must assemble a new team to meet imminent threats: The Authority! Only this time, joining Authority regulars Midnighter and Apollo are some unusual additions: Manchester Black, Enchantress and Steel’s daughter.

Grant Morrison returning to write Superman again, however briefly, is enough to get me to pick up this four-issue miniseries, rather than for its being part of DC’s latest line of nonsense, Infinite Frontier. And, while Morrison remains the definitive Superman writer, this outing overall wasn’t that impressive.

This book is essentially all table-setting. Three of the four issues is Superman assembling his team, which would be frustratingly idiotic if this was all there was of this group, but it’s revealed in the final issue that this is all preamble to a larger storyline that begins in Action Comics #1036 (not written by Morrison but by current Action Comics writers Philip K. Johnson and Sean Lewis).

Superman’s characterisation remains perfect under Morrison, there’s some fun banter between Superman and Manchester Black, particularly given that Black hates Superman, and Black’s intro was ok too, but generally seeing the team come together wasn’t that interesting. Midnighter and Apollo punch baddies, Steels’ daughter Nat punches some manifestations of internet things (trolls, edgelords and conspiracy theorists), June Moone continues to struggle with her Enchantress side, and Lightray is introduced because she’s going to play a role later on down the line.

And then there’s the garbled and unimaginative finale which involves the team punching another version of The Authority for some reason while Superman takes on a couple of his classic rogues. It just feels arbitrary, to give this book, that’s essentially all introductions and setting up of future storylines, a semblance of a story arc that it never really had.

Mikel Janin’s art is great as always - I liked his design for sexy older dad Superman and he gets to draw some cool images like a triceratops! - but he doesn’t draw all of the book unfortunately. Travel Foreman draws some fill-in middle pages and they are noticeably worse. I don’t like Foreman’s work generally but it really looks bad in comparison to an artist as skilled as Janin.

It was nice to read Morrison’s Superman again and there’s some pretty art from Janin, but there’s little here to recommend Superman and The Authority - by no means a must-read for anyone.