Comic Book / Superman and the Authority

Here's to a finer world.

— Superman

Superman and the Authority is a 2021 DC Comics four-issue mini-series written by Grant Morrison, with art by Mikel Janin. Serving as an interquel to Superman (Phillip Kennedy Johnson) run.

In 1963, before President Kennedy's fateful trip to Dallas, he asks Superman to give him a promise: to help make the world a better place, a finer world. Superman agrees.

In the present day, Manchester Black is found and captured by authorities when Superman intervenes and takes him to the Fortress of Solitude. There, he tells him that he needs Black's help: Superman is slowly losing his powers and soon won't be able to keep his promise, so he is trying to recruit people who can do the things he could do, to help him save the world.

The only problem is that Manchester Black hates Superman. So he's going to take some convincing. Too bad the world might be ending sooner than anticipated...

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Tropes in Superman and the Authority:

• All-Loving Hero: Superman, full stop. Even though Manchester Black tried to kill him several times over, Superman still wants to recruit him and, at the end of the first issue, when Black tells him he should get revenge on the world because it would feel good, Superman disagrees.
• And the Adventure Continues: The four-issue series ends on a Cliffhanger where Clark reveals that the team's next big mission is to help him liberate Warworld from its tyrannical rule, a plotline that will be picked up in Action Comics #1036.
• Anti-Climax: Done rather deliberately. After much of the second and third issues is built on a true battle between Superman and the Ultra-Humanite, his oldest foe and the archetypal supervillain, not only is his newest body killed by Lois Lane, and his new Superman Revenge Squad wrecked in their first outing, but when Brainiac and Ultra-Humanite declare this is just the first step of an all-out war, Superman simply tells them... it won't be, and declares he's leaving the planet behind. In-story, this is showing that Superman has grown past that old rivalry and way of doing things, and trusts the new generation to handle any problems created by the Ultra-Humanite. Naturally, the Ultra-Humanite fails to understand that this was an insult, and interprets Superman's disinterest in answering his crude challenge as running scared.
• Art Shift: The second and third issues switch between multiple different art styles while introducing the members of the new Authority: the parts with Superman and Manchester Black have pale, washed-out tones and a rather idealized aesthetic, the parts with Natasha have brighter colors and more conventional superhero stylings, the parts with Apollo and Midnighter are scratchy and sepia-toned, and the parts with Enchantress are more gothic and feature green and red shading.
• Author Avatar: Both Superman and Manchester Black represent Grant Morrison in some ways:
  • Superman is an old timer in the superhero business but has grown disillusioned with it and sees his fellow crimefighters as being too insular and focused on their world-ending crises to effect meaningful change. This mirrors Morrison's position at the time of publication, a decades-long veteran of the DC Universe who at that point had become disillusioned with corporate cape comics. Notably, both put their trust in the next generation to succeed where they failed: Superman with the Authority and his son Jon, and Morrison with newer creators like Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Tom Taylor.
  • Manchester Black more parallels Morrison's early days as a DC creative. Like Morrison, he was a British rebel who wanted to shift the conception of superheroes by taking on the established "big man"; in Manchester's case, Superman, and in Morrison's case, Alan Moore.
• Badass Boast: It wouldn't be a comic with Midnighter if he didn't drop one of these in the second issue.
  "I've already anticipated every move you could ever make, in every possible and not possible combination. I've run every conceivable combat scenario. In all of them, you die and that's how it is. I am the face of your inevitable end. I am the death that's always been here, waiting for you. That's how they made me."
• Big Bad Wannabe: Ultra-Humanite spends a good chunk of the story posturing about how he's Superman's real first villain, how he practically invented supervillainy, and how their battle will be a grand showdown to last the ages. As it turns out, Superman just sees him as a relic of an older era, has no interest in continuing their rivalry, foils his scheme with relative ease, and quickly recognizes him as a pawn of Brainiac (quite tellingly, Ultra-Humanite spends most of the story in the body of a zombie). When Superman declares that he doesn't want to fight him, Ultra-Humanite believes that Superman fears the idea of facing him—in reality, Superman simply views fighting him as an unproductive waste of time.
• Bilingual Bonus: The second issue has a pair of robots cleaning up Manchester Black's vomit speak in Kryptonian to each other. Deciphering the words reveals they're saying "Analyze vomit." "No, you analyze vomit."
• The Bus Came Back: Issue #3 features the appearance of Iron Cross, Coldcast, and Fleur de Lis. The first two haven't been seen since before Flashpoint, while the third one only appeared for a single panel during Doomsday Clock. Issue #4 ups this further with a reappearance from the pre-Crisis version of Koko, Brainiac's pet monkey.
• Canon Welding: While prior stories treated the Authority's history in the DCU as a very uncertain thing, this story notably seems to suggest that an Authority very much like like the one that appeared in the Ellis and Millar runs did indeed exist in the DCU's history, and actually predated the Elite.
• Cast of Expies: Aside from Superman, the rest of this Authority appears to correspond to the original Authority in terms of character types:
  • Jenny Sparks = Manchester Black: a hard-drinking Brit who wears a Union Jack and dislikes superheroes.
  • The Engineer = Natasha Irons: a Gadgeteer Genius who created a suit of armor in order to help the world.
  • The Doctor = The Enchantress: a super-powerful magic user who also might be unstable and has a dark past.
  • Jack Hawksmoor = O.M.A.C.: someone artificially altered against their will to prepare them for the future.
  • Swift = Lightray: a relatively happy superhero who revels in their celebrity.
  • And Apollo and the Midnighter are, well, Apollo and the Midnighter.
  • Superman himself, funnily, matches up to The High, who was a Superman Substitute and whose shifting ideals and attempts to affect meaningful change proved the catalyst for the Authority's creation. However, his new outfit, visible age, lesser superpowers, and greater reliance on technology all make him very similar to Tom Strong.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: Superman asks Manchester Black to help him stop the Zonedroids, but Black refuses and walks away from the Fortress. After Superman tries and fails to stop them, however, Black returns and destroys them with his telekinesis.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Superman mentions the second fall of Camelot. This is a reference back to Morrison's Seven Soldiers, where the original Camelot echoed through history, resulting in several other Camelots, all of them eventually falling. This is even echoed in this issue with Kennedy (whose administration was called "Camelot") being assassinated.
  • Both Black and the Ultra-Humanite mention that Superman has revealed his secret identity to the world, which happened during Superman (Brian Michael Bendis).
  • When Midnighter tells Apollo that they've scored a spot on Superman's new team, he specifies that he's talking about "Sexy Dad" Superman, not "Skinny Next-Gen," referring to Jon Kent who took up Clark's mantle in Superman: Son of Kal-El.
  • In the Batman/Superman special that follows up on the series, Midnighter mentions Dick Grayson when he first meets Batman. This is referring to the events of Grayson, where the two worked together on and off.
• Depower: Superman is slowly losing his powers. He says that flight is going first, so he is making sure to hover six inches off the ground at all times just to keep practicing.
• Dolled-Up Installment: Morrison wrote the comic with the intention that it be a standalone out-of-continuity tale, perhaps to serve as a distant finale for Action Comics (New 52). However, it was rolled into standard continuity, leading to several tweaks—for instance, the intent of the JFK scene was that this Superman was around in the JFK administration, but it was given a quick Hand Wave as time travel.
• Expy Coexistence:
  • Apollo, a Superman Substitute, is now working with the original. He even suggests he spent part of his early career modeling himself after Superman.
  • The Elite, a rather harsh Deconstruction of the Authority, co-existed with their inspirations in this story. Manchester Black (who is himself loosely based on Jenny Sparks) suggests that he was trying to jump on a burgeoning trend.
• Feeling Their Age: Part of this story, like with Superman (Phillip Kennedy Johnson) and part of the inciting stuff for Superman: Son of Kal-El, is Clark realizing he's not a young man anymore and dealing with his mortality.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Apollo is clearly very happy to be working with Superman, and admits to having modeled himself on him in the early days of his career. In fact, working with Superman is treated as an anniversary present for him.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: When Superman and Manchester Black walk through the Fortress in the second issue, a panel has the time machine from The Time Machine (1960) in the background, as well as what appears to be a TARDIS, which is painted red instead of blue.
• The Man Behind the Man: The final issue reveals that Brainiac has been the main bankroller of Ultra-Humanite's schemes, as part of a plan to see the Earth forever preserved.
• Master of Illusion: This is how Manchester Black usually uses his telepathy — to make his enemies think they are seeing things and have them take care of each other. It doesn't work on the Zonedroids because they are robots.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The entire concept of Superman founding the Authority seems to be inspired by The High, who was a very Superman-Esque hero in the Wildstorm universe who realized that his attempts to "save the world" were doomed and so went against the government and founded his own team; his attempts to create meaningful change were a major inspiration behind the Authority's formation. Notably, Superman points out that attempting to actually defy the world's governments is a good way to make things worse (as he puts it, those same liberal ideals nuked Hiroshima), suggesting that he wants to avoid a situation similar to that of The High.
  • Manchester Black and the Elite were originally based on the Authority. Now, he's a member of the Authority. Black even acknowledges this in the second issue, calling the Elite "a cheap knockoff of the real deal."
  • Manchester asks if Superman is going to set him up as the "disabled professor" of a team of "mentally ill super-dicks." Morrison previously wrote New X-Men (or Doom Patrol, depending on your tastes).
  • Back in The Multiversity, it was explained that the world of DC: The New Frontier (an optimistic timeline where heroes did manage to create change) arose because JFK was never assassinated. Here, the assassination is seen as My Greatest Failure for Superman. (It doubles as a reference to a famous comic where Superman met him, which was nearly published at the same time as the assassination.)
  • The Supermobile makes an appearance in the second issue, with a twist: it actually means something in this story, since Superman can't fly like he used to. (Still has the extendable fists, even!)
  • The Fortress of Solitude here is called "Fort Superman," as it was on the cover of its debut, Action Comics #241.
  • Superman's insignia here is also directly lifted from Kingdom Come, another story about an aged Superman dealing with his failures.
• New Media Are Evil: An AI that formed within the internet was absolutely horrified by what it found there, and created defenses based on its view of humanity: misinformation-spewing bots, body-shaming trolls, and obnoxious and vicious edgelords.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: One of the core ideas of the comic is that Superman spent so long wrapped up in superheroics that he failed to affect larger issues or change the status quo. He wants to form the new Authority in part because he hopes they can do better.
• Series Continuity Error: This version of the Authority appears, fully-formed, in Action Comics #1035 ... where Superman's hair is still black and he wears his regular costume.
• Shout-Out:
  • In the second issue, when musing on how much weaker he's gotten over the years, Superman muses "call me the samurai in autumn", a reference to the Pet Shop Boys song of the same name (the lyrics of which are simply "It's not as easy as it was, or as difficult as it could be, for the samurai in autumn").
  • In the same issue, Manchester Black calls Apollo and Midnighter "Hinge and Brackett", referring to a British female impersonator duo. (He claims that he's allowed to make jokes like that because he's 48% gay on his mother's side.)
  • The scene with Ultra-Humanite hiding in plain sight in the Fortress of Solitude is a reference to an old Justice League of America story where a Shaggy Man did much the same thing.
• Silver Fox: Superman himself, who's swapped out his usual outfit for a form-fitting, short-sleeved bodysuit that shows off every inch of his muscles, and even gets a shirtless scene in the second issue where he's shown wiping off sweat after a workout. Apollo even calls him "sexy-dad Superman" (as opposed to his son Jon).
• Spiritual Antithesis:
  • It stands as one to the original What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?, which introduced Manchester Black. While What's So Funny depicted Superman as diametrically opposed to the anti-heroes, this story shows him as sympathetic to them and their attempts to affect meaningful change, only trying to guide them onto a brighter path. While What's So Funny has Superman refuse to compromise his ideals ever, this story has Superman admit that the path he's taken his career on has largely failed to generate meaningful change, and try to evolve his methods. While What's So Funny's climax hinged on Superman proving his superior methods by being able to crush the anti-heroes easily, this story depicts a weakened Superman who needs their help. And while What's So Funny portrayed the anti-heroes as utterly monstrous supervillains who do nothing but kill wantonly and incidentally hit bad guys, this story depicts them as Unscrupulous Heroes at worst and victims of larger issues who are lashing out at a world genuinely going sour. Even the first issue, which features Superman using his heat vision to surgically heal Black, is a counterpoint to the finale of What's So Funny, where Superman used his heat vision to disable him.
  • Its resolution also seems to serve as one to the ending to Morrison's own Green Lantern run. There, Hal Jordan and by extension Morrison, seems to have grown disillusioned with the Corps' (DC Comics) ways of doing things and appears dismissive of his (Morrison's) successors, opting instead of leave rather than give any kind of parting words of wisdom. Superman and The Authority seems to walk back on that. Superman (Morrison) comes to terms with and accepts the Darker and Edgier heroes that his kind butt heads with in the past. And while he leaves for parts unknown much like Hal Jordan does, he does so expressing his faith in the next generation of heroes (future DC writers) in keeping up the good work.
• Take That!:
  • Morrison delivers a pretty big one to previous eras of DC for ignoring what made Superman and other superheroes special, as Superman explains to Manchester Black why he needs his help now:
  "We'd made it about us—our special needs, our special enemies, our deaths and rebirths, our crises."
  • In the second issue, Manchester Black refers to his first meeting with Superman as "when I was young and evil, and you'd only just got started on your journey to irrelevant old-manhood", which gives a pretty clear opinion on how Morrison thinks that story changed Superman's general trajectory (admittedly, there's also a Call-Back to All-Star Superman in that panel, suggesting Morrison's willing to admit fault there).
  • Morrison takes the opportunity to throw shade on the concept of Non-Fungible Tokens by having at least one of the Ultra-Humanite's flunkies accepting them as payment, only to be mocked for it by the Midnighter.
• Time Travel: Since the current day Superman wasn't actually alive during the time of the Kennedy administration, the fact that Superman met JFK is explained via time travel. Superman later shows the Round Table of the Knights of Camelot to Manchester Black and reveals that he also traveled to the second fall of Camelot.
• Who Shot JFK?: The comic keeps coming back to a film strip of Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, while Superman helps with the moon landing (even though those events in the real world were far apart) in order to show Superman's successes and failures.
• You Are Not Alone: Superman attempts to get through to June Moone in the midst of her depression using this sentiment:
  "We all make mistakes. Every moment is a fresh opportunity to do something you can be proud of! We're still here for you, June!"

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