Man, am I ever pissed off about this Frank Quitely situation.
The Authority artist will be illustrating Grant Morrison's Uncanny X-Men run. Quitely bolted from The Authority after drawing only a couple of pages and the cover of #23, despite being scheduled to stay on the series with writer Mark Millar through #25 (supposedly the last issue of the current run).
The Authority, and its immediate predecessor, Stormwatch, up until mid-2000 or so, was absolutely blessed. Warren Ellis came on with Stormwatch #37, and took what had been a typically lame Image title and turned it into a transcendent superhero comics experience.
Ellis, with pencilers Tom Raney and Bryan Hitch, immediately created a fascinating superhero comic filled with compelling characters, biting humour, and mind-bending plots. Unlike Grant Morrison, though, Ellis's stories were always meticulously plotted and comprehensible, despite their intricacy and depth.
The amazing run of issues that began with Stormwatch #37 continued into a second volume of Stormwatch, a one-shot co-published with Dark Horse, and then into the best of all these comics, Ellis and Hitch's 12-issue experiment in wide-screen magic, The Authority.
The cracks began to show last year, with two seperate events: The Authority annual, a generic exercise in crossover-itis by creators who had never handled the characters before, and more importantly, Jenny Sparks: The Secret History of the Authority, a maddingly uneven five-issue mini-series that missed its mark more often than not, despite being written by Mark Millar, the writer who inherited the parent title from Warren Ellis with its thirteenth issue.
Millar and penciler Frank Quitely made some magic in their first four-issue story-arc, only stumbling, to my way of thinking, with a fairly lame and inconsistent wrap-up to the Dr. Krigstein storyline, a joy to behold until its final few pages. Millar was crippled in his second story-arc by two fill-in issues drawn by Chris Weston, who is a fine penciler, but not suited to the big-screen thrills of The Authority. Millar and Quitely had the makings of a great creative team, but now we know they'll only have ever completed one story arc together, the one with the stupid ending.
Now, Millar's third and final arc has been damaged by the unexpected, and not altogether explained, departure of Quitely. The entire Quitely affair has been bizarre, even by comics standards. Among the interesting notes is that Frank Quitely isn't even the guy's real name, although why he uses a pseudonym is, so far as I know, not yet public knowledge. A friend had told me a year ago he thought it was made up ("Quite Frankly, Frank Quitely," haw haw), but I thought it was close enough to normal-sounding that it might be real. Turns out, my friend was right. Well, I was right a year ago when I told him George Dubya had obviously been annointed and there was no way to stop his ascendence to the White House. Wish I'd been right about Quitely, instead.
So now, Wildstorm has scrambled for an A-list penciler to step in and finish out the title; a sad state of affairs, given the previously excellent run of luck readers have enjoyed. Apparently Arthur Adams will draw the remainder of Millar's run. It might not suck, I guess.
Except...except...
It's still being written by Millar. It could go either way. I'm not, frankly (quite frankly, haw haw), optimistic.
Millar's blown more stories about these characters than not. I won't blame him for the unsatisfactory nature of "Earth Inferno," his second arc, because he was hindered for the first half of the storyline by an inappropriate artist.
But the Krigstein solution, and the unfocused Jenny Sparks mini-series, show that Millar is not as adept at handling these characters as he might seem at first glance. I thoroughly enjoyed his first issue of Ultimate X-Men, but based on the available evidence, Millar seems to have a problem crafting endings for his stories that meet the quality and excitement of their beginnings and middles. Additionally, his ham-handed insertion of Jenny Sparks into 20th Century history (not to mention a pointless fling with Shen Li Min that apparently was done solely for the shock value), did little to justify the destruction of the thousands of trees needed to print up those five issues. I think a worthwhile story could have been told there (including the fling with Shen), but as it stands, the potential far exceeded the execution.
And then there's the wide-open question of where The Authority goes in the post-Millar era. Names have been tossed around (and not ones that fill me with hope, I'm afraid), but there's no official announcement yet from DC/Wildstorm.
It's pretty clear, I imagine, that I have immensely enjoyed what has gone on with these characters since Ellis took over Stormwatch with Volume 1, #37. I think the quality of the title(s) overall has been a priority to the editorial office at Wildstorm, or else it wouldn't have been this great, for this long.
But things have slipped in the last few months (thankfully mostly in venues other than the main title, such as the Jenny Sparks mini and the exceedinly forgettable Annual), and Quitely's abrupt departure is a serious blow.
You'll note I said at the start that I'm pissed about the Quitely situation, not at Frank (or Vincent, whatever), or DC, or Wildstorm, or even that charming Svengali, Joe Quesada.
I'm just pissed that The Authority is listing. Like a wise school child once said, I just want somebody to "Respect my Authori-tah."