The new DC Avengers arrive in theaters
The authority
(Image: CC)
James Gunn has revealed ambitious plans for the future of the DC Universe. The Authority plays a large part in it, a shadowy group of superheroes that formed the basis of the Avengers as we know them today.
On Tuesday night, the new heads of DC Studios, James Gunn and Peter Safran, revealed the future of the DC Universe, their counterpart to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
DC Studios starts with a clean slate
Superman will have a new movie directed by Gunn himself, the mastermind behind the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, Batman and Robin share the cinematographic stage again for the first time in 25 years and several series have been announced.
You can find the details and an overview of all the announced projects here. with our colleagues from WANTI have listed them all for you.
Today we are approaching one of the new superhero titles announced by DC Studios: The Authority. That’s because that’s the only superhero (group) that will play a major role in the new movies and series, which we haven’t seen in a movie before.
wild storm
Just as Gunn managed to bring an obscure group of superheroes to a broader audience with Guardians of the Galaxy, he’ll do so again for DC with The Authority. Chances are you’ve never heard of them, and that’s not surprising.
Superheroes fell under WildStorm, one print of DC Comics that began as a separate publisher of former Marvel artists and writers. Jim Lee, a famous comic book artist, sold WildStorm to DC in 1998. However, the comics that fell under WildStorm remained a separate universe.
The two main comic series of the print were WildC.ATabout a group of superheroes fighting aliens, and storm watch, about a secret United Nations organization tasked with protecting our planet. After the acquisition by DC Comics, that second series was canceled through a huge event where the aliens from the Alien franchise, yes that franchise, defeated the superheroes.
The DC Authority
You can quickly forget that detail, but the few superheroes that survived the event formed a new superhero group: The Authority. A kind of Avengers, but from WildStorm. The new comics about the group were initially written by Warren Ellis.
Ironically, The Authority consisted of superheroes that were clearly pastiches of popular DC and Marvel heroes. Midnighter is a braver version of Batman, Apollo is clearly some kind of copy of Superman and Doctor, by the way, is very similar to Doctor Strange, the Marvel superhero.
The rest of the crew consists of Jack Hawksmoor, who gets his powers from cities (yes, really), Engineer, whose blood has been replaced by copycats, Swift, a woman with falcon wings and talons, and Jenny Sparks, that can create electricity. Also unique for the time, Midnighter and Apollo, the Batman and Superman of the group, were a couple:
The beginning of film comics.
Also, they’re all pretty generic superheroes, but it made for a mega hit of a comic book series. The great art and scope of the adventures in The Authority felt more cinematic than other comics of the time. In fact, the comics of the time were ‘widescreen comics‘ because they were reminiscent of movie blockbusters. Now, that goes for pretty much every comic Marvel and DC ever put out, but we’re talking about a time for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Another era.
The basis of the Marvel movies.
Speaking of Marvel, there’s a pretty direct link between The Authority and the early Marvel movies. After Ellis finished the strip, writer Mark Millar picked up the pen. Yes, the man behind Jupiter’s Legacy, the Netflix series that failed. He poured his own sauce on The Authority.
Soon after, he was hired by Marvel to modernize the Avengers, as they needed a drastic update for modern audiences. The resulting comics that Millar wrote later formed the blueprint for the Avengers as we know them today, and how you saw them in the first Avengers movie. Track? Millar conjured up Marvel superheroes basically to the Authority. The same gritty, adult tone, the same cinematic approach that he applied to those heroes. The similarities are obvious when you put them next to each other.
superman and authority
Since then, various teams have worked on The Authority comics, but the enormous popularity of the first series has never been matched by WildStorm. In 2010, DC decided to shut down the print to close. Some popular characters, including The Authority, were transferred to the world of DC superheroes.
They recently got another chance in the form of superman and authoritya new comic in which the group of superheroes come together to help Superman in his fight against an alien race.
The future of the DC universe
The big question is, how will the superhero group fit into the new DC Universe? That is a question that James Gunn has yet to give a concrete answer to. All we know is that the superhero group is getting their own movie. Of course you can speculate. The probable equivalents of DC’s Avengers will protect Earth from cosmic threats, a kind of Guardians of the Galaxy. satisfies Captain Marvel style approach.
At the time of writing, we only know that The Authority will be a movie. The only new DC movie that already has a date Superman: Legacy. That blockbuster won’t be released until July 11, 2025. In other words: it will be a long time before we see The Authority on the big screen. In the meantime, you can on Amazon order this packagewhich collects the best comics about the group of superheroes.
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The Authority: DC’s new Avengers come to the big screen