Longtime readers of this blog can probably guess why I read The Authority. There will be, at some point, a movie adaptation of this comic book series, and I wanted to know more about it for that reason. There are no details available on the movie yet, but I assume that the idea of superheroes operating above the law will be a prominent theme.
Another reason I sought out The Authority is The Planetary Omnibus, which I read not long ago. Planetary is another Warren Ellis creation, and the two properties have crossed over at least twice. The Authority appears briefly in The Planetary Omnibus, and Planetary appears even more briefly in The Authority: Book One.
Of the two properties I'd have to say that Planetary is WAY more interesting. There are some fun ideas at work in The Authority: Book One, but they're largely overshadowed by the world-ending threats that pop up every four issues or so. After the third time the world's almost destroyed and millions of lives have been sacrificed you're left feeling kind of numb, and I would've liked more lulls between battles, more time in which to know both the characters better and to examine the moral implications of what they were doing. Who are these people, really? After reading this TPB I'm no closer to understanding who any of The Authority are, or to understanding what drives them to do what they do.
Stormwatch, you say? Maybe, but I've read a few issues of Stormwatch. I wasn't seeing much character development there, either.
Also, a lot of this comic book series seems to revolve around various characters embodying things. A woman embodies a century, a man embodies whatever city he's in, another man embodies a mystical force dormant in the Earth, etc., etc., etc. It gets a little repetitive after a while.
I would, however, like to read Mark Millar's heavily censored run on the characters, the run collected in Book Two. The early 2000s was indeed a very strange time for comics, and there are probably even more interesting ideas in Millar's take. I have no doubt that he took some of Ellis' ideas forward into both his own run on The Authority and The Ultimates, and the connections between The Authority and later comics make it worth reading, even if it's not that interesting read in isolation.
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