Stormwatch/The Authority has been integrated into the standard DCU. I was a huge fan of Millar's The Authority and I was interested to see how the title had changed in accordance with the general creative re-vamp strategy DC have been running under "the New 52".
The immediate changes:
a. Martian Manhunter seems to have replaced the Doctor as a member of the team.
b. Jenny Quantum is still around, but Midnighter and Apollo are not her foster fathers - indeed, Midnighter has a real apprehension about her and tries to strand her in an interdimensional limbo at one stage.
c. Midnighter and Apollo do not seem to be a couple, although the writer is clearly moving it in that direction.
d. The Engineer is in charge, and is considerably more bad ass than she was in the old continuity (its not a pleasant change - it comes across as very stereotyped).
e. Hawksmoor now literally talks to cities - they manifest as people on some other plane that he moves in. This was very intriguing, particularly when we meet the scarred manifestations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
f. The Ship is now some sort of Daemonite creation, entirely antithetical to the superheroes on board and is basically coerced into assisting. the intelligent core of the ship is a very unpleasant thing which The Engineer calls "Charlie". The ship itself is called "Eye of the Storm". It looks like a giant hairdryer. The cool Bryan Hitch design of the Ship is gone.
g. The Bleed is now "hyperspace".
h. Back in the day, Stormwatch reported to some sort of mysterious cabal. This new Stormwatch reports to "the Dark Lords" - three humanoids who live on an island called Avalon and who remind me of the Nebulaman from Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory. Its a bit crap.
i. Stormwatch has existed for centuries and has been composed of different characters over those years. I quite liked this new additina to the concept. The reader gets glimpses of these other Stormwatches from times passed (including the Crusades). It reminded me a bit of the Minutemen from 100 Bullets.
The team still fight world-threatening things - some Neanderthals who use some sort of technology to periodically set humanity's evolution back in some sort of race war; the Red Lanterns (this was the first time I'd read about the Red Lanterns, and aren't they an enormously dreary concept); some other interworld snots who are out to mine the Earth for gravity.
But a lot of the appeal of the book is gone. There's no witty repartee, no leftie "we want to make the world better" politics, and no standing up to authority which was the underpinning of The Authority. The main villain - The Engineer's old boyfriend - is entirely unsympathetic.
One other superficial thing annoys me. The costumes have been changed, for no apparent reason. Midnighter used to look like a leatherboy - slightly perverse and dangerous, a pretty simple design of black with a long leather jacket. In order, I assume, to steer the costume design away from Batman, the artist has got ride of the cape-like jacket, and covered the character in big spikes, including a very ridiculous looking one on his chin. For some reason it reminds me of a sex toy.
Anyway, I doubt I'll buy another tpb.
