quote:
Originally posted by Snapman:
If you or anyone could give a synopsis about these setbacks, that would be cool.
.....d'oh. I had originally typed them up but thought nobody wanted to hear it so I erased it. Alright, I'll give you the "shorter" version:

Frank Quietly was originally suppose to go through issue 24 with Millar, as I said before. The first problems were with some of Millar's scripts(mostly over the grahpic fight scenes, and over Apollo and Midnighter's ambiguous sexual demeanor, which Millar used primarily as the butt of jokes). This caused Quietly to fall behind on several of his issues(hence Chris Weston doing issues 17 and 18). Finally, Quietly was fed up. He signed a contract with Marvel, and broke off contact with DC. By the time anyone knew Frank was no longer working on the book, he was already several months past his deadline, and in mid story-arc.

So, DC had to find a replacement. They chose Art Adams, knowing fell well that he was about the only guy on the planet that worked slower than Frank Quietly. Additionally, they tapped Brian Azzarello and Steve Dillon as the next creative team for the book, which many were very excited about. Anyway, to give Art time to complete the story, DC decided to have Tom Peyer and Dustin Nguyen(an up and comer in the Wildstorm studio ranks) do a fill in arc, as an interlude. They produced(in my opinion) utter crap, but considering what they had to work with, I can't really blame them. At the time, all looked well.

Then September 11th hit. Suddenly, a lot of what the Authority was regularly displaying(destruction of cities, etc), seemed very inappropriate. Brian Azarello himself later admitted that, in his story, he intended to have various buildings New York destroyed in a fight. He decided that this was now too close to home, so he dropped out of the project, along with Dillon.

Art Adams then became the focus of Authority fans. He had six months to complete two issues, and while he took a month longer than planned, he finally turned in his work, and was quite proud of it. However, DC was not so proud. Aparrently, there were several "last minute changes" that Millar had added into his script, changes that were not included in what he sent to his editors. One scene(which was online at Newsarama at some point a while ago), depicted a villain raping the corpse of Jenny Sparks. This was a little bit too much for DC(especially considering at this time The Authority didn't have a mature readers label), so they asked Art to redo it. As you can probably imagine, Art was furious, and he refused.

So, then DC had to find Adams' replacement. Erksine was a fast worker, and he had worked with Wildstorm in the past as an inker, so he seemed like a solid choice. However, by this time, enthusiasm for the series had dwindled to practically nil, and coupled with the failure of the "Authority Widescreen Special", which was simply shelved prior to completion, DC decided that the franchise was in too hectic a state to continue, so they cancelled the series.