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Authority

Authority

An ambitious information broker obsessed with gaining omniscience. Enemy of Spider-Man

Name:
Authority
Publisher:
Real name:
Tito Mendez
Aliases:
  • Tito Mendez
Birth date:
None
Gender:
Male
Powers:
  • Electronic interaction
  • Intellect
  • Invulnerability
  • Power Suit
cover

Biography

Origin

Tito Mendez, government fixer
Tito Mendez, government fixer

Tito Mendez was the child of a wealthy mob boss. He got into the habit of looking the other way around his families criminal activities. This became his philosophy, keep your head down and look the other way.

His dad got him a job in the Intelligence community, and Tito acted as an assassin, keeping to his philosophy of never asking questions. However, he was tricked into killing his own father. He also discovered that his wife was a government plant, and was forced to kill her. Tito vowed never again to act without having all the facts. He used the money he inherited from his father's death to start a massive think tank, to give him as much information as he possibly could.

The Authority

He then became an information broker, known as Authority. He was an asscociate of Silver Sable, giving her information of terrorist activities. However, he also had his own designs.

Authority minipulated Spider-Man by placing anonymous adds about crimes before they happened, pushing Spider-Man into conflict with Major Love in New York, and a group of monsters in Crete. He tipped Sable off to a plan by ULTIMATUM, which Sable had Spider-Man deal with. After Sable's agent, Sandman, tipped Spider-Man off to Authority's existence, Authority had a messenger send Spider-Man a business card.

However, Authority quickly learned of a crisis more pressing then his own designs. Man-Thing had come into posession of one of the Norn Stones, and it was amplifying his powers out of control. Spider-Man caught up with Authority, and Authority had him go and deal with Man-Thing.

Authority then told Spider-Man of the Globe of Ultimate Knowledge, which was in one of the Leader's old bases in Italy. Spider-Man told Authority he wouldn't give it to him, but Authority told him he simply wanted him to vaporize it, in order to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. He gave Spider-Man a weapon to destroy the orb with. Spider-Man agreed to carry out the mission, but didn't realize that the weapon was actually a teleporter. He then used the Globe of Ultimate Knowledge to gain omniscience.

However, the Watcher Uatu arrived and took the orb away from Authority. Authority begged the Uatu to make him a watcher, to show him more, but Utau instead wiped much of the information from his mind, leaving him with some degree of amnesia, muttering "I Don't know" over and over again.

Powers and Abilities

Authority, surrounded by information and informants
Authority, surrounded by information and informants

Authority ran a massive think tank in Manhattan, that employed hundreds of specialists in all forms of human knowledge. He used cybernetics to process data quickly, and used computer and communications systems to gain on-demand knowledge from his think tank. Authority himself was highly knowledgeable about a wide variety of subjects, and had formidible critical and deductive thinking skills.

Issues

December 1997

January 1998

January 2006

February 2008

Volumes

1997

2006

2008

Authors

Friends

Enemies