Also among this week's comics...

COUP D'ETAT: THE AUTHORITY - And here we come to the lame duck of DC's Eye of the Storm imprint.  Authority is a zombie comic which inexplicably continues to stagger on long after it died.  I am less than thrilled, to be honest, that DC are trying to breathe life into Eye of the Storm by building it around the Authority.  It strikes me as hostile to the directions of both WildCATS and StormWatch, and at best an undesirable nuisance for Sleeper.  At some point DC have to recognise that they've killed Authority, and it's time to let it lie.  Anyway, this issue is the Authority fighting giant aliens.  It's average superheroics which lacks the subtlety of some earlier chapters in this crossover, and it's saddled with art from Whilce Portacio, who isn't the strongest storyteller in the world.  C

HELLBLAZER #193 - The final part of "Staring at the Wall."  Mike Carey has steered this series into the area of relatively conventional superheroics.  There's still the magic and nastiness there, but on the other hand we've got guest starring roles for Swamp Thing and his magic armour.  This story also appears to be setting up for the upcoming Swamp Thing series - the sort of intertitle continuity that Vertigo don't generally go in for.  In fact, it works fairly well.  It's not as interesting as Lucifer, but as an action/horror story, it makes a good yarn.  B

KNIGHTS 4 #2 - The frustrating thing about this book is that it certainly has its virtues.  For one thing, it looks fantastic.  Steve McNiven is doing absolutely gorgeous work on the title.  No doubt there are people out there who'll find the book worth buying for the art alone, and I couldn't fault them for that.  As for the writing, there are flashes of successful characterisation.  But the whole book still remains smothered by the weight of a fundamentally stupid premise.  The story asks readers to accept that world-famous celebrities with genuinely useful abilities would find themselves almost totally unemployable.  In the Marvel Universe, that's obvious nonsense - there are plenty of organisations out there who'd jump at the chance to hire the Fantastic Four.  But even if you want to ignore that, it's still far too easy to think of obvious ways they could make more money.  Get a book deal.  Teach at a university - how many people would want to hire Reed Richards?  The book doesn't merely fail on the first hurdle of "suspension of disbelief" - it proceeds to wrestle disbelief to the ground and pummel it into oblivion with a hammer.  It's a terrible, terrible premise and they should jettison it as soon as possible, because if you can look past that (and god knows it's hard) there's definite promise here.  I would be interested in reading this creative team on the Fantastic Four - but not doing this awful, awful idea.  C

There's a new Article 10 on Monday at Ninth Art.

Next week, Uncanny X-Men #441 wraps up "She Lies With Angels".  Admirers of Chuck Austen can also enjoy his work in Exiles #44.  But that's not all - Alpha Flight is back, and it's officially an X-book this time round.

Oh, come on.  At least try to look excited.

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