Time again for WildStorm's annual attempt to revive interest in The Authority.  For some time now, the book has hovered in a limbo - nowhere near as popular as it used to be, and nowhere near as interesting, but still WildStorm's best seller.  Although admittedly, that's not the achievement it used to be either.

Last time I checked in on the Authority was during the Coup d'Etat crossover when they took over the USA.  Since the whole concept has been quietly ignored in Sleeper (where it would wreck the set-up, since questionable government agencies are fundamental to the plot), I rather assumed it had been quietly resolved in early course. 

Apparently not.  Instead, we have Authority: Revolution, a new series with the Authority running America.  In fact, the previous Authority book only ended last month, so this is really just a renumbering of an ongoing series.  But they've got a new creative team, with Ed Brubaker and Dustin Nguyen aboard, so evidently they think it's worth a shot.

I'm less than convinced, however.  To be fair, at least we're not getting a clone of the successful earlier runs by Warren Ellis and Mark Millar.  Ellis' Authority was the definitive widescreen superhero book, boiling the plot down to the bare minimum and letting Bryan Hitch go wild with ludicrous destruction.  Millar took that style and welded on a liberal power fantasy, producing a run that had a lot of supporters, but didn't do much for me - even though I agree with most of Millar's politics, I found it rather shrill and pleased with itself.

The widescreen stuff is pretty much gone here, but the liberal power fantasies remain, as the nice reasonable superheroes with historically accurate views on hemp set about imposing their views on dumb America, in their capacity as usurper government. 

I have a fundamental problem with this concept.  My fundamental problem is that it's unbelievably stupid.  I just don't buy the basic premise of the Authority being able to take control of the US government, and the public at large accepting them.  Sure, there are some rioters here, but it seems pretty much established that they're accepted by the political and legal establishment as the de facto government.  That's absurd.  It's stupid on every conceivable level.  It wouldn't command public support - they're far too left-wing for that - and while I could buy them being able to wreck anything the rightful government wanted to do, I don't buy them ever having the public support to set themselves up as government.  The book would need to go into very, very broad comedy for me to accept this as a workable premise.

And this issue does nothing to help me get over my fundamental problem with the concept.  Unfortunately, it comes across as a less sexy version of the Millar approach - a bunch of liberals who are painfully pleased with themselves droning on about something they read in High Times, and generally living up to every right-wing stereotype about self-righteous liberal elitists.  I agree with almost everything they say and I still loathe them.  The whole thing is just so insufferably smug.

I suppose it's possible that Brubaker is going the Squadron Supreme route, where the heroes learn the hard way after 12 issues that the "taking over the world" thing isn't viable.  But even if that's so, I just don't like the characters, and I have no desire to spend a year watching them learn the blindingly obvious.

Rating: C

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