THE AUTHORITY REVOLUTION #5 REVIEW

[Nick Costanzo]

<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/previews/dc/0205/AuthorityREV5T.jpg" align=left alt="Authority: Revolution #5"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/previews/dc/0205/AuthorityREV5.jpg)Reviewer: Nick Costanzo, ncostanz@vt.edu
Story Title: The Eternal Return: All Good Things...

And then there was fallout.

Written by: Ed Brubaker
Pencils by: Dustin Nguyen
Inks by: Richard Friend
Colors by: Mayor/Royer of WSFX
Letters by: Jared H. Fletcher
Assistant Editor: Kristy Quinn
Editor: Ben Abernathy
Published by: Paul Levitz
The Authority Created By: Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch

This Book is Intended for Mature Audiences. If you're a kid, don't @#$%!-ing read it.

Last issue, The Authority defeated Paul Revere's modern-day Sons of Liberty, only to end up vaporizing Washington DC in the process. This issue deals with the fallout (pardon the pun), and for the most part it plays out in a rather predictable fashion.

It shouldn't surprise anyone how pissed off the American public is after all this mess. It's called Authority: Revolution, but they might as well call it Authority: The @#$!-Up. Really, the team has yet to do anything to be truly called a victory in this mini so far, They've let a team of lunatics destroy their cities right under their noses, only to make things worse when they try to stop them. Even without the repeated visions of the future, it's been obvious that this mini is all about the deconstruction of The Authority so far, and it comes dangerously close to happening here.

The first of two “shockers” in this issue isn't shocking at all. Honestly, I thought Midnighter would have left the team earlier. He's certainly been moody enough. The way he throws all the blame on Jack, and turns his back on Jenny and Apollo... I'm not liking it. At first, I thought it might be a new face of Midnighter's personality, something more introspective and perhaps even sensitive than what we've seen before. Instead, the man is acting like a child, and it's almost as if he's happy to finally have a justification for leaving the team (even though we've never really seen any indication that he wanted out before). I know that things are bad at the moment, but the team has seen worse devastation than this before, and it just seems really crappy for Midnighter to storm out like that. I don't know if it's Brubaker's writing here that irritates me, or if that he's just writing an unfavorable personality trait really well, but regardless I'm annoyed.

From there, the exits keep on coming. The Doctor dissolves the Shamanist Church (literally), and The Authority finally decides to step down from their self-appointed rule of the United States. It kinda reminds you of when the US pulled out of Vietnam. They're not admitting defeat (even leaving on a threat), but they're still retreating with their collective tails between their legs.

I'm thoroughly depressed now. The team is dying, they're being beaten to a pulp, people all around the world hate them now... it's just a crappy time to be a member of The Authority these days.

Luckily though, we're given a little twist at the end in the form of the identity of the man whose orchestrated the events of this series so far. Now, I thought it was the Doctor, driven insane in the future and back to exact his revenge on the team that drove him away. I mean, I was sure of it, especially after the future Jenny showed up last issue. But nope, I was wrong. Instead, the culprit turns out to be someone who's supposedly been dead since before The Authority was even created. I know that those of you who were reading back in the Stormwatch days are probably more excited than I am, since I really don't know much about this guy except that he's bad. Brubaker writes some pretty good villains though so I'm looking forward to see where he's going with this little revelation.

Nguyen's art fits the story well, in that it's quiet and not terribly striking. There aren't any big fight scenes, and there are only so many ways you can draw flattened rubble I suppose. I really can't say anything terribly good or bad about it; it does its job and it does it quite well.

This is an issue with a lot of surprises, even though most of them seem to fall a little short of having any real impact to me. I'm just too distracted with seeing my favorite superhero team go up in flames. Don't get me wrong, it's written quite well, but that doesn't make it any less depressing.


ART:
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STORY:
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OVERALL:
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Buy The Authority: Revolution online now from X-World Comics and save! (http://x-worldcomics.com/yourvirtualstore/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=1511&cat=AUTHORITY%3A+REVOLUTION)

[thebigO]

i am a new authority reader. i have read the first trade and all the issues thus far of revolution and i really love it, i am slowly going to get all the trades, but can someone help me out on who the bad guy was in the end? i have no idea.


also- midnighters behavoiur. it was made quite clear from the opening page of this mini thaat he was unhappy with the teams current position. he wasnt enjoying leading the country AT ALL. That, added with the future visit-of course he wants out of the team. he has been lead to believe that it is the only way to save them all......

loving this title.

xO

[Kevin Sutton]

This is going really well. The identity of the mystery man wasn't that big a surprise to me; but I still have plenty of other questions, mostly relating to ther Midnighter's trip to the future.

[Chris Nutall]

Great Issue yet again, far better than Green Lantern; Rebirth.



Bendix was the founder of Stormwatch, the group that enforced the UN's views on superhumanity. Bendix was appointed its first Weatherman, a job that was held at other times by Jackson King and Christrene Trelane. At some point, Bendix began to take a more interventionist view to world politics (GN: Force of Nature), sending Stormwatch on covert missions against Gammora, the US and Japan. Bendix also created and betrayed a team of secret superhumans, including Apolo and the Midnighter (GN: A Finer World.)

Bendix went completly mad when the Changers began to threaten his own plans for Earth and he sent Stormwatch in to battle them, a battle which they won at high cost. Jenny Sparks, realsing that bendix was mad, attempted to kill him and failed. Unknown to anyone else, Bendix was alive and working with IO, coordinating their actions against Stormwatch. After the fall of Skywatch, Jenny Sparks killed him for good.

However, Bendix came back in some form in the Monarchy. I don't know much about that cos I never read them. And now...

I must say; he is the perfect villian for this peice. Brudbaker deserves credit for that, at least.

[kirigirisu]

Hmm.

At first, I thought the appearance of Henry Bendix as the Big Bad pretty much tossed all of Dosell Young's work on The Monarchy out the continuity window, especially the bits about how Bendix engineered his own death in Stormwatch just to become "imaginary" and fight evil with the Spider People out in the greater supercontextual blah blah blah as "Happy Hank Bendix."

According to the Monarchy run, Bendix turns out to be a "good guy" after a fashion and a rather reluctant horrible bastard type he portrayed in Ellis' final Stormwatch run.

Someone pointed this out to Ed Brubaker and he responded by saying that the next issue sort of resolves that without buggering up Warren Ellis or Dosell Young's stuff.


That being said, so far the whole series has been kinda hit-and-miss with me. Certain elements I like, others, not so much.

Plus I thought Dustin Nguyen's stuff on Wildcats 3.0 and his first Authority run was crisper and more dynamic than this current run. Perhaps he's in that awkward "transitional period" stylistically speaking. Having purchased a bunch of his original artwork from both previous series and looking forward to posessing more of his future work, I hope it's just a temporary thing, since I'm not exactly high on the current stuff.

Just my $0.02.

[Jordan T. Maxwell]

i had heard about the "mystery man's" identity being revealed before picking this up and was apprehensive as i'm a HUGE Monarchy fan. but now that i've read the issue in its entirety, i think it may be my favorite issue of the Authority so far, actually addressing a lot of the issues i'd been having with the team since the start of Millar's run. and i have enough faith in Brubaker to handle this without totally effing up all the highly sweet and clever stuff Young did with Bendix in the Monarchy.