Nope. I don't see us in this book, either...

Jason Schachat's Occasional Breakdown
10/20/06, page 2
page 1

When you see Grant Morrison’s name on a book, you know it has to be good. If that book happens to be titled The Authority #1, you expect a life-changing event. Morrison probably figured that too, which is why the Scotch bastard teases us with the only Authority comic not featuring a character named Kev to make you wonder if it’s really about The Authority.

After a Norwegian submarine (no, I’m not sure Norway has submarines, either) mysteriously collides with a glowing “something” underwater, a man named Ken (not Kev) receives a call from the rescue operation. It seems that terrorists snuck aboard as cooking staff and started shooting the crew around the time of impact.

Most of the book lingers on Ken’s deteriorating relationship with his wife and the eventual discovery of certain mysterious underwater objects any Authority fan will quickly recognize, so I won’t go into detail. For the most part, Morrison is asking us to take a leap of faith. Midnighter, Apollo, Jack Hawksmoor, Jenny Quarx (Quantum), The Engineer and The Doctor haven’t stepped onto the stage yet. Who knows how long it will be before they do?

I will recommend this title for the sheer amount of intrigue. Morrison’s dropping clues with his pacing and perspective. He said in interviews that this would be a return to Ellis’ style but with a new take, and you can’t help but agree with that. Gene Ha’s simplified art and Art Lyon’s smokey colors give the story a mood very different from most stories in this franchise.

Still, we have to ask ourselves what the future of The Authority is. This book started the widescreen style (back when it was still Stormwatch). Arguably, Ellis was doing much the same thing with Stormwatch that Morrison did with JLA around the same time. The crucial difference was that Ellis managed to dissect the superhero team genre and put it back together while telling his story.

Ellis’ heroes learned the hard way that they couldn’t trust in governments to fix the world. In the end, it was all up to the few people who were willing to do what was right, no matter what it cost them. Sadly, the subsequent runs of The Authority diluted then destroyed both the format and the content. Let’s hope Morrison can pick up where Brubaker left off and get us back to the garden...

The Flash #5, the penultimate chapter of the “Lightning in a Bottle” story arc, does just as much as the last four. Too damn little. Griffin’s evil, check. Bart’s Flash now, check. Flash’s new love interest has been kidnapped by a foe from the past, check. Now what?

Ironically, none of these pictures came out because the flash didn't go off...

Following the resolution of how Bart survives Griffin’s attack (he turns into Flash, duh), Bart gets a pep talk from Cyborg, which almost reminds us that Bart has a history in the DC Universe and isn’t some brand new character, even if the writers treat him that way. Cyborg posits that fear is the only thing holding Bart back.

Wow. A superhero needing to overcome fear to get control of his powers. How original.

Bart then accepts that he is now The Fastest Man Alive and starts beating Griffin to crime scenes. Griff no like.

Now, I can appreciate that Mark Waid’s run on Flash was damn near impossible to follow. That’s why Geoff Johns made his run about the Rogues (interestingly enough, his first issue was also called “Lightning in a Bottle”). It made some sense for the series to shift away from Wally, since so much had already been done with his story, but this new Flash has swept away nearly everything Johns and Waid built up over the last two decades.

Honestly, why can’t the guys who wrote the pilot for the Flash TV series (scribes Danny Bilson and Paul Demeo) write a decent Flash comic? Rather than draw from the rich history of the franchise, they give us the goddamn Griffin. Rather than delve into Bart’s character, they make him a whiny Peter Parker wannabe.

Admittedly, they do FINALLY bring a face from Impulse’s past into the story, but it’s too little too late. By the fifth issue of a sixth issue arc, we should be much further along. Instead, it feels like we’re still meandering through the second half of a first issue. I’ll say it plainly: this chatty, one-dimensional snore-fest isn’t fit to line bird cages with.

As if you needed anything to remind you why Gail Simone rocks, she uses Gen13 #1 to roll the once-successful franchise all the way back to square one and get things right this time. Yes, Fairchild is still a babe. Yes, Rainmaker still loves the ladies. Yes, Grunge still has all the intellect of a pile of meat.

But this time the story immediately makes itself about how sick and f**ked up this world is in how it treats teenagers.

We begin with some type of private internet cam show where a group of wealthy people chat through what seems to be a live broadcast of a date rape. We then learn that some grossly-overfunded covert-ops group seems to have orchestrated the whole thing. Things get even more disturbing when the traumatized cheerleader victim wanders out of the car covered in blood with metal sabers where her arms should be– right into the wetworks team that ends the experiment.

Then we’re introduced to Caitlin Fairchild, Bobby Lane, Percival Edmund Chang, Roxy Spaulding and Sarah Rainmaker in their rotten lives as American teenagers. The nerdy girl who never fits in, the open-minded guy who others can’t stand, the fun-loving skater who’s a few too many years behind the times, the trouble-making partygirl and the gay girl who can’t find a place she belongs.

But the creative team throws us a curveball: what if this was all according to plan? What if these lives were being twisted into a specific shape for a specific purpose? What if these personalities were molded to bind them together into the perfect team?

What Gail Simone and art team Talent Caldwell, Matt Banning, and Carrie Strachan do is nothing short of masterful. Taking these tired wannabe X-Men pandering to an MTV audience and making us want to clutch them to our chests and assure them that everything will be alright.

They still have all the muscle of their heyday, but now we might like them for more than their swimsuit issues and flashy appearances in Wildstorm crossovers. Now, we might actually have a story on our hands. Pick this one up.

I think he's compensating...

Wildcats: WorldStorm #1 (yes, there were a lot of first issues this week) tries to revamp another Wildstorm book with their special ingredient: Grant Morrison. However, this effort is hampered by something the new Gen13 doesn’t seem to struggle with: continuity. In the end, it’s all about one thing: WorldStorm starts now.

Sorry, just had to get all those colons out of the way.

After a brief history of the Wildstorm Universe, we find that Grifter’s laying low in the muddy alleys of a third world nation overrun by Daemonites. Hadrian is practically running the world with his new “a Spartan in every home!” sales of robot superheroes, but he calls Pris up to his space station for some sweet, sweet lovemaking and a superhero team recruitment offer.

Meanwhile, Kaizen Gamora has been resurrected in the Asteroid Belt by the Gamorran terror army, Hellspont is leading a fleet of starships toward Earth, and Majestros and Sister Zealot are knee-deep in Daemonites on a completely overrun Khera.

And the issue ends not long after that.

So we still really don’t know what’s going on at all. Jim Lee gets his big beautiful panels and Morrison gives us a nice summary of this world flooded with superheroes, but it’s all just prelude to the WorldStorm.

No, the issue doesn’t tell us any more about the WorldStorm. As far as we know, it’s just the big groups of baddies coming along to womp the hell out of our planet. Why? They’re evil, duh.

Much as I’d like to give this book a chance, what with the often good Jim Lee and godlike Grant Morrison handling it, it feels like nothing more than a nicely done prologue to a crossover. It’s hard to judge since they really don’t start a new story. That may change in a couple months, but this first issue is dead on arrival.

Jason Schachat