In the past few years, Ed Brubaker has proven himself to be a writer who's quite comfortable in the world of mystery, who can bring a gritty crime/espionage drama to life like no other writer in comics at the moment. On The Authority: Revolution, he approaches super-heroes from a different angle... he gets political. It makes for some entertaining satire and biting commentary, as well as some interesting ethical issues, but some of the super-hero action elements are a bit too over the top and cliched, for my tastes. Nguyen's artwork is wonderfully unique and striking, and he captures the edginess of the book nicely. However, his exaggerated style doesn't work as well with the real-world components of the book, which stand out as the stronger ones.
The Authority is now running the United States of America, but as they're reluctant to do so as dictactors, they've tried to remain true to the previous form of the government. Of course, that requires them to deal with an unending stream of politicians, bureaucrats and red tape. Those folks and their in-triplicate methods don't care for the Authority much, and neither does a new faction of superhuman Americans who stage a demonstration in Philadelphia, calling for the country to rise up against Jack Hawksmoor and his team.
One of the most striking visuals in this issue is the splash page early on in the book. It brings no image of action or wonder to the reader's attention. Instead, it's an image of the Midnighter, the biggest badass in the Wildstorm Universe, bored out of his tree. It's a thoroughly effective visual, as it's not only funny, but it allows the reader to connect with the character. The leader of the resistance introduced here strikes me as being far too similar in design to characters in Alan Moore's Terra Obscura. Ngyuen's style does capture the dark maturity of the property nicely, but the more grounded scenes, featuring the Authority's dealings with the mundane, really call for a more realistic, detailed and grounded approach in the art.
It merits note that this comic book emulates the cover design of the Wildstorm event from earlier this year, Coup D'Etat. That makes sense, as this story grows naturally out of that one. Fortunately, Brubaker maintains an accessible tone here. One needn't know how or why the Authority came to take over the U.S. government. It's just enough to know that they did.
Brubaker's depiction of Hawksmoor's powers in this issue strike me as going too far, making him seem impossibly powerful and casting his powers in a somewhat laughable light at the same time. Exactly how the Rocketeer and Atom lookalikes take out Swift is not clear at all either. The super-hero aspects of this book stand out as its weakest ones, and that comes as no surprise, really. Unfortunately, those genre plot elements tend to eclipse the other aspects of the script.
So what did I like about this book? That's easy... the political elements. Brubaker takes aim not only at the Bush administration, but at political establishment in general. Brubaker essentially posits that solving people's problems really wouldn't be all that much of a challenge if it weren't for the people elected to solve those problems. It's not change that's hard, but how people react to change. The status quo is a warm, comforting thing, even if it's not good for us. 7/10
