This may be one of those story arcs that can only be fairly judged in trade paperback form, when all the twists and turns have been revealed. I sure as hell hope so, because this issue reads like a parody of the Authority, rather than the Authority-lite we've been getting, and follows up with an ending that pushes the reset button about as hard as I've ever seen it pushed. The departure of Frank Quitely, the announcement of a mature readers relaunch and several fill-in creative teams have made this feel like a bit of a lame duck at any rate, but I've never been tempted to just drop the book altogether before this issue. When Ultimate frickin' X-Men is doing the Authority style more effectively than the book that started it all, something has gone horribly awry.
A big part of the problem for me is the artwork, and I had never realized to what an extent The Authority was an artist-driven book before. Although I gave credit to Hitch and Quitely for their gorgeous work, to my mind it was Ellis and Millar who really shaped the book. However, the scope and style of this book calls for a certain kind of artist, and while I think Nguyen is a fine artist who will probably be great on the upcoming mature readers Wildcats, he's not at all suited to the work here. His faces lack definition, and his storytelling is too small and cramped to really get the widescreen effect. Even with the big splash pages of Re-Space or the Authority team shots, there's just not enough going on to make this feel big.
However, another part of the problem has been the writing, which just hasn't clicked with me. There are certainly interesting aspects of this new team to be explored, and Peyer hits a few of them: the role of the chaplain, the notion of working with the world order and using their spy satellites and resources and the in-fighting amongst a team that is together for money and fame rather than ideals are all depicted nicely. However, because they really have no ideals behind them, these characters aren't at all sympathetic, and I honestly couldn't care less what happens to them.
Also, while I'm enjoying some characterization bits, I enjoyed them more when they were subtle and mentioned in passing, rather than focused on. Last Call's homophobia was a terrific aspect of that character, but it's been played up so much that now it's the only aspect of the character. Ditto the Colonel's temper or Teuton's sensitivity. Perhaps part of the point is that without ideals, the team is little more than one-dimensional cardboard cutouts, but if that is the case, Peyer has made his case a bit too effectively.
However, I was still with this book in a "treading water, one more issue to go" way until the ending. This is the sort of thing that I expect to see in poorly-written super-hero books that have been running for hundreds of issues and have to substitute shock value for originality. There's one more issue to go, so I'm hoping that there's more to this ending than meets the eye, but I have a sinking feeling that in the end, this will have been four issues spent establishing something that Millar was going to do more effectively in two pages.
