I’m sure somewhere Warren Ellis has said it smarter or better or not even this at all (seriously, YOU try and predict that man!) but it’s kind of the logical extension of the Justice League.  If people as powerful as Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman just hung around and waited for the Justice Phone to ring or worried about when Lex Luthor ot that Star Alien Doodad were going to rear their ugly head, it seems sort of a waste doesn’t it?  We get a lot of superheroes leading ‘normal lives’ or ponying up to charity work between punching evil in the face, but what would happen if they just stopped and devoted themselves to 24-hour, 365 day-a-year ass whuppin’?  If they became THE AUTHORITY (just like the name of this cartoon!) of the planet?  Are these people up for it?  What kind of world would they make?  How on Earth would you oppose people in a hgh-tech flying fortress just waiting for your ass to step out of line?

It’s brilliant and from this idea have come some very awesome stories (and some stinkers, but hey, such is comics).  The heart of the matter is there and I’ll always sneak a look at what’s got their name on it this week to see if they’re talking about the theme I really like.  Sometimes the Authority will show up in a crossover and just stand around long enough to have a little yellow box with their name hover next to them and sometimes their latest volume is dropped like it’s hot from two people you think would do really well with the theme (everyone thank Grant Morrison and Gene Ha, kids.), but on the whole, I’m waiting for them to get back to their overseeing roots.  To see what happens when the world’s most powerful people regulate.

Authority: World’s End #1 caught my eye as Number of the Beast and DreamWar and whatever else Wildstorm is doing did not:  it had their name on the book and the characters on the cover.  Woo!  Imagine my surprise to find out that the Carrier had crashed and the world was under a general apocalypse!  Man, where had I been? Now, over on Funnybook Babylon, the crew there had seemed to take some issue with the rather cliched idea of surviving the world when it done gone bad and how boring the idea of post-apocalytic worlds are these days and how much they really didn’t like the characters so it really did nothing for them.

I think this is freakin’ BRILLIANT.

Remember that thematic element I like so much?  The idea of Earth’s Mightiest being exactly what it says on the cover of the book and really being the 400 lb gorilla of evil foiling?  The way the Authority was set up, it seemed impossible for these guys to lose.  They were there to keep the peace and they had just the orbital canons to do it and now…

They failed.  Not only did they fail, but they are mere shadows of who they used to be.  The team is personally broken down in a far more elegant way than they had been before.  This is not humiliation, this is a job undone.  This is not the finer world they wanted and now they have to live with this defeat.  Already, I’m interested in not only the larger post-apocalyptic theme at work, but how the characters are personally surviving it.   Sure, the setting is cliched and we really have seen it done a tousand times before but not with these guys and each member of the Authority is going to handle it in a different way.

Take Midnighter (because he kicks ass):  in #3 he sets out to go stop the big bad and his cronies from ruining their rescue efforts and he does it the only way he knows how: violence!   A beatdown commences that can never be finished as apparently, our Bad Guy this evening can’t be killed.  Or at least, can’t be killed in a way that the Midnighter can compute.  All the times evil’s reared its ugly head, the Midnighter has been able to ball up his fist and strike it in the face time and time again for the fastest results and now?  Violence is not the answer.  The Bad Guy tells him that if he’d just asked, he would have left their rescue efforts alone anyways which, while maybe not the whole truth, presents an interesting look at how this new world works.  it works in a way that the Authority aren’t really known for.  The idea that they could have used diplomacy in order to get their way isn’t a factor for the world’s most powerful people and let’s face it: the Authority isn’t really known for it’s pulse-pounding talking action.

I got a good feeling about this new start, so let’s hope they keep on making it.