The Authority: Rule Britannia is the second part of Wildstorm’s World’s End series. By this time, the world is pretty much of a mess: the Carrier is grounded in the city of London — now “Unlondon” — to which its lower sections have fused. Jenny Quantum and the Doctor are missing, leaving Angela Spica, the Engineer; Jack Hawksmoor, the spirit of cities; Swift, a winged woman; Apollo, a bio-engineered “Superman”; and Midnighter, Apollo’s husband and a mean fighter who can see his opponents’ next moves, to try to make some order out of the chaos. There are two severe problems that constitute the two main story arcs: first, a virus that thrives on heat and burns its victims out on an average of fifteen minutes — known as “Warhol Fever” — has infected Apollo. Because of his superhuman constitution, he stays alive long enough for the virus to evolve and become sentient. It thinks of itself as the Burn. Second, Kaizen Gamorra, who seems to have been hoping for universal destruction, has made his reappearance and is preparing to take over the world — or what’s left of it. He’s not terribly concerned about the present inhabitants, having his own clones to work with. Nor is he pleased at interference from the Authority.
There are a couple of comparatively minor complications. Lorenzo, a native of Sliding Albion imprisoned by Hawthorne at Rendlesham, escapes and starts pushing Hawthorne toward his own agenda — return to his native earth using Carrier technology. And Habib, the Doctor, seems to have imprisoned the goddess Gaea and become the Green Knight; he wants nothing more than to eradicate humanity and purify the earth.
It’s a complex and fairly chaotic narrative, and the abrupt shifts between various members of the Authority as they are dealing with various aspects of the various problems don’t necessarily make things any clearer. It’s a dense script, and in that regard, perhaps unfortunately, the drawing, by Simon Coleby, Brandon Badeaux, Drew Johnson, and Mike S. Miller, is right in sync. It’s sometimes visually incoherent, so that I, who admit to having some small experience in reading words and images, found myself wondering just what was going on. The color by Carrie Strachan is a redeeming feature — Strachan delivers a rich, sometimes almost tactile visual field, and makes adroit use of “mood signatures” in various sections to support the feel of the story.
This is one for which the reader needs to be prepared. There’s not a lot of character development. One trusts that happened in previous installments of the overall series, but if you’re looking for any revelations in that department, I hope you’re going to be satisfied with action. The few attempts at emotional realism don’t always make it — although in the case of Midnighter, that could equally well be just a function of his personality. You’d think, though, when you’re forced to shoot the man you love, your face would show something. (A sidenote, under the heading “Times Change”: DC censored a kiss between Midnighter and Apollo in one of the earlier volumes by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely, along about 2001. There are two in this collection.)
And then there’s the violence. Graphic, often excessive, it’s a major drawback in what is otherwise a decent action/adventure tale. In part I can see it as an outgrowth of the basic thrust of the series — superheroes who have no compunctions about making a better world by any means necessary. That in itself offers a comment on the traditional take on superheroes, and it’s something that seems to have taken over superhero comics (although most teams don’t seem to take it to these extremes), so that now we have portrayals of what I can only call situational, contingent morality in comics, as opposed to the traditional black/white, us/them mentality. I just wonder if it really has to be that — how shall I put it? Visceral.
In spite of its failings, I will admit to liking this collection, although I can’t rank it as one of my favorites. There are enough enticing glimpses, though, that I may even hunt down the first collection, World’s End.
(Wildstorm Productions [DC Comics], 2010) Collects The Authority, Vol. 5, #8-17.
