The Authority #29
Story:
Art:

Written by Mark Millar
Art by Gary Erskine
Colors by David Baron
Lettered by Tom Long & Sergio Garcia

Published by DC/Wildstorm.
Price: $2.50

My Verdict: Pathetic.

After what feels like five years, the final four-issue story arc of the book ends. The Authority, via a deus ex machina, regains their memories and goes back to The Carrier to stop the madman Seth and also the congolmerate who replaced them. To make matters worse, all of reality is about to collapse in on itself. But what, exactly, is the team going to do about it...if anything?

Once upon a time there was a comic that had balls. It was born out of the utter and complete destruction of its predecessor at the hands of a possessed genius named Warren Ellis. It was big, beautiful and destructive. It spat in the face of the superhero genre and the genre (along with its fans) said, "Thank you, Mr. Ellis." When Warren Ellis left, another man stepped in and alleviated our fears by making the thing even more big, beautiful and destructive. Then, something happened. The book was controversial. The book was owned by a corporate conglom. The book fell further and further behind. A fill-in story arc was planned and blew chunks. Finally, when the last story arc resumed after the fill-in story arc, it had been so damn long, no one could remember why they cared. And the attitude and aptitude of the creative team after (and during) the fill-in didn't help to remind anyone. The controversy sank the book and current events kept a brilliant-sounding story arc from a new creative team from ever happening.

This fairytale draws to a merciful close with the end of the series. After the first issue in which everyone was pretty much left for dead except for The Midnighter and Jenny Quantum, the replacement Authority was actually pretty boring. Then when the real series resumed, we learned they weren't dead, they had just been "re-assigned" as payback for their position on world affairs. Now with the convenient death of...the replacement of The Engineer, sorry, it's been months, I can't remember her name...the implants controlling The Authority are gone and they can now go defeat Seth because conveniently Swift knows the "fail safe" to disable Seth.

What a waste. This issue smells like something a writer wrote when he knew that it didn't make a spot of difference what he did, he was headed for a brick wall. Because of the delays, the story is hard as hell to follow. And the ending feels terribly, wrongfully rushed. This is the payoff for sticking with the book for the aeons it took to complete? And the resolution to the whole death of the multiverse thing might have been interesting in a different context, but here it's just lame. It's an overindulgent attempt to resolve the series into something that's a definitive point of completion. But it falls flat on its face.

So the book that featured the evacuation of the earth, the death of God, and the use of a interdimensional Carrier as a blunt instrument has died with a whimper. I'm so pissed off I can't even begin to tell you. Shame and disgrace on all souls involved with its pathetic demise. It deserved better. And honestly, so did we.