So, the library bought me (well, not just me, but y'know what I mean) a copy of THE AUTHORITY: REVOLUTION by Ed Brubaker and Dustin Nguyen, and it got me thinking...
There seems to be a moment when an ongoing comic book stops innovating, furthering its own mythology, and starts recycling its own past. It has ended its creative phase, and enters another one as a franchise. Wotta stinkin' word, but it means a lot: the entity has changed hands from art to commerce. Instead of producing a new chapter in a novel, the creators are basically whipping up a little patty that has to resemble the last one exactly, to keep the existing fan base ticking along nicely. Because that's what franchises do. I don't go into Burger King expecting the head chef to get a little inspired and improvise from one Whopper to the next. I want to go into any Burger King in the world and get a Whopper that tastes exactly like the one in my home town.
This doesn't actual occur that often in comics, right in front of your eyes. These days, comics come, hang around a while, and go. Usually they get canceled pretty quick. Other times, they have a finite lifespan, so (like PREACHER, SANDMAN, or STARMAN) they get to be genuinely novelistic, with definitive beginnings, middles and ends. Few comics reach the stage where they can go: okay, we're safe. Maintain the status quo! Start treading water! The few times this has happened in comics, it has happened on my blind side. God only knows when it happened in the big, iconic titles like SUPERMAN and BATMAN, but one thing is for sure: it was long before I was born. In the FANTASTIC FOUR, depending on who you ask, it happened either just over halfway through the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run, when Kirby realised just how much he had contributed to the series for not enough credit/reward. So, instead of creating anything new of any great import, his plots shifted to re-using elements he had already established. The other school of thought says that the last fifty or so issues of FF were too damn good for that to be entirely true, and the FF only really started to maintain its holding pattern when Kirby skipped town, replaced by lesser talents in thrall to his characters. Similarly, by the time Steve Ditko left SPIDER-MAN, all of the great rogues gallery were already in place, but some of the classic Spidey mythology was established in the John Romita era. That said, after around fifty issues or so of Spidey, the book does go into a holding pattern, a soap opera powered not by change, but the illusion of change.
I was, however, around to witness this happening to the X-MEN. Say whatchu want about the current fragile mental state of John Byrne, but after he left the book (#143 if memory serves), it becomes pretty much a "greatest hits" compilation of tropes, themes and characters introduced in the previous fifty issues by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum and Byrne. A trend that continues to this day, with even a great run By Grant Morrison being referred to as a "remix" (or as a meta-textual comment by Morrison on Claremont's work: either way, it's a case of pop will eat itself).
So, fifty issues and yer out. This would seem to be as far as a hit comic can go before it starts to repeat itself for the sake of not wanting to take risks. That must mean that THE AUTHORITY's descent into becoming a franchise comic sets a new record. Twelve issues for Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch to set the tone. Twelve issues for Mark Millar and Frank Quitely to subvert it. And then what? Rehashes by lesser talents (no names, but they know who they are). Piss-takes by old stagers with no great feeling for the characters (Garth Ennis, Keith Giffen, Alan Grant).
And then, what next for the comic that came to define its era, and then fell so quickly from grace with its own publisher? To save it, it was given to Wildstorm's safest pair of hands, SLEEPER's Ed Brubaker. I'm a big fan of Bru's. I reckon he's everything Bendis is hyped to be but isn't really (the similarities are striking: both small-time indie crime comic writer/artists, turned mainstream writers, turned "saviours of super hero comics"). SLEEPER was the deepest, darkest noir ever in super hero comics, and offered a new take on a tired genre that seemed to offer a life saving olive branch for the increasingly moribund Wildstorm impint. So, when given what has become its signature title, what would he come up with? Um, a rehashing of the past, unfortunately. A villain from Warren Ellis's origin of these characters. A plot structure from Millar's tenure. Some flashy SF trappings from the Ellis' era. A shot of Millar's trademark sadism. An "Authority versus a team of super hero analogues" battle straight outta Millar's playbook (this time, it's versus a team of golden age analogues, a little bit FREEDOM FIGHTERS, a little bit ALL-STAR SQUADRON). Nothing that stands out as definitively Brubaker in the mix. Even the sex and cursing seems... forced.
So, say something nice, Mark...
...uuuh...
... I liked the art. Kinda like early Mignola by way of the Gaijin Studios crew.
That is all. Move along.