Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: Godhead: Episode 2
Written by: Robbie Morrison
Penciled by: Dwayne Turner
Inked by: Sal Regla
Colored by: WS FX
Lettered by: Jared K Fletcher
Editor: Ben Abernathy
Publisher: Wildstorm Comics/DC Comics
The complaints about the new Authority book are well know and numerous:
- The art is crap
- The stories lack the edge they used to have
- The book’s villains are all generic hordes who hail from parallel earths
- The acts of property damage and violence lack the novelty and the weight that they used to have
Not to mention the fact that readers are starting to see how the characters are pretty much one-dimensional caricatures. Something that was routinely overlooked during the book’s heyday and in light of the unison circle-jerking critics engaged with the book. One could argue, the Authority has simply fallen victim to the inevitable backlash towards everything that the book once personified and the influence that it had on the industry. One can also argue, the presence of low-level talent on the book has sped up this backlash since it was once praised for the top-level talent working on it. Sure, Robbie Morrison was the darling of the indy comic scene, but he fails to deliver the goods on what is his first real break in the competitive world of “Work-For-Hire” comics. Not to mention, Dwayne Turner’s art is just plain generic when you compare it to previous Authority artists.
So is the book doomed? Given the recent rumors that Wildstorm has called upon both Ed Brubaker AND Jim Lee to take over next year in order to save the Authority, it seems that Wildstorm still has hope to save the book rather than let it die.
Anyway, enough talk about how the book sucks. On to the review!!!!!!!!
This issue is the second part of the “Authority versus Organized Religion” storyline. The Authority takes on a Scientology-type cult that has begun targeting various organized religious establishments for destruction, at the hands of its various super-powered assassins. Swift barely saves a group of Buddhist monks from a horde of flying cyborgs, then the Authority decide to pay the Church of Transcendence a visit. There, the Church’s leader John Clay (who looks like a cross between John Travolta and Preacher’s Reverend Custer) offers to brainwash Apollo “out†of being gay. Then, Clay has his minions (including the Nell Carter-type fat lady who has sonic scream powers and a generic werewolf) attack the Authority. Apollo and Swift get the crap beaten out of them, Jack Hawksmore is torn limb from limb, Midnighter is given the psychic whammy by Clay, and Engineer is apparently depowered by the Doctor, who has been converted into the cult by his ex-wife.
The ex-wife thing is an interesting anomaly, as Mark Millar had all but stated outright, during Authority #17-20, that Doctor was married to and divorced from Courtney Love. In this issue, we find not only that the Doctor is still married, but it’s to a Ms. Velez, who is Hispanic and looks nothing like Courtney….
The issue ends with a bunch of unresolved cliffhangers. Hawksmore’s injuries, Engineer’s power loss, and Midnighter and the Doctor’s apparent “conversions” are not explained to the readers at the end of the issue. This is kind of frustrating given the ambiguousness of Engineer’s power loss and Hawksmore’s injuries, but given that Authority has always been written in a serialized format, this should be considered acceptable script pacing.
Overall, this issue is uninspired crap. Robbie Morrison has taken a decent storyline and totally screwed it up by making it generic. Why should I care about a badly written Church of Scientology analogy, two poorly conceived villains based upon John Travolta and Nell Carter, and a generic werewolf guy? Why not pit the Authority against the Catholic Church if we are going to do an, “Authority versus the evils of organized religion” story? God knows the Catholic Church, with their grand tradition of persecution, torture, murder, and policy of allowing priests to rape and molest innocent kids while telling their victims to go f— themselves, could work in the context of the story. Or even Radical Islamic groups like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda? Now that would be an interesting story, as the Authority could deal with destroying an organization that defies their normal M.O. of genocidal magical beings or invaders from parallel earths. Not to mention, offering up opportunities for the book to include political commentary about the current war on terror, as the Authority could find themselves forced to deal with working with the same people who tried to kill them during the “Brave New World” arc. Not to mention, addressing the way they accidentally caused radical Islamic terrorists to set up their own little mini-state in Kosovo (as seen in early issues of Stormwatch: Team Achilles).
