Introducing: the AuthoriTeens!

"Listen up guys and dolls! We're the Authoriteens and we're here to prevent the kabloo-ing of, like, the Multiverse!"

(or my 'GEN13#11 rules' review)

No, Gail Simone isn't on crack, trust me, it all makes sense later on.

Who are they? What do they want? Where do they come from? Why weren't they on the cover instead of the Tranquility Goths a.k.a. the Liberty Snots? (although Mangacide is seriously cool)

(no kidding, I almost missed the issue, I thought they were showing up in #12 only)

The Authoriteens premiered at the end of Gen13 #10 and are the warped creation of Gail Simone who obviously has an itch on her funny bone -- and it's about time! As much as I am ecstatic with the leaps and bounds she has made in the industry, I do miss those wacky YABS columns and her Deadpool/Agent-X/Killer Princesses/Simpsons runs where anything went and you could see the insanity take root, settle down and live am long and prosperous life.


So, er, back to the Authoriteens.

They're exactly what you feared: the teenage versions of the Authority, coming from an alternate world where everyone is a teen. (let's not delve too deep in that, shall we)

They are:
DAYBREAKER: the dim-witted teen Midnighter. He can run the same routine in his head a thousand times, and still mess up. Aparently straight/denial and with a cast regular at Jackass.

KID APOLLO: guess. Prefers Babies to G.I.Joes but he would still totally fry that blonde bitch to get to Ken's stable. Total powerhouse.

THE INTERN: get it? the junior version of the Doctor. brilliant. He's the snotty know-it-all in class who loves info-dumps.

CONTRACTOR: get this one too? junior Engineer. She mainly floats around and uses weird words. Experiencing serious early growth. She likes to frug.

NESTLING: Her eggs bring all the boys to the yard. Total tramp according to Daybreaker. But then again that would be like taking sex tips from your kid brother.

JACK HATFIELD: The teen version of Jack Hawksmoore. The Spirit of Small Towns. Think Smallville to Metropolis. Brilliant (applauds)


What else did we like in GEN13 #11:

-Finally someone points to the elephant in the room and explains the discrepancies between this and the rest of the Wildstorm relaunch titles. Namely that every other title picked up where last continuity left off, while Gen13 was the only title that rebooted. Now we finally learn that the kids' souls got transferred to their new cloned bodies upon their death, and there was some more inexplicable cosmic mumbo jumbo that will probably tie into Final Crisis or Worldstorm or whatever. So the kids have literally re-launched, withuot prior knowledge of their lives, but unknowingly drawn towards each other and the people/places they knew. Sweet.

-Gen1, or the Gen13 babies!!



They're so cutesy! I want to see a whole army of cloned babies going up against the teens! Gen1 times a hundred! Baby havok! Shit will fly! (erm... ok). They're cute.


-The sequence between the gutters: brilliant! When the Intern takes Roxy and Rainmaker on a tour to the intricacies of the Multiverse, they literally step between the Gutters, in a fitting tribute to Morrison's ANIMAL MAN, the mother of all 4th wall breakers, and John Byrne's SHE-HULK. The kids walk through panels, climb down them and even walk around old Gen13 vol. 1 covers
If you're going to do a 5-page infodump, you might as well give your reader a flashy setting/locale to distract him from the abuse.


What we DIDN'T like:

-oh, the art... needles, sticking in! Not a good choice to have the fill-ins in this issue, and certainly not a wise choice to get Sunny Lee to do the 4th wall breaking art. Was the deadline demon so dire?

Sure he managed to do the above page right, but when it came to the one on our Left, he delivered a whimper when the script was seriously calling for a BANG. It's a page featuring the teenage/Kid version of all current Wildstorm titles. It's Wildkitties. It's Stormwatch PHD in primary school, it's the Planetary as toddlers. It's... mostly covered by the two honking figures of Roxy and Caitlin, and it's hastily put together, a 5 minute sketch each at most. Boo :(

[you can check out more pages from the issue over at SCANS DAILY, and scroll down to the comments section for a fun exchange between Gail and the post's author who wouldn't believe that it was really Gail posting there ]