Issue 1

Issue 1 "Red Shift" Script: Doselle Young Pencils: John McCrea Inks: Garry Leach Colours: Ian Hannin Editor: John Layman

Plot

C-Space. A Transdimensional reality. Home to The Throne, the headquarters of a team of 10,000 superheroes. All bar two of them just died. The survivors, King one, hereditary leader of the Throne, and Morningstar, the youngest member of the team and King One's heir. Their enemy: Abraham Dusk, the quantum bacteria that walks like a man. King one calls him Traitor, and he says he's doen very bad things, things that would give Einstein nightmares. When Morningstar's powers (which are similar to Apollos's) do nothing to stop Dusk, King one reshuffles reality, bringing him and Morningstar to the Throne's engine room, powered by a reality prism. King one disables Morningstar's powers and sends him into a backwater reality stream called the Bleed, and prepare to release the energy contained within the Prism, intending to stop Dusk once and for all.

Priming for the reunification of the monarchy

Philadelphia. Jackson King and Christine Trelane stand outside a cathedral, on the trail of a transdimensional man, who they've been trying to recruit for Six months, and they knew about since the incident on the Carrier. Christine heads back to the Crown, their headquarters, while Jackson goes to talk to this Transdimensional man.

Not a few blocks away, a pack of kids calling themselves the Young Authoritarians are killing "suspected" crack dealers and immolating homeless people, "making the world a better better place no matter how many people they have to kill". They are Authority Fans, and they get their powers from Matt, a young boy who has glowing rods sticking out of his body following a toxic waste spill.

In the Cathedral, a young woman is confessing to "Father Ray" that she works in an AIDS hospice, and smothered a victim because she couldn't stand to see him suffer. She asks him if he's going to turn her over to the police, but he tells her There are no Judges, and if she should look in the mirror, and if she sees anything that looks like God, to give him a call. She runs into the night. King walks over to him, and we learn that Father Ray is Jon Farmer, aka Morningstar, who has been hiding from the world since he went to the Carrier lookig for heroes, and only found Jackson.

Christine and Professor Q, the "Calculator Godess" are in Pathway Xi, another transdimensional realm, chatting about Jackson and his plans, and setting mines for a group they called the Four Horsemen. They return to the Crown, and Christine tells Professor Q that she has to find a weapon in manhattan to use against Chimera, and they'll send "The big blue Bastard"(Union) after it. Christine says what Jackson did to get him back gives her the creeps. She then has some sort of prescient flash, and somehow realises what the Young Authoritarians are up to.

Back to the cathedral, where King and Farmer are talking inside Farmer's mind. Farmer accuses Jackson of being insane, who retorts by saying that Farmer is pretending to be a priest, but Farmer isn't, he actually became a priest when he realised the world is ill. King tries to convince Farmer to join him again, saying that their are problems in the world, and "even our origin stories are going sour". Outside, the Young Authoritarians are demolishing a housing project, but Matt knows that he was meant to be a hero, and that the others are misusing the powers. when he tries to stop them, they turn on him, beating him mercilessly. Christine arrives and shoots them with stun darts, but Matt is venting power and ready to explode with the force of thirteen Hiroshimas. Farmer finally emerges from his seclusion and vents te explosive force away. His powers have obviouly changed since the events in C-space. King telepathically alters the memories of all the bystanders to remove the evidence of what happened, as this team will work hidden and awy from prying eyes.

the world needs surgery, Welcome to the first cut.

Unsolved Mysteries

• What happened to C-Space?
• What did Farmer do between coming to Earth and Joining the Seminary?
• What has happened to Jackson and Christine?
• What is Pathway Xi?
• Who are Four Horsemen?
• Who is Chimera?
• What did Jackson and Christine do to get Union back?
• Where is the Crown?
• What do the initial conditions pertain to?
  

  Analysis

• The Young Authoritarians are, of course, meant to evoke certain members of the Authority: Jenni is Jenny Sparks, Fletcher is The Midnighter, Whitey is Apollo. There is a girl with curly hair who is either Swift/The Engineer, and then there is Matt, who can really only be analogised to the Doctor, if anyone(Matt is outside the group to a certain extent).
• Jackson and Christine certainly have set themselves up well. They have spent months working to build the basis for the team, setting up their headquarters. you really do get the feeling that in this issue they still haven't finished setting up the team, as if the authority started with the scene at the end of Stormwatch #10
• Farmer's powers have obviously changed by his passage through the prism. Where before, he fired lasers at Abraham dusk, he has some kind of spectral power effect, and he is able to vent Matt's powers away, with no radioactive fall out.