Customer Reviews

Authority, The: The Magnificent Kevin

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I really enjoyed the previous two books in the Kev series. I found them to be laugh out loud funny and although much of the material could be viewed as offensive it really seemed to work in the context it was used. The third book is probably the weakest in the series and has less funny moments but it is still definitely worth a read.
What this book does is flesh out the Kev story and bring it to a satisfying close. The story keeps your attention and has satisfying plot twists and suprises. It continues the very anti-establishment focus of the first two novels but concentrates more on the bad treatment of the SAS. The artwork by Carlos Ezquerra is great as usual and the "Alien" based dream Kev has at the beginning of the book has a very "Strontim Dog" look to it. I think the bad language might be a little overdone but this is a minor criticism.

Garth Ennis is good at combining serious topics with satire. Here, he is using Kev as a kind of symbol for every sucker who has volunteered to become cannon fodder in wars whose causes he knows nothing about. Kev is the absolute antithesis of the glamorous James Bond -type agent, and despite his unappealing nature it is hard not to feel sympathy for him.
In this episode of the Authority, Kev is finally confronted with a task so awful that not even he is willing to obey orders, and faces betrayal from the only family he has had since growing up -his teammates in the regiment.

I was not too fond of the first Kevin stories (collected in KEV) but decided to give this one a chance. I don't think I made the right decision. In this volume, Kevin once again finds himself working with The Authority. The Authority has been attacked by a goofy, pin-headed creature that claims it is a vagina. It then throws a pie and the superhero is out of action (nice Alien parallels here). When Midnighter becomes the only Authority member to escape, he enlists the help of Kev.

Kev, as we know, is an extreme homophobe and has difficulty relating to Midnighter and Apollo. This has not changed. As the two work together, we learn a little more about Kev and the factors that have helped to shape his life. But eventually the crisis is solved and Kev goes his own way.

While it was sort of nice getting the Kev character fleshed out a little more, it is just more flesh I don't like. What little humor the earlier Kev stories had they seem missing from this volume. The goofiness of the story and the unlikeable Kevin combine to once again create a story where I have to wonder why it was written in the first place. The Kev stories seem more like a parody from the pages of Mad or Cracked than actual canonical Authority tales. My advice is to avoid this one unless you liked the earlier Kev stories.