Dan Abnett and Andy Landing are telling us a story of an earth gone horribly wrong, and they drive the point home by showering London with a "soulstorm", in which the ghosts of the dead strike like lightning at those who survive.  A little pointless and heavy-handed, yes, but it's an effective visual to get the reader into the mindset to read the story, which is basically about what superheroes do at the end of the world.

The Authority were idealists.  They knew, or believed they knew, right from wrong and did whatever they wanted in pursuit of those ideals.  In this shattered world, they find themselves questioning their mission statement and their ability to carry it out.  Hawksmoor is an emaciated wreck, a reflection of the city that once granted him his powers.  He has all but given up the role of hero, resigned to the fact that there is no longer good and evil, only survivors.  Swift is forced to watch as innocents are murdered because she feels her survival will be important in the long run.  The Engineer stubbornly refuses to give up on the now-useless technology that once gave her powers.  Apollo, who draws his power from the sun, is forced to live away from his team above the dark clouds.  Only The Midnighter remains as he was:  a man who will do anything or kill anyone for what he believes is right.

What makes this kind of story work with the Authority in particular and not with more famous heroes is that we wouldn't accept most other heroes acting in any way other than heroic .  Spider-Man must always be good.  Superman must always do the right thing.  The Authority were never particularly good, so it frees the writers to ask many more questions and take the characters into morally questionable territory.  Taking these morally ambiguous characters and suddenly thrusting them into a post-apocalyptic world is a concept-within-a-concept, and might normally alienate new readers, but credit must go to Abnett and Landing for boiling this potentially-complicated story down to its bare essence.

It's a shame, if unsurprising, that Hairsine isn't back for issue 2.  The art by Simon Colbey is perfectly fine, although I'm not enamored by the way he draws faces.  They're a bit sketchy, and might look right at home on a Vertigo book, which is probably exactly the kind of art Wildstorm is wanting on their books right now.