The Authority: Harsh Realities
Written by Robbie Morrison
Art by Dwayne Turner, Tan Eng Huat, Sal Regla, and Sandra Hope; Cover by Turner and Regla

High Stakes

The Authority battle an invasion from Viceworld, a world-sized casino and pleasure complex catering to people across the multiverse, whose owner started the invasion so people could bet on whether or not the Authority would be able to stop it.

Reality Incorporated (#1-4)

The Authority battle an attack by inter-dimensional suicide bombers in Chicago. After all of but one of the bombers is destroyed, the last has a change of heart and surrenders. The US Army tries (and fails) to arrest the Authority afterwards, because the US government now considers it a hostile power.

On the Carrier the bomber reveals that the responsible party is Reality Incorporated, a multiversal corporation with what amount to multi-billion dollar interests in 36 parallel universes, which terraforms inhabited planets into vast resources of fossil fuel to sell across the multiverse. A meeting with Wade Walker, representative of Reality Inc., confirms that they wipe out or enslave civilisations during this process, and they intend to do the same to the Authority's Earth. After a hard battle, the Authority is able to destroy Reality Inc.'s all-out fleet attack just as it enters Earth space, thanks to the sacrifice of the surviving suicide bomber.

Behemoth (#5)

The Engineer tells young Jenny Quantum a sanitized version of how they confronted a giant monster who was attacking Kuala Lumpur. The monster was a nine-year-old boy whose latent powers were activated by a confrontation with his abusive father. The Doctor, in an action he's not proud of, was forced to assume the form of the boy's father to threaten him into submission, leaving the boy in a vegetative state