The Authority: Revolution Part 1
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art and cover by Dustin Nguyen & Richard Friend

The Authority are plagued by a group of old superhumans called the Sons of Liberty, consisting of old patriotic superheroes from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. They rally American citizens discontented with the Authority's take-over of the US government, and lead a series of riots across the nation, answering to a mysterious man in a hood who operates his own Carrier and has an entire alien race under his control.

While the team struggle to control this threat, the Midnighter receives an unsettling visit from an aged Apollo, who claims to have travelled from the future. He shows Midnighter a future in which Authority rule has reduced the world to a totalitarian dictatorship, and in which Midnighter himself has become a brain-damaged despot. Apollo tells Midnighter this future can be avoided only if he breaks up the Authority.

Soon the leader of the Sons of Liberty, a hero codenamed Paul Revere, challenges the Authority to face him and his comrades on the White House lawn. In the ensuing battle, during which one of the combatants, a nuclear-powered member of the Sons of Liberty, becomes unstable. The resultant explosion destroys the White House, and much of Washington, D.C. Ashamed by their failure, the Authority resign as rulers of the United States, and disband. The Doctor dismantles his Church of the Shaman. At the end of the fifth chapter, the mysterious man in the hood is revealed to be ex-Weatherman Henry Bendix himself, who then takes over the United States in the Authority's absence.

Three years pass and much has changed in the Wildstorm Universe. Jack Hawksmoor and the Engineer have taken the Carrier for themselves and travel through the multiverse for pleasure. The Midnighter battles crime all over the world, leaving Apollo to look after their adopted daughter, Jenny Quantum. Swift has retired to a Buddhist monastery in Tibet. Tragically, the Doctor has apparently died from a drug overdose.