Westfield: For people who have never read the book before, who and what are The Authority?

Ed Brubaker: The Authority are an incredibly powerful superhero team that started out being earth's last line of defense, then slowly morphed into a team that tried to fix the world and not just stand by while people slaughtered each other by the thousands, and at the end of this evolution (in the Coup D'Etat event) they deposed the government of the US and installed themselves as temporary leaders of our country.

Westfield: What can people look forward to in The Authority: Revolution?

Brubaker: A whole helluva lot of twists and turns. If there's one thing I cannot stress enough for fans reading this series, it's that almost nothing is what it seems.

I'm going to put these characters through the wringer, and it's going to be a lot of fun, and at the same time, I'll be doing something that the comic The Authority has always done well - which is to be a subtle black-humored commentary on the superhero genre. There are things I see going on in the mainstream right now (a mainstream that was in large part redefined by Warren Ellis's initial run on Authority) that I want to put my own twist on and the Authority is the perfect place to do that. Hell, it was practically designed to be that way. And if I can make it somewhat funny and dark, put in another layer of thought, and still make it the over the top action book it was meant to be, then I'll feel like I've done what I set out to do.

And for longtime fans, there'll be a lot of pleasant surprises, too. We'll see answers to a lot of questions that have been left dangling since the beginning - like where did the Carrier come from, and who was the Jenny from the 1800s, things like that. It's going to be a blast. Dustin and I are really psyched to be working on what we consider to be the coolest team book in the industry.

Westfield: The Authority has a reputation for being controversial. Do you feel it necessary to put the group into controversial situations or will the characters themselves make situations controversial? (For example, could they make going to the store for milk a controversial situation?)

Brubaker: Not really. The way I look at it, the controversy came from their reactions to what most teams go through. Another team attacks, and instead of subduing them, they blow them to pieces. And the other bits of controversy came from outside the book, on the publishing side, and for what I've got planned, I don't see a lot of problems from that side of things. I'm not planning to do anything with the book that's already been done, so I don't need to push most of those buttons again.

The thing I look at with a book like this, is that because of what this team is, what they've done in all the previous runs, and the fact that it's a mature readers book, you can really never know what they'll do, how they'll react, and the possibilities are endless. That's one major reason I would rather write the Authority than the JLA.

Westfield: Sleeper has been getting some very favorable press. Is there anything you'd like to tell people about the book?

Brubaker: Yes. Buy it! If you haven't seen the press, or noticed all the Eisner nominations, or haven't heard of Sleeper at all - there are two trades available, Out in the Cold, and All False Moves. They are two of WildStorm's best-selling trades of the year, the first already well into it's second printing, and the new #1 that follows them is just out a few weeks back. This is my favorite book I've ever worked on, and I think it's my and artist Sean Phillips best work so far in comics. It's story about an undercover operative in a super-powered crime organization. Sort of like Donnie Brasco as a superhero. If you like 100 Bullets or Wanted, or Powers, you'll love Sleeper. Trust me.

Westfield: Do you have any other upcoming projects you'd like to mention?

Brubaker: I've got a project I'm scripting over Jason Pearson's plot and art, which is scheduled to run as the second arc in Razor's Edge, the new WS book. And I've got a two part Tom Strong story drawn by Duncan Fegredo that I'm incredibly proud of, the first part comes out in October.

And in November, I've got a big book launching from Marvel, but I can't say what it is.

All in all, it's a very busy time for me, thankfully.