Over on the weekly comics thread, it was suggested that it would be a good idea to have a separate thread for Seven Soldiers. I agree, so here it is.
For those who didn’t know and have wandered in here, perhaps hoping to find the rest room, Seven Soldiers is actually seven comic miniseries , as well as two bookend one-shots, all by Scottish madman Grant Morrison. The titles are:
Seven Soldiers #0 (On Sale Now!)
Shining Knight
Guardian
Zatanna
Klarion the Witch-Boy
Mister Miracle
Bulleteer
Frankenstein!
And Seven Soldiers Special #1
All the series are separate, and supposedly form separate complete stories, but combine to form a greater whole.
So, first order of business. Spoilers.
I suggest that we all agree to be respectful of each other’s enjoyment of the comics, but at the same time, keep the thread from getting too cluttered with black boxes. Let’s adapt the Lost thread rules:
Please remember, links inside spoiler boxes are readable even to those who don't highlight. I suggest we say spoilers are open from the Thursday after the comic hits the stands onward. If you can't get to the store, simply excuse yourself from the thread until you can catch up. And if you're waiting for the trade paperbacks, for God's sake, keep out!
A very promising start here as Morrison launches straight into the high-octane weirdness. I had some trouble following it on the first read through, but that’s par for the course with this writer. On my second pass, it made much more sense. We’re steeped in DC history here, but even though I’m not famillar with (I knew of a couple, but I’ve never read anything they figured in)any of these characters (or their predecessors), I still found the group enjoyable. I mean, the object was, “Let’s assemble the most pitiful group of losers we can”, but it still worked. These are low-rent heroes. Then he kills them all. Well. I saw it coming, because these aren’t who the series’ are about, but still… Dang.
As for connections and speculation: Slaughter Swamp is the birthplace of Solomon Grundy. I wonder if he’ll factor into anything? He’d make a great antagonist for Zatanna, Klarion, or Frankenstein.
The Hunter, at the end looked familar, then it hit me, that’s Neh-Buh-Lon, the Adult universe of Qweq and “The Wild Huntsman”, from Morrison’s recently concluded JLA Classified story. Now we know what he hunts. Those little pixie men are from that too. They were used by NBL and Grodd to control the IUC. They… Are much scarier here.
I just read it today – very interesting start. Over on the WCD thread, Candid is disturbed because the Vigilante appears to be dead. I’m not that upset about it, but that’s because I’ve never read much with the character. I do think it’s pretty cool that Morrison’s taking the modular approach so seriously – first act this may be; it nonetheless doesn’t actually have any of the Seven Soldiers in it.
Not much more to say yet, although I, Spyder was pretty creepy. (Is he new or has he been around before?) I also dug the fact that this was based on past 7SOV continuity, even though the Post-Crisis line-up of the team (including the Golden Age Spider) was featured in one issue of one poor-selling comic (Stars & S.T.R.I.P.E., #9 IIRC).
There was a mini by James Robinson a few years back; I think it tied in with Starman continuity. There was also a scary cyborg version of him in Kingdom Come.
And yeah, his B-list status is why he’s being used. Writers get more lattitutde with characters nobody cares about than they can get with, say, Batman. Remember, when Brit Pack writers took over titles like Swamp Thing and Doom Patrol, those books were on the verge of cancellation. American writers had pretty much run out of fresh ideas for the characters.
Vigilante’s apparent demise is only one of my points of contention with the series. I’m worried that the revamped Guardian and Shining Knight, and to a lesser extent Klarion the Witch Boy, will completely displace incarnations of those characters that are explicitly in continuity.
My view is if you make a new version of a character like that, you gotta acknowledge the previous ones. Grant Morrison is a good enough writer to be able to play within the bounds of continuity, so I will be disturbed if he pulls a John Byrne.
I thought that guy looked like the Nebula Man. Didn’t catch the pixie connection, though. Huh. Nice timing on DC’s part.
This is generally something that doesn’t bother me. To paraphrase Duke Ellington by way of Peter Shickeley, “if it reads good, it is good.” I think it’s irrational to give a hoot about revamps as long as the revamped product is good. OTOH, I do understand it; the point of fiction is to make the reader develop an irrational attachment to characters which don’t exist, and I’ve faced a similar issue recently with the LSH, but ultimately continuity must not be allowed to get in the way of a good story.
All that said, I think the fact that the picture of the Post-Crisis 7SOV is prominently featured suggests that this series is not ignoring continuity any more than Animal Man or Morrison’s JLA did ((who even knew who the Post-C 7SOV were except Geoff Johns and the, like, 12,000 people who read Stars & S.T.R.I.P.E. #9?). Maybe this Shining Knight isn’t going to be Sir Justin, but I don’t think Sir Justin’s going to cease to exist anymore than he did when Johns introduced a new Shining Knight during the Silver Age fifth-week event. Morrison, much moreso than the other Vertigo-flavor British Invasion writers, is a big fan of the DCU; I trust that he knows what DCU characters he’s impacting and how they’ll fit in. Another clue is the heroes he’s chosen for this project – in this issue alone we’ve seen a Golden Age character and new versions of several others from both DC and Quality. So far I’d say the worry is that this mini is steeped in continuity rather than the other way 'round.
Oh, and I don’t know where the witch boy’s been featured in the last few years, but if you’re worried about the Klarion that Peter David was writing, don’t. He was lame.
I haven’t read it, but I have to ask, why the hell didn’t Vigilante get his own title? He is famous enough to be a regular on “Justice League Unlimited” He is the modren day cowboy who fights the crimes of the big city with the tools of the old west.
Well, appearing on JLU isn’t any measure of fame. They’ve managed to get everyone on there. Even perennial D-listers, like, say, Vigilante.
As for why he hasn’t had his own series (ever, the guy was pulling support duty even when he was published), it’s probably simply that there hasn’t been a demand and no creator has come up with a good enough idea for him. Hence, he’s more or less disposable.
I think Western characters fall into a weird space. Too gritty for four-color superheroics, too out of palce and innocent for modern-day gritty heroics, like the Punisher. They work best in a Western, where they can be on their own terms, a sadly largely disappeared genre. CandidGamera, I’d share your concerns, but I think it’s unlikely that Morrison will replace or contradict any continuity. I think it’s more likely that he’ll give us new characters that, somewhat confusingly, have the same name and similar gimmicks. The old stuff will probably still be there for whenever someone wants to pick it up.
Ah! Well, only Shining Knight is from the old SSoV. Incidentally, they were:
Shining Knight
Vigilante
Green Arrow
The Star-Spangled Kid
The Crimson Avenger
And their sidekicks
Only Green Arrow went on to greater things.
Morrison seems to be playing with the team’s central concept: Seven Second-Stringers, rather than rebuild it straight-up.
If you want to be technical, The Star Spangled Kid had her own book, mid nineties, along with her “sidekick”, and still is in the new JSA series, and I love the new Crimson Avenger, in the new JSA, but that isn’t what you probably mean. I had to say it though. Starro commands it.
Not only that but the series Young Justice reastablished tho original female hero, The first Red Tornado, Ma Hunkel, a Founding member of the JSA.
Oh, and I looked up some stuff and found previews on line. They take forever to loud, but they show that Vigilante is not forgotten. That is, unless he is mention in one issue, then never mentioned again. I hope not.
The question doesn’t make much sense, IMO. He didn’t get a miniseries in Seven Soldiers because Morrison chose to use the character differently. You might just as soon ask why Aquaman or Detective Chimp didn’t get a mini in this event, and the answer would be the same – 'cuz that’s not the role the writer wanted them to play.
The Star-Spangled Kid Menocchio is talking about is the original, Sylvester Pemberton, who with his partner Stripsey headlined Star-Spangled Comics in the '40’s. They were both members of the original 1940’s version of the 7SOV. The SSK that Scott is talking about is Courtney Whitmore, a character Geoff Johns created in his late-'90’s series Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E.. Courtney’s step-father is Stripsey (now a bit older), and when she discovered this she began using the original SSK’s gadet belt to fight crime. (When S&S was cancelled it seemed clear that Johns was angling towards a 7SOV reunion/relaunch, but AFAIK he never got to it.)
BTW, since Post-Crisis Green Arrow and Speedy didn’t exist in the Golden Age, they couldn’t have been in the 7SOV. Instead, the Post-Crisis team included Vigilante’s partner Stuff and another Golden Age archer character, the Spider from the 1940’s Quality Comics feature Alias The Spider (in Crack Comics). My understanding is that the Spider in the original series was a good guy who went undercover as a crook to infiltrate criminal organizations. Post-Crisis, this was upside-down; the Golden Age Spider was a thief and smuggler who went undercover as a good guy. His betrayal resulted in the 7SOV’s defeat at the hands of the Nebula Man.
The Spider apparently had two sons. One, a bad egg like his dad, took over the alias The Spider and was a villain in later issues of James Robinson’s Starman and Hawkman, until Green Arrow shot out his aiming eye. The GA Spider’s other son is the Tom Dalt we met in this issue who (if I’m reading the Prologue correctly) took over the family identity of the Spider to be a contract killer until his experiences in Slaughter Swamp remade him as the heroic I, Spyder. (Where he also gave up the bow for some undefined spider power.)
Here’s a question – Vigilante mentioned that his 7th had gotten cold feet. Who might it have been?
Also, “Gimmix” is clearly a version of Merry, Girl of a Thousand Gimmicks, who was Merry Pemberton, the original SSK’s sister. Jacqeline Pemberton is obviously connected to the original Merry; does anyone know if she’s been established before? Is she Merry’s daughter or is she meant to be Merry herself (or something else)?
You know, there’s a simple way to make the Vigilante interesting. It goes something like this.
“They call it flyover country, on the coasts. They have the fancy costumes in the bright colors and the boys flying around in their underwear. Here in the heartland, there’s just me. The Vigilante. When people need help, when the going gets weird, when there is no recourse or succor, I am there. I solve the crimes of the new west with the tools of the old.”
X-Files meets Joe Leaphorn with a bit of Punisher style. And a bit of Preacher style. Simple, obvious, easy.
Awesome response, E-Sabbath. By the way did you ever read Mad dog? It was also set in the heartland. It was about a masked vigilante, and was a Marvel comic. No, wait, it wasn’t that, but a diffrent title.
P.S. to very critical people. Being in the heartland does not also mean that he can also be in a big city at the same time.
El Diablo? Yeah, years back. And frankly, it’s hard to use a motorcycle as well in the city. Not that he can’t… and I can imagine some fun stuff to do in Denver when someone’s dead, but I’d move him out to the open spaces. Scarier stuff there.
