 The ADD Blog Flashmob Fridays A Criminal Blog Kochalkaholic!
|
Morrison’s story/stunt is not nearly as conceptually clever as Moore’s
recent gimmick, but it is more accessible. Seven Soldiers is something
different in a market where almost nothing is ever different at all, which
makes it notable; it also happens to be quite good, more than readable, and
as collectively well-rendered as anything in the mainstream market today.
Morrison’s miniseries are successful to varying degrees on their own terms,
and their synthesis (slow and subtle) makes them even more compelling. A
rambling old ferryman, the Virgil of Seven Soldiers #0, tells the doomed hero
narrator of the prologue, “Slaughter Swamp is one of those in-between
places, where solid things turn soft and change...” Therein lies the
excitement of Seven Soldiers, a collection of miniseries that do not achieve
their full potential until they too grow soft and run together. Seven
Soldiers is an inverted magic eye poster: a group of seemingly easily
decipherable pictures that, when viewed from the proper distance, blur to
create an almost-tangible bit of abstraction far more layered and compelling
than the individual fragments. The real fun of Seven Soldiers comes not in
watching Morrison juggle a series of unrelated genres but rather in seeing
what mosaic forms when he drops them all on the floor and lets the shattered
pieces intermingle.
To separately review single issues or even single miniseries is to be
doomed to failure from the start. Although the individual series are
independently comprehensible as linear stories, such a view would drain
their real power. Imagine listening to The Beatles' The White Album -— but only the bass
lines. Very likely Seven Soldiers’ eventual success or failure will be
decided in the in-between places. The series will either gel as seemingly
inexplicable connections are made almost but not quite apparent like some
psilocybin-induced vision of unity -— or wither as pretty, occasionally
excellent throwaway DC miniseries that strain but never attain some
hyper-conceptual big brass ring. Two issues into the first wave of books and
it remains hard to tell which way the collective project will turn, but even
if it ultimately flops there is more excitement and adventure in Morrison’s
attempt than in any other Big Two book of the last year.
The prologue to Seven Soldiers tells the tragic tale of a group of six
heroes who unite to fight a deadly enemy -— only to be massacred in the final
pages. The team consists of mostly dimestore superheroes and one avenging
cowboy. They are amassed via the Spyder by a mysterious group of men in an
attempt to vanquish the Sheeda, but the disorganized group, a washed-up and
uninspiring collective that might easily be referred to as West Coast
Watchmen, proves to be no match for the skull-faced Sheeda soldiers.
J.H. Williams and Dave Stewart do a beautiful job illustrating what
ultimately functions as a coy guidebook to reading the rest of the
miniseries. Though Morrison is more than opaque regarding the history of
the villains and particularly the nature of the group battling the Sheeda,
key name-dropping and references to people and places later in the story
help the diligent reader begin parsing out the overarching plot arc.
The Guardian #1-2
The Manhattan Guardian is the most familiar of the first crop of books, a
relatively straightforward superhero tale about a working-class schmoe
turned protector of the people.
Jake Jordan is down on his luck when the job of a lifetime comes his way:
the Manhattan Guardian, a people’s newspaper, is looking for a mascot. The
paper is written entirely by the readers, the stories filtered through
platoons of newsboys who comb the streets looking for the straight dope.
Jordan is to become a living emblem of the paper, a superpowered reporter
who will report on crime while he fights it.
His first task is to dispatch a group of subway pirates (yes, subway
pirates) who cruise the tunnels in a hijacked train car they call the
President Clinton. They murder, rape and maraud their way through subway
stops, taking the treasures and lives of citizens waiting for their stop.
The Guardian, hot on their trail, not only finds his subterranean bandits,
but discovers a world lurking beneath the city floors that exceeds anything
he could have imagined.
The Manhattan Guardian is the most accessible and self-contained of the
first wave of Seven Soldiers substories. Unlike the other three, it opens
with a two-issue arc that has a logical beginning, middle and end, and it
only tangentially addresses the more expansive story at hand. While this
makes it the most easily readable, it also makes it the least interesting,
since the miniseries take on a greater weight as they begin to encompass and
compose the larger story. While the series is not without its share of
weirdness, it feels overly familiar by comparison.
Cam Stewart’s art is solid -— the double page spread that opens the first
issue is hilarious and frightening all at once, a sick joke with a deadly
serious punchline -— but his work here lacks the twisted whimsy he showed in
Seaguy or the sex-infused noir dread he put to use as a fill-in artist on Ed
Brubaker’s Catwoman. It’s fun stuff to be sure, with pirates and superheroes
exploding out of their panels and toward the reader with Kirbyesque zeal,
but while the art (and Morrison’s story) excels, it doesn’t match up to the
head trips and elaborately textured visuals of less obviously interesting
but ultimately more substantial Klarion or Shining Knight.
As a former member of the Justice League, Zatanna represents the most
well-known of the Seven Soldiers crew (with Mr. Miracle and the Guardian
vying for a close second). Despite the name recognition (or more likely leg
recognition) factor, Zatanna has long been a B-lister, and reinventing minor
characters is Morrison’s forte. His Zatanna is washed up, tired out and at
times afraid of her own powers. She’s tired of superheroes and sorcery,
perhaps not so unlike the reader, but she can’t seem to break the old
habits.
Her story opens with an almost-clever one-off gag in which she shares her
woes with a group of wannabe superheroes. It seems that once again Zantanna’s
found herself in over her head following a massive magical accident, but the
possible repercussions of the force she’s dealing with are more dire than
even she expects. While she’s trying to sort out the details of what went
wrong and killed a group of fellow magicians at a séance, she meets Misty, a
dour young girl eager to be Zatanna’s sorcerer apprentice. Zatanna can
barely control her own powers, much less pass them along, but a demon
descends upon the two, forcing them together -— just before a surprise visitor
shows up and turns her world sdrawkcab.
Character comes before plot in Zatanna, setting it apart from the other
three books. Even Klarion, which spends the first issue establishing the
title character’s black (magic) sheep status in his parochial community
eventually shifts its focus toward the zany plotlines. Zatanna stays small,
though, focusing on the daily lives of the title character and her new
sidekick. As a consequence, the book feels lighter than the others, yet has
the most potential for growth. Morrison seems to be writing a twisted
version of Gilmore Girls with this dame duo book.
Unlike the others, Zatanna excels in the talking heads sequences but quickly
tires out when too much weirdness and magic come into play. Zatanna’s battle
with the ephemeral demon whose face appears everywhere is far and away the
least interesting part of the book; instead, the plot is driven by the
interplay between the two female leads.
Ryan Sook’s art is wonderfully expressive. He affords Zatanna an incredible
range of emotion, creating her as a whirlwind of insecurity and
contradictory feelings. The action sequences are fast and fun, but aside
from a trip through alternate dimensions in the opening issue, Morrison
hasn’t given Sook as much to work with as the other Seven Soldiers artists.
(Sook does win the award for best cover in the series so far with his
gorgeous shot of Zatanna amidst the rabbits on the first issue).
Interesting as the characters may be, the plot in Zatanna appears to be
stalling and its connection to the larger concept remains vague at best. Two
issues into a four-issue miniseries and the exact focus of the story remains
unclear, making Zatanna the weakest of the first four titles.
Klarion the Witch Boy #1-2
Perhaps the most successful of the four opening miniseries is Klarion the
Witch Boy, a tale of adolescent revolt in a religious community. Morrison
flips the disaffected-youth-mistreated-by-greedy-elders formula on its head
by casting the hero and title character of the book as a champion of the
old -— the very, very old.
Klarion is a teenaged witch living in a village community dominated by
stark religious ideology and bound by the words of the elders and a cryptic
book of myths and spells. (No, he does not live in Texas.) In Klarion’s
world, dead family members are resurrected as zombies and forced to work in
labor camps where they harvest glowing blue rocks used by the village to
appease the Sheeda and the god-force Croatoan (a nifty American history
reference, and hopefully not a fruitless one). After witnessing the
resuscitation and subjugation of his own grandfather, Klarion decides to
flee any witch way he can, hoping to reach the legendary world called Blue
Rafters. On his way he discovers a terrible secret about the elders of his
village that quickens his departure, but the world to which he runs may be
more dangerous than the one he left behind.
Klarion the Witch Boy is a delightfully weird take on teenaged
rebellion -— the Hollywood pitch spin on the book would be The Crucible meets
Harry Potter meets Aleister Crowley. But Klarion’s world is much darker than
that of the bespectacled dweeb Potter. There’s no delightful magic to be
found here; just a dying culture whose dedication to fundamentalism has
turned them into the capitalist equivalent of cannibals.
Still, there’s not much in Klarion’s world that can’t be found in Gaimen’s
Books of Magic, and the first chapter, though pleasant enough, follows too
many familiar tropes. The story doesn’t truly pick up until the conclusion
of the second issue, when Klarion, the effete blue-faced boy in
Pilgrim-wear, stumbles into the world of the Manhattan Guardian. Much like
the Guardian story, which also feels a little rote, the intrigue comes not
from the characters but from seeing two disparate worlds collide. Klarion in
Klarion’s world is as largely unremarkable as the Guardian in his, but the
act of transposing the two renders one antiquated and dark, and the other
glimmering and modern -— and serves as Morrison’s stroke of inspiration.
Frazer Irving’s art is gorgeous, not so much for his clean and effective
linework as for his evocative colors. The muted blues and inky blacks of
Klarion’s world define it, making the sudden, brighter transition to Blue
Rafters all the more jarring. The most startling panel of the book is not
one filled with monsters or zombies, but rather the final panel on the
penultimate page of the second issue when Klarion steps out of a subway
tunnel and into Blue Rafters/Manhattan. The minor change in blue tones of
the sky, a shift from murky teal to bright cerulean, marks the most dramatic
turn in the book. This change in lighting quite literally recasts Klarion’s
pale face and dark eyes, and also refocuses the tone of the book, leaving
the reader to feel as lost and befuddled as the Witch Boy hero.
Shining Knight is the most ostentatiously trippy of the four minis, a
Camelot-derived tale of a stranger in a strange land. The opening pages
thrust the reader into a bizarre sci-fi/fantasy world in which
sword-wielding knights covered in elaborate gold armor do battle with
worm-riding Sheeda who roast their enemies with laser cannons and set
terrible green giants upon them -— all this before our hero Justin tumbles
through the bottom of a mystical lake and falls straight down into modern
Manhattan. It’s a testament to the innovative mind of Grant Morrison and
particularly the gorgeous work of Simone Bianchi that the book actually
seems stranger when Justin is spirited from his terrible world to the
neon-tinted grit of NY, NY.
The actual plot to Shining Knight is fairly simple and perhaps the least
intriguing part of the book; Justin, the last knight of Camelot (not, of
course, your parents’ Camelot, or any Earthling’s Camelot for that matter),
is lost in battle with the dark queen of the Sheeda. Following a magical
mishap of sorts, Justin and his talking winged horse Vanguard are hurled
(ostensibly) hundreds or thousands of years into the future where they land
in NYC. Justin, lost, wants to return to Camelot or find some place for
himself in this inexplicable new world.
Despite a plethora of mind-bending visuals, the first issue feels fairly
routine, at least by Morrison’s standards. The second issue, however, spins
the book in a slightly different direction, heightening the intrigue. As if
the police and a curious mob boss aren’t enough trouble for Justin, a
guilt-wraith of the Sheeda descends upon him and attempts to poison him with
words. Meanwhile, apparitions of the Sheeda appear in the modern world in
search of Vanguard, munching Mafioso and threatening the city.
Bianchi and Klarion artist Frazier Irving make their miniseries the most
visually compelling of the two, and notably both artists not only do all
their own penciling and inking, but all their own coloring as well. In both
cases the art feels more complete and reflective of the tone of the story,
whereas Zatanna and The Guardian are merely nice-looking. Sook’s Zatanna
pops and crackles when she’s lost in the magical realms of the mind, and
Stewart’s Guardian is kinetic when he does battle with subway pirates, but
Bianchi’s Knight and Irving’s Klarion are equally breathtaking when the
characters are doing battle or having a chat. Irving and Bianchi create the
two most aesthetically holistic, cohesive universes, making the prospect of
overlap all the more mysterious and intriguing.
-- Bryan Miller
|
Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers is perhaps the most ambitious superhero
work on the stands today -— whatever that counts for. The story runs 30 issues
in length and is made up of seven intertwining (but not overlapping)
miniseries bookended by a pair of stand-alone issues. Each of the seven
books revives a forgotten character—some more forgotten than others,
including Shining Knight, Guardian, Zatanna, Kalrion the Witch Boy, Mister
Miracle, Bulleteer and Frankenstein. While the seven books share common
elements that occasionally interrelate, they never cross over and the seven
characters never meet, at least not in their individual titles. Morrison
claims that each individual book will stand on its own merits as a
self-contained, four-issue story but that, when read in the proper order,
the tableau of stories will coalesce into one larger picture. It’s a nifty
trick, and probably the most innovative bit of storytelling seen in Big Two
comics since Alan Moore’s Promethea poster.
Seven Soldiers #0
Zatanna #1-2
Shining Knight #1-2