But we'll delve into that below the fold, where, as you might expect, lurk SPOILERS of all kinds! SPOILERS of the SPOILEST kind! Be warned. Oh, and Happy New Year.

In case you're interested in reading any of the previous reviews, you could go to the handy category Our Dread Lord and Master set up for these posts, where they are in reverse chronological order. Or you could click on one of the covers below, which will take you right to my thoughts on that particular issue! Aren't I swell?

Okay, let's get to the Grand Guignol! It's Seven Soldiers #1, delayed six months, building the anticipation among comics geeks everywhere, and delivering ... what? Well, let's see!

Before we dive in, I'd like to look at the three main themes present throughout this saga. Call it a review, if you must. These are themes that really should be present in a lot of superhero sagas, and the fact that they aren't, I think, weakens those that lack them. Your views may differ.

1. Transformation. This is, of course, the main theme of the saga. Each main character, and many of the ancillary ones, go through some sort of transformative experience, and Morrison wants us to consider why they do, how they do, and what they become afterward. The idea of transformation is at the heart of superhero comics, and that's why this series resonates with us, because we are forced to deal with different kinds of changes and examine them both as isolated incidents and within the context of the greater whole. Most of these transformations have to do with people becoming heroes and what makes a hero. We have seen that Justina's story can be viewed as a metaphor for the transformation from a sexless girl to a sexualized woman. She spends this entire issue with that tear in her shirt, which exposes her bound breasts. Yes, she did it to herself, but it's still an uncomfortable image, echoing the practice of feet-binding in China and, more closely, the idea of corsets and an idealized female form that is almost impossible to achieve naturally. Justina, in her journey, becomes a woman, but also overcomes the guilt she feels about Camelot's fall. Jake Jordan must realize that he has it in him to be a hero, and that a mistake should not rob him of his self-respect. He too overcomes guilt, plus the idea that his girlfriend - Carla - likes him as a weakling, and emerges a hero despite his reservations. He is contrasted with Alix Harrower, who rejects the superhero life. Remember, Jake was going to quit until he heard Ed's tale of the Newsboy Army and the Sheeda. Why is he convinced, when Alix remains unmoved by Saunders' declaration that her destiny is to save the world? Is it because he took the job to gain his self-respect back, and she had "the job" forced upon her? Is it because his former job, as a policeman, lent itself to "heroic" deeds while hers, working with kids with autism, lent itself to less "showy" heroism? Something to ponder. Klarion, the amoral soldier, learns the ways of men, and transforms from wide-eyed child to somewhat cynical dreamer. Zatanna, who is the most superheroic at the start, must also deal with guilt and overcome it, and she does it by becoming a maternal figure to Misty. Shilo Norman has to change, too, from vapid celebrity to Messiah figure. His mini-series, while perhaps the weakest of the bunch, gives us a transformative moment that is most momentous in the series, because it is most explicitly stated. Shilo literally has to escape Life, and become something greater than the living. Frankenstein, we can argue, changes the least, but even he subtly becomes less of a blunt object and more "human" throughout the course of his series.

2. The advent of adulthood. This ties in with the theme of transformation, as we see in Shining Knight. But that's part of a bigger idea of what it means to become and adult and if that means a loss of wonder. The mini-series, as we've seen, are rife with references to growing up, clashing with parental figures, and losing the innocence of children. Justina, as we've seen, becomes a woman. Jake loses one father figure - Larry - and gains another - Ed. Zatanna's entire series centers around her lack of true closure over her father's death, and the desire to reconcile with him because she failed to save him. This quest is mirrored in her mentoring of Misty, whom she does not want to lose like Giovanni lost her. She overcompensates with Misty and ignores some troubling signs about her true nature - yes, Misty is a "good" person, but she's still Sheeda, which plays a big role in SS #1. But she doesn't destroy her relationship with Misty, and it allows her to break through and have that one last moment with Giovanni that was denied her years ago. The most obvious moment of childhood becoming adulthood is in The Manhattan Guardian #1, when the Newsboy Army confronts the Terrible Time Tailor in Cyrus Gold's house in Slaughter Swamp. Klarion, meanwhile, epitomizes the Peter Pan complex when he realizes there is no need for him to grow up. Considering the kind of person his father turned out to be (since I guess we need to accept the fact that Ebeneezer Badde is his father), not growing up doesn't seem like such a bad thing. He also loses not one, but two father figures (Ezekiel and Ebeneezer) and gains another - Melmoth - who also betrays him. Then he returns home and his own mother wants to burn him at the stake. Can we blame him for wanting to stay a child? Alix Harrower, despite her exterior appearance, also takes on a maternal role. Her job is no longer an option, but she tries to help older but emotionally stunted superheroes like Mind-grabber Kid and Sally Sonic. Frankenstein, of course, rebels against his "father," Melmoth, and becomes a father figure to the lost children of Mars. The advent of adulthood doesn't just mean rebelling against or becoming parents. As the Terrible Time Tailor implies, it means a loss of magic in your life. Morrison's ideal is that our heroes will grow up and find a new kind of magic, a childlike magic that doesn't preclude taking on adult responsibilities. This is what Zatanna is able to do - she grows up, and in doing so regains her abilities. This is all about overcoming negative emotions that are unnecessary. Guilt, of course, is the big one. Everyone has made mistakes, and will these heroes allow those mistakes to cripple them? They have lost their innocence through their mistakes, but they haven't grown past those emotions. When they do, they can take the next step and realize that the magic they knew as children doesn't go away, it just ... transforms.

3. The meaning of myth and legend. Many of the series are concerned with mythology. Obviously, the Sheeda are figures from mythology, which is why people believed they were fairies early in the saga. Morrison has always been interested in myths, and in this epic, he tries to look at them and see what makes myths work and how things become mythic. Obviously, we begin at Camelot, and the fact that this time period becomes the shining ideal for all time to come is important. Justina discovers that the new world in which she finds herself is not a Golden Age, because there are no longer legends on the earth - or if there are, they are shackled, like Aurakles. Similarly, Klarion discovers that the basis of his people's faith is missing, and this allows him to create new legends of his own. Klarion, as I pointed out, understands the power of myth, and is smart enough to realize that if he is in charge of mythmaking, he can be in charge of men's souls. The idea of "becoming a myth" is prevalent throughout the series - all the characters, not just Klarion, understand the power that legends have, and therefore Don Vincenzo can go to his death with a clear head, and Shilo Norman can overcome the Life Trap by being something greater than just life. When he puts on his costume, Jake becomes more than just a man, he becomes a symbol, and the people he rescues at the New York Science Park recognize that. It no longer matters who the person is inside the costume, because the costume has become the legend. This is what Greg Saunders is trying to point out to Alix Harrower at the end of Bulleteer - she can't escape her destiny. Her fate is the most ironic - she deliberately avoids her fate but ends up becoming the "spear that was never thrown" anyway. This is the way of myths - ask Oedipus about that. Myths seize the participants in their grasp and force them to their destiny, and throughout this series, our main characters have been manipulated into places that they would not have gone. But they are the gears of mythic forces now, and must play out their parts.

So those are the three themes running through the entire epic. There are more, of course, and we've looked at some of those for the past month. But these are the overarcing ideas that are present everywhere you look, and we'll see how they come to the forefront in Seven Soldiers #1. So let's open that monstrosity and see what we can find!

On the first page we are confronted with the sewing machine in Cyrus Gold's cabin, and one of the Seven Unknown Men of Slaughter Swamp standing at the window. He turns to face the audience, and even though he's speaking to Zachary Zor, he's also speaking to the reader. He even has a DC tie pin, which is a nice touch. He tells Zor, and us, a story about the Seven Soldiers, who were destined to save the world from an evil queen, yet never meet. He also mentions that a secret order of seven angels keep the fabric of the universe from fraying, and one turned to harm and the others had to judge him. This is probably a reference to Lucifer and the Fall, which the Time Tailor ties in with the story we're about to read, where one soldier "turns to harm," and Seven Soldiers #0, where Boy Blue, we learned in Bulleteer #2, also "turned to harm" and betrayed the team. Betrayal is a staple of a lot of good fiction, obviously, and we should be looking for it in this issue. Who will die? Who will betray humanity? The mind reels!

We jump right in, as Gloriana Tenebrae tells her minions to send troops with witch-brands to the wheelroom to bind Frankenstein there. You'll recall that as he is not dissimilar to the Grundys, the witch-brands can hold his body. She also tells them to "call our Huntsman home. Our undead Spyder." Either Tom Dalt has been appointed the new Huntsman in the aftermath of Neh-buh-loh's death, or the Queen has not yet been apprised of Neh-buh-loh's death. It's not clear. On this, the second page, we're told in narration that Gloriana's "plans of conquest lie in ruins" but she still believes her victory is assured. This again makes this issue somewhat superfluous - before it even begins, the Sheeda have lost! She still plans to rebuild the fleet and harvest the 21st century, so I suppose the Seven Soldiers still have a job to do - kill the Queen, but here's why time travel epics never work for me - why does she have to harvest this particular time period? If the Sheeda exist at the end of time, can't they pick a different time period and go harvest that one? If they get defeated in one era, why return? They have different eras to choose from, right? But if they don't harvest this era, will it outgrow the bonds of Earth and be too powerful for the Sheeda to destroy further in the future? Do the Sheeda only exist because they are able to go back in time and reap the past, and if they are stopped, that timestream will cease to exist? See why I don't like time travel stories?????

Gloriana says that the mirror's prophecy concerning seven soldiers has obviously not come true, which is the cue for Justina to rise from the cauldron and challenge her. We saw the Shining Knight in one panel of Frankenstein #4, but who knew she stowed away in the cauldron itself? She should be nicely recovered from those wounds Galahad dealt her back in her series.

Then we get Grant Morrison's secret history of the world, done in big-time Kirby-O-Rama art style (Williams' art in this book is spectacular, of course). The New Gods show up - that's Orion, Metron, and Lightray - and "refashion in their own image the primitive inhabitants of a primordial Earth," giving them "fire, inspiration, and magic." They build four mystical cities - Falias, Findias, Murias, and Gorias - to rest between labors. These cities, one of which - Gorias - has been mentioned before, are copped from Irish mythology. The New Gods were bored and horny, apparently, and they "mix together, in one incredible being, the traits of space god and Neanderthal warrior!" This is Aurakles, the world's first superhero. He is sent to "tame the ferocious Earth." We move from Irish to Greek mythology, as Morrison implies that the twelve labors of Hercules were part of Aurakles' mission to "tame the Earth." Aurakles, of course, is a combination of Oracle and Herakles. The gods, as is their wont, leave the earth and Aurakles to battle the 666 Monsters of Chaos, one of which is our pal Neh-buh-loh. They entrust Aurakles with Seven Imperishable Treasures: the sword (Caliburn Ex Calibur); the cauldron of rebirth; the all-knowing fatherbox, which we know as the pair of dice that the Puritans worship as Croatoan; the hammer (of Thor?); the Merlin, which we have seen is Gwydion, Zatanna's "ideal man"; Pegazeus, the winged steed, who spawned a whole race of flying horses of which Vanguard is only an example; the spear, which is "enchanted" and "can carry death across time and strike a target many millennia away," whose name is both "love" and "vengeance." If you notice, we don't actually see the spear in the picture with Aurakles and his bevy of beauties, because the spear doesn't actually exist. Well, sure it does, but Morrison, ever coy, is using a euphemism for, well, Aurakles' "spear of manhood." His descendant, Alix Harrower, becomes the spear, which is why it can strike a target millennia away. It's all metaphorical, people! The red-headed gene carries down through the ages, too, if you'll notice.

So the Neanderthal scientists launch a time machine into the future. Melmoth finds it and copies it, and goes back in time to destroy the Neanderthal culture. This leads back to the headache-inducing paradox of time travel - the only reason the Sheeda were able to go back in time was because someone from the past showed them how to. The Sheeda, we have seen, are a dead culture, just counting out time until the planet falls into the sun. At the other end of time (time as a Möbius loop, perhaps), the Neanderthals, whose culture is higher than anything stupid old homo sapiens has managed to crank out, seed their own demise with their hubris. It seems that Morrison is saying that we cannot reach too far, because we are the cause of our own destruction. The Sheeda destroyed Earth's first culture, sure, but the Neanderthals gave them the means. The knights of Avalon were defeated too, but what really plunged the world into darkness was the first nuclear winter. Morrison implies we are going down the same path. This links back to Gloriana's pronouncement at the end of Frankenstein #4 - aren't the Sheeda human? Don't they have a right to exist? Do we in the present have a right to exist if we abuse our power?

So we move on, and the Neanderthals die out, and homo sapiens replace them. 30,000 years pass, and finally Arthur, led by the Merlin, come to Gorias, which has fallen into ruin. He is there for his father, Uther Dragonhead, who rules the world. Arthur finds the sword, but he did not guess the secret of the spear. After Arthur became king, he set out to find the cauldron. The story implies that they went into the future, because they go to "Sheeda-side," but it's not clear. We once again get the quote from the Preiddeu Annwn about going into "it," and only seven returning. The Sheeda did quite the number on them.

We go back, briefly, to the Time Tailor, who is sewing something. He tells Zor that the coat is really for him, not Cyrus, because he drowned Cyrus in the swamp. Recall that Cyrus rose from the swamp to become Solomon Grundy. He says more portentous things, like the fact that the Seven Unknown Men all look alike, and that time is screwed up in Slaughter Swamp. We have seen that the swamp is a "soft place," where different times mix together. So the men are still - or perhaps always? - chasing Cyrus Gold, even though it happened 160 years before.

Then it's back to the action, with a facsimile of an actual issue of The Manhattan Guardian - issue #777, of course. The Sheeda are attacking Broadway under the cover of Hurricane Gloria, which has finally made it to New York. The situation is summarized, and we get some other information as well. Harry the Police Horse retired, but Jake seems to riding him through the streets. Maybe Harry wanted one last shot at glory! We also learn that Benito Silencio's father, Antonio, died of a heart attack. His son, of course, was eaten on Mars by the Martian horses, and the newspaper speculates that his death was somehow "connected" to that. Maybe he was despondent? There's also an item about Shilo Norman, who reappeared from the black hole and then vanished again. No one knows where he is! We see Ed on his horse, breaking out of the newspaper to call Ed and tell him that horse lessons paid off. But he's in the middle of a group of regular folk who are being ridden by the Sheeda. Down at the bottom of the page is a comic strip featuring Carla and her mother. They're driving away because Carla can't handle being with Jake because of his crazy life. Lauren tells her that it's all going to work out, and Carla says it's not a fairytale, despite the presence of all the fairytale elements. We have seen many of the evil tropes that show up in fairytales, but Lauren subtly points out that "happily ever after" is a key component in many tales, too.

And then there's the crossword puzzle. Stupid, stupid crossword puzzle. Let's tackle it, shall we? The answer to One Across is Lena. It's hidden in the "whole name," and the last two letters of "whole" and first two letters of "name" give us this. Lena, who is Ed's personal assistant, is Chop Suzi's child. The speculation is that the "twin" is Lars, who is another employee of Ed. Makes sense. This kind of puts a dent in the theory that Cap 7 molested Chop Suzi, because I'd like to see the Punnett square that gives us two Scandinavian children from the union of an Asian girl and a black guy. The answer to Three Across is Bors. He split the atom, after all. Four Across is Badde. This confirms our suspicions that Ebeneezer Badde is, in fact, Klarion's father. One wonders if Klarion knows. Seven Across is Gloriana. I'm not sure why, but it is. Nine Across is Open, which again contained in the words "winO PENitent." One Down is Loa. Life Or Anti-life. The loa are voodoo spirits, hence the reference to Haiti, and the "capitals" mean we look at the capital letters. Two Down is Abednego. We get that from the clue - "a bad ego." Abednego was one of the three men thrown into the fire by Nebuchadnezzar because they wouldn't worship his idols. I still wonder why Judah wasn't named Meschach, but oh well. I still don't get Four and Five Down: Be and Do. Can anyone explain? Six Down is Lance. A "lance" is yet another euphemism for the phallus, which "ruins a maiden and makes a wife." Seven Down is apparently GM, as in Grant Morrison. The Time Tailor/Unknown Man in this issue certainly bears a resemblance to the God of All Comics, doesn't he? Eight Down is One. Seven into seven equals one. Really, only two clues - One Across and Four Across - give us any solid information about the story, unless I'm missing a lot. So it's basically Morrison doing his typical "I'm smarter than you are" thing. I know I promised to back off the Morrison-bashing, but this thing that he does it probably his worst attribute. Yes, you're clever, Grant. Thanks for rubbing our face in it.

On the next page Ed quotes something Shelly Gaynor wrote about the need for heroes in our society. Ed, as we know, digs superheroes, and he sums up one of the themes of the saga: "I'm calling it INSTANT MYTH!" The mythology that has been created around these heroes is happening right now, not in some distant past. This is Morrison's joy in superheroes, which we've seen in so many of his comics. The idea of experiencing legendary feats as they happen appeals to him. Jake then bursts through the page of the newspaper onto the actual streets of the city. Remember, the Guardian comes out in a timely fashion - literally as the action is happening!

Alix, meanwhile, is driving Sally to the hospital, but Sally remains unrepentant. It's interesting to see Justina fighting the Queen on this page and others, "outside" the panels. They are, of course, displaced from time at this point, as Castle Revolving moves backward through time toward the present, and not unlike Zatanna's battle with Zor, this one takes place beyond the confines of the comic book world. We get a quick glance of Justina stabbing Gloriana through the chest, and then we're back in New York, with Zatanna arriving on the scene with Misty, both of them riding Vanguard. The horses shoot lasers from their eyes - that's kind of handy. Vanguard senses Justina nearby, so he leaves them and goes to find her. Misty uses her die to put Zatanna to sleep, because she has to go it alone from now on. She says she now understands that the only way to stop the Harrowing is to take Gloriana's place as Queen. The Sheeda riders circle around her in a halo, because they recognize Melmoth's daughter, Rhiannon. Zatanna wakes up and feels foolish for falling for the "sidekick-turns-bad" twist, and suddenly Ali Ka-Zoom is there, telling her she's just surfing the spell of seven. He gives her Gwydion in his jar back to her and says, "They didn't used to call me the Merlin of the Ghetto for nothing." Just as Alix is descended from Aurakles, Ali Ka-Zoom is the descendant of the Merlin - whether a literal descendant or just a spiritual one doesn't matter. He's there to advise, and he gets Zatanna back on her feet and into the fray once more.

Klarion shows up, drilling his way to the surface and laughing because "war has come to Blue Rafters!" As he clutches his die, he wonders aloud which side he will choose. Oh dear, Klarion, you mischievous child! Misty, suddenly blue, walks up behind him as one (or both) of the die begin to ping. I did not like this sudden coloring change in Misty. It would have been far too easy to color her blue from the beginning, and I suppose you could make the argument that she was colored like a regular white person because she did it herself to fit in, and now she doesn't care anymore, so she's reverting to her natural color. I guess. Seems like a bit of a cop-out, though. In a fanciful narrative, the two children, the two heirs of the Sheeda, face off. Misty knows what Klarion's die is, and he sort of does - "Croatoan" means "Fatherbox" in Sheeda, but Misty knows that if she puts the two together, she can challenge her stepmother. Misty gives it away by telling Klarion that he holds in his hand a weapon of the Gods, and Klarion is able to distract her with a paradox - stupid time travel! - and Teekl grabs her die when she, startled, drops it. In that instant, Klarion decides that if anyone is going to take over from the Queen, why not him? Why not, indeed?

As Justina fights on, Misty tells Zatanna that he took her die and now there's nothing to stop Gloriana. In the middle of the page, Sally Sonic is kicking Alix in the head while she drives. That's a good way to get in an accident, young lady! My wife always waits until the car comes to a complete halt before she kicks me in the head. As Castle Revolving lands on New York, we see an interesting circular panel. Carla is driving past the United Nations building, where the Newsboy Army made their pledge and under which S.H.A.D.E. is having an emergency session. In the foreground, Jorge Control, from The Manhattan Guardian #3, walks along with his wife's head, which talks to him. I guess we know now that Hanna is a robot. Father Time, meanwhile, tells the Bride, who is holding the fort at the Hero Museum (on Broadway and Lennon), who the Sheeda really are, thanks to Frankenstein's e-mail from the future. Then he tries to contact Frankenstein, who is still in the wheelroom of Castle Revolving. He is asking for permission to to destroy an entire civilization as he cuts apart some Sheeda bad guys. Klarion shows up with a witch-brand and takes control of him, ordering him to go ... Back ... to the Future! Man, I'm so glad I go to use that! Misty is upset because if they beat the Sheeda, she'll become Queen and she'll have to prey on the past - she'll have to be like Gloriana Tenebrae. This goes back to the theme of becoming an adult - are you forced to become like the adults who are dead inside? Is Misty trapped to repeat the mistakes of her forefathers? Zatanna means to show her a different way, one that allows her to grow up without losing her magic, which is partly what this saga is about. She addresses the audience (which could, I suppose, mean we are party to saving the world) and tells the universe to awake and for the Seven Soldiers to strike. She releases cards from her sleeves that show various scenes from the previous installments of the epic. By addressing the reader and reaching for us, Morrison is once again involving us in his ideas of heroism. Everyone has a stake in saving the world, and it's up to the individual to make the world as good a place as we can. We saw this in his final JLA arc, where everyone in the world became a superhero, and also, to a certain extent, in the underlying theme of X-Men, where soon everyone would be a mutant with strange powers. But here Zatanna says we don't need powers, we just need to grow up and realize how to be heroic on our own.

And then Carla runs her down. Well, not really, because she disappears just as Carla is about to run her down. Carla stops the car and Jake rides out of the smoke. The hurricane, you'll notice, is gone. Carla wants Jake to stop the monsters, and Jake gets probably the best line in the book: "That's okay, baby. I'll get to them when we're done kissing." Go, Jake! Justina is still fighting Gloriana, and she mocks our knight because there is only one of her, not seven. She tells Justina that they were born to survive, and Justina says she had to learn. This is another crucial point of the series - the Sheeda have been living this way their entire lives, and the Seven Soldiers have had to come to understand what survival entails. She splits Gloriana's head open, but even that is not enough. She throws Justina off Castle Revolving to her death. Oh, no!

And finally, Shilo Norman shows up. He confronts Dark Side and tells him he is there to accept his challenge if it helps end it. This Dark Side, interestingly enough, has never met Shilo, because Shilo is no longer inside the black hole. Aurakles sits next to Dark Side, shackled as usual. Dark Side speaks to Shilo as Darkseid, his real form, speaks in another voice. Shilo tells him he can see his true form, because he now has "god-sight." We see Dark Side, with his god-machines in ethereal form around him, tells him that he promised the Sheeda this continent in return for Aurakles. Remember, Aurakles was most likely shackled below New York with Croatoan, but when the Sheeda gave him to Dark Side, he was moved. Dark Side will hunt the New Gods after the Harrowing. It's not clear why he wants Aurakles. Yes, Aurakles is "beloved of the New Gods," but what is Dark Side going to do with Aurakles? Hunt down the other New Gods and kill the original superhero in front of them, to make them suffer? Who knows? Shilo tells him that he's taking Aurakles' place, because he's the ultimate escape artist, and he'll get out of anything Dark Side puts him in. We saw this in the last issue of Mister Miracle - the sacrifice that Shilo is willing to make puts him beyond Dark Side's power. What power does anti-life have when you no longer fear death? That's the ultimate escape from Life, man! Then we learn that Dark Side really wanted Shilo all along! Ah-ha! He is the "master of the life equation" and the "avatar of freedom." Dark Side wants him because if he dies, so dies freedom. Right? Unlike a good Bond villain, Dark Side pulls out a pistol and shoots Shilo through the head. As we leave the scene, his mother box pings. Given the final page of this issue, I presume his soul was escaping into mother box, just like hers escaped into his in Mister Miracle. I don't think I'm far wrong.

On the next page, Vanguard rescues Justina, and then we get to the climax of the book. Gloriana knows that Misty is still alive, and curses Neh-buh-loh for his betrayal. This indicates that she does not know yet that Neh-buh-loh is a cosmic stain in the Himalayas. Tom Dalt shows up and she says he must "slay the child" and then they have to return to Summer's End. As she hold a ubiquitous apple, she asks him if he found the spear. He says he did, as we know from the third issue of Bulleteer, when he tried to kill the spear, Alix Harrower. He tells her the "Seven" (Unknown Men) made him unkillable and gave him cold blood and perfect aim. He shoots her through the head and asks, "What kind of prey do you suppose I, Spyder would hunt?" This, of course echoes his question in Seven Soldiers #0, when he asked what kind of prey gods would hunt. The Queen and her apple fall from the castle to the streets below. As she lands and tries to pull the arrow out, the "spear that was never thrown" appears behind her. Sally and Alix (who is about to become the Harrower, making her last name rather prophetic) fight in the car, causing it to go out of control and slam into the Queen from behind. "Prophecy moves in for the kill," indeed! You'll notice that Alix's car is launched because it runs over the rubble left by Klarion's drill, which you can see in panels 2 and 3. Klarion might have gone over to the "evil side," but if he hadn't come through the ground at that point, Alix wouldn't have killed the Queen. Nice attention to detail by Morrison. But what would you expect? As Alix stands and watched the car burn, Jake stands behind her (this and Klarion's subjugation of Frankenstein are the closest any of the soldiers come to meeting each other). We are pretty sure that Sally died in the accident as well, because the police tell Alix there were no survivors.

Back in the swamp, the Tailor is almost done. He puts Zor in a "miser's coat" - Cyrus Gold was a notorious miser and takes his top hat. He sews Zor up in the coat and leaves him there for his punishment, which is to be dumped into the swamp. He tells Zor that "they all live happily ever after," which we knew was coming at some point. He leaves Cyrus to his fate and once again quotes the poem he told Tom Dalt in Seven Soldiers #0. Ali Ka-Zoom, meanwhile, takes Justina to a "school for heroes" (who attends that school?) and tells her that she just might be the queen of a new golden age just prior to the flood. Who knows what adventures await her? The epilogue continues with Klarion on the Sheeda throne, using his dice and laughing maniacally; Millions the Mystery Mutt inheriting Don Vincenzo's spoils and becoming "dog-father" (which means The Manhattan Guardian #4 lied when it said Millions died at 14, unless Vincenzo gave him a bath in the cauldron of rebirth); and a cemetery. Jake, Carla, and Lauren visit Larry's grave (the annotations say it's Shilo's grave, but there's no wreath by it in the next panel, and why would they care about Shilo anyway?), and then Dark Side shows up at Shilo's headstone. He lays what appears to be a black flower from Slaughter Swamp on the stone and says that "evil won the war" and "death rules the day." He walks away, and we expect a big downer of an ending, but then, like some bad horror movie, Shilo's arms burst up through the ground! He's an escape artist, people - of course he could escape that!

Phew. Lots going on in this issue, although it does feel like sound and fury, signifying nothing. Let's check out each soldier. Justina gets in a big ol' sword fight with Gloriana, but doesn't actually kill her. At least she does something! Jake doesn't do much - he doesn't actually rescue Carla, who drives to him. Sure, he rides through Manhattan killing Sheeda, but still - that's grunt work! Klarion does quite a bit, but unfortunately, it's all bad stuff. Shilo does almost nothing - he gives himself up and gets a bullet for his trouble. Frankenstein, who has done most of the dirty work in Frankenstein #4, appears on one page. One page! Finally, we have Zatanna and Alix. Alix doesn't do anything because she really wants to, but she is the key to killing the Queen. Zatanna brings Misty to the party, which is something, because it spurs Klarion on, and she also involves the audience, which I'll get to. So this remains a strange, anti-climactic issue, much like a big-budget summer action movie - all spectacle, not much else. It's certainly better than many "big-budget" comic book epics, including the one taking place at the same time in the DCU, but given the build-up, it feels strangely hollow.

But does Morrison really care all that much about giving us spectacle? Probably not, or he would have done so. He wants to sum up the themes he's been working on the entire time, without much concern for whether or not he delivers a completely satisfactory story. But does he even do that? For the most part, yes. Look at Frankenstein. The least changed of the Seven Soldiers, the one with the least character development, but also the one who affected the "events" of the saga, hardly appears in this issue. There's no need for him to appear. His arc was over when he killed Neh-buh-loh, even before he took perfunctory care of the Sheeda dreadnoughts. Shilo, whose series never really fit in with the rest of the epic, also gets little to do in this issue, partly because he too had a more self-contained series. Alix, as the "spear," has to play an important part in the issue, but again, she is the most fully mature of the Seven Soldiers, so her arc is pretty much done when she tells Greg Saunders to shove it. The others, obviously, have things to do, but they are also in need of more growth, and this issue gives it to them. Justina is able to exorcise at least some of her demons, Zatanna becomes a true superhero, Jake gets the girl, and Klarion becomes a myth like he wanted. So this issue serves a purpose, even if it's not specifically to end the Sheeda threat.

Zatanna might be the most interesting character in this issue, because she is the one who engages the reader, just like she did in her series. She brings us in and makes us responsible for our own salvation. Morrison has toyed with this idea before, in his final arc of JLA, "World War III." In that arc, every person on the planet becomes a superhero and helps defeat that big ol' evil thing in the sky (whatever the hell it was). Here, he involves not every person on the DCU Earth, but us. This ties back into the whole theme of growing up. The Sheeda represent the bad side of maturity. They have grown up, but they have not "kept growing," in that they have become a frozen culture, without hope. They have taken any sort of childhood innocence and perverted it, and they have turned into a cold, technological marvel without any magic to it. Morrison loves this theme, and we have seen it throughout the series. He is showing us that technology without soul is useless, and leads to extinction. He is charging the reader to learn how to be mature without losing what keeps us looking at the world as a marvelous place. We have to grow up, but we don't have to become like the Sheeda. The Seven Soldiers all show us the way. Frankenstein shows us responsibility. Shilo shows us how to get rid of our fear. Alix shows us how to choose our own destiny. Justina shows us how not to hide ourselves from the world. Jake shows us how to overcome guilt. Zatanna shows us how to see wonder in the world. Klarion shows us how to make our own legends. In the end, however, it's up to us.

This is why, despite its problems, is a successful resolution to the saga. It's not a superb grand finale in terms of a cataclysmic event, which it seems the saga has been leading to, but it is a fascinating issue because of what it says about these themes. Morrison is too good a writer to allow this to be a failure, and it's interesting to compare it to the other big DC event, Infinite Crisis. That also examined what it means to be a hero, but in far less subtle fashion than Seven Soldiers. Morrison doesn't care about big events defining heroism, because he knows that it's easy, when you have powers, to fight someone else that has powers. It's what superpowered people do, after all. It's far more difficult to overcome the things inside you, the guilt and the doubt and the fear that you just aren't good enough. In Infinite Crisis, the heroes suffer from self-doubt, but it's a shallow introspection, because the spectacle is all. The Seven Soldiers suffer, but they don't whine about it, and therefore, it's more interesting to track their progress through their problems, because it's far more subtle and more rewarding. Seven Soldiers #1 is, ultimately, not about the Sheeda at all. It's about the title characters - the Seven Soldiers, who each complete their journey here. Despite the feeling that we've somehow missed something important, we have been part of an extraordinary journey, one that reminds us of the power of fiction. Morrison has involved us in the story far more than, say, Mark Millar (Morrison's protege), who attempts social commentary in a ridiculously heavy-handed and over-the-top way.

So we finish the epic, and comics are better for it. Morrison is one of a handful of writers who is wildly ambitious, and even when his reach exceeds his grasp, it's still a wonderful thing to read. Seven Soldiers is not his best work, but it is an example of why he is such a brilliant comic book writer. It's a magnificent epic, even with its flaws, and shows us again why comics are so much fun. Too bad it got overshadowed by, you know, crap.

For this issue, the annotations are pretty good. And of course, lots of people have stuff to say. Jog does. Patrick does. Marc Singer does. RAB does. Holy crap, everyone is smarter than I am! But no one else was crazy enough to do this in one month! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!

All right, I'm done now. I'm taking a break. My children no longer recognize me, and my wife has been giving the eye to the mailman. I have to put my house in order! I hope you had fun with this - it was quite the groovy experience!

18 Comments

• At January 2, 2007, Geoff Burmester wrote:

  Greg, thanks for all your work!

  Your close reading of each issue, in the context of the whole saga being concluded, ...

• At January 2, 2007, The Mutt wrote:

  "They have grown up, but they have not “kept growing,” in that they have become a frozen culture, without hope. ...

• At January 2, 2007, Bill Reed wrote:

  Congratulations on finishing this and living to tell the tale.

  The "Do" and "Be" reference "Do be do be do," I'm ...

• At January 2, 2007, Jedeye wrote:

  'Be' and 'Do' - it's about existentialism, isn't it? If you're not a human being, you're a human doing, or ...

• At January 2, 2007, comixkid2099 wrote:

  Have you read Countdown to Infinite Crisis? in that, there is a scene where Shazam is talking to ted kord. ...

• At January 2, 2007, Greg Burgas wrote:

  I have tried to blot Countdown from my memory, comixkid, so although I remember that scene, I don't remember the ...

• At January 2, 2007, Matt Brady wrote:

  You're awesome, Greg! I've already expressed my admiration for your work ethic, but I'll say it again: Good ...

• At January 2, 2007, Bill wrote:

  First of all, thanks for all your work. I re-read Seven Soldiers over the last few days and your essays ...

• At January 2, 2007, winterteeth wrote:

  Comixkid2099- I believe, and I could be mistaken, the voice Shazam hears is that of Mordru (spelling?) who was trapped ...

• At January 2, 2007, RMC wrote:

  Nice one Greg,

  Good call on spotting the Alix/Aurakales/"hushed and profane spear" connection. Can't believe I didn't twig to the Red ...

• At January 3, 2007, Geoff Burmester wrote:

  I think there's an implication from the crossword that Lance might also be a descendant of Aurakles - his name ...

• At January 3, 2007, ninjawookie wrote:

  i've been copying and pasting these into a world file so i can read it on the plane, 150 pages ...

• At January 3, 2007, RAB wrote:

  This has been an exceptionally good overview. Not a dud in the set! Kudos to Greg and ...

• At January 5, 2007, veghead wrote:

  Wow, Greg. I missed a lot of the subtler stuff and reading your series has greatly increased my apprecition ...

• At January 6, 2007, DCD wrote:

  I Mailman

• At January 6, 2007, nybcboy wrote:

  WHEW!! Good job, Greg. (voicing other people's kudos)

  Back to my soapbox concerning the Newsboy Army...

  Does anybody have any theories on ...

• At January 7, 2007, YouStayClassy wrote:

  Absolutely amazing job!

  I spent all morning re-reading 7 Soldiers, and all afternoon reading your reviews on here. They have ...

• At October 26, 2008, Equalix wrote:

  The irony is that the Mister Miracle mini series, which is called the weakest of the 7 here, is now ...

Norah would like to point out that there are SPOILERS in this post.  Because that's how we roll around here, with SPOILERS galore!

 

Last issue, Frankenstein told Father Time he would walk to Tibet.  And here he is!  He's pretty fast, too, because not too much time could have elapsed between issues.  He is here to fight Neh-buh-loh, because that crazy universe is just out of control!  The narration summarizes the Sheeda for us: they are from the future, they prey on the past civilizations, they're ruled by a parasite queen.  Okay.  Check.  Frankenstein shows up by what looks like an altar, which is quite probably the Tomb of Wing, the Unknown Soldier of Victory, whose identity was revealed in JLA #100-102.  At this altar is Neh-buh-loh, munching on winged horse - it tastes like chicken!  Neh-buh-loh asks Frankenstein, "What malformed thing have they sent to judge me in my exile?"  This is a strange question.  The last time we saw our favorite evil universe, he was absconding with the Undry Cauldron from Don Vincenzo's mansion.  Well, chronologically that was the last time we saw him!  The winged horses are one of the Seven Treasures of Camelot, which are important to the Sheeda, so why is Neh-buh-loh just sitting around eating them?  Why, exactly, has he been "exiled" to the Himalayas?  How has he fallen out of favor with the Sheeda?  Is it because he allowed Misty to escape once more?  Does Gloriana Tenebrae even know that Misty is still alive?  These are important questions, damn it!!!!

Neh-buh-loh, interestingly enough, tells Frankenstein that he, Neh-buh-loh, will confess his sins before tearing Frankenstein apart.  He is still haunted by the guilt of letting Misty escape - twice.  He tells Frankenstein that he is 3 billion years old, and he might have grown huge enough to replace the universe, but there's a flaw in him that keeps him small.  Frankenstein doesn't care, and blows a hole in him with his locomotive gun.  Neh-buh-loh tells him that he failed to kill the daughter of the Sheeda king, and that why he is being punished.  The annotations speculate that "Errrhiahchnnon" and "Mhwuuiiielmethhh" are the Sheeda names of Rhiannon (Misty) and Melmoth.  Maybe.  I always thought that since Neh-buh-loh had a giant sucking chest wound, he couldn't pronounce their names correctly.  But it really doesn't matter.  He says that he was moved by beauty and preserved life instead of ending it, which is the flaw.  He tells Frankenstein that "confused galaxies collide" inside him.  In Misty, he saw "harmony, symmetry and beauty."  Frankenstein, unmoved, shoots him in the face.  This is why Frankenstein is the perfect soldier to send after Neh-buh-loh: he has no soul.  Now, that's not to say he's not a swell guy, but in essence, he is just a weapon, like the water creature in issue #3.  We saw that Zatanna and Misty were frozen by the mere presence of Neh-buh-loh, but Frankenstein doesn't hesitate.  He does what has to be done.

We get a quick look at the Bride and Father Time, flying over what appears to be Hurricane Gloria.  The Bride has read Helen Helligan's report, which shows the patterns behind the Sheeda attack.  She jumps out of the helicopter to join the fray.  Meanwhile, back in Tibet, Frankenstein has used his Internet access to find out everything about Neh-buh-loh.  It's a nice reference to the various comic book web sites, like the annotations I link to in every post, where all the information is categorized.  He discovers Neh-buh-loh's history, including the fact that his infant form is still on Pluto in the JLA remote lab and that the Ultramarines were injected into him to stop Black Death.  This makes it all the more weird that DC has not included JLA Classified #1-3 as part of the Seven Soldiers trade paperbacks, because it's such a crucial part of the saga.  Frankenstein tells Neh-buh-loh, who's now missing most of his face, that the supermen who invaded him gave him medicine to hasten his end.  The flaw is the "presence of death."  The annotations have some speculation on the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which Frankenstein says is causing Neh-buh-loh to lose heat, but it's interesting that Neh-buh-loh himself thinks the flaw causes him to feel compassion, while Frankenstein says it's the actuality of death.  It seems that because Neh-buh-loh himself knows what death is, he is able to feel compassion for things that don't necessarily deserve death, like Misty.  Frankenstein quotes Paradise Lost again as he takes advantage of this flaw and shoves Neh-buh-loh's spear through him, killing him.  I dug Neh-buh-loh, as you know, but it feels like he never got to be a truly epic supervillain, despite the impressive number of victims on his résumé.  This is something I'll get back to with regard to the Sheeda themselves.

Frankenstein calls Father Time, who tells him that he needs to head for Miracle Mesa in Arizona, where the Sheeda are up to something big.  The coordinates Father Time gives - 33 North 110 West - put the mesa on the San Carlos Indian Reservation, east of Globe in Graham County.  Pepper City, I should point out, doesn't exist.  We flip to Arizona, where Frankenstein watches as Gloriana Tenebrae, last seen in Los Angeles biting Agent Helligan, raises the cauldron toward Castle Revolving to take it to Summer's End.  You'll notice Sir Justina has stowed away on one of the Sheeda's helicopters and will follow the Queen into the future.

So we go one billion years into the future, where "the ransacked planet Earth tumbles on slow, wounded spirals towards a blistering, undead sun."  You'll notice that the sun, like Frankenstein, is "undead."  The Sheeda, the "creeple people," cling to a "spectacular half-life, in a gross and claustrophobic imitation of culture at the end of all things."  The black flowers of Slaughter Swamp, just like the Terrible Time Tailor and Misty predicted, have covered the planet.  Gloriana Tenebrae returns, and "at her command, six gigantic, world-wrecking harvester dreadnoughts commence rotation in the senile, filthy twilight."  Six?  Boy, we know that means evil!  Frankenstein, we see, is killing his way through the Sheeda as Gloriana Tenebrae talks about how the time of the harvesting is here, blah blah blah.  She's about to take a dip in the cauldron and get the mystical equivalent of some botox injections when Frankenstein shows up.  She thinks that he's Melmoth's emissary, but he tells her that her husband is dead.  Frankenstein tells her he has "vowed to protect humankind from evils" like her, and she makes the very good point that they are just examples of survival of the fittest.  She asks him, "Are we not human?"  (Kind of live Devo.)  Don't they have a right to exist?  She eats an apple, just like she did in Shining Knight #1, linking the entire series together and reminding us of the evil stepmother once again.  This is an interesting speech, because Frankenstein has no response to it, much like he doesn't respond to the curse Melmoth laid on him.  He is the perfect warrior to battle the Sheeda, because he simply does not care about their motivations.  He is there to stop them, and not even necessarily because he has "vowed to protect humankind."  Sure, there's that, but he is also stopping them because he killed Melmoth, who claimed that only he could stop the Sheeda.  Frankenstein has taken Melmoth's burden upon himself, and therefore he must destroy the Queen.  Plus, he has that vow to protect humankind, too.

Just like Ozymandias would do, Frankenstein has not visited Castle Revolving first.  As the Queen prepares for a throwdown, he simply blows up her six dreadnoughts.  Gloriana, naturally, does not take kindly to that, and in true Queen of Hearts fashion, hisses "Off with his head!" as Frankenstein runs for it.  He kills the steersman of the castle as he sends an e-mail back through time to S.H.A.D.E., and tells Gloriana that she needs to return to his time for trial.  Gloriana is unimpressed and is still preparing to go into the cauldron as Frankenstein takes the wheel.  And there it ends!

This, the penultimate issue of the epic, is rather weird.  Why?  Well, it appears to make Seven Soldiers #1 superfluous.  In this issue, Frankenstein kills the Celestial Huntsman, who was a pretty formidable foe, and destroys the ships the Sheeda were going to use to "harvest" our time.  I mean, the Queen is still alive, and there are Sheeda infesting the Earth, but they have been reduced to just another bunch of beatable villains, right?  As we will see, Seven Soldiers #1 indeed suffers from a feeling of anti-climax (no, it doesn't want to cuddle or, conversely, roll over and fall asleep, but that feeling is still there), and it's mostly because the Seven Soldiers themselves don't have a lot to do.  Frankenstein has done their work for them.  As I read this, I couldn't help but wonder exactly what they were going to do in the big finale.  As it turns out, Morrison didn't know either.  Ostensibly, this epic is about Seven Soldiers fighting an "extinction-level event" without actually forming to make up a team.  Groovy.  As we have seen, many of the mini-series are more about examining what makes these people heroes and how they overcome their own shortcomings and not always external issues.  These are damaged people, and they have to figure out a way to be heroic.  Even Frankenstein, to a far lesser degree than the other six, has to grow up a bit.  As we see even in this issue, he realizes that he has to employ some sneakery if he wants to deal with the Sheeda threat.  Early in the issue, he simply approaches Neh-buh-loh and blows his head off.  That kind of direct approach will not work one billions years in the future.  He has become more of a strategist, which allows him to almost single-handedly defeat the Sheeda.  But what is left for the other six soldiers to do?

As a culmination of his own mini-series, this is a fine issue.  It completes a cycle begun in the first issue, it gives Frankenstein some small measure of character development, and although Mahnke's art got more rushed, it seemed, over the course of the series, it's still a stunning-looking title throughout.  His Neh-buh-loh is horrible, actually, and that's the only misstep in the entire book.  Seriously, Mahnke - what's up with your rendition of the too-cool-for-school Celestial Huntsman?  Blech.  But as a part of the whole, this issue leaves us with too many questions answered.  Seven Soldiers #1 promises - what?  Perhaps if Frankenstein did these things in that book instead of this one, we'd have something.  But then it would have been twice as long and Morrison would still be writing it, so I guess we take what we can get.

So where are the Seven Soldiers now that the big dust-up is coming?  Justina, we saw in this issue, is on Castle Revolving, ready to take revenge against Gloriana.  Jake is leaving the offices of the Guardian, ready to rescue Carla.  Zatanna has just been accosted by Misty and her flying horse friends.  Klarion is climbing back up toward New York, looking for adventure.  Shilo just popped out a black hole.  Alix is about to drive Sally Sonic to the hospital.  And now Frankenstein, like Cosmo Kramer, is driving the bus!  So there you have it!

And so, once again, I direct you to the annotations, if you are interested.  Jog, eloquent as always, has some thoughts.  Of course, other links are most appreciated.

Next: Holy crap, it's the final post!  The big enchilada!  Will the Internet ever be the same???????

3 Comments

• At December 31, 2006, winterteeth wrote:

  You have really done a great job with this, so I just wanted to say thanks for all the effort. ...

• At December 31, 2006, Bill Reed wrote:

  I loved this issue. Those that said Frank got nothing to do in Seven Soldiers #1 and didn't contribute to ...

• At January 1, 2007, Anonymous wrote:

  Just in case those coordinates happen to be exact, this is a site with pictures of the real-life counterpart to ...

Someone should probably point out that there are SPOILERS in this post!  Oh, it should be me?  Okay, there are SPOILERS in this post!

Alix Harrower judges us on this cover!  "Yes, you want to see scantily-clad chicks fight each other, fanboy!  Yes, you do!  For shame!"  We're sorry, Alix!

We begin with a bucolic woodland scene, in a lonely farmhouse.  And old woman tells a young girl that she's so happy the girl rescued her cat from "those terrible boys" that she's going to give her a present: "the whistle of the wind kings," which tunes "your whole being to magical, super-sonic vibrations."  Er, if you say so.  The girl, Sally, blows it, and we next see her as a superhero, fighting alongside a giant teddy bear, Barnabus (on page 2, she thwarts Dennis and his brother, Chris, which comes up later in the issue).  But there's a dark side: her parents tell her that she's not aging like everyone else,and that she'll always be young.  Sally exclaims that this is a good thing ... right?  The Peter Pan complex that several characters suffer from in this epic is back, and Sally is its most tragic, perhaps, manifestation of it.  Yes, Alix has no sympathy for her later, but it really is a tragic story, unlike the other characters who suffer from it.  Lance is just a tool, Gloriana Tenebrae wants to remain young so badly she'd kill her stepdaughter, and Klarion revels in his undying youth.  The idea of not growing up is everywhere, and it always ends up costing the person who believes in it.  Sally's situation is the most tragic because it's not her fault.  She desperately wants to grow up, but fate has conspired against her.  First her parents die, then Barnabus, then the state takes her house away because she's too young to own it.  I'm not entirely sure why her looks trump her birth certificate, but that's just a minor point.  She is sent to the "Bleakdale Home for Bereaved Children," which is run by Madame Eva Martinette.  Boy, that's quite the place!  Madame Martinette is perfectly named, by the way.  We then get a scene from the present, as Sally stands over the refrigerator she used to beat Alix into submission, crowing that she's in charge, which is what Madame Martinette said in the flashback.  Sally is obviously a bit unhinged from reality.

Sally monologues for a bit, telling Alix that men "love it when you do the change" from meek housewife to sexy superperson.  She says that Lance told her all about their boring life together, and that Alix didn't even want to dress up like a superhero on Halloween.  She is utterly scornful of both Alix and Lance - Alix for refusing to indulge his fantasies, Lance for having them in the first place.  Alix recovers and bashes the refrigerator over Sally's head, which doesn't hurt her at all.  She grabs Alix's arm and snaps it in two, then tells her that she has to know how to fight.  Alix continues to tell her she doesn't want to fight, but help - we get back to Alix's pre-SmartSkin vocation, and how she has no interest in being a superhero.  Sally is unimpressed, and flashes back to Madame Martinette's home.  She is being put in the Wardrobe of Solitude because she's been sneaking out to help people.  While she is in there, she ponders the fact that all she's ever done is try to help people, and the world keeps spitting on her.  By the time she fights Alix, she's telling her that "the world's rotten and evil to the core."  This is where she begins to formulate that idea.  Significantly, she is kept in the wardrobe for three days, the length of time Christ spent in the tomb (a reach, you say? not with Morrison writing!), and when Madame Martinette comes to get her out, she has blasted through the back of the wardrobe and the wall and escaped the home.  The wardrobe reminded me of Lucy's in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, as I'm sure it was meant to, but we can also find an allusion to Ali Ka-Zoom's cabinet, as both are places where children who did wrong according to others were put.  Sally escapes into "Narnia," away from the horrible real world and into a Britain where fabulously good-looking men offer her a "cuppa" and help her out.  Except, of course, he's a scumbag.

Dennis, the man who takes her home, tells her that he's a superhero himself.  He tells her he has "Vitamin X" powers, and when he first got them, he was a "bit of a bad lad."  But during the war (which is World War II), he got a glimpse of the "Yank superheroes" (the Justice Society, presumably), and now he's met Sally, and she believes in him, which turns him on.  Shocking - all he wants is to get in her pants, which he does.  We have reached a point in the series, and the overall saga, where superheroing, or the thought of it, leads directly to sex.  It's not surprising that Sally, later, equates her powers with sex.  She loses her virginity (it's not stated, but it's fairly clear) to a man who is turned on just by the thought of fighting crime with her.  Back in the present, Alix still wants to know why Sally did what she did, and Sally tells her because she wanted what Alix had, except she would have dressed up for him.  Sally cannot relate to a lover except in a fantasy role.  This is interesting, because fantasy is not a bad thing in a relationship, but Sally takes it too far - she is lost in the role, and Alix recognizes this.  We flash back again, as Dennis takes pictures of her and sells them to the Kingpins of England's Criminal Underworld (there are seven of them, by the way).  I'm not entirely sure why the criminals would want them - shouldn't he be selling them to skin mags?  Dennis tries to convince Sally that it's a good thing, because fighting crime doesn't pay the bills.  Sally can't get a job because no one believes she's old enough, and Dennis convinces her that she can make good money selling pictures of herself.  Even though, you know, I doubt she saw much of the cash.  Finally, Dennis gets her to inhale "Doctor Hyde's evil serum."  I can't believe that not a reference to Edward Hyde, but I could be wrong.  No, I can't be wrong on this!!!!

So Sally is now evil, but that seems like a bit of a cop-out to me.  I mean, "evil serum"?  Really, Grant?  Like the water in Frankenstein #3, this is a bit of a stretch.  I know they're both perfectly goofy, comic-book kind of things, but they bug me.  Sally is a horribly damaged girl, and she has no need for external prompts to get her to go all evil.  It's far more boring than the arc that her character was already on.  So the evil serum bugs me.  She even kind of admits it wasn't the serum.  She has thrown Alix onto the street, and she floats down and tells her that the world swallows you and changes you, whether you want it to or not.  She is not necessarily happy with who she is, but she has done what she did in order to survive.  Alix hits her and says she doesn't care what her sob story is, but she really does, because if she didn't, she wouldn't try to save her.  She knocks Sally unconscious and then gets a phone call on her cell.

Who calls Alix?

That minor mystery aside, before Alix can take Sally to the hospital, Greg Saunders shows up.  She says he's dead, and he says there are all kinds of death.  He tells her that she's the seventh soldier, the spear that was never thrown.  He says she is descended from Earth's first superhero - Aurakles - and that's why "they" sent him to recruit her.  "They" are the Seven Unknown Men, by the way.  He tells her that "the future of every living thing depends on you coming with me right now."  Alix tells him to shove it.  Go, Alix!  She says she's heard schizophrenics talk like he does, and like Sally did.  She tells him that she has to quit because she can no longer tell the difference between paranoid schizophrenia and the reality of a "costumed crimefighter."  Saunders tells her it's her destiny, and she again tells him to shove it.  In familiar words, she tells him she's tried to use her powers for good - like Sally - and she obviously wants to get out before she turns into Sally.  She tells him he's on his own, because she has to get Sally to the hospital.  She remains the spear that was never thrown, because she won't fight!  Yay, Alix!

There's a lot to like about this issue, not the least of which is Paquette's art, which not only is perfectly suited for chicks in spandex, but is perfectly suited for those chicks to fight each other!  I'm not bashing the art, believe me - there are a lot of artists who couldn't make this work, either because they just can't draw superheroes all that well, or because they draw females too slutty.  The nice thing about Paquette's art throughout this series is that he draws the women as sexy, not slutty.  When he wants to make them slutty, he does so through body language, which is far more difficult than putting them in clothing that is several sizes too small.  He does a great job with Sally Sonic in this issue, as we believe that she looks like a teenager even as he gives her, in the present-day scenes, a world-weariness combined with that insane light in her eyes.  It looks like a superhero comic, which it should, but it's more subtle than what we usually get in one.

We also have the culmination of the two themes Morrison has been exploring in this series: the idea that being young is the only way to stay sexy, and Alix's rejection of the superhero lifestyle.  Sally Sonic is the metaphor of superheroes staying young forever - she's been around for over 60 years, but she still looks like a girl!  As I mentioned, she is doubtful about whether this is a good thing or not when her father tells her about it, unlike others in the epic, for whom eternal youth is the goal.  Sally has only herself to blame for her later bad deeds, but we have to admit that she has been messed up by society in general and men specifically, and her response is to turn her disadvantage to an advantage.  She decides that since she is always young, she should make money from it.  But even though she "grows up" because her personality changes as she "ages," she remains in many ways a child, and being a child forever drives her insane.  We see this in the first issue of Zatanna, when she shrieks that she can't get a drink in a bar.  We see this in her desperate need to destroy "happy" families - the men in those families obviously want her, a person who looks like a teenager but know "adult" things.  Morrison shows us the old saying is true: be careful what you wish for.  If Lance had seen what has happened to Sally, would he still want it?  Probably, because he's a tool.  But Alix now has what Sally has, and she desperately wants to avoid making the same mistakes.  Which brings me to her rejection of the superhero life.

We have seen this before, of course.  Throughout the series Alix is simply trying to make sense of her life, and she wants nothing to do with anything that will make it more senseless.  We come back to her work with kids with autism - she wants to help Lucian in issue #3, she wants to help Sally in this issue.  She goes along with Helen Helligan in issue #2 because she wants to help.  She has the perfect makeup to be a superhero - she is compassionate and humble.  But she also realizes that superheroes don't really do anything that is positive in the long term - her battle with Sally has destroyed her apartment and a good part of the street below, and who's going to clean that mess up?  She wants to be heroic in a different way - instead of going off and saving the world, she wants to help Sally, because she obviously needs it.  Alix is all about the small contribution to society, because even before she hears Sally's story, she realizes that trying to help everyone at once leads only to heartbreak.  It's ironic, because I've been watching Heroes recently (I recorded them all when they first showed up, so don't ruin anything for me!), and Peter quits his job as a caregiver because he's "destined for bigger things."  He doesn't get that we can only help the world get better one person at a time, and that is what makes us a hero.  Ironically, that episode was written by Jeph Loeb, who might be the anti-Morrison.  Alix is a hero because she rejects the superhero life, while Peter ditches an old man who wants to die with dignity so he can go flying.

The ending is nicely done, too, because it follows the rest of the series.  Alix is not suddenly going to have a change of heart just because Greg Saunders tells her it's her destiny.  The Seven Soldiers, after all, each reach their destiny in separate ways.  Alix reaches hers through, really, ignorance of it.  But because she is doing something that is heroic on a small scale, she ends up doing something heroic on a large scale - killing Gloriana Tenebrae.  Who knows where she would have been and what she would have been doing during Seven Soldiers #1 if she had taken Saunders up on his offer?  Fighting the bad guys, no doubt.  But there's only so many bad guys you can punch before it becomes stupid.  Alix decided to save someone instead of beating on them.  Therefore, like only some of the other soldiers, she has grown up - that is, gotten past the point where she feels sorry for herself and does something about it.  What she does is no less heroic than Jake Jordan or Sir Justina or Frankenstein.  It's just a different path, and we have seen throughout this saga that there is no one clear path to true heroism.

And so we reach the end of another series, the sixth of seven.  One of the better ones, I think, although you may disagree.  If you care to, check out the annotations, where there is a lot about Dennis's Vitamin power.  Jog has his usual good thoughts, including some comments about the art that I didn't consider.  They're valid concerns, but they didn't bother me all that much.  And Ragnell has a good piece on Alix and Helen Helligan, which concerns the entire series, so I didn't link to it until we were done, even though Helligan went to the great beyond two issues ago.

Coming soon: Neh! Buh! Loh!  Only he's kind of a paper tiger, isn't he?

2 Comments

• At December 30, 2006, Tony wrote:

  I have to admit I almost got a little misty when Barnabus the Teddy Bear King died. That was ...

• At December 31, 2006, David Looney wrote:

  the pictures is because she looks like a underage teenager, but because she is over 18 they are technically legal. ...

As usual, we have SPOILERS to look forward to.  Come on - you know the drill!

Hmmm ... I wonder if there's enough foreshadowing on that cover?  Morrison is certainly not going for the subtle approach here!

Okay, so I've tried to wrap my brain around this issue.  It's not that it's ridiculously complicated, it's just that it's, you know, weird.  Not that there's anything wrong with that!

In the beginning, Shilo Norman is a child, hanging from a complicated trap while his older brother, Aaron, who's a policeman, tells him that he's never going to get out of it.  Shilo says, significantly, "I can get out of anything."  On the next page, the splash, we see Shilo in his wheelchair and bandages and casts, thanks to his beating last issue.  He holds several pills in his hand, but we're not entirely sure if he's trying to commit suicide or not.  Given the way this issue plays out, it's a good possibility.

Shilo lives through versions of his life, because he's in the Life Trap that Dark Side put him into.  So he sees himself with a young wife and daughter, and then suddenly as an older man with a teenaged daughter, and then suddenly as an old man on his deathbed.  Rabbi Dezard, who is, of course, Dr. Dezard, shows up, and Shilo freaks out because he realizes this isn't his life.  We flip back to his childhood, as he hangs from his trap and tells Aaron he'll be able to get out.  We see him witness Aaron getting shot, which seems to happen at different times in his different lives.  Then he's some kind of super-cop, guarding a "homeless god."  Ah, here we get some information about the overall epic!

Shilo is holding a weird-looking key, and he has to go into a cell where the god is.  He enters and says, "Oracle?"  This is not Barbara Gordon, but a character from Justice League #100, the first appearance of the Nebula Man.  Shilo enters and tells the god it's time - they're going to execute him because he "killed a whole bunch of superheroes and civilians."  Do we know if this actually happened?  Is Morrison referring to events in other comics?  Anyway, Aurakles (the dude's real name) asks him, "Did ... did the spear finds its mark?"  We have heard, in The Manhattan Guardian #4, that the mirror into which Gloriana Tenebrae looks speaks a prophecy about the spear that was never thrown ending her reign.  Aurakles, we learn, "throws" that spear - it is, in fact, Alix Harrower, who is his last descedant.  Alix, of course, kills Gloriana Tenebrae with a car, which could be seen as a spear that is not thrown.  Aurakles can see through time and space, so he sees all of Shilo's life, and wonders what he has become.  Aurakles also mentions that he was "broken in the torture chambers of the Sheeda at Summer's End ..."  We have seen the chains in the Chamber of Croatoan.  Was Aurakles tortured there?  He is not actually Croatoan, but why would the Sheeda need chains to secure a pair of dice?  I'm going to say that Aurakles used to be there.  Remember, too, that this might not actually be the "Seven Soldiers" reality.  So who the hell knows, right?  As Aurakles speaks to Shilo, the "god exterminators" - Dark Side and Dezard - show up, but the door won't open and no one can get through to Shilo.  Aurakles continues by telling Shilo that he has also run from his responsibilities, but he can set Aurakles free and "break this chain."  Notice he doesn't necessarily mean the chains that hold him, Aurakles - he says "break this chain" after he says "set me free."  He could be speaking metaphorically - I know, big shock in a Grant Morrison comic book!  We'll get back to this.  Outside the cell, Dina Bell, Shilo's partner, is trying to convince him to ignore Aurakles, because "he's insane!"  But inside, Aurakles is asking Shilo if he's one of the 666 Monsters of Chaos - you know, I remember when Monsters of Chaos toured Pennsylvania back in the day and Van Halen was headlining with Anthrax and special guest Slaughter!  Sing it with me: "Up all night, sleep all day - that's right!"  What, wrong Monsters?  Oh, okay - we'll learn slightly more about the 666 Monsters of Chaos in Seven Soldiers #1.  Aurakles asks the crucial question: "Wilt thou give thy life that Aurakles might save us all?  Wilt thou give thy life for me?"  Shilo doesn't say, "My name's not Wilt," but he does make the point that his life is all he has.  Aurakles cares not and says, "I will set you free!  I am the Lord thy Destroyer!" and Shilo disappears into his beard.  Which is kind of strange.

The scene shifts to Dr. Dezard's office, where our friendly psychiatrist is trying to break down Motherboxxx.  This is another weird bit of the issue - we just saw Dark Side and Dezard as "god exterminators," and now here they are.  But of course, Shilo is not in "their" reality, but Aurakles is part of their reality.  We presume that because he's a god, he can cross over realities as easily as he can see through time and space.  Dezard tells Dark Side that the mother box is he dissecting has no soul, and that it must have escaped into Shilo.  Dark Side is unperturbed - "If the god machine has merged her consciousness with his, then she too is doomed."  He says there is no escape from Omega, because it's the Life Trap.  Does Dark Side seem a bit more pensive than we're used to here?  He seems awfully world-weary, and I don't like it.  I want my Dark Side to be PURE EVIL!  Shilo, meanwhile, is experiencing a number of lives, "each more degraded than the last."  We see in the middle of the Infinite Crisis, with OMACs fighting all the superheroes and the big guys dead in the foreground.  The giant yellow tunnel in the middle of the page reminds me of the hole in the mountain into which the Pied Piper led the children.  But I'm messed up on cough syrup, so just, never mind.  We zip through other lives, including one in which he's dead and the other superheroes are at someone else's grave (which is where the cover ostensibly comes from, but we'll see it's just foreshadowing for another grave), and then the young Shilo finally breaks free from the trap he put himself in at the beginning of the issue, which leads directly to his confrontation with the Omega Sanction itself.

Shilo is back in costume, floating around in a weird blue haze.  Suddenly someone speaks to him, telling him tht the trap follows him wherever he goes, and moves as he moves, unseen.  The blue haze coalesces into a figure that laughs as it tells him it's his life - the Omega Sanction!  It is "living oblivion" and Shilo will be "broken and blinded by the explosion of being!"  As Shilo relives all his crappy lives over and over, he says that he's had a long time to think about the Life Trap, and that the Omega is trapped with him, so it's suffering too.  He says that everybody has chains they want to break, and Shilo understands that.  He says that no matter what is holding "you" down, they should escape together.  He appears to be talking to the readers here, which makes the lost metatextual comment in issue #1 make more sense.  Dark Side blames Dezard, of course, because megalomaniacs never blame themselves, and then we get Shilo as a child, speaking to an elderly doctor, who can't believe that Dr. Dezard missed the obvious with regard to Shilo: the guilt he feels because of Aaron dying in his arms.  The doctor muses that Shilo has been trapped by that thought, like he was in a "black star, with no exit."  He had "no freedom to move, or to think, or to change things."  Aaron's heroism overshadowed Shilo's own life, but he has finally changed.  The doctor tells him it was "always going to happen this way, for him and for you."  All he has to do is forgive himself, and he'll remove the chains.  Shilo stops crying and suddenly, he's back in the black hole with Metron, completing the Möbius loop that this series has become.  Metron tells him he's been there for seven days (wow, another reference to seven!) and that he has survived "this first initiation" into the mysteries of the New Gods, and that his true life, his free life, is about to begin.  Back at S.T.A.R. labs, the black hole generator switched itself back on inexplicably, and suddenly Shilo Norman appears.  He looks really small.  Is it just a perspective problem?  He's a bit stunned by what has happened, and on the final page, we see him eating the chocolate (which looks like vanilla) sundae his brother promised him if his first escape was successful.  He has come full circle, from his first escape to his latest escape.

Naturally, there's a lot of weird stuff in here.  Was any of Shilo's experience "real"?  He has spent a week inside a black hole, yet he experienced things that occur in the other books as well.  Was he simply in a perfect copy of the DCU, one in which everything occurs that occurs in the "real" DCU, but bends to his will?  It doesn't really matter, of course, but it's just part of the weirdness of this issue and the series as a whole.  We have to consider some things, however.

The idea of being weighed down with chains of your own making is nothing new.  Everyone can probably name at least one pop song that uses that metaphor.  So when Shilo speaks of this, it's not terribly interesting, except, like anything else, in the context of the story.  What has Shilo accomplished?  He has defeated the guilt he felt over his brother's death.  It's not the same kind of guilt that Justina feels (I've been calling her "Justine," I know, but I forgot that in Seven Soldiers #1 she is actually called "Justina," so I guess I have to as well) or that Jake feels, even though it's more similar to Justina's than Jake's.  He feels guilty not because he was responsible for Aaron's death, but because Aaron was the hero, and Shilo feels that if anyone in the family was going to die, it should have been him.  Survivor's guilt is a difficult thing to deal with, because it's not his fault that Aaron died, but he has to deal with it.  Only when he deals with that can he begin to be a hero and be free.  This is just another way that we see these characters transform themselves.  Shilo, quite literally, goes through several transformations - each life he leads is a change in how he perceives reality, but he finally understands that the Life Trap is just something we do to ourselves, not anything that Dark Side imposes.  When he addresses the reader, he is telling us all to find that thing that's holding us back and just get rid of it.  There's no reason to let it stop anyone.

More interesting in terms of the overall story (but less interesting if we're looking at this as a character-driven epic) is Shilo's meeting with Aurakles.  I am very disappointed in Morrison in this regard: Aurakles is very important to the saga as a whole, and he shows up for the first time with only three issues left.  It's a cardinal rule of fiction that you shouldn't introduce such a key player so late in the game, and although rules are made to be broken, in this case, I think Morrison left it too long.  That's neither here nor there, however, and we must deal with Aurakles as he comes to us.  Aurakles is the shackled god, like Prometheus (yes, I know Prometheus isn't a god, but bear with me), and is one big heaping metaphor himself.  He tells Shilo that he can free him and break the chain, and it's important that Dina Bell, Shilo's partner, tells Shilo that Aurakles is insane.  This is a world that does not believe in gods, and even when they see one, they can't comprehend it so they call it insane.  The people around Shilo are trying to convince him to embrace a "normal" reality, a reality in which notions like Aurakles have no place.  The "mundane" vs. "magical" world is another overused metaphor, but in this issue Morrison gives it a nice twist, as Aurakles says that Shilo must, in essence, take his place so that Aurakles, not Shilo, can save the world.  Shilo must become the shackled god, punished for the sins of mankind, while the original superhero - Aurakles - throws the spear that is never thrown.  Shilo escapes from the Life Trap with the ultimate escape - his death.  We don't see it in this issue, but it explains his rather anticlimactic appearance in Seven Soldiers #1.

Ultimately, this is an interesting mini-series but still a disappointing one.  In it, Morrison indulges in that weirdness that he often does, but without a lot of the heart that characterizes his best work.  We care more about Shilo than we do about any of the cast members of the Invisibles, but it's still not enough to pull this series completely together.  The art, which was fine in the first issue, lousy in the second, okay in the third, and decent in this issue, doesn't help the cause.  The biggest problem with this series is that although Morrison deals with many of the themes he's examining in the other series, it doesn't feel like it's part of the whole.  Yes, Aurakles plays a significant role in the climax of the saga.  But this series feels like it has been grafted onto the rest of the saga, and that gives it a slightly off-kilter feel to it.  Maybe that's what Morrison is going for, considering the weirdness inherent in the story itself.  Perhaps we're meant to feel off-kilter!

The annotations give some good information about Dina Bell and others in the issue.  So go on over and read them!

Next: Sally Sonic slugs Sexy Superhero!

3 Comments

• At December 29, 2006, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Didn't bother me in the slightest that there weren't so many overt ties to the rest of the story. ...

• At December 29, 2006, Jedeye wrote:

  Okay, Aurakles. This just struck me as I was reading - What happens to Shilo during the course of the ...

• At January 1, 2007, comixkid2099 wrote:

  Have you read Countdown to Infinite Crisis? in that, there is a scene where Shazam is talking to ted kord. ...

There just might be SPOILERS in this post.  I won't guarantee it, but there have been SPOILERS in every other post so far, so why wouldn't I put SPOILERS in this post?

Is that a seal on the cover?  Where did that come from?

Remember the theme that has been running through each mini-series?  The one about transformation?  Well, as Frankenstein himself appears to have no need of such psychological navel-gazing, in this series Morrison has been exploring the dark side of transformations.  In issue #1, we got Uglyhead and the teens' transformation into their "secret selves."  In this issue, which is a bit too thematically similar to issue #1 (but still enjoyable), we get the townspeople (and the fauna, too) of Salvation Valley turning into ravenous zombies.  Don't drink the water, people!  It's a fun issue, but like some others in the series, feels a bit disjointed, as if Morrison wanted to tell a fun story with some of his favorite things and decided to just drop it into the Seven Soldiers epic.  He ties events tangentially into the grander story, but it still doesn't seem to fit all that much.

However, we do get the Bride, which leads back to the notion of whether or not Frankenstein needs to change.  The Bride was "made" to be Frankenstein's "companion," but she, ultra-modern as ever, says he wasn't her type.  The pathos of existence that Frankenstein experiences is brought to the fore when he destroys the water creature, giving it "oblivion."  Should Frankenstein change?  Does he have to?  We have seen so far that he is a hero in that he does what is necessary and doesn't worry about the consequences.  Now, after killing Melmoth, he is under a curse - at least he believes he is.  Another reason why this is a strange issue after the resolution of issue #2 is because Frankenstein doesn't seem to do anything to atone for his "sin" of killing Melmoth.  This issue does introduce the method by which he makes up for it - S.H.A.D.E. and their high-tech gadgets - but it seems like he could have found Gloriana in the Arizonan desert without their help.  So although it's an enjoyable issue, it's odd.

So what is going on in Salvation Valley, and what's in the water?  Frankenstein shows up there, inexplicably, and sees cute little woodland creatures attacking humans and Army commandoes wetting their pants.  He is attacked by those woodland creatures and is rescued by the Bride, who shows up with wacky boots on and two extra arms.  The Bride, of course, is based on the movie The Bride of Frankenstein, which was directed by Ian McKellen.  She and Frankenstein escape, and then she shoots him in the head with a tranquilizer dart.  When he wakes up he is shackled in a secret headquarters somewhere  (Essex Airbase, although wherever that is remains a mystery).  He's a prisoner of S.H.A.D.E.: the Super Human Advanced Defense Executive.  The head of S.H.A.D.E., Father Time, tells him that they could execute him because he "transformed a well-regarded southwestern high school into a crematorium."  I emphasized the two words because of the choice of verb, which is interesting, and the fact that in issue #1, we're told specifically that Jefferson High is in the Northwest.  A minor continuity glitch by Morrison, I assume.  Father Time tells him that S.H.A.D.E. cleans up the crap no one else will touch, and he wants to hire Frankenstein.  One of his agents tells him that Hurricane Gloria is tearing up the East Coast "on what appears to be a ... a pre-programmed path," which, as we know, it is.  Father Time says "the whole world's in crisis," which might be a reference to Infinite Crisis and also explain why no superheroes seem to notice the Sheeda invasion in Seven Soldiers #1.  Maybe.  Father Time tells Frankenstein that they develop and test experimental super-weapons at Essex, and three days previously, one of them got out and went to Salvation Valley.  He says that a 3 billion-dollar superhuman is loose in the town, and he wants them to get him out before they nuke the place.  Sounds easy!

Who is Father Time?  According to the Bride, he's a man who "has seen it all before."  According to a comment in my last post, he's Captain 7, who was pushed into Ali Ka-Zoom's cabinet for possibly molesting Chop Suzi.  There's absolutely no evidence of this, beyond the fact that they're both black.  I would like it to be true, but can anyone tell me why they are the same person?  Any clues you pick up on?

Anyway, as Frankenstein and the Bride head back into town, we get a rare glimpse at Frankenstein's soul.  He doesn't regret his life, really, but he does yearn for something else, perhaps a "normal" relationship with a four-armed undead woman with tall hair.  There isn't much of this in the series, but it gives Frankenstein more humanity, and it's a nice touch.  But soon there are carnivorous cows to kill, and giant water monsters to destroy.  You'll notice that when the Red Swami brainwashed the Bride and passed her off as a reincarnated assassin goddess (like Kali) it took seven S.H.A.D.E. agents to subdue her.  They are confronted by a large creature that appears to be made out of water.  The Bride says it's the target - "it runs on some kind of toxic fuel" and it's a "wetform A.I. based on a prototype by Professor Ramsay Norton."  RamsEy Norton created Chemo, who was recently dropped on Blüdhaven during Infinite Crisis.  The water creature also reminds me of Glob of the Ultramarines, who is hanging out inside Neh-buh-loh during this epic.  That's not their target, though.  Their target is "Pilot Zbigniew X, leader of the X-Hawks."  You can read a lot more about him and the X-Hawks at the annotations.  Pilot Z-X shows up, quite mad (in both ways), and he tells the Bride that he drank the water and tried to communicate with this new form of life, and he knows now that he is supposed to "nurture these alien forms of intelligence, so that they can inherit the earth from solid matter."  He notices that the creature is spewing toxic waste all over Frankenstein, and he says that they're the same.  Frankenstein agrees, and therefore grants the creature oblivion, which is denied him.  The Bride tells Pilot Z-X that the water is causing his cells to turn cancerous, and she cuts off his head in order to take it back to S.H.A.D.E.  Nice move by the Bride!

When Father Time moves in, he asks Frankenstein if he'd like to hunt down "a time monster in Tibet."  This is a reference to Neh-buh-loh, who is searching for the city of Gorias and the tribe of winged horses.  S.H.A.D.E. needs him, because "a lot of the superheroes are dead" and there's some sort of "planetary crisis alert."  Good to see Morrison doing some advertising for the other big event comic from DC!  Father Time tells him that Salvation Valley is going to be wiped out by nukes, and then he tells him about Masaru Emoto and the memory of water, which is an experiment where if a beaker is labelled with a certain phrase or emotion, the water crystals reflect that emotion.  Here's his website.  You can read more about the experiment here.  Of course, if you're a cynic like me, you just think it's all bullshit.  But it fits in well to a comic book!  Father Time tells Frankenstein that they tried to make water into a weapon, and the water fought back.  Frankenstein can relate.  He leaves Salvation Valley and walks to Tibet.  He's damned speedy, is Frankenstein!

So that's the issue, and it remains an odd little sidebar to the main epic, even though we get a little bit of information.  For me, the most intriguing thing in the issue is when Frankenstein actually tastes the water.  "It's only water," he says.  This is really not expanded upon, but it implies to me that the people of Salvation Valley went nuts for an entirely different reason, and the water is a convenient scapegoat.  We see no Sheeda in this issue, but the way the creatures in Salvation Valley run amok reminds me of Mo Colley, killing cops in Nowhere Square.  In Seven Soldiers #1, the Sheeda cause riots in the streets of New York.  Why do the people in Salvation Valley go crazy?  The other explanation is that Morrison is simply showing people giving into their deepest desires, thanks to the millennarian fever that is in the air.  The whole saga has an apocalyptic feel to it (which every good superhero epic should have) and as this epic seems more in the public eye than say, Infinite Crisis, it's possible that the people of Salvation Valley have simply freaked out on their own.  That doesn't explain the animals, sure, but if Hitchcock didn't have to explain why The Birds went crazy, why should Morrison?  The hints that the water is NOT responsible for the insanity is fascinating, but unfortunately goes nowhere.  Too bad!

The other intriguing part of the issue is Frankenstein's character, which is developed slightly more than in the first two issues.  We have seen in issue #2 that he has a soft spot for children - this is an evocation of the movie, where he chucks the girl into the lake (you know what I mean - he's playing!) - and in this issue, he pines for the Bride.  Frankenstein is comfortable with who he is (the hero), but like Alix Harrower and unlike the other Seven Soldiers, he does not necessarily want a "heroic" life.  He has gotten his vengeance on Melmoth and now he simply wants peace.  Since he cannot find it himself, he gives it to the water creature.  We could argue that Neh-buh-loh needs peace as much as the water creature, and Frankenstein grants that too, next issue.  Frankenstein, who is more fully developed as a hero than any other Soldier, must develop as a "human" - that is his transformation.  He makes sure Melmoth dies horribly.  He makes sure that the water creature does not.  Would he have been so nice to the water creature if he hadn't killed Melmoth in such a fashion and received a curse in return?  One wonders.

The issue is certainly interesting, if a bit disappointing for its place in the whole.  As a brief story, it's pretty cool.  And why does Rachel have a picture of a really freaky clown on her wall?  That's just weird.  Check out the annotations if you must!

Next: Man, it's just too weird to talk about.

10 Comments

• At December 28, 2006, John Romkey wrote:

  Hi -

  I love this series of articles you're doing on Seven Soldiers... I enjoyed most of SS and this is ...

• At December 28, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  I was joking, John. Trust me.

• At December 28, 2006, Bill Reed wrote:

  Father Time is now an old white guy. He reincarnates every year. I doubt he's Captain 7.

• At December 28, 2006, nybcboy wrote:

  Hi

  re: Captain 7

  1) I was playing the race card (sorry) in making the somewhat-obvious assumption that Father Time is the ...

• At December 28, 2006, RAB wrote:

  One need not be a cynic to recognize that this "memory of water" thing is pernicious pseudoscientific twaddle. I ...

• At December 30, 2006, John Romkey wrote:

  I trust you! :-)

• At January 3, 2007, Carabas wrote:

  I'm liking this series of colums a lot so far.

  A minor quibble: 'The Bride Of Frankenstein' was directed by James ...

• At January 4, 2007, Dwain Pannell wrote:

  What happened to the issue of Mister Miracle?

• At January 4, 2007, Dwain Pannell wrote:

  I should explain: I tried to click on the link for the last issue of Mister Miracle and it came ...

• At January 4, 2007, Greg Burgas wrote:

  Sorry, Dwain. Andy must have gotten the link wrong. The last issue of Mister Miracle is around, I ...

Oh, and speaking of waiting for the trade, here there be SPOILERS.  You know SPOILERS are a-coming!

Well, I don't see any connection between superheroes, sex, and violence on this cover, do you?  What are you trying to say, Yanick Paquette?  We just can't tell!!!!

I have a small problem with this issue.  On the one hand, I'm with Grant Morrison and his thinly-veiled scorn for comics conventions.  I rarely go to conventions anymore, not necessarily because I don't like them, but because the two children take up a lot of my time.  Phoenix has only one convention a year anyway.  But I used to go to Portland's, and enjoyed myself.  I did, however, look askance on the people in full warlock regalia, and "femtroopers" are just a bit weird, even for me.  But it's a kind of gentle scorn, and I don't begrudge people who dress up.  A comics pro, however, should be a bit more understanding, because without these wackos, nobody would care about them.  If Morrison or any other comics pro wants to hold the opinions that comic book conventions are the last refuge of kooks and losers, fine.  They don't have to express those sentiments in an actual comic book.  They could just, you know, keep their opinions to themselves.  You might say that Morrison isn't really picking on people who go to comic book conventions, but I think he is.  Defend him, please!  This attitude, for me, shadows an otherwise very good issue of Bulleteer.  Not enough to ruin it for me, but enough to bother me as I read through it.

But let's delve in, as we actually get to meet Suli Stellamaris, whose billboard for the movie Cup of Blood we saw in Shining Knight #2.  Stellamaris is actually a mermaid, which is a derogatory term, so I guess I'm just as guilty as anyone else.  As Stellamaris explains how she is trying to overcome stereotypes, she starts to choke and says she's being poisoned.  Given the events of later in the issue, we can probably call bullshit on that.  Nobody can get in, because the glass of her water tank is reinforced, but that's no problem for Alix Harrower, her superpowered bodyguard!  Alix smashes the glass, and all is well.  Except that Alix is now a target, as a mysterious narrator tells us.  This narrator is trying to find a weakness in her armor - which we can see as both a practical problem, but as it turns out, is also an personality issue for the assassin.  The narrator tells us a bit about Alix, including the fact that she has an "English kid studying art history."  She is currently guarding Suli Stellamaris in Zenith City, which appears prior to this in DC history apparently only in this issue.  I was kind of hoping Morrison would bring back Vanity for at least a cameo in this series, but alas - 'twas not to be!  (Although that link postulates that the town where Uglyhead wreaked havoc is Vanity - a very cool possibility that I hadn't considered.)  Anyway, the assassin reveals his identity as I, Spyder.  Jeez, what's with this guy?  Is he dead or not?  He is whittling a very special arrow for Alix, and looks like Jack Knight in James Robinson's Starman.  Admit it!

Stellamaris is a mean mother, according to Alix - she orders her kid around all the time.  Big Thunder, the other bodyguard, tells her that she can "pacify the fanboys" while he takes Stellamaris back to her room, presumably.  Alix isn't sure what to do with the fanboys, who just want to ogle her even though only a few of them know who she is.  Mind-grabber Kid, whom we last saw trying to pick up Zatanna at the end of the first issue of her series, tells her that she needs to open up her bustier a bit more.  Considering she has no zipper there, that would be a feat indeed!  He takes her to meet the original Bulletgirl, Susan Barr (even though he gets her name wrong and calls her "Parr").  Susan thinks Alix looks like a hooker and is quite put out that she's stealing her husband's old thing.  Notice that Paquette draws Alix sticking her chest out when Susan confronts her - the sexualized nature of the book, muted in issue #2, is in full force again in this issue.

Alix and Lucian (Mind-grabber Kid's real name) leave Susan and walk through the convention.  They pass Dumb Bunny and the "Eternal Superteen" booth, which is the porn site that Lance visited in issue #1.  Lucian tells her that his panel is called "In the Pink Corner: Superqueer Bashing, Kid Sidekicks and Life on the Fringes of the Law."  We know he was trying to pick up Zatanna earlier, so we're a bit confused.  He tells her that there are all kinds of people in the world and they don't all end up with Justice League credentials like his.  You'll recall Jackie Pemberton picking on Zatanna because of her Justice League credentials, but she didn't pick on Lucian, who after all was in the same group.  They stop outside of a panel called "Sweethearts and Supervixens," where the women are arguing about those being their only choices in the community.  Lucian tells Alix that a lot of the girls grew up in cruel orphanages, and it's no wonder they end up twisted.  This is, of course, Sally Sonic's story, as we'll see in issue #4, and it also has a nice Dickensian flair to it.  Inside, a comic geek asks L'il Hollywood, who is on the panel, that after all the controversy about the Newsboy Army over the years, if she could comment on the rumor that Millions the Mystery Mutt is immortal and secretly running the U.S. banking system, and whether it has anything to do with the cauldron of rebirth that the late Vincenzo Baldi was supposed to have found in Slaughter Swamp.  L'il Hollywood hadn't heard that Vincenzo was dead, and the fan says he was killed that morning.  L'il Hollywood makes a point to ask Lucian if he knew Vincenzo was dead.  Etta Candy, by the way, is on the panel.  We last saw her heading the self-esteem workshop that Zatanna and Lucian both attended.

Later, at the awards banquet (where the late, lamented Booster Gold is giving out the Year's Most Outstanding Comeback), Alix sees one of the girls on the porn site - Thumbelina - heading to the bathroom, so she follows her (take note of Thumbelina's costume, too - a nice detail).  In the same panel, Suli Stellamaris indicates that her son was born in very similar circumstances to Aquaman (well, not the modern Aquaman, but the pre-Crisis one), and of course Aquaman wins the Best Comeback Award.  At another table, L'il Hollywood is hanging out with other heroes.  The annotations claim the guy who toast Jackie Pemberton is the original Stripesy, who was a member of the original Seven Soldiers of Victory.  Two Boy Blues sit at the table, which is weird.  The other guy is, if you can believe it, Selina Kyle's brother.  When is Will Pfeifer going to use him?  One Boy Blue expresses what we've all been seeing throughout the series: "Nobody goes into battle with six on their team."  The other Boy Blue says, "Everybody knows it's unlucky.  Five is good.  Seven is better."  Is it something to do with prime numbers?  I'm not sure.  L'il Hollywood tells Lucian to go get them some drinks so they can toast to the Undying Don.  L'il Hollywood and Lucian apparently have some sort of a Gloria Swanson/William Holden relationship in Sunset Boulevard.  In the bathroom, Alix catches Thumbelina shooting up with her shrinking serum.  Alix asks her if she knows anything about Sally Sonic, and Thumbelina tells her that Sally "liked turning guys against their human wives and girlfriends," but that's all she can tell her.  Alix has a spider on her shoulder, which turns out to be one of Tom Dalt's bugs, and he is listening in at that moment.  He narrates that Lance started an e-mail affair with some "Brit superheroine."  And Alix's tenant is English.  You don't suppose ...

As she leaves the bathroom, Lucian finds her and tells her they should "team up."  Yeah, he means exactly what we think he means.  He says they shouldn't waste their time "playing out these restrictive social rituals" when they both want, you know, sex.  Alix points out that he's gay, and Lucian replies, "Do I look gay?"  That's a funny statement, considering it's kind of difficult to tell if someone is gay just by looking at them, but you know what? he wears spandex and he has nicely-moussed hair - he DOES look gay!  He tells her that it's the only way he can get out of sleeping with the "old bag" - I originally thought he meant Susan Barr, but he means L'il Hollywood.  She was looking to "coach" him and she told him he had a special destiny to save the world.  This is interesting, as L'il Hollywood certainly remembers the Newsboy Army's ill-fated trip to Slaughter Swamp.  So we've seen Ed Stargard, Ali Ka-Zoom, and now L'il Hollywood try to mentor people who could "save the world."  Lucian also tells Alix that L'il Hollywood "can make herself look a lot younger than she is," which explains why Miss Hollywood doesn't appear as old as the others in the Newsboy Army.  Lucian asks if Alix doesn't think he's capable of saving the world, and Alix asks the important question: "Why are you all so obsessed with being special?"  This again shows that for Alix, this life is not the one she would have chosen.  Her task is to overcome the obstacles that simply being a superhero has put in her way, and not any specific heroic task - she fights a supervillain, sure, but it's not like she goes and finds her.  Lucian can't really answer her question, except to speak about a "yearning" they have, and if they don't make it early enough, they get too old.  Again, this echoes Lance's desire to be perpetually young, because old people just don't get to be superheroes!  Lucian then goes on a rant about how he doesn't use his powers to score chicks because he's a good guy, and how he doesn't deserve to be "caught up in a nostalgia freakshow that never ends."  He tells L'il Hollywood he's cruising gay bars every weekend, but he's really going to his therapy group, as we've seen.  Big Thunder comes around the corner and says that they should team up, which makes Alix suggest they all team up.  Oh happy day!  Meanwhile, Tom Dalt floats outside wearing a jet pack, and he thinks to himself that he's found her weakness: she listens.  This implies that Dalt uses more than just an arrow to kill his prey - he also destroys them psychologically, because how is "listening" a weakness an arrow can exploit?  Alix's penchant for listening, however, saves her life, because as she assists Lucian up, the arrow misses her, which it wouldn't if she had been standing straight.  Tom lands on a roof across the street and is confronted by the ghost of Greg Saunders, who says he knows they got him working for the other side, but he recruited him first.  He shot Ramon Solomano through the soul, and presumably he does the same thing here, which is why Tom goes back to the "good" side.

As a coda to the attempted assassination, everyone rushes over to see what has happened, leaving Suli Stellamaris alone.  She yells that she's being poisoned again, but no one listens, and her son sits idly by, drinking soda.  The annotations claim that her son poisoned her and that Dalt's attempt DID lead to one death, that of Stellamaris.  I wonder if she's crying wolf for the attention.  It's kind of coincidental that she's getting poisoned just when no one is paying attention to her.  I could be wrong, though - I often am.

Alix returns home and talks to Sara, who slips up and mentions Thumbelina when Alix didn't.  This tips Alix off that it's really Sally Sonic, who blows her magic whistle (oh dear, the symbolism) and magically changes into costume.  She throws the coffee maker at Alix and then begins to beat her with the refrigerator as we fade out.  The annotations believe this is a reference to Women in Refrigerators, and I certainly wouldn't put it past Morrison, but perhaps a fridge is just a fridge - it just happened to be there, and they are in the kitchen, after all!  I wonder.  It would be kind of cool if Sally's choice of weapon was a reference to it.

In this issue we return to the hyper-sexualized content we saw in issue #1.  We again see the linking of superheroes and porn, but it expands beyond the people who put on the costumes to the people who worship the people who put on the costumes.  Now, this phenomenon is not limited to comics, of course - witness girls peeing their pants when the latest boy band shows up, and guys lusting after, say, JoJo (she's only sixteen, people - don't look at her that way!) - but for some reason, it takes on a darker undercurrent when applied to comics - perhaps because the people comics readers lust after aren't, after all, real (sorry, Ragnell - Kyle Rayner's butt doesn't exist).  This issue mocks those who would worship at the altar of celebrity, but it also mocks those who are celebrities - or at least are higher up on the celebrity food chain than the fans.  There's this idea that celebrities are somehow "sexier" than regular folk - the fanboys gather around Alix simply because she looks like a superperson, even though we know she's a regular person like they are.  Lucian perfectly encapsulates this idea when he speaks of "yearning," which is something we usually hear when we speak of romance - it's a lust for the worship and the sex that goes along with it.  Morrison puts a twist on this by having Lucian reject the idea of sex with L'il Hollywood - he would rather pretend to be gay than get it on with this older woman who, as Alix points out, might just be lonely.  We know she probably is lonely, because these people do not inhabit a world where they are allowed to grow old gracefully.  They lose the spotlight, and that's the worst thing of all.  L'il Hollywood reaches out to Lucian the only way she knows how - sexually.  We don't actually see her reach out to him, but it's interesting to contrast it to the way she talks down Mo Colley in The Manhattan Guardian #4 - she is innocent, so she doesn't use sex, just an appeal to his better side.  By the time we get to the present day, she can no longer relate to anyone like that.

Alix remains aloof from this strange world, and here I think we can look at how Morrison and Paquette sexualize her, because it's her very sexual presence that allows her to remain aloof.  We see her in more sexual poses after issue #2's backing off: the cover, obviously; on page 3, when Tom Dalt is spying on her through the window; on page 5, when Big Thunder tells her she was hot, she's standing with her hips out and her hand almost on her butt; on page 7, in panel 2 we see only her ass, while in panel 4, she confronts Susan Barr by literally sticking her ample chest out; on page 8, she looks practically fluid in both panels 2 and 3; on page 12, when Thumbelina comes out of the stall, she again thrusts her hips out; on page 13, when Thumbelina tells her she would do great in superhero porn and Alix rejects her, Alix stands with her left hip askew and her right leg straight, in a defiant yet sexy pose; on page 16, while Lucian is ranting about the "nostalgia freakshow," she leans against the wall with her left arm akimbo, looking very much like a prostitute; on page 17, she is almost pushing her breasts into Lucian's face as she helps him up; and on page 22, when Sally is about to hit her with the refrigerator, she's on all fours with her butt high in the air.  What are we to make of these poses, which are very deliberate?  I think that Alix's sexuality, which is as casually a part of her as anything, liberates her from the obsession that cripples the other heroes and fans in this book.  I'm not saying that she goes around having sex with everyone, because we have seen she doesn't.  I'm saying that she knows that she is sexy, and doesn't worry about it.  Her sexiness comes from her looks, of course, but it also comes from her bearing, which is confident and poised.  Even when she is worrying about her future after Lance dies, she doesn't break down and go fetal - she simply gets to work and gets things done.  The people at the convention are past their prime (L'il Hollywood and even Lucian to a degree) or people who will never have a prime (the fans).  Everyone is insecure, from L'il Hollywood and Lucian to Suli Stellamaris to the women on the panel, who worry about labels.  Interestingly, only the bodyguards - Alix and Big Thunder - seem together.  I think we can all agree that Bug Thunder projects some measure of sexiness without worrying about people calling us gay, right?  Big Thunder is also calmly sexy, and he and Alix are the only ones in the book who don't seem to be dealing with dozens of neuroses.

This sexiness also allows Alix to be human.  She cares about Lucian, and wants to help him.  She doesn't worry about appearances, so she's not sure why Susan Barr is so angry at her.  She's trusting, so she lets Sara Smart stay with her without, presumably, checking up on her (she's new to the superhero game, I guess, but anyone who reads comics knows that when you become a superhero and then someone mysterious shows up who seems nice, probably isn't).  By the end of the issue, when she's going to fight Sally Sonic, we have learned enough about her that she can finally start starring in her own book!

Yes, Alix Harrower has been a guest star for three issues now.  Yes, the first issue was her "origin," and she was featured prominently, but Morrison really examined Lance and his relationship to his wife more than he did Alix.  Issue #2 didn't even need Alix at all, except for the revelation that she was supposed to go to Miracle Mesa.  She's in this issue a lot, of course, but this is more about the people at the convention that Alix herself.  Why has Morrison done this?  I think it's because of what people have said about her job with children who have autism - she is not really suited for this "heroic" life, not because she is not heroic or even that she actively rejects the heroic life, but because she had such a fulfilling life beforehand (except for her relationship with her husband, which was presumably okay from her point of view).  Therefore, she doesn't have to make any kind of transformative journey - her transformation is purely external, and now she's just trying to continue with her "normal" life.  The only thing that she wants cleared up is Lance's relationship with Sally Sonic, which comes next issue.  So Morrison could use her series as kind of an infodump, which he has done for two issues, and also a place to look at alienation, which he has done elsewhere as well (most notably Frankenstein #1, which features another hero who really doesn't need to transform).  It doesn't really weaken the story, unless you believe Morrison's contention that each of these mini-series can be read completely separately.  In that respect, nothing much has happened in this series.  However, read as part of the entire saga, we have learned a great deal about what's going on, so I count it as a success.

And come on - next issue there's a catfight!  Whoo-hoo!

The annotations are pretty helpful, and gave me the link to Catwoman's brother (I still can't get over that).  Jog says that Thumbelina is working with the Sheeda, which I think is wrong, but still has excellent thoughts about the issue.  (In case you're wondering, the theory is that Thumbelina put the tracking device on Alix's back when she came out of the stall, but it's on the wrong shoulder that she touches, so I'm doubtful.  Could be, I suppose.  But why?)

Next: The Bride!  No, not the crappy Sting/Jennifer Beals movie.  Don't worry!

8 Comments

• At December 27, 2006, nybcboy wrote:

  Hi

  Re: Bulleteer 3

  Rorshach test - we see what we want to see, buddy

  1) Defending Grant Morrison - I don't ...

• At December 27, 2006, Ragnell wrote:

  Now, Greg, I'm well-aware that Kyle Rayner's butt does not exist. It's like a platonic concept. Far too ...

• At December 28, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  I was just making sure you knew, Ragnell! :)

• At December 28, 2006, Jedeye wrote:

  Re: "She listens"

  This is important to Spyder because if she can listen, that means her ears work. The ears are ...

• At December 28, 2006, RAB wrote:

  I must agree with nybcboy on the first point. I've seen GM a number of times at conventions and ...

• At December 28, 2006, nybcboy wrote:

  Hi guys

  Pardon the stream-of-consciousness rant earlier. I should check my spelling and grammar better next time.

  It's Lucien, not "Lucian"

  1) I ...

• At December 28, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  nybcboy - It's definitely "Lucian." I don't know why it's NOT Lucien, because that would make sense, but it's ...

• At December 28, 2006, nybcboy wrote:

  The Therapy group.

  Hey there!

  spelling of Lucian's name - okay... my bad.

  The therapy group - Why do I think it's a ...

But let's move on to the land of the SPOILERS!  You know SPOILERS are coming, but you can't resist reading on!

You have to love Baron Bedlam!  He's just so bodacious!

This is a really interesting issue, in that Morrison does a lot more with Shilo and his development as a hero than he did in the first two issues, and he pulls back just enough on the New Gods thing he had going on in issues #1-2.  RAB's excellent commentary notwithstanding, the New Gods fit awkwardly into the saga as a whole, and the less we get into their separate mythology, the more we can get into the mythology of the Seven Soldiers.  In this issue Morrison does a good job of keeping the New Gods apart, even though they are present throughout.  He does a fine job in showing Shilo's personal trials and not overwhelming us with New Genesis/Apokolips rivalries.  This issue begins with Shilo whining about a new escape artist whose outfit looks strangely similar to his and whose stunts are even more strangely similar.  Shilo doesn't know how Baron Bedlam does it!  Baron Bedlam, of course, is another Fourth World analogue, corresponding to Doctor Bedlam, but the nice thing about him is that we don't need to know that at all.  Shilo talks about Bedlam's disciples - "plastic people" - which isn't really all that subtle and turns out to be quite literal.  Dr. Dezard wonders if Shilo is scared of a little competition, because people will always side with the underdog.  As he says this, we see a street scene outside his office, and although it's raining, at least two people are smiling vacuously as they walk on the sidewalk without umbrellas.  Are they "plastic people"?  Shilo tells the doctor that he's going to ask Bedlam to open for him at the "dome show," and he invites Dezard to come.  Bad move, Shilo!

He goes back to his apartment and watches one of Bedlam's stunts over and over.  Bedlam is getting crushed between two trains, and Shilo slows it down and says it shows Bedlam's body smashed, and there's no way he gets out.  His girlfriend, Jonelle, who has just returned from Paris, says he was stupid to mention getting contacted by aliens, because people are starting to make fun of him.  We see here the idea of peer pressure and the need to conform - Shilo has been through a transformative experience and doesn't really care what people think of him anymore, while Jonelle makes the valid point that in the "real" world, image does matter, and Shilo should worry about it.  Jonelle, of course, becomes a "plastic person" in this issue, but even before that, she is obviously concerned with Shilo's - and by extension her - image.  She also mentions Hurricane Gloria, which we've heard about before and will hear about again.  ZZ, meanwhile, is also angry at Shilo, but Shilo turns the tables on him by asking him about the "Flat" he's inhaling.  We saw this in issue #1 - ZZ has a weird orb that emits ghostly lights and fumes, and it's apparently some kind of drug.  He tells ZZ that he has to stop seeing Lashina, who is, as we saw in issue #1, a Female Fury.  He's worried because he thinks "they" got to ZZ too.  You'll notice that Jonelle thinks the only thing that can calm Shilo is some good sex.  ZZ defends his use of Flat, telling Shilo that it "shows you things as they are," but he looks rather sad as he says it, as if things as they are reveal a sad truth about the universe.  But he's an addict, and despite his sadness, he can't stop.  Lashina mysteriously shows up and ZZ leaves with her.  Later, Shilo explains to Jonelle that ever since his experience in the black hole, things have been weird.  This is another indication that perhaps Shilo is still in the black hole.  He wonders what's the deal with the "plastic people," and Jonelle, who is reading about it, says it's a "new cosmetic thing that makes your skin like enamel."  I doubt very much if we're supposed to ignore the similiarities between it and SmartSkin, which turned Alix Harrower into a superhero.  The emphasis is again on staying young forever.  It seems like the method of the Sheeda is to force people to grow up without changing emotionally.  People like Lance Harrower and the people who have this process done to them are adults, chronologically, but they act like children.  Therefore, they are easy pickings for the Sheeda and their Apokoliptian allies.  Jonelle tells Shilo it's all going to be fine now that she's back, which is, of course, horrible irony, considering that on the next page Granny Goodness turns her into a plastic person.

When Shilo arrives that night, Bedlam confronts him with his posse, who are presumably bad guys from Apokolips, but I'm not familiar enough with them to worry about it.  They're punks - that's all we need to know.  Bedlam tells Shilo he's there to replace him, and as Shilo cops an attitude, Jonelle shows up, plastic, and tells him that Bedlam is better than he is - at everything.  This idea of sex running through this issue and, to a lesser extent, the series itself, is interesting.  Jonelle hits Shilo where he lives, so to speak, when she implies that Bedlam is a better lover than he is.  This sets Shilo off, as he leaps at Bedlam and attacks him.  Shilo, as I mentioned, has gone through an experience that supposedly left him with more awareness about what the world is like, but the first time someone challenges his manhood he snaps.  He attacks Bedlam and breaks his head open, proving that he's not human - Bedlam is, in fact, the ultimate "plastic person," able to transfer his consciousness into an infinite number of bodies.  Dr. Dezard shows up and tells Shilo that Bedlam is a "living wavelength," and that Shilo has already been replaced, because the people want "a plastic man who smoothes away all the rough edges for maximum appeal."  This is a not-terribly-subtle critique of both mass popular culture and comic book culture.  Morrison is bemoaning the homogenized tripe that comes out from the faceless corporations that run popular culture (ironically, there's an ad on the facing page for Underworld: Evolution, a slickly-produced sequel that stars a perfectly toned and air-brushed Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman with fake-looking and "plastic" special effects), not unlike his bosses.  I'm not going to get into the fact that a man who takes money from a faceless corporation produces comics that critique it, because that's a problem with any artistic endeavor, and it's not the place for it, but it's interesting that Shilo, who is pretty mass-produced himself, still has too many rough edges for the public.  Presumably he was the perfect escape artist, not too threatening, a "safe" black man for the white American public, until he went a little nuts after coming out of the black hole.  The American people like their superstars quirky, but not crazy.  Shilo went a bit around the bend!

Dr. Dezard takes Motherboxxx away from Shilo (which brings up an artistic point: where the heck is Motherboxxx all the time? she is not visible until Dezard takes her off Shilo's shoulder, and prior to that, there's no evidence she's even around) and brings in Dark Side, who tells Shilo the Anti-Life Equation.  This destroys what is left of his mind.  The Anti-Life Equation, in case you're wondering, is: Loneliness + Alienation + Fear + Despair + Self-Worth / Mockery / Condemnation / Misunderstanding x Guilt x Shame x Failure x Judgment; N = Y where Y = Hope and N = Folly; Love = Lies; Life = Death; Self = Dark Side.  Now that's an equation!  As Shilo staggers through the streets, he passes a television with a picture of a mushroom cloud on the screen, and in the background of one panel, watching him sadly, are Lightray and, according to the annotations, someone named Jezebelle.  As he walks through the rain, he is passed by a familiar taxi cab carrying a familiar blue kid.  Yes, it's the taxi from Klarion #3, which is taking our hero and the Deviants to the Museum of Superheroes.  At the same time, we see Carla pushing Jake's engagement ring away and it falling into the gutter.  Wow - all these things happen at the same time????  Shilo wallows in self-pity as Bedlam takes over the top spot and wows the crowd.  But then Shilo sees Metron again, who points out acts of kindness and tells him that there's a Life Equation and that "one good man can make a difference."  This is apparently enough for Shilo to resist the Anti-Life Equation, which makes me wonder how effective the whole Anti-Life Equation is in the first place.  Shilo bursts back into the dressing room where Dark Side sits with his minions (and Jonelle), and Dark Side says he might be immune to the Anti-Life Equation, but "no one escapes the Omega Sanction."  Yes, that sounds like a Robert Ludlum novel (I think it was published after The Gemini Contenders but before The Holcroft Covenant) and when Dark Side is Darkseid, it means those cool beams come out of his eyes and turn right angles before incinerating his foe, but in this world, it apparently means getting his thugs to beat on Shilo with baseball bats.  Not very original, if you think about it.  Jonelle gets off on the beating that Shilo is taking, and Dark Side points out that in "his world," Shilo is smaller than a grain of sand, "and evil is a mountain."  Shilo wakes up in the trunk of a car and calls out to Motherboxxx, but Dezard is busy dissecting Shilo's computer, and Shilo has no one to turn to.  The bad guys open the trunk and proceed to turn Shilo into pulp, even though he tries to buy his way out of it.  Then they do some work on him with a drill before dousing him in alcohol and setting him on fire.  This is not the first time we have seen someone become a living pyre - in fact, it's the third time in the epic.  They use some bolt cutters on his family jewels - again, we see the connection to sex, and now that Jonelle has figuratively unmanned him, these guys do it literally - and we pull back to view Hurricane Gloria over northern Florida.  It's a disturbing scene, made even worse by Morrison's penchant again for "humanizing" bad guys with a few simple words.  We saw how the flunkies employed by Melmoth were discussing feminism in movies, and Dark Side's minions are discussing one guy's sister and whether or not she likes the other one.  It's a perfectly reasonable conversation to have, and we could believe it's just a few guys sitting around drinking beers if it weren't for the fact that they're destroying a human being at the same time.  They return to the city and throw Shilo's battered body in front of where Bedlam is performing.

The final two pages show Shilo in a wheelchair, completely bandaged, with a cast on one arm, trying to buy groceries.  Dark Side comes in and puts the "D'pends undergarments" out of his reach on the shelf, which is just mean.  I mean, sure, beat a man almost to death, emasculate him, set him on fire, but don't put the diapers out of his reach!  As Dark Side leaves, two men stand over Shilo.  It's Orion and Lightray, in their "real world" aspects.  Orion says "The Life Trap has you in its grip," and Lightray says, "And there's only one way out ..."  That's a suitably ominous place to end.

This issue, as I mentioned, is more interesting than the first two because of how it ties into the rest of the epic.  We finally get some confirmation that Shilo is living in the world that the rest of the saga takes place, as the scene on the street shows.  It's still a strange world, though, that feels disjointed from the rest of the saga - possibly because the world in which Shilo lives seems much more like our own world than the world of DC.  But that's neither here nor there - Shilo is firmly placed in the universe with the rest of the Seven Soldiers, so he can safely intersect with them later.

The interesting part of the issue stems from Morrison's examination of the "plastic people" and what that means to the epic as a whole.  The critique of modern society, with its emphasis on exterior rather than internal beauty, is heavy-handed - that's not to say it's not a point worth making, just that the metaphor is a bit obvious - but that's not all Morrison is saying.  Shilo Norman himself is guilty of this sort of behavior, and now that he understands what is happening, the glorification of external beauty has become more sinister and less vapid.  Dark Side links this objectification to the nullification of life itself - if no one ever gets old, what's the point of propagating the species?  We have seen this attitude before with Gloriana Tenebrae, who plans to live forever and therefore has no need for an heir - in this case, Misty.  These people can't take the long view, because they are so wrapped up in their own lives, and therefore Dark Side will bring out the extinction of humanity not by overt conquest and enslavement, but by appealing to yet another Deadly Sin - vanity.  When they become "plastic," they are freezing themselves in time, and can no longer evolve.  They are ripe for the harvest, and the Sheeda are coming.

Shilo is fighting against this, which, as I mentioned, is ironic, because in the beginning of the series, he is as "plastic" as the rest of the people.  His sojourn among the New Gods has shown him that the outer shell means nothing - again, the imagery isn't subtle, but when he glimpses the majesty of the New Gods behind and above the broken bodies of the homeless people, he understands that he has been living the wrong kind of life.  This is the first step on his road of transformation and heroism, but like our other heroes, nothing is easy.  Shilo suffers more than the others, which indicates that he was far more along the road to damnation than the others.  He has the hardest road to travel, because he was in so deep to begin with.  His transgression is against society as a whole, a society that worships what he used to give them - external spectacle with no soul.  Now, "people are starting to make fun of" him, as Jonelle points out, and once you become the object of ridicule, it's far easier to destroy you.  Shilo is destroyed because the public - that arbiter of culture - no longer has any use for him.  He has become too "serious."  Who needs that when the circus is in town?

Williams' art, while not perfect and perhaps the weakest in the series, fits the story well.  He draws exaggerated perfection, and the body language of Jonelle and the rest of the plastic people is highly sexualized, which goes only with the fetishistic aspects of the book - the plastic people, after all, are coated in enamel, which can easily be seen as a sex toy.  The art would look awkward in another book and in another context, but here, with the undercurrent of not only sex but "movie-star sex," as my wife and I put it - think Pierce Brosnan boning Rene Russo on marble steps, for crying out loud, in The Thomas Crown Affair - it works, because we see that Williams is striving for external perfection of his cast but also shows their grotesque nature.  Williams, from the little experience I've had with him, always draws this way, and it's possibly a happy accident that he found a book that works to that style.  But that's okay - it works.

For more inside information, you can always check out the annotations.  Of course, Jog has his usual good thoughts, as he delves more into the New Gods angle than I do, but less into the materialistic part of the book!  So it all balances out.

Next: A superhero convention.  You know that will be fun!

2 Comments

• At December 27, 2006, Dru wrote:

  One thing I don't understand - If Shilo's still in the black hole, how come we also have him surrounded ...

• At December 27, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  That's why I don't think he's still in the black hole, even though it would be a nice theory. ...

Would I SPOIL things on Christmas?  Of course I would!  So watch out! SPOILERS everywhere in this post!

I can't help putting Harry Callahan's voice in Frankenstein's mouth on this cover.  "Do you feel lucky, Melmoth?  Well ... do ya?"

I'm enjoying the different tones of the narration throughout the saga.  This one is all about bombast, and it begins with a full page of Frankenstein riding some strange steed over an alien landscape and the narration: "First over the horizon comes fear.  And at its heels, terror."  This refers to the two moons of Mars, Phobos ("fear") and Deimos ("panic").  We turn the page and get the two-page splash, with the narration: "The flesh-eating horses of Mars are restless."  Frankenstein rides through what appears to be an abandoned city, with a large sculpture of a head that looks very much like J'onn J'onzz near him.  Some of the spires in the city are bisected, and the tips are floating, which is kind of strange.  There are also three glowing shapes floating in the sky above Frankenstein.  Well, that's weird.

Frankenstein stops his ride by a Mars NASA lander and puzzles things out.  He contemplates missing children, the theft of one hundred space suits from the Smithsonian, an SOS from space, and a familiar, sulfurous spore leading to Mars.  On the lander is the grafitti "Melmoth lives," which confirms what Frankenstein has guessed: Melmoth is on Mars with missing children.  According to the annotations, this is Viking I, which landed on the "Plains of Gold."  Which makes sense.  Frankenstein camps for the night, and then rides out again!  He sees the majestic remnants of J'onn's culture, and then finds the gold mines where Melmoth runs his little slaving empire.  He enters, determined to kill Melmoth once and for all!

Down in the mines, Melmoth is showing people around.  He mentions that the Puritans of Limbo Town were fiercer than he planned for, a reference to the fourth issue of Klarion.  He is also bandaged completely, because he was pretty much immolated by Klarion.  Morrison could be evoking anyone from the Invisible Man to DC's Unknown Soldier with the swaddling, but I'll leave it to the experts to sort out!  Klarion, you'll recall, bit off his left arm, which is still missing.  He carries a witch brand from Limbo Town and is talking to Mr. Silencio, whom we remember was shown in Klarion #3 and was also engaged in some sort of East Coast-West Coast gang war with Vincenzo to Undying Don (which, of course, shouldn't remind anyone of the East Coast-West Coast hip-hop war, should it?).  Silencio is freaked out by the mines, and says that his father claims that Melmoth is an immortal demon.  Melmoth gives his secret origin: Gloriana Tenebrae dumped his sorry ass when Camelot fell and left him "to walk home through the long centuries."  He was kept alive by "magic and bloody-minded rage."  He heard of Slaughter Swamp and found that the Undry Cauldron was there, giving life to a village of drowned corpses.  He had his blood drained and replaced by the waters of the cauldron.  He found the cauldron, obviously, in 1590.  It came there when Justine threw it into the time stream of Castle Revolving in Shining Knight #1.  He made the beast with two backs with all the hot repressed Puritan women and moved on, and the cauldron was lost again, presumably, until it came into possession of Vincenzo.  The boy in the background of all these panels, by the way, is Billy Beezer, who has recently joined the other young men in the mines.  I assume he uses his pick axe so violently and causes a bit of a cave-in because he's so angry at Melmoth - he gives him the ol' stink-eye as Melmoth passes by.  Melmoth says that he has built an army of his own to fight Gloriana, and he has become fond of mankind, so he's willing to fight for them.  Of course, his plans for mankind, however "more benevolent," are still pretty awful, but I guess it's the lesser of two evils!  Silencio asks him how he plans to finance the war, and Melmoth shows him the inner chamber of the mines, which is filled with "more gold than there's ever been."  The floor of the chamber looks suspiciously like Superman's crest - it's a five-sided figure with the point downward.  I suppose I'm reading too much into it.  As Melmoth is about to break into the mine (which is, I'm sure, supposed to remind us of an Egyptian tomb, what with the statues "guarding" the tomb, the hieroglyphics on the wall, and the booby traps), Frankenstein shows up and throws a pick axe into his back.  That Frankenstein - nothing subtle about him!

Frankenstein does some big-time damage to Melmoth's men (one thing Morrison can't escape, despite his excellence as a writer, and that's the sad fate of almost every flunky who ever shows up in fiction, whether it's comics or the movies or television).  He recognizes Billy Beezer, although we're not sure how, and tells him that his friends are waiting for him on the other side of the Erdel gate where he found them.  The "friend" are the Deviants, Billy's gang from Klarion #3, one of whom looks a lot like Frankenstein.  We have to assume that Frankenstein got to Mars through the Erdel gate, but how did he get to Melmoth's place?  Did he follow the "spore" that is mentioned earlier this issue?  If so, he has a powerful nose, smelling something across deep space like that.  How did he activate the Erdel gate?  The annotations say that Frankenstein must have arrived on the scene right when Billy went through and used its opening to get to Mars, but that makes no sense.  Melmoth was right there when Billy went through, so Frakenstein could have confronted him then.  In between Billy's abduction to Mars and this issue, Melmoth went to Limbo Town.  Frankenstein would not have gone to Mars unless Melmoth was there, right?  Maybe he went there for the missing children, but it seems like he puts all the clues together, deduces that Melmoth is on Mars, and then went there.  So who opened the Erdel gate?  Does Frankenstein know how to do it?

Anyway, Melmoth tells Frankenstein he knows the truth of his creation: in 1816, Victor Frakenstein came to him, seeking the secret of life.  Frankenstein gave Melmoth some "scientific secrets" (one wonders what they were!) and Melmoth gave him some of his precious, undying blood, which, as we know, isn't really blood but the water of the cauldron.  This, not lightning, gave Frankenstein's monster life.  He is, in actuality, a Grundy, made for "heavy lifting."  Suddenly the deus ex machina comes to the rescue, in the form of "tattered macrophages," which are "grave protectors, programmed to devour all profane living flesh."  Billy knocks the witch brand from his hand, which means he can no longer control Frankenstein (remember, that's how the Puritans control the Grundys).  The tomb's doors start to close, and everyone runs for it.  Outside the mine, Silencio is very grateful to Frankenstein for saving his life, but Frankenstein is having none of it.  One of the flesh-eating horses quickly puts Silencio out of his misery.  Melmoth (with the axe still sticking out of his back) tells Frankenstein he's his real father, if you want to get technical, and Frankenstein decides this is a good enough reason to feed Melmoth to the horses.  Which, as he puts it, is kind of icky, because once Melmoth goes through their systems, he'll still be conscious, even though he'll be horse dung.  Charming.  Melmoth's last words remind him that he could have saved mankind from Gloriana, but now there will be a curse on Frankenstein for what he's done.  Frankenstein ponders this at he leads the children back to Earth, like some monstrous Pied Piper.

As is the case with the second batch of these mini-series, Morrison, it seems, is pushing the plot along far more than in the first batch, which means the development of the grand themes gets pushed to the background.  That's not to say it's not there, but it's muted a bit.  The nature of the characters also inhibits him.  Mister Miracle continues to be a New Gods story, which means it fits into the overall epic rather awkwardly.  Bulleteer is about a woman who explicitly does NOT want to be a superhero, which makes the theme of growing up through heroism a bit less powerful.  Frankenstein, meanwhile, appears to be about a monster who knows exactly what he is and what he needs to do.  It's not that Frankenstein is an unfeeling monster, but he's apparently already gone through the trials that the others are going through and come out far more confident than they are.  Where can the character development come from?

And then he "kills" Melmoth.  This development gives Frankenstein something to consider.  As the narration states: "The monster feels the unaccustomed chill as the howling winds of Mars coax voices and sly, mocking laughter from corroded pylons and haunted tunnels.  'Too late, Frankenstein,' they seem to say.  'What's done can never be undone.'"  Frankenstein has saved humanity from the slave pits of Melmoth, but he doesn't necessarily know that.  All he knows is that his private vendetta may have cost humanity its chance to defeat the Sheeda.  His mission goes from finding and destroying Melmoth to atoning for that act.  He doesn't whine about it, either, he just gets about to doing it.  In this way, Frankenstein acts as a contrast to most of the other Seven Soldiers.  He and Justine are really the only ones who simply go about their business, and even the Shining Knight experiences a lot of self-doubt.  Frankenstein is shown as the apotheosis of heroism, because he has made his choices and he lives with them.  He doesn't allow doubt to enter into it.  He wants revenge on Melmoth; he gets it.  If that leads to something worse, then he will deal with that.  The other Soldiers, we have seen, get caught up in their emotions, and it often cripples them until something external spurs them into action.  Frankenstein, perhaps because he is an artificial creation, does not have those kinds of problems.  He certainly has emotions, but he doesn't let them interfere with what needs to be done.  He has a moral compass, and follows it even to the plains of Mars.  Frankenstein helps Morrison highlight the moral journey the other Seven Soldiers must make, because he has already made it.

We have seen throughout the importance of legend to the saga, and that is, of course, evident in a title named Frankenstein.  Frankenstein comes to the tomb where Melmoth is digging for gold, and the narration speaks of "shapeshifting toad emperors, crowned with algae, iron and gold," as well as "sorceror kings of aboriginal Mars."  These legendary kings are gone, but their fingerprints remain.  What this issue does is open up the possibility that the Sheeda themselves harvested Mars those long years ago - Melmoth is, after all, intimately familiar with the tombs.  Why not?  At the point in the future from which the Sheeda come, they certainly have the technology to attack Mars as well.  Frankenstein himself is a legend, and the implication throughout the epic is that the Sheeda must be countered by legendary figures - another reason why Frankenstein can be seen as the template for the other soldiers, because he's already a legend.  As the most uncomplicated of the Seven Soldiers, he is the most legendary - we can psychoanalyze mythological characters all we want, but they tend to be archetypes, and therefore more uncomplicated.

Once Frankenstein completes his mission, we see in later issues that he begins another mission, which is the pattern of these series - the first two issues seem to tell a story, and the final two issues tell a slightly different one.  Frankenstein hasn't really grown all that much, but that's okay - neither did many of the other soldiers in their first two issues.  We'll see how that changes when we return to this series.

Naturally, there are annotations, where you can find out about Yves Tanguy, among other interesting things.  And that's all for the links this time!  Of course, if you know of any, feel free to let me know!

Next time: Back to Shilo Norman, as he faces a new rival!

2 Comments

• At December 27, 2006, Matt Lazorwitz wrote:

  Melmoth (with the axe still sticking out of his back) tells Frankenstein he’s his real father, if you want ...

• At December 29, 2006, comixkid2099 wrote:

  you mentioned that the sheeda are possibly capable of destroying other planets besides earth. I am not familiar with the ...

Gosh oh gee, I wonder if there could be SPOILERS in this post?  Why yes, I suppose there are SPOILERS!  I'm glad I mentioned the SPOILERS!

Of course, before we begin, I must mention something about the first issue in the series.  This will prove once again that I am the dumbest person in the world!  As if you needed more proof!

So.  Last issue, I briefly mentioned that Alix works with autistic kids.  In the comments section, commenter extraordinaire FunkyGreenJerusalem asked why I didn't go into that more.  I misunderstood him (the stupidity thing again), but he explained that he meant that Alix actually has a "grown-up" job and Morrison takes that away from her.  This is an excellent point, and it's not the first time Morrison has done something like this in the series.  Remember, Jake Jorden has a reputable job as well, and it is taken away from him.  Only by becoming a superhero can he regain what his job gave him - self-respect.  This is a different situation, as Alix loses her job because she becomes a superhero, which seems to contradict one of the major themes of the series, that these people need to grow up to become true heroes.  Why does Morrison give Alix this job?  Is it just for cheap shock value, so that we're much sadder that she can no longer do it?  I have more faith in Morrison than that, but I do wonder about it, especially because it's never mentioned again.  What is the connection between autism and how Morrison wants to examine the growth of these people from "children" - in a developmental sense - to "adults."  I mentioned that Alix is vain, although not as vain as her husband.  We've seen what she wears to work, and that's to "work with autistic kids."  Perhaps Morrison is making the point that even though she does something that is worthwhile, she is still preening, taking a job that allows her to show off her compassion.  Maybe.  It's vexing.

If anyone has any thoughts about it, feel free to chime in.  Meanwhile, let's move on, because Helen "Sky-High" Helligan is making another appearance in the saga!  The first page of issue #2 shows us a slide of Lucas Ludlow Dalt, alias the Spider, crucified to a wall, with arrows through his hands and one through his heart.  Gee, not too much Christ-like imagery!  Someone is saying that the chief suspect in the murder is Tom Dalt, who is desperate to prove himself to his family - another example of someone with low self-esteem.  Tom disappeared the day of his brother's murder and appeared, "seven days later," in Arizona.  We see that the voice belongs to Helen Helligan, last seen in Shining Knight #3, when she seemed ... less together than she does now, thanks to a bite from the Queen of Terror.  Alix is in the room, as well as three men.  Helligan shows the next slide, which is Jackie Pemberton, whose "bag of trix" was found scattered across the desert near Pepper City, Arizona.  She shows Shelly Gaynor, a columnist for the New York Daily Recorder, who went missing.  She shows Harris D. Ledbetter, or Dyno-Mite Dan, who bought two hero rings off the Internet.  They were "working fakes," and we know he got them from Cassandra Craft, even though Helligan does not.  Alix asks what this has to do with her, and Helligan shows her the ad that Greg Saunders placed in the trade magazine asking for superheroes.  Alix suddenly realizes that this is the "seven soldiers thing," and we learn that she was the seventh soldier - she had even bought a plane ticket.  At the last moment, she realized that she didn't want to see people who were just like her - unlike the "original" soldiers, Alix is completely uncomfortable with being a superhero.  Helligan tells her that she's lucky she missed out on what happened, and they roll the footage they got from the bikes - they were equipped with cameras, remember?  Helligan mentions that Greg Saunders was dying of some unnamed illness, and that's why he wanted to get the spider at last.  We see the same scenes we saw in Seven Soldiers #0, and we watch as Neh-buh-loh skewers Greg and Shelly at the same time (yet another version of Neh-buh-loh by a different artist, as Paquette draws him with what looks like more body armor - he's not as starry).  We also see a spider tearing Tom Dalt's intestines out, which makes the fact that he's alive (as we know from Shining Knight) rather intriguing.  Is the new Tom Dalt a robot, like the spiders?  The Time Tailors seem to able to take people apart and put them back together - did Zor have a hand in resurrecting Dalt?  It wasn't the cauldron, as the Queen didn't have access to it.  It's rather interesting.

Helligan and Alix drive to the penitentiary, and Helligan tells Alix to keep away from the girls on the superhero porn sites, because they're kind of nasty.  Alix, of course, will ignore her advice, although she won't know it until it's too late.  Helligan coughs for the second time in the issue, and when Alix asks her if she's okay, she says she's reacting to the antibiotics and tetanus shots they gave her after Gloriana Tenebrae bit her.  She also brings up her sister again, who's getting married in two hours, and we learn a bit more about the groom - he beats her up.  So Helligan is trying to stop the wedding.  She tells Alix that she shouldn't get involved in superheroes, because "the only way in here is in over your head."  Inside the penitentiary, we see again that Morrison is playing with the conventions of female superhero sexiness.  Alix is uncomfortable wearing her slinky costume in a male prison, but Helligan asks her to trust her - she knows a thing or two about supervillains, and believes Alix's presence will help.  It's interesting that Alix never had a problem showing off her body before, but now that she's coated with a metallic substance, she's suddenly shy.  They get to their destination, where Ramon Solomano - Ramon One-Hand - is waiting.  He's known as "The Hand," "The Iron Hand," and the "Napoleon of Crime."  Wow.  Helligan wants to talk about Greg Saunders and the Seven Soldiers.  Ramon tells her that the doctors told him he had a month to live and he went a little crazy.  Helligan reminds him about the original Seven Soldiers of Victory fighting his Nebula Man in the Himalayas 40 years ago.  One died, and the others were lost in time for 30 years.  She then tells him that the Nebula Man returned a week ago and killed a new bunch of Soldiers.  She is referencing events that occurred in JLA #100-102, the first appearance of the Nebula Man.  Ramon tells her he had nothing to dow with it, but the Nebula Man can "ride through dimensions of time the way you and I walk through a door," so he's glad Saunders is suffering.  Helligan tells him that when Klarion and the Deviants stole the sapper drill from the Museum of Superhumanity, nobody noticed that Helligan "borrowed" Ramon's Iron Hand.  Remember the prominence Morrison and Irving gave to the Iron Hand in the scene in the museum?  Ah, the crafty Grant!  She holds it up for Ramon to see, and Alix breaks the thumb off, just to piss him off.  She breaks the pinky off before Ramon caves in and tells them about the Nebula Man.  This is a fascinating page, because Morrison explains a lot with very little and manages to integrate a comic book from 1972 into the whole thing.  Ramon used a horn to summon Neh-buh-loh from his "terrible, distant homeland."  He was in the Himalayas looking for a treasure in a lost citadel.  We know that this is Gorias, where Misty went with Vanguard.  We also know Neh-buh-loh is looking for the Seven Treasures of Camelot.  He is also trying to find a "tribe of winged horses, from before the flood ..."  These are the descendants of Pegazeus, and the idea that they are from "before the flood" brings us back to Camelot's "pre-historic" founding and the notion of civilizations rising and falling, which we have seen before.  The flood legends in the Seven Soldiers saga are remnants of the Sheeda, destroying their way through the past.  Note here too that Neh-buh-loh is a time traveler, so we don't know if this Neh-buh-loh is from before or after the events of these issues.  Ramon happily pointed him toward the Seven Soldiers of Victory, because he was looking for seven soldiers to kill.  Ramon tells Helligan that his nephew spotted the advertisement for the heroes and he helped Ramon gain his revenge on Saunders - he used the horn to summon Neh-buh-loh, and we know the rest.  This "nephew" is Boy Blue, who died to help Ramon get his revenge.  Now that's a loyal nephew!  The idea of a horn to summon Neh-buh-loh reminds me of Roland's horn, which he blew to no avail.  It could be just me.  Ramon says that Saunders was a racist and deserved to be punished.  Helligan doesn't know what he means, and Ramon tells her that when Saunders busted his gang once (with Shelly Gaynor's grandfather riding shotgun), he told one of the gang, whom he calls Lupelino, "I catch you or any more of your filthy kin round here come moonrise, I'll flay your hides and hang 'em out to dry."  Helligan laughs, because Saunders wasn't being racist, he was recognizing that the man was a werewolf, because Saunders was one too.  He had found out that the disease was coming back, and that's why it became so important to try to destroy the spider - he was saving a silver bullet for himself.  He almost admits it to Shelly Gaynor in Seven Soldiers #0, but doesn't quite get it out.  Helligan tells this to Ramon and gets angry, asking where the Nebula Man comes from and what he knows about Gloriana Tenebrae.  All Ramon says is that they come from a place "at the end of all hope."  More clues about the origin of the Sheeda.  He tells her that last night, "something that once was Saunders" came to him, "like a dream," and shot him in the soul.  He starts bleeding, and the interview is effectively over.  Outside, Alix says she feels like Alice through the looking glass.  I don't have to mention that chess plays a significant part in that book, too.

Helligan believes that she is going to die, apparently, because she calls her brother and apologizes to him about putting fish oil in his milkshake, which we saw in Shining Knight #3 is the only sin on her soul, and once she confesses it, she's able to lift Excalibur.  Brian, not surprisingly, doesn't remember anything about the milkshake.  Helligan, you'll remember, always looks at the "big picture," and she makes an intuitive leap and realizes that "the starry guy and the fairy folk are from the future."  As she begins to bleed, she asks Alix to get her to the church on time.  It's nice to know that Helligan can make pop culture references even as she feels her life slipping away!  We get a full-page shot of Alix carrying Helligan over the roofs of cars, and I was struck by the pizza parlor in the background.  Its awning says "1=4 (PIE - of pizza - it's a picture)" with the tag line, "We bend the laws of physics with pizza."  I assume the pizza pie is supposed to represent pi (π), but I can't really figure out what the equation means.  I just thought it was funny.  They reach the courthouse just as Helligan's sister, Rose, is about to say "I do" to Lido Lupelino - not the same guy who was busted by the Vigilante, we have to assume, but maybe his son?  Alix bursts in with Helligan, who manages to yell out "The guy's a werewolf!" before dying.  Lido Lupelino looks somewhat sheepish, which I thought was a nice touch.

It turns out the entire story is being told in flashback, as Alix is talking to "Sara," who is renting a room in her house.  Alix tells her she's going to Zenith City for an "insane" body-guard job, but she'll be back.  Sara says she thinks Alix would make a great superhero, and maybe she just needs a nemesis.  As the book ends, we see Sara has destroyed an umbrella behind her back, and we realize she probably wants to be that nemesis herself!  As it turns out, Sara is Sally Sonic, with whom Lance Harrower was having an online relationship.  That can't be good that she's turning up here.  Or coincidental.

It's a good issue, as it gives us a lot of information that we need to know about the greater saga.  It's nice to see Helligan again, even though this is her swan song, and although we don't know yet who Sara is, her introduction shows us that bad things are on the horizon for Alix Harrower.  Interestingly enough, because of the plot-heavy elements of the issue, there's not really a lot to look at in terms of grand themes.  Alix stands around listening to other people talk - she doesn't really grow in terms of what it means to be a hero, and the oversexualized undercurrent of the first issue is only brought up when Alix visits the prison, and even then it's far more subtle than in issue #1.  We do get a few references to the nature of superheroes and how "do-it-yourself" heroes are in over their head, something that Alix quickly agrees with when she hears Ramon's tale of Neh-buh-loh and then when she witnesses a werewolf trying to get married.  We go back to Seven Soldiers #0, where the "heroes" were desperate to be heroic and paid the price for their folly.  Alix is the same kind of hero, but she has a much more level head on her shoulders.  That's why she resisted going to Arizona in the first place.  Alix has the potential to be a true hero, because she doesn't want to be one.  Yes, it's paradoxical, but that's kind of the point: a true hero does things not for the thrill of it, but because it's necessary, and it's not always "fun."  Shelly Gaynor was looking for fun.  The others were too.  Greg Saunders, foolishly, trusted the heroes.

There's not much else to say about the issue.  As infodumps go, it doesn't pack the same punch as The Manhattan Guardian #4, because that tied into the themes of the bigger story.  This does too, but not as well as that one did.  It's an entertaining issue, and it's important for the information it does give us.  But in terms of a deeper meaning, it's kind of lacking.  Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Of course there are annotations!  As for reviews, Jog finds himself similarly stymied, but puts it far better than I can, and Marc Singer has deeper thoughts than I did about the issue.  So you can check those out, because I know you have nothing but time this time of year!

Next: Frankenstein goes to Mars.  Sounds pretty cool, doesn't it?

6 Comments

• At December 24, 2006, Youri Zoutman wrote:

  Morrison seems to have a thing with autism. I've seen it mentioned here, in 52 (Co-written, so maybe it isn't ...

• At December 24, 2006, Jedeye wrote:

  I think that maybe because Alyx doesn't have that much of a heroic arc, it fit in quite well. I ...

• At December 24, 2006, mcewen wrote:

  She may be preening but it's hard to fake a compassion for autism. Cheers

• At December 24, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  As I have a great deal of experience with special needs children, I agree with you that you can't fake ...

• At December 27, 2006, FunkyGreenJerusalem wrote:

  I've just been reading about Autism on wikipedia to see if I could spot it.

  I've got a few theories, just ...

• At March 14, 2009, Tuomas wrote:

  The main theme in the whole Bulleteer miniseries is that Alix's "super" power is her caring and empathy, not her ...

Lots of SPOILERS in this issue, although not much of consequence happens.  Again, we're looking at the weakest of the mini-series, so it's not surprising that not much happens.  But if something does, I will be there to SPOIL it!

Remember last issue?  Shilo Norman was about to face the menace of the Drive-By Derby?  Well, hang onto your hats, because here it comes!  The old guy in the wheelchair, who sort of revealed last issue that he was Death, the Black Racer (the guy on skis), is talking to Shilo as the cars come at him.  He tells him, "From the moment you're born, you start running," and this becomes quite literal as Shilo flees from the cars and the eerie figure on skis above them.  Wait a sec - if the guy in the wheelchair is the Black Racer, then who's the guy on skis?  I'm so very perplexed.  Anyway, another guy in a wheelchair shows up and reveals that he is actually Metron, whom Shilo met last issue as well.  Shilo doesn't recognize him, but Metron says that it "had to happen this way," because they need to prepare him for his first experience with "dark side."  The two dudes in chairs face off, and Shilo becomes a pawn in their game of chess - again, literally.  Metron holds up a knight and says, "I move palm inductors ... white supermagnetic force to black gravity.  Power repulse and check."  Shilo gets discs that enable him to levitate over one of the cars.  The Black Racer is telling Metron that there are some things no one can run away from, and even the New Gods knew that all things are temporary.  Metron says that Shilo will prevail, which is why he was selected, "long ago, in the far future, before the fall."  I'm not entirely sure what this sentence means.  Shilo Norman is not a new character, so does this tie into his origin in another book?  The reference to the "far future" recalls the Sheeda, who are also from the far future.  This is the first reference in the book to the bigger saga, but I'm not certain what it means.  "Before the fall" has plenty of Biblical weight to it, of course - the fall of Lucifer, the fall of man - and when Metron says it here, is he referring to the fall of New Genesis?  How has time become twisted from what Shilo saw in his vision of the destruction of New Genesis, which seemed to take place in the past?  Is time in this series like the actual Möbius strip, which has only one side?  And the fact that Metron no longer looks like Metron - and the rest of the New Gods look different - makes me wonder exactly where this series - or at least this part of the series - is taking place.  Remember, Shilo did fall into a black hole.  Where the heck is he?  (Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the connections to the other series, which implies it's in the good old DCU.  We'll get to that.)

The Black Racer tells Shilo that he is being pursued by "living cars," the "crazy horses of sunless Armagetto!"  Armagetto (which is spelled with an "h" after the "g" wherever else I find it) is the main city of Apokolips, Darkseid's planet, and of course merges Armageddon, the battle at the end of the world, with "ghetto," so it's a handy word.  Shilo manages to escape into the sewers, and Metron says that he believes Shilo can "restore the gods to their thrones on New Genesis."  Again, we're left wondering exactly where they are right now.  The Black Racer says that Shilo has a mother box, "the last of her kind," and it would be helpful if "Dark Side" doesn't get his hands on it.  I am left wondering where the other mother boxes are.  Are they in a universe that doesn't have mother boxes, or is the actual DCU now bereft of them?  As usual, Morrison makes my head hurt.

Shilo gets in touch with ZZ and tells him to bring a Hummer for him, and he climbs out onto the street as the cops and firemen clean up.  He sees the crazy old man in the wheelchair, but can't catch up to him.  He does bump into Metron, who appears to be far more handicapped now than he was a few pages before.  Shilo remembers that Metron said they'd meet at the crossroads, which is where they are now.  Before he can say anything else, a huge elderly black man accosts him and tells him to take his hands of the chair.  Shilo tries to explain, but the man is having none of it.  Then he calls the guy in the chair "Metron," so Shilo follows him and tries to get him to talk, finally blurting out that he has "motherboxxx," which gets the guy's attention.  The guy takes him back to the "barracks," which is just a construction site, and shows him all the "troops" gathered there, who are really New Gods.  Shilo can see their true selves when he uses his mother box.  The big guy who was taking care of Metron is Orion, Darkseid's son.  For the others, check out the annotations.  Unfortunately, when Shilo takes out mother box, a sinister Mercedes in the shadows turns on its headlights, and the homeless bunch freaks out and runs for it (the is not unlike when Vincenzo used the cauldron and alerted the Sheeda to his presence).  Shilo follows Orion and Metron, and Orion says that they can't stay there or he'll see them.  Metron says, "Daaaassssyyyy Dakkseddd," which is probably "Darkseid" repeated twice.  A wrecking ball swings in and destroys the squat, and "Dark Side" watches from the car and grins evilly.  He does everything evilly, because he's Darkseid.  The old bearded man, who is actually Highfather, tells Shilo to leave them alone, because they can't help him.  Shilo tries to persist, but Orion shoves him away and they disappear into the night.

We zip back to Shilo's psychiatrist's office, where Shilo is talking about the experience.  He says, significantly, "Down in the dirt there was brotherhood and community and a vision ... like human life, all human life, was so precious ... and every individual human story was worthy of ... I don't know ... mythology."  I'm not sure how he got that from his brief encounter with the New Gods, but it's an interesting statement.  We have seen sentiments like this before - from Ed Stargard, who believed in giving every person a voice to tell their story.  Morrison is showing us that the stuff of fiction, and even of legend, comes from the mundane, if only we have the will to overcome the obstacles in the way.  Shilo mentions "mythology" - again, the saga is concerned with what makes a myth a myth, and here it's implied that we all become myths if the circumstances are right.  The "fall" of the New Gods from deities to homeless people doesn't take away their basic dignity, and Shilo is seeing that his life might be a bit meaningless, despite his success.  This is the first step he has to take on his road to transformation.  The doctor is unsympathetic, and tries to get him out of the office (saying they're "going in circles," another reference to a Möbius strip).  He says that Shilo originally came to see him because his rapid rise to fame led to fears that he would lose it just as quickly.  Now, he's had a "quasi-religious confrontation with the existential abyss of meaninglessness."  He says Shilo found a purpose in a life that had none, and every bum on the street has become a divine prophet.  The doctor, who is Darkseid's master torturer Desaad, is playing the role of the Terrible Time Tailor or Melmoth - he is the adult, trying to crush the dreams of the hero.  Shilo believes in something - whether or not he's crazy isn't the issue - and his belief is helping him look for something more to life.  Dr. Dezard is trying to deconstruct that belief and, in the process, destroy it.  Shilo mentions motherboxxx, which is just a "toy ... somebody made" for him.  We can assume it was the Seven Unknown Men who made it, but whether Shilo knows this or not is unclear.  Dr. Dezard shows an unhealthy interest in motherboxxx, but Shilo doesn't want to show it to him.  Dr. Dezard lets him go, but tells him he's worried about his neurological state.  Shilo, don't ever trust anyone in a Nehru jacket!

As Shilo dreams up a new escape, we continue on with Desaad and his machinations.  His next client, a Miss Rimbaud, weeps in his office as he talks on the phone.  Why Morrison named her that is beyond me, as I know very little about Rimbaud beyond the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio played him in a movie.  Anyway, Desaad is talking to Darkseid, saying that he believes mother box "woke" Metron and is grooming Shilo as a servant of the New Gods.  He says he's been "eroding the boy's sense of self worth," but soon the techniques of the healer won't be enough, and other methods will be needed.  Considering Desaad likes the torture, I wonder what he could mean?  He pauses to destroy Miss Rimbaud's fragile ego, and tells her that Dark Side Therapy (people actually go there and think they'll get better?) can "heal the schism between self delusion and what you truly are."  This reminds us of Uglyhead and how he also showed people what they truly were.  Is Morrison saying the artifice is always better?  He calls her an "un-person," which again recalls the insect-like nature of the Sheeda, and he grins as she accepts the "anti-life equation," which will cause her to "never dream again" nor "love again."  On the other line, Dark Side tells him he'll take over now.  Desaad's treatment of Miss Rimbaud reveals his plans - Morrison is tying the grand quest of the Fourth World - Darkseid's lust for the anti-life equation - into the epic of the Sheeda.  Miss Rimbaud, like the teenagers in Frankenstein #1, like the Newsboy Army when confronted by the Terrible Time Tailor, like the Puritans when Klarion returns, like Zatanna at the beginning of her series, like Jake Jordan ... phew!  Where was I?  Oh, yes - Miss Rimbaud has been deconstructed, and in doing so, Desaad has made her "grow up."  She no longer believes that she is an artist, because she is so very bad at it.  Desaad has made her understand that, and she has become "whole."  But this wholeness is an awful fate, because she no longer dreams.  That is what the Sheeda are planning to do - take away mankind's dreams, because what is civilization but the dream of a better life?

This issue is far more interesting than the first one, which had the better art.  Patton and Williams are not quite up to the task, and Dave McCaig's colors are full of browns and blacks and make everything far too dull.  However, after we get past the silliness of living cars trying to smash Shilo, the themes that Morrison is exploring in this issue tie in nicely with the bigger epic and also show some nice subtleties.  The idea of the New Gods becoming homeless "bums" is nice, as it allows them to gain some much-needed humility.  One of the biggest problems I've always had with the whole Fourth World thing is that, even more than superheroes, these people are so far removed from us puny humans that we can't relate to them.  Even when Forager got killed in Cosmic Odyssey, I was largely unmoved.  What Morrison does here, in just a few pages, is humanize them immensely, so that even though they are unheroic, they are still people.  They have been beaten down by a far more powerful opponent, and want just to be left alone.  No, it's not what "gods" would do.  But it is what people would do, and Metron, at least, is still trying.

Of course, the major theme of the issue is that the New Gods have lost their dreams, just like Miss Rimbaud.  They have been reduced to "normal" people, who simply exist without really living.  Morrison has tapped this vein before - I can't help but be reminded of Crazy Jane in Doom Patrol #63, who never painted again after the psychiatrists were done with her.  This idea of fanciful dreams becoming dreary nightmares of reality is nothing new in fiction, of course - I could rattle off plenty of examples, but won't - and it's all in how it's presented.  Morrison is doing a fine job showing us various ways the "real world" beats us down.  We know the theme is going to come up, but it's interesting to see how it will be done.  Uglyhead brings us the dark side - so to speak - of peer pressure.  The Terrible Time Tailor forces the Newsboy Army to grow up, and Melmoth does the same thing with the Deviants.  Gloriana Tenebrae takes what is beautiful - Olwen and Galahad - and corrupts it.  Now, Dr. Dezard is breaking down what makes each person unique and calling it "self delusion."  Shilo fears the loss of his fame, which is why he is not yet a fully actualized adult.  However, the fact that he is a successful escape artist makes him unique, and Dr. Dezard, ultimately, wants to destroy that part of him.  If he can't escape anymore, then Dark Side will gain control of mother box and win.  Each time this theme comes up, it becomes more insidious as the Sheeda get closer to their goal.  We start with the Queen's rather blatant corruption of Olwen.  We move on to Melmoth's kidnapping of Billy Beezer, Zor's attempts with Zatanna, and the Time Tailor's destruction of the Newsboy Army.  Uglyhead uses what's in each teenager to destroy the school, and Dr. Dezard is using psychiatry to destroy Shilo.  The enemies of dreams are becoming more subtle, possibly because they realize that the Seven Soldiers are slowly gathering, and they haven't been able to stop them with frontal assaults.  Killing dreams requires a softer touch, and that's what we've been seeing in these latter issues.

The subtleties of the issue notwithstanding, this is still the "worst" of the mini-series (I put it in quotes because it's still pretty good), because it feels the most disjointed.  Yes, the other series had issues that were devoted solely to one story, so those probably should feel disjointed, and this clearly has a narrative thrust from the first to the second issue, but it feels disjointed partly because of the art, and partly because it feels so divorced from the Sheeda-reality.  Even Bulleteer, which after one issue doesn't seem to have much to do with the rest of the saga, has a few connections.  Plus, this relies a lot on your enjoyment of the New Gods, and as I said, I don't enjoy them.  So it feels even more disjointed.  As far as what Morrison is trying to do with Shilo's psyche, I enjoy that, but there still seems to be something missing from this series.  As it moves on, we'll have to see how Morrison rehabilitates it.

If you want annotations, you shall have annotations!  Jog has some unkind things to say about the issue, although he does a good job telling us why he's saying them.  Anyone else care to link to other reviews?  RAB, are you out there?

Next: Alix Harrower finds out more about being a superhero!  It's easy, right?

3 Comments

• At December 24, 2006, RAB wrote:

  Someone mentioned my name! Truly, this is the merriest Christmas of all! God bless us every one!

  I posted ...

• At December 27, 2006, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Hoy Shit RAB, that was awesome.

• At March 13, 2009, Tuomas wrote:

  About the signifigance of the name Rimbaud: Arthur Rimbaud was a poet who stopped writing poems at the age of ...

There's a SPOILER on the second page!  So when I say SPOILERS, I mean SPOILERS!

That's a cool cover, except for his head.  Why is it so small?

We begin in 1870.  Careful readers will note that it's five years before the Vigilante, along with "Johnny Frankenstein," fought the spider of Miracle Mesa.  But that's neither here nor there.  Our hero, Frankenstein, bursts into a room hung with your standard-issue chains  A voice from off-panel says, "Die, Frankenstein!  Die!"  This is, of course, eerily reminiscent of the chants of the Puritans when they were about to put Klarion to the torch: "Burn, Witchboy!  Burn!"  (And it's a contrast to Frankenstein's last words of the issue, "Frankenstein lives!")  It turns out that Melmoth says these words, which is kind of a strange, unrestrained thing for him to say.  Frankenstein confronts Melmoth, and says that he can't kill something that isn't truly alive - referring to himself.  Melmoth says, "Or that which cannot die," referring to himself.  We're at a bit of an impasse!  But Melmoth has bred slug-like monsters that feast on dead flesh like Frankenstein's, so he has the upper hand!  But then Frankenstein shoots Melmoth's head clean off!  He uses a locomotive gun, and we see that we're actually on a train - oh, the serendipity!  You'll also remember that in the third issue of Klarion, we saw ugly scars on Melmoth's neck - that's what will happen when someone sews your head back on!  Melmoth's head smashes into the coal bin, which causes the train to crash as it comes down a hill.  Page 4 has a caption out of place, as the "1955" in panel three ought to be on panel 4, but by 2005, there's a bustling city where the train wrecked.  Boy, that's just asking for trouble, isn't it?  That's like putting your town on top of an ancient Indian burial ground.

Then we meet Uglyhead, who lives in the town.  Boy, he's ugly.  UH (as it's easier to call him) has a unique gift: he can read people's thoughts, but in a perfect, comic-booky way: he can actually see their thought balloons.  Awesome.  One girl is nice to him, and he thinks, portentously, "I believe I shall spare this one."  Meanwhile, all the other kids think typically teenaged thoughts, meaning they are evil and scared and totally infantile.  High school ROX!  The nice girl, whose name is Kim, has what we think is a typically doofusy boyfriend, but he turns out okay.  Meanwhile, UH wonders if he's schizophrenic or if he has actually become a god.  He hangs out in front of "Excalibur Fantasy Butterfly World" and tests his power.  The connections in the name are fairly obvious, but let's go over them.  First, it reminds me of the finest comic book store in Portland, OR, Excalibur Comics, which is on Hawthorne Boulevard just a little bit west of where it becomes really trendy.  If you're ever in town, stop by and say hello!  Of course, it's been five years since I've been there, so it might suck now.  I hope not!  Butterflies, of course, become important in the story, but when we first see the store, we're supposed to be reminded (I guess) of how butterflies come out of something rather ugly and turn into something beautiful.  Is UH going to be an Ugly Duckling who becomes a Swan?  Well, not really.  Of course, the fact that it's called "Excalibur" reminds us of Arthur's sword, one of the seven imperishable treasures, as well as the fact that in the first few pages, Frankenstein carries a sword that looks very much like an Arthurian piece.  And look! there's a sword hanging in the window of the butterfly store.  Why, exactly?

UH tests his powers on some pretty young thing outside the store, telling her that she's scared and unsure of herself.  Then he proceeds to destroy her self-esteem.  He tells her that butterflies start out as maggots but then they change, and he asks her if she's ready to change.  It's then that we see the Sheeda spine-rider clinging to his back!  Dum-dum-dummmmm!

This is an interesting exchange, because once again, Morrison brings us around to self-esteem.  Even heroes can suffer from a lack of it, but in this scene, it's teenagers who suffer from it, which is not the most groundbreaking scenario.  However, UH suffers from it, too, even though he seems to be the most "well-adjusted" of them all.  Every teen in this book is full of secrets (the flowers must be blooming in the swamp!) and they all deal with the lack of self-esteem.  On the surface, it appears that UH would suffer from this too, because everyone keeps telling him how ugly he is.  But we quickly see that he is very confident, because he can read everyone's thoughts.  So the paradigm is overturned, but we quickly see that he, too, suffers, because he desperately wants everyone to like him, even though they are vapid.  If Shining Knight is the story of a girl's journey to womanhood, this issue shows the dark side of growing up - the weird things that happen to your body, the weird thoughts that go through your head.  The Sheeda exploit those feelings, because they can.  Mean old Sheeda!  The girl turns into UH, surfing the Internet for butterfly information, chatting with other collectors, eating pizza, and getting fat.  I wonder who Morrison is comparing them to?  Her boyfriend gets angry when he sees what happened to her (in one night?), but UH turns him, and everyone else, into sad little people too.  He tells them that the maggots are in the cellars of the butterfly store, and they need humans to grow on.  Again we see this idea of transformation skewed horribly, as the teens are turning into their "true" selves, but selves that are the basest parts of their personalities.

On prom night, Kim and her unnamed boyfriend show up, and they know something is weird.  Interestingly, Kim makes the point that her mother and father went to bed early - have they too succumbed the Sheeda sickness?  When they enter the auditorium, they find UH surrounded by the students, who are being eaten by the same maggots that attacked Frankenstein at the beginning.  There are also butterflies flitting about.  He tells Kim that she was nice to him, so she can be his queen to breed with when he takes over.  It's interesting, because in two panels, UH goes from devilish despot to scared teenager, as he follows this up by asking, pathetically, "Would that be okay?"  Again, he's not as "secure" with his power as he'd like us to believe.  He then tells us that the maggots "needed hosts to mature and hatch into spine riders."  This is the first time we've heard about the true nature of the Sheeda, but we're still not sure what that means.  Do they implant the hosts, Alien-style, and then the Sheeda burst out of them?  Or is it something different?  And why are the Sheeda, who are from the future, hatching here?  Oh, my head hurts!

Her boyfriend tells her to run, and then overturns the punch bowls and zaps the floor with the strung lights, killing himself in the process.  He tells her he loves her in a "totally doomed way that you'll never forget," which is a nice teenaged thing to say.  I'm not sure what he was trying to accomplish, because neither UH or the maggots seem to be affected by his sacrifice.  Anyway, Kim runs for it, thinking "Uglyhead" backwards in her head.  Someone at the annotations speculated that this was because from UH's vantage point, the word would be forward, but I wonder if it has something to do with a Zatanna-like incantation.  We never see Kim again after this issue, so I guess we'll just have to keep speculating!

She runs through the halls, and suddenly Frankenstein rises up in front of her.  This is interesting, because I guess he's been trapped where the train wrecked for 135 years.  So who rode with the Vigilante to Miracle Mesa?  He asks her if something was left undone, implying that only the Sheeda threat could bring him back to "life," so to speak.  Frankenstein's resurrection, of course, reminds us of the Grundys of Limbo Town - he's stitched together from dead flesh, but he has been in the ground and is called upon to finish a great task.  Frankenstein is awfully well-informed about this new world, as he immediately recognizes television and radio, but he also knows ... evil!  Kim zaps him with her Taser, which is just what he needs to get a nice jolt.  UH, meanwhile, is talking to no one (us?) when he says that the Sheeda came here because it has the highest suicide rate in the Northwest.  He says he's now the one who's normal, while everyone else is weird.  Again, he's desperate to fit in, even as he scorns the society into which he wants to fit.  Before he can wreak more havoc, he runs into Frankenstein.  Bad move.  Frankenstein throws him through the window of the butterfly store as he quotes John Milton's Paradise Lost.  This poem, for those of you lucky enough to have avoided it, is almost unbearably boring, but, you know, it's a "classic."  Remember Donald Sutherland in Animal House bashing Milton?  Yeah, he was right.  According to the annotations, in the original novel, the monster reads Milton and identifies with Satan, so Morrison didn't come up with that.  I really ought to read that damned book.  Anyway, Frankenstein stands over UH, takes the sword from the window, which is his own sword, after all, mutters "Michael's sword," and shoves it through the Sheeda rider and UH's neck.  He dies saying, "Oh God, I'm in He ..."  I suppose "Michael" is the archangel, because he had a sword, but who the hell knows.  It could be Michael Hutchence for all we know.

Frankenstein burns the school down, which Kim thinks is overkill, but he says his necessary because the contagion spreads so fast.  He finds a nifty backpack in the rubble with a weird horned god on it, and into that he puts the sword.  Kim asks him to take her with him, because she could be "Girl Frankenstein," but he says he must walk his road alone.  He tells her to prepare for Armageddon, because the Sheeda are coming.  This is where it gets a bit confusing.  This is what he says:

 

Find your kin and tell them to gather weapons, for Armageddon's breath is now upon their necks.  If men called Sheeda come this way, if dark Melmoth shows his hand again ... tell them they have, in their folly, awakened my vengeance.  Tell them, I will find them and make hammers fall upon them like a rain.  Tell them ... Frankenstein lives!

 

Okay, so it's all very dramatic.  Is he talking about the Sheeda, or Kim's "kin"?  I assume he means for Kim to tell Melmoth and the Sheeda all this, but wouldn't she be running in fear instead of telling them all of this?  And by saying "folly," he seems to imply that the people of the town have inadvertently woken the Sheeda, so he's kind of pissed.  I'm going to stick with Frankenstein being pissed at the Sheeda, but it's kind of a bizarre thing to tell a scared teenager to tell the horrible armies of "dark Melmoth."  Anyone want to argue the opposite?

This is an interesting issue, because Frankenstein is not the main character.  From what we gather about him, he is unlike the other soldiers in that he doesn't really have to change all that much.  Zatanna is a superhero, sure, but she has issues.  Frankenstein goes through this issue, and the series, very single-mindedly.  We'll get to whether or not he transforms at all later, but in this issue, the idea of transformation is linked far more to puberty than it is in any other series, Shining Knight included.  Also, in most of the series, transformation has been seen as a beneficial and necesary thing (with some exceptions, of course - Galahad would argue the opposite point), but in this story, it becomes something far more sinister.  This is, of course, because it's tied to the "bad" kind of growing up - becoming more secretive and worrying about what your peers say about you, which is something every teenager has to go through.  How we come out of it shapes our future, and Morrison is looking at an adult hive-mind in a very literal sense, as the students all become fodder for the Sheeda army, which is like-minded, almost insect-like.  Frankenstein, perhaps, can resist the Sheeda because he isn't truly alive - he has been built as a fully-functioning adult, and his purpose is singular - fight Melmoth and the Sheeda.  Can he grow at all?  We'll see.

Is Frankenstein the hero?  That's a tough question, because it seems so easy.  Of course he is!  He kills Uglyhead and defeats the Sheeda threat!  However, in this issue at least, it doesn't seem like he has much choice.  This is what he does.  He has to fight the Sheeda, so where is the heroism?  Now, I'm not suggesting that fighting the Sheeda isn't heroic, but it's interesting that Kim, who does "betray" Uglyhead at the prom when she thinks that he's crazy, acts more heroically at school, because she refuses to cave into peer pressure and automatically condemn UH.  She's not a perfect hero, but she does make a choice, which Frankenstein doesn't appear to do.  He does what he does because it's what he does.  We'll watch the growth of his personality over the next three issues.

Finally, we have revelations about the Sheeda.  In the last issue of Zatanna, the time tailors liken them to a disease.  Frankenstein does so too.  They certainly act like some kind of disease, but what does Morrison mean about what we are, as the Sheeda are our distant descendants?  We have already seen hints that Morrison is linking industry with depravity, and "progress" with the horrors of technology (which makes me think he doesn't drive a car, doesn't use electricity, never takes any kind of lab-created medicine, and kills his own food, but let's not get into that), and the Sheeda seem to be the epitome of that.  It's interesting to note that Frankenstein himself is the result of technology gone wild, but Frankenstein rebelled against this an has become a hero.  He is looking for a life without all that technology, because it symbolizes, to him, a careless and egotistical creator.

Mahnke's art gives this a nice look, because he's a very good artist.  He's excellent at drawing the grotesque, and it's useful on a book like this, with the lead character being quite hideous and all.  But Mahnke does a nice job bringing out the horror of the "normal" scenes, as well, and as the students spiral into madness, the art reflects that well.  He's called upon to deal with a lot of weirdness in this series, but he's definitely up to the task, at least in this issue.

We've seen how some of these series are directly involved with the Sheeda threat and others are not, at least for most of the series.  This issue promises to give us some good revelations about the threat, because Frankenstein appears to know a lot, and he's very keen on going after Melmoth.  It's certainly an interesting issue.

Annotations!  Read them at your peril!

What could be next?  It's more Kirby-esque tribute!

9 Comments

• At December 23, 2006, Brian wrote:

  About the quote, he's telling Kim's kin, i.e. mankind, to arm themselves in preparation of the coming events of the ...

• At December 23, 2006, Gil Jaysmith wrote:

  I'm enjoying these annotations a lot, but could I make a request? The jokey snarkiness about Morrison is starting to ...

• At December 23, 2006, FunkyGreenJerusalem wrote:

  "They actually make you sound a bit, well, jealous, I guess, if you feel you have to resort to ad-hominem ...

• At December 23, 2006, Jacob Munford wrote:

  "C’mon Greg, don’t fuck with Morrison fans!

  They’re zealots they are, and they take their stories about men in spandex, and ...

• At December 23, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  Jacob - I was wondering about the lack of Kim later in the series. It was kind of bizarre.

  Sorry, ...

• At December 23, 2006, Gil Jaysmith wrote:

  Greg: thanks :) The column really is a highlight of the day.

  FunkyGreenJerusalem: I'm glad to have conformed to, er, whatever ...

• At December 23, 2006, Bill Reed wrote:

  Frankenstein: Great Seven Soldiers series, or Greatest Seven Soldiers series?

  I'd side with greatest, myself, probably.

• At December 23, 2006, FunkyGreenJerusalem wrote:

  "FunkyGreenJerusalem: I’m glad to have conformed to, er, whatever view of me you apparently have. I think."

  I just think I'm ...

• At December 24, 2006, veghead wrote:

  Greg, I like the writing style which mixes intellectual analysis with conversational humor. It seems like that's the kind ...

Would it be okay if I mentioned that there are SPOILERS in this post?  Well, there are!  SPOILERS, that is.  Did I say SPOILERS?  Why, yes, I did say SPOILERS!

Man, check out that cover.  Only in superhero world can people bend like that!  I mean, that's pretty impressive.  I wonder if the issue has anything to do with exploitation????

Alix Harrower (note the last name) stands in front of a mirror and says, "Now what?"  She is shiny.  She has red hair.  She has a large bust, if you don't mind me saying so.  She is, in other words, a perfect superhero.  What she says might be another metatextual moment from Mr. Morrison - we're done with the first round of mini-series in this epic, and now Grant is wondering what to do next.  I mean, it's not like he plots these things out before hand, right?  Oh, okay.  Maybe Alix is the audience, wondering where Morrison can possibly go now.  Hmmm ...  You'll notice that the mirror into which Alix looks is cracked, reflecting the way her life has gone.  The mirror in Zatanna #2 is cracked as well, and we haven't really gotten a good look at Gloriana Tenebrae's mirror, so who knows.  The fact that it is cracked means it distorts the reality we see (the one in Cassandra's shop was even called "the Mirror of Reality") and Alix is seeing that her life has completely changed, and she doesn't know where to go.  Boy, a cracked mirror - nice subtle metaphor, Grant!

We flashback to a hospital scene, as Alix and her husband, Lance (Lancelot?) are brought in, covered in the shiny metallic substance.  Lance is not in good shape - he's suffocating.  Why isn't Alix?  We learn that the metal didn't cover the spot where her wedding ring is, so therefore her skin was allowed to breathe, whereas Lance does not have a ring on (oh dear) and is subsequently dying.  This reminds me of the scene in Goldfinger where the actress is painted gold and they had to leave a spot unpainted or she would have, you know, died.  So Lance dies, and the more we know about him, the less we're sad that he did.

Suddenly Alix wakes up in bed, but we know it's a flashback again, because she is not covered with metallic gunk.  She's wearing naught but panties, but I'm not going to get into the sexualization of the title character right now.  It's quarter to five, and Lance isn't in bed.  She finds him in the basement looking at porn, although she doesn't quite catch him at it, and he tells her he's having issues with the "SmartSkin growth pattern."  He has been working on this metallic stuff, and he's been able to cover a mouse (Mickey Metal, as Alix calls him), but he hasn't been able to "keep it coherent" over more than a few square inches.  It makes the mouse superstrong, but Lance still needs a human test subject.  Whenever scientists say that in fiction, bad things occur.  In the morning, Lance tells Alix that she looks like a superhero, then tells her that with SmartSkin, they could both actually be superheroes.  Alix can't think of anything more horrible, but Lance won't let it go.  The next page gives us some crucial insight into Lance's character.  He's worried about growing old and his body becoming decrepit (we see from the hospital scenes that he's in as good shape as she is), but he's also worried that they won't be famous before that happens.  So it's not just being young - he wants to be young and famous.  She says that she's 27 and her body is fine, and then Lance, who would win Asshole of the Year if he were not fictional, tells her that she "never used to have those little lines" on her face.  Alix, showing remarkable restraint, does not break his hand when he reaches for her, but does tell him to knock it off.  He says that youth doesn't last forever unless you're a superhero - a nice reference to the nature of the comic book business - and Alix retorts by saying, "Life's not supposed to last forever."  Will Lance heed the warning?

Of course not!  After another page on which Alix stands in front of the mirror, thinking about what the doctor told her after her husband died, telling her that some people will do "just about anything to hang with the skintight crowd," which is a nice shorthand for superpeople, we flashback again.  Alix comes home and hears Lance screaming in the basement.  He tells her he thinks he did something stupid (note his wedding ring on the desk next to the computer, which shows women in bikinis), and as she calls 911, he touches her, "infecting" her with the SmartSkin.  I'll get back to the "money shot" of Alix's face later.

After the funeral, Alix visits what I presume is a psychiatrist.  She tells him that she can't pay the rent, and she can't go back to work.  She works with autistic kids, and they think she's been replaced by a robot.  She tells him that when she went to make sure Lance's research wasn't lost, she found the various porn sites, which are all about superhero porn.  Lance has even corresponded with Sally Sonic, one of the "eternal superteens," about teaming up with her.  Sally, you'll recall, was at the self-esteem workshop in Zatanna #1, although we don't know it's her yet.  What's also interesting about the e-mail is that Lance says something about looking at Alix and seeing her come apart in ten years like a "piece of bad tailoring."  We see the image of Tailors again, and we recognize that Lance is still looking for a childhood fantasy - Alix has already put on her "adult clothing," and he can't handle it.  Alix is telling the doctor that she was ready to commit suicide, but she ran through the city until she came across a train wreck, and a young boy asked for her help.  She rescued a bunch of people and decided it felt pretty good.  She decides to take Lance up on his fantasy - she puts on a sexy outfit and is ready to go!

From the little I read about this title, opinion was rather heated about the "sexploitation" aspects of the book.  This is rather silly, as it's pretty clear that Morrison and Paquette are deliberately emphasizing both Alix and Lance's superficial aspects to make a point.  There's nothing terribly titillating about Alix, after all - she has big breasts, but so what?  Lots of women have big breasts.  She wanders around her house in underwear, but when she's out in public, she's wearing perfectly reasonable clothing - yes, it's sexy, but she has a nice body, and the dresses she wears aren't slutty.  We can look at this as a fairly brutal critique of superheroes and the fetishization of their culture - superhero porn is a logical extension of superheroes themselves, and I'm fairly certain we've seen it shown explicitly like this before (not in Flex Mentallo, because that's Morrison again, but somewhere else), only I can't remember where.  The implication that only superheroes stay "perfect" is certainly a criticism of an industry that steadfastly refuses to change, and this goes back to the idea of growing up that we have seen throughout the series - superheroes are a form of literature that refuses to grow up, which is why Lance is so fascinated by them.  Alix, we see, is also a bit vain, but she is not as wrapped up in the superficiality as Lance is, and this is what, probably, keeps her faithful - Lance is a jerk, sure, but she doesn't see him as an object.  Her vanity does not interfere with her life, as it does Lance's.  It's a benign sin.

The use of sexual images is also rather interesting.  Morrison is openly mocking the motifs of porn, from the poses Paquette draws Alix in (on page 6, she pauses before the open door to grab a shirt, and we see her preening for us, the audience; on page 7, she bends over, rump in the air, and hugs Lance around the shoulders, in juxtaposition with the girl on the screen in panel 1; on page 8, she bends over again to look at Mickey Metal; on page 12, as she sits in front of the mirror, she coyly covers her breasts as she touches her face; on page 15, she arches her back as she pulls on a glove; on page 21, she leans forward and pushes her arms against her breasts as she sits in the doctor's office; and on page 22, she admires her new self in the mirror) to the "money shot" on page 14, when the SmartSkin covers her face, looking uncomfortably like, well, you know.  The linkage of porn with superheroing is always there, of course, and the fact that Morrison and Paquette link it so explicitly means that they are deliberately drawing us to make the comparisons.  Porn, Morrison is saying, is as infantile as superheroing.  As the series moves on, we will see this link being made even stronger as Sally Sonic shows up.

Of course, transformation is at the heart of this issue, as it has been throughout the saga.  Alix turns from a slightly vapid but good-hearted young lady into a hardened superhero (literally), but her heroic act was somewhat by accident.  Morrison is pointing out that just looking like a superhero and having indestructible skin does not make you a hero.  Alix has been thrust into a situation where the only thing for her to do is be a superhero, but, like Jake Jordan, she has real-world concerns too - she can't pay the rent and she suddenly finds herself unemployed.  So being a superhero isn't really her first option, but it turns out to be her only one.  But how can she make money being a superhero?

It's natural to look at the other two series starring women, and this slots in nicely with Shining Knight and Zatanna.  We get the virgin-whore-mother scenario, which is somewhat interesting.  Justine turns out to be practically sexless, despite what Ragnell has said.  Yes, we can read the series as a journey through puberty, and that's certainly an excellent way of looking at it, but Justine is not a sexually active woman in any sense of the word.  She is the virgin, to the extent that no one even knows she is a woman.  Alix, of course, is the fully sexualized woman.  Zatanna, despite yearning for the man of her dreams and wearing skimpy outfits, turns to the mother role in her dealing with Misty.  She is fulfilling that role much more than she is playing the role of lover.  By slotting these women into these traditional roles, Morrison is able to play with stereotypes, just as he is with the men, despite men usually not having "traditional" roles in fiction.  Justine, of course, is much more than just a young girl.  Zatanna is certainly more than a mother.  Alix is more than an attractive woman.  Part of their journeys through the series in which they star is their breaking of stereotypes.  How successful Morrison is at showing this is up to the reader, of course.

Paquette is a fairly good choice for this title, as he draws "cheesecake" well, but also does it with more irony than someone like Adam Hughes might bring to the project (I love Hughes, but I feel he takes his cheesecake far more seriously than it needs to be).  Even when Paquette was drawing Wonder Woman, he seemed to bring a needed sense of humor to the fact that female superheroes are always drawn the same way.  Alix, interestingly enough, is drawn differently than most female superheroes - yes, she has big breasts, but she is built, if you'll pardon the expression, like a brick shithouse - she seems more proportional than what we get from the Michael Turners and Ed Beneses of the world, and she seems taller than most women.  The female character she most reminds me of is Big Barda, and there's nothing wrong with that.  We can contrast her with the girl on the Superteens web site (Sally Sonic, I guess), who is more like the stereotypical female superhero.  It's an interesting difference, and one that will become more pronounced as the series goes on.

As a first issue goes, this is more like a typical superhero mini-series in that we get no mention of anything even remotely connected to the Seven Soldiers epic.  We assume it will come up soon enough, but there's not even a villain in the book, for crying out loud!  This makes it both better and worse than the other first issues.  On the one hand, it's enjoyable to read and appreciating on its own terms.  On the other hand, we're so used to looking for connections between the Seven Soldiers now that it's a bit disappointing to not see them.  But the superhero porn critique makes up for it, I think.

There's not a lot to the annotations, but they aren't bad.  Over at Jog's blog, he has a lot of the same insights I do, but he writes far more eloquently than I do.  Our Dread Lord and Master made some interesting points about it when it came out, as did the always-interesting Mark Fossen.  I'll link to Ragnell's thoughts later, because she posts after the series are complete.

Next: A big monster with a big gun!  No subtext there!

7 Comments

• At December 21, 2006, David Kirkpatrick wrote:

  To my knowledge, the best of the 'porn & superheroes' connection was done in the Marshal Law series by Kevin ...

• At December 22, 2006, FunkyGreenJerusalem wrote:

  You don't think there's any commentary in the fact she works with Autistic kids?

• At December 22, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  FGJ - I thought about that, but it doesn't get mentioned again, and I didn't want to extrapolate too much ...

• At December 22, 2006, comixkid2099 wrote:

  in one of the "Powers" stories there is a guy who had some fake retro girl porn.

• At December 22, 2006, Matt Brady wrote:

  Formerly Known as the Justice League had a mention of Fire posing semi-nude on her website. Actually, she was ...

• At December 22, 2006, FunkyGreenJerusalem wrote:

  "FGJ - I thought about that, but it doesn’t get mentioned again, and I didn’t want to extrapolate too much ...

• At December 23, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  Ah, excellent point. Now I'm cranky that I missed that, because you're absolutely right. Sheesh.

Lots of SPOILERS here, by the way.  As if you didn't know by now!

Not a good place for Klarion to begin this issue.  When last we saw him, he was heading back to Limbo Town to warn them about Melmoth's impending attack.  Well, the inhabitants obviously didn't take too kindly to that, because they tied him to a stake and are about to burn him as he warns them, over and over, that there is no witch-god and that men are coming to burn Limbo Town.  His mother and his sister lead the charge!  Before they can put the torch to the pyre, however, the earth starts to shudder (which they attribute to his blasphemy) and a moment later, Melmoth's sapper drill bursts through the ground, scattering the fearful Puritans.  Melmoth and his men get out, and in the confusion, Beulah frees Klarion and tells him to ring the Sabbat bell nine times.  Melmoth stands in front of the stunned Puritans and tells them he had "spider-sex" with their ancestors, and they all crawled underground to have his babies.  One wonders what "spider-sex" is and how Melmoth accomplished it, but I suppose it's too icky to think about.  As usual with these series, the fourth issue gives us a big reveal - Justine is a girl, the secrets of the Newsboy Army, the identity of Zor - and this one simply confirms what we kind of already know.  He tells them that even though he's going to turn Limbo Town into a breeding pen, they'll survive, because Sheeda "were born to cling fiercely to life in the most hostile of environments."  This is a bit of foreshadowing to the issue of Frankenstein when we finally see the Sheeda Earth of the future - it's not pleasant.  Klarion rings the bells, which summons the Grundys from the ground, and those zombies are ready to fight!  In the bell tower, Submissionary Judah appears, having dragged himself back from the subway tracks where he was smashed in issue #2.  He doesn't look good, but he's still full of hatred for Klarion.  As the Grundys attack Melmoth's men, Judah asks Klarion the same question he asked him in issue #1: "Would ye be Submissionary?  Would ye bear burdens of knowledge heavier than the rock of mountains?"  Judah is dying, so he wants to pass on his knowledge to the younger generation, and Klarion is all that's left.  Presumably, he also wants to kill Klarion, so he hopes the youngster will not be able to handle the secret knowledge.  Considering Klarion already knows that Croatoan doesn't exist, Judah's hope is a futile one.  Klarion heads into the map room, where the Submissionaries became the Horigal, and tells Teekl that it's only a map.  However, we see strange light emanating from the map, and we know it turns people into the Horigal.  It's not a lost treasure of Camelot, but what is the map?  Anybody know?

Outside, Melmoth's men have finally gotten the upper hand against the Grundys, and Melmoth tells them that "Croatoan is a sophisticated artificial intelligence system and it comes in the form of a pair of dice."  We know where both die are - Klarion has one, and Misty has the other.  What exactly is Croatoan supposed to do?  We won't find out for a while.  If they're so important, one wonders why Melmoth left them lying around in the first place.  Stupid Melmoth!  He goes into the bell tower and says he's very pleased with his eugenics experiment.  He then sees Judah and tells him that he remembers him from his toyshop (and he forgets the name of the third one, who will remain forever unnamed - is it important?) and then he reaches into his mouth and switches him off.  This is weird.  Judah is like the spiders the Sheeda use - a very sophisticated machine.  Is he immortal?  Did no one notice that he lived for 400 years?  The other Puritans aren't like him, but they don't seem to know about Judah.  Ebeneezer knew that the train hitting the Horigal wouldn't kill it - did he know that Judah wasn't alive?  So many questions!!!!

We get no answers, however, because Klarion shows up, having been transformed (with Teekl) into the Horigal.  He wreaks some bloody havoc, to be sure, and chews Melmoth's arm off at one point when he drives the Sheeda into the pyre that was meant for him originally.  Melmoth, however, steps out of the fire (looking very much like Gwydion from the first issue of Zatanna, in that they're both on fire) and tells Klarion that blood no longer runs through him - instead, the waters of the cauldron do, and he's pretty much immortal.  He casts a spell on Klarion that is supposed to kill him, and leaves Limbo Town, confident that after the Sheeda are done with the world, he'll have plenty of time for his depravity.  Klarion is in agony, but his mother is able to separate him from Teekl, using "secrets the men never learn."  This is a standard theme in fantasy fiction, it seems, that women learn different kinds of magic than the men.  She heals him, and all is well.  When next we see Klarion, the Puritans are asking him to stay and take Judah's place.  He tells his mother that he's going to send Leviathan to their aid, but they should close the Wicket Gate because the war is coming, and he has to join in.  He has to go, because he wants to be many things before he dies, and today, he's a soldier.  The last image we get of Limbo Town is one of the Puritan women (Beulah, possibly), ready to set Melmoth's men on fire, gleefully saying, "Smell how they burn!"  Oh, those wacky Puritans!  Always ready to burn somebody!

This is one of the few issues that doesn't have a lot of "meat" on it, in other words, weird hidden things that we can delve into.  That doesn't mean it's not a good issue - Irving's art is as stellar as ever, and Morrison gives us good action, but because a lot of the issue is fighting, it's not as "deep" as most of the other issues of the epic have been.  Some interesting things come up, but they are what we've already suspected: Melmoth is the progenitor of the Puritans, which is why they're blue in the first place; Judah is a machine (we might not have suspected this, but he did get hit by a train and survive) like the Sheeda spiders; the power of the Submissionaries in Limbo Town itself, like the power of Croatoan, is based largely on illusion (although I'm still wondering about that weird light in the map).  Does it get into anything else of interest?

Well, we're still tracking this idea of growing up, something Klarion had to deal with last issue.  In this issue, Melmoth takes on the role of the father figure once again, and tries to destroy his progeny, especially his rebellious offspring, Klarion himself.  Klarion is still a rebel, but his rebellion is channeled into a positive outcome, as he helps save Limbo Town from the Sheeda.  Of course, we see that the Puritans are still clinging to their superstitions at the beginning of the issue, and spiritually, they are much closer to Melmoth than Klarion.  They want to punish Klarion for his transgressions, because he dared rebel against their law.  Again, it's a case of the younger generation - the children - being punished for daring to say the emperor has no clothes.  Klarion seeks knowledge, while the Puritans seek conformity.  Only when they are confronted with a threat do they realize that the rebel is actually the one who can save them, because he dared to step outside their reality and find out the truth.  In the same way that Zatanna stepped outside her world, so too did Klarion step outside his, and gain insight that helped him when he returned to his world.  Thematically, then, this issue is similar to the final issue of Zatanna.  There is a father figure - Zor and Melmoth - who wants to "claim" his offspring, but those children stand up and become grown-ups when they resist.  When Klarion makes the difficult choices, he becomes a hero.  Interestingly, both he and Zatanna yearn for new adventures at the end of their trials.  Justine is motivated by revenge, and Jake is motivated by a need to rescue the woman he loves.  Both Klarion and Zatanna are motivated by a need for adventure.  We will see how their motivations lead them to fight the Sheeda later.

I have mentioned throughout that Klarion is kind of a jerk.  Does he remain one?  Well, for the most part, yes he does.  He's not as much of one, to be sure, but he's still the most emotionally stunted of the Seven Soldiers so far.  But this is partly because of the lessons he's learning.  He has been lied to about his religion his entire life.  He has been betrayed, probably by his own father (a debate for another day).  He has been betrayed again by a substitute father, and he learns from Melmoth that it's best not to grow up at all.  He is betrayed yet again by his mother and sister, who are first in line to burn him when he returns to Limbo Town.  Yes, he forgives his mother, but what are the lessons he is learning during this series?  Trust no one.  Stab them in the back before they stab you in the back.  Remain a child.  Through all his growing up, he eventually shirks any responsibility he feels toward his home (sending Leviathan to help is a nice touch, though) and leaves for more adventure.  Can we blame him?  Probably not, because who's to say that his family won't betray him once more?  But it remains an issue, because Klarion should be learning better lessons than this.  He doesn't, though, and this sets up his actions in the finale.

Finally, the idea of group-think enters into this issue, as it has been an undercurrent during the epic so far.  The Puritans are caught up the "witch-fever," as Beulah puts it, and don't stop to consider what Klarion has to say until it's almost too late.  The Sheeda, it appears, are a collective, not necessarily a hive-mind, but definitely alike in their thinking to the point that they are almost non-entities.  What they want to do is stamp out individual thinking, which will make resistance to their onslaught less likely.  We can see this even back in the JLA Classified arc, during which they took mental control of several Ultramarines.  Any villain in this epic so far has exhibited this kind of group-think mentality, and even some of the more benign groups show it.  What is Zatanna's self-esteem workshop but a less insidious form of group-think?  Morrison is implying, as most writers would, that this kind of thinking leads to disaster, and true heroes overcome it.  At its worse, it can destroy a civilization.  Look at the knights of the Round Table, who split the atom in order to defeat the Sheeda.  Galahad comes up with the idea but can't do it himself.  Bors cheerfully steps in, because nobody is thinking independently - the overriding concern, to defeat Mordredd, has taken over.  The Puritans, who are trapped in amber with regard to their civilization, cannot break out of that mentality, and therefore anyone who suggests that there might be something different is obviously a "blasphemer" and "heretic.  The Terrible Time Tailor (Zor), by attempting to "fit" everyone into his "special clothes," is assigning roles to them, roles that will dictate how they live their lives.  Ali Ka-Zoom mentions how stupid they were to send Cap into his cabinet, because he did something they thought was wrong.  He regrets the decision, because it was a decision, we understand, that was made for them by the structures of society.  The Newsboy Army had become just another group enforcing conformity, which is why they failed.  Klarion, by remaining non-conformist and immature, might not be a true hero, but he might also be a wild card that the Sheeda can't anticipate.  Melmoth certainly didn't anticipate the Horigal.

So while Klarion #4 doesn't show the depth of some of the other books in the saga, it does offer some interesting connections to the other heroes and what they have experienced on their journeys.  Of the four mini-series so far, Klarion is the most consistently interesting, even though certain single issues in other series surpass it.  In the other series, the characters' arcs don't really take us by surprise all that much.  Klarion, however, remains an enigma as he hops in the sapper drill and prepares to return to Blue Rafters.  That's why his mini-series is neat.  And that's why we need to keep an eye on him.

What kind of person would I be if I didn't link to the annotations?  A not very thorough person, I'll tell you that much.  Of course, Jog has his usual good thoughts.  So there's that!

Next: Exploitation is groovy!

2 Comments

• At December 21, 2006, RAB wrote:

  The third Submissionary is named in...yep, the crossword puzzle in Seven Soldiers #1. I'm not sure what it means ...

• At December 21, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  Damn it! Stupid crossword puzzle! Yeah, when I heard that one of them was named Shadrach, I wondered ...

This issue actually came out AFTER Klarion #4 and Bulleteer #1.  But it should be read before them.  Don't blame me - that's how The Great Bald One wants it!

Standard SPOILER warnings apply, in case you didn't already know.  Read the issues!

Zatanna and Misty get all girly in Z's closet (not like that, you pervert sickos! sheesh).  Misty thinks Zatanna's fashion sense is cool, and asks if she can borrow a coat, even though her die will protect her from the cold.  Really?  How does she know?  Zatanna says that's fine, because Misty is, after all, going to Tibet.  Wha ...?  When did that happen?  What the hell is going on?

Well, they fly Vanguard to Slaughter Swamp, where the horse tells them that they are going to the city of Gorias, which is "high in the mountains of the East," and there they can make a stand, because it was unknown to all but Arthur's inner circle.  Gorias is one of the four magical cities in the "Land of Youth" in Irish mythology.  Significantly, each city is home to a timeless treasure, and in Gorias is the Spear of Lugh, who is a sun god (which is probably also significant).  Zatanna tells Vanguard to take Misty to Gorias while she finds the Seven Unknown Men.  Misty follows her to Cyrus Gold's cabin, telling her that Gorias won't offer any protection from the Sheeda, and she should know.  She also repeats what the Terrible Time Tailor said in The Manhattan Guardian #4 about black flowers covering the earth.  Spooky!  Zatanna calls her "gloom cookie," which I found humorous, considering she looks like someone from a goth comic, and then they enter the cabin, where instead of the Cosmic Sewing Machine, they find a spinning wheel covered in spider webs, not unlike the one Misty was spinning on in her flashback in issue #3.  Misty claims the loom looks familiar, which isn't surprising, and wonders when "she" will show up.  Vanguard warns them to get a move on, because there are footsteps on the ceiling.  These are Zor's footsteps, presumably, because he shows up on the next page.  Zatanna tells Misty that she doesn't think she really lost her powers, just her faith in herself, but Misty has helped her remember who she is.  One of the themes of the saga is, of course, discovering what it means to be a hero.  After her big mistake at Baron Winter's house (and, I'm convinced, the events of Identity Crisis, which Zatanna sort of references on this page), she felt completely unheroic, as she probably should have.  Being a hero is not about being the strongest or the smartest, it's about taking responsiblity for your actions.  Misty allowed Zatanna to focus on making things better instead of wallowing in self-pity, and even though she got involved in adventure as a way to externalize her feelings, it still allowed her to move past the guilt she felt over getting her friends killed.  By becoming a mother figure to Misty, Zatanna realized that there were more important things in life than saying spells backward.  Morrison allows Zatanna to have it both ways, too - she grows up and becomes more of a hero, but she also rediscovers that childlike innocence that allows her to believe in making things better.  Morrison is doing a nice job with that sort of thing - superheroes are essentially childish, but they bridge the gap between childhood and adulthood by allowing us to fantasize about having powers and experiencing wild things, but at the same time learning about heroism and what it means to be an adult.  Zatanna sums this up on the next page, when she explains that being a superhero is about finding yourself as the only one who can save the world, and whether you run or whether you do it, not matter how hard it is.  Zatanna has been able to decide, and that's why she doesn't need Misty anymore.  She needs Misty to be safe instead of helping her, so she makes sure Misty gets out with Vanguard.

And then Zor shows up.  Zor is not a nice guy.  He bit the head off of a dove, for crying out loud!  He shoots bullets out of his eyes!  He tells Zatanna that he was the one who showed up in Cassandra Craft's store, all in order to make Zatanna think it was her father back from the dead.  He also says that in this world, he can do anything.  This is interesting, because we wonder which world Zor comes from.  Considering the metafictional nature of this entire issue, it's certainly worth wondering about.  He changes Zatanna into his own wicked daughter, Zorina, but that doesn't work, and Zor gets tougher.  According to the annotations, he refers to one of his battles with the Spectre from More Fun Comics #55, and the battle between he and Zatanna plays out like that one.  Zatanna releases Gwydion and tells him to battle Zor.  Gwydion says he is one of the seven treasures - so far it's been four treasures, but now it's seven - and that he is made of living language, born in the workshops of the gods.  This is interesting, because the language Justine speaks is some kind of proto-language, a language that all men could understand before they lost touch with the gods.  Gwydion is a manifestation of that.  Morrison, of course, is very concerned with language and how we can play with it and manipulate it, so Gwydion becomes a crucial component of the way Morrison's fiction plays out.  Gwydion can change the world simply through language.  Zor takes for himself the role of "new architect of the universe," which Gwydion claimed to serve back in issue #2.  Zatanna narrates about magical battles, saying that "belief becomes a weapon more deadly than bombs."  This ties back into Zatanna's renewal as a hero - she believes again, and can therefore fight someone like Zor.  Zor attempts to make her feel guilty, but she is past that, and it doesn't work.  Then things get weird.

This entire series has, in one way or another, been concerned with texts.  We saw the Liber Zatarae as the catalyst in the first couple of issues, and Misty's "origin" in issue #3 is taken right out of fairy tales.  In this issue Morrison concerns himself with the idea of texts as a gateway to a different reality, which isn't that original an idea - we experience it whenever we pick up a text, after all.  Zatanna goes "outside" the text, which is just another way of growing up - she seizes the opportunity to make her own reality and not just follow the script.  By not doing what is expected of her, she is able to defeat Zor, of course, but she is also able to comprehend the machinery behind the Sheeda threat.  Only when we step outside the proscribed arc of our lives are we able to reach understanding.  How does Zatanna achieve this?  Zor "breaks" the Merlin, Gwydion, who is born of living language.  He doesn't destroy Gwydion, but by shattering him, if only for a moment, he allows Zatanna to escape the bonds of reality (her reality is defined by language, after all) and become something different.  Zor claims that he has become the universe - not unlike Neh-buh-loh, mind you.  However, what Zatanna has finally understood is that there are many universes, and Zor is just a small one that she can easily defeat.  His universe is the text of a comic book (note that Gwydion seems to be making reference to that while Zor crushes him - "I, the many thousand hands that hold it ... I, the multi-colored eyes that gaze upon you ..."), while Zatanna is no longer confined by that.  She struggles with Zor in the swamp, but is able to shift him outside that reality, where he has become the universe, to someplace different.  Remember, Slaughter Swamp is a "soft place," and Zatanna has taken Zor outside of where he is powerful to a place where he is impotent.  This momentary switch is all she needs to stun him.  She hears "voices coming from somewhere east of nowhere" - the Newsboy Army, remember, lived on Nowhere Street - and realizes that if she can break through the "weird machinery, this scaffolding stuff that was holding all our lives together" then she could contact "them."  She reaches toward the reader, as she comes to understand that the reality of the writer (Morrison, in this case) is the one that dictates what happens in her reality.  If only she can get through to that reality, maybe she can change everything.  On the next page we see the Seven Unknown Men of Slaughter Swamp, staring down at her as she reaches toward them.  They are impressed that she has made it that far.  She understands why she couldn't reach them before - they were there all along, meaning that the writer is ever-present in the text.  You'll notice she's reaching up through the inner workings of a typewriter.  She is no longer "being written" like a comic book character.  She has broken beyond that.

She enters the world of the Seven Unknown Men, where she feels "eyes, tens of thousands of eyes, in different times and places, all converging on me."  Again, this is a reference to the readers, who are watching her go through this turmoil.  The men tell her that they are called "time tailors," who "patch and sew" to "make sure the fabric of your universe is kept in good repair."  Zor took it too far and tried to change the pattern.  Notice in this panel that the time tailors are removing Zor from a panel of a comic book.  Zor appears to be the eighth time tailor - or has he been replaced by a new one?  We saw in Seven Soldiers #0 that there were only six time tailors - Zor is obviously not there, because he has thrown in his lot with the Sheeda.  So they have found a new one in the interim, right?  Anyway, they explain that he introduced a deadly plague into the world - the Sheeda, remember, ride mosquitos, which spread disease.  They also tell Zatanna that they set seven "hidden" warriors in motion, but if they fail, the Sheeda strain will do irreparable damage.  This backs up Ed's statement about the Seven Soldiers not knowing each other - they must remain hidden from the Sheeda if they have any chance.  Finally, they offer Zatanna access to anything in their records, and she, of course, asks about her father's four books.  Giovanni appears (along with the others who died in issue #1) and tells her that he wrote the books in her, and she was his gift to the world.  Each book represents a primary element, and they also correspond to the four golems Ed Stargard created back in the day.  As the time tailors cut up Zor and try to determine what went wrong with him (which, if we accept that to be a true hero you must overcome your limitations, means that perhaps nothing was "wrong" with Zor and he just became fully actualized, which makes him a "renegade"), Giovanni hugs Zatanna and sends her back to save the world.  Just like Shining Knight, we're back where we started, as Zatanna meets privately with Etta Candy and finishes telling her the whole thing.  Etta, who did nothing to help her, still says she did nothing wrong, and even if she did, all the right things she did make up for it.  Which is what Morrison has been pointing out all along.

Zatanna does get to keep Gwydion, still in his jar, but, amazingly, she's still an action junkie, as she says (backwards) that she needs a new adventure, and suddenly Misty shows up riding Vanguard and leading a pack of flying horses, telling her that Gloriana Tenebrae is about to invade the earth.  Of course that's where we end.  Luckily for Misty, Zatanna is back at full strength!

There's not much else to say about this issue that I haven't already covered.  Through all of these comics, issue #3 has been the issue in which the hero discovers something about themselves that makes them face their fears, and issue #4 is when they get a chance to prove it.  Zatanna has possibly come further than the others, because her magical nature has allowed her to accept the fundamental differences between realities.  Justine and Klarion have personal experience with the Sheeda, so they aren't thrown too much by what's happening.  Jake is a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, so he gets freaked out by it before coming to grips with it.  Zatanna, however, is able to accept the existence of the Sheeda, but she needs to go further, because of the nature of her guilt.  Her guilt might be greater than any of the others', because she got people killed through her own actions.  So she needs to reach beyond our reality and understand that nobody ever really dies.  In much the same way that Morrison's ultimate tale of metafiction, Animal Man, showed us how silly comic book clichés can be, this comic allows Zatanna to realize that her father and the others may be gone, but that doesn't mean they are "dead."  Hell, Terry Thirteen is already back!  This allows her to truly become a hero, because she is no longer riddled with guilt.

Phew.  That's a tough book to read, even though it's very fun.  Sook's art certainly helps, as it remains the best overall of the mini-series (and second only to Williams' art in the bookends).  And although people complained about the whole "reaching out to the audience" thing that Morrison likes to do, it does seem to be necessary and not just a gimmick.  That doesn't mean you have to like it, but you can't just dismiss it cavalierly.  Well, maybe you can, but you shouldn't.

For this issue, the annotations are very good.  Jog has good thoughts about the issue, too, even though they're kind of in line with mine, which either makes me smarter than I actually am or Jog dumber than he actually is.  Marc Singer also thinks deep thoughts about this issue.  So many smart people out there!!!!

Where to next?  How about Klarion tied to a stake?  Sure, why not?

2 Comments

• At December 20, 2006, comixkid2099 wrote:

  i have never read the seven soldiers books before, but seeing these reviews may make me want to look at ...

• At December 20, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  Replacements are a big part of the whole epic, so I don't doubt that Morrison had the apostles at least ...

Does someone out there know why Pasqual Ferry wasn't on this the entire series?  Did he go exclusive with Marvel or something?  I'm sure it was big news when it happened, but I can't recall why he left.  The other artists try to ape his style, which I'm not sure was a good idea, because, let's face it - Ferry's art on this issue is only just okay.

The media is covering the latest stunt by the world-famous escape artist, Shilo Norman.  He's preparing to dive into a S.T.A.R. labs-generated black hole, just so he can escape it.  The newspeople, predictably, call him "one of the seven celebrity wonders of the world."  One wonders who the other six are.  Shilo Norman, Mister Miracle himself, has been around for a while, but I'm not sure when Scott Free actually turned the mantle of Mister Miracle over to him, nor what Scott Free is doing right now.  It doesn't really matter, except that this series concerns itself greatly with the New Gods, so it's odd that Shilo didn't learn more about them from Scott when he was learning how to be such a great escape artist.  But, as I mentioned, you don't have to know that much about Shilo to appreciate this series.  You do, however, have to know more than probably should be necessary about the New Gods (even though we get a brief refresher course), a concept I have never found that interesting.  Yeah, Kirby blah blah blah, but whenever any of these characters shows up anywhere, I get taken right out of the story.  They don't always ruin things for me, but they take some getting used to.  Morrison, of course, has a nerd boner™ for all things Kirby and specifically the New Gods, so it's not surprising they show up in the saga.  Anyway, Shilo is suspended above the black hole, which is a tiny dot far below him.  He is hung not unlike the crucified Christ, which can mean many things.  This is, more than likely, foreshadowing on Morrison's part.  Shilo, after all, sacrifices himself for the good of the world.  Morrison is obsessed with the Tarot, too, and there's a Hanged Man in the deck (check out the cover for an even better view of this), which, apparently, can symbolize Odin, who hung from a tree for nine days to gain wisdom.  So Shilo hanging above the black hole is fraught with meaning.  That wacky Morrison!  In the first issue of The Manhattan Guardian, of course, Jake hears about this stunt on the radio, which pegs when the series begins, at least.

As the countdown commences, Shilo asks the Mother Box (he calls it Motherboxxx) on his shoulder if they can use the time dilation effect as they fall toward the event horizon.  Phew!  That's quite a sentence.  A Mother Box is one of the gadgets that the New Gods use, functioning as portable supercomputers that can also open trans-dimensional holes known as Boom Tubes.  Pretty handy to have.  It's apparently semi-sentient, as well, and functions as Shilo's "familiar" throughout the series.  Hmmm, where have we seen familiars before?  The "time dilation effect" means that some other time slows down compared to the observer's own time.  It's all about physics, people!  This kind of thing occurs around black holes, because the gravitational field is so strong.  The "event horizon," beside being a really awful science fiction movie, is the spot at which the inward pull of the black hole becomes so great nothing can escape.  So that's not a good place for Shilo to be.  The restraints come loose, and Shilo falls.  Something immediately goes wrong, and Shilo Norman, as the news says, "has, quite simply, ceased to exist!"

Or not.  On the next page we see that he is face to face with Metron, who asks him what took him so long.  Our Dread Lord and Master, who has access to arcane knowledge, posted a while back about what the page was going to look like.  With that in mind, we have to ask ourselves if Metron is simply asking Shilo what took him so long, or if he's asking the reader why it took us so long to reach this point - surely Morrison's dense plotting is easier to comprehend than that????  Or, it could be a sly self-deprecating remark about Morrison himself - hey, Grant, why did it take so long to finish Seven Soldiers #1?  I'm just spitballing.

Metron does his weird, annoying way of speaking, then tells Shilo that "we" are lost.  Since he's not royalty, we have to assume he's speaking about more than just himself.  This, as it turns out, is true.  The New Gods need Shilo, presumably because he's an escape artist and can "find" his way out of being "lost."  Metron tells Shilo that inside the event horizon, even "he" cannot see or hear us.  Again, part of the problem with this story is that it requires us to know that Metron, more than likely, is talking about Darkseid.  Anyone who has only been reading the Seven Soldiers saga might think he's talking about the Terrible Time Tailor or Melmoth.  Metron invites Shilo to get snuggly with him in his Mobius chair, which evokes both a Mobius strip and the comic book artist, Moebius.  Shilo is still freaking out, and Metron tells him to let go of fear or be crushed.  We've seen this before - fear playing a big role in keeping our heroes from being true heroes.  Now Shilo has to deal with it.  Mother Box kicks in and tells Shilo that the void in his soul is going to be filled but he'll have to be strong to bear it.  Again, we see the idea of someone taking on responsibility and having to deal with it.  Shilo is not a grown-up, because he has a "void" in his soul.  But if it's filled, he'll have a responsibility to it.  Mother Box hopes he can come through.

The next few pages gives us a brief history of the battle between New Genesis and Apokolips.  The narration sounds like someone telling someone else a story, which it turns out to be.  We can guess that Shilo is the one talking, and he is.  He talks about how wonderful New Genesis was, but then there was a war, and the wrong side won.  We see Darkseid standing watching the industrial machines of Apokolips, and the narration tells us, "The dark side won."  This goes back to Morrison's anti-industrial (anti-progress?) bent, as Darkseid's nightmare world reminds us (as it's supposed to) of our own world, and it also recalls the knights of Avalon splitting the atom.  As this is part of Kirby's mythology, I can't really hold Morrison responsible for coming up with yet another horrible industrial world, but it's worth noting that he ties Apokolips and the Sheeda, both with out-of-control technology, together.  Metron tells Shilo that he can either free the bright ones - the New Gods - or be slaves to the dark.  He then at least names Darkseid and tells Shilo that he'll meet him at the crossroads.  Boy, I'm glad Grant isn't going for tired old clichés denoting important life choices!  He's too clever for that, right?

Metron snaps his fingers (like a magician, like Giovanni Zatara?) and Shilo escapes from the black hole.  As he kneels on the ground with the crowd going wild, he passes out.  He wakes up to see his manager, ZZ, staring back at him.  ZZ tells Shilo that everyone is having a party around him, but Shilo just wants to be alone.  Shilo says that there has to be more to this life than what he has - another sign of growing up.  ZZ says he understands a mid-life crisis - even though, as Shilo points out, he's 23 - and that Shilo doesn't know what to do when he's done everything.  During this speech, he's holding a glowing ball that emits weird wisps of light.  We don't find out what this is until the third issue, but it still doesn't make much sense.  Anyway, we finally learn that Shilo is talking to a psychiatrist as he narrates this entire sequence.  I don't know about you, but I was suspicious of that doctor from the first panel.  I mean, he has that billy goat beard, which is really Satanic.  And, of course, psychiatrists are evil in general in fiction.  Come on, people, you know I'm right!  The doctor prompts him to speak about the events leading up to his "outburst," and Shilo says that as ZZ led him to "party people," everything took on a "flavor" like in Metron's world, but bad.  ZZ takes him up to meet some women.  These women are a madam and her prostitutes, but they're really Granny Goodness and the Four Furies - Bernadeth, Wunda, Lashina, and Mad Harriet.  Shilo figures this out, and Granny doesn't help things by sticking her forked tongue out at him, so he freaks out and runs for it.  Back in the doctor's office, he says he knows he's not crazy as he looks out at the New York-that-might-have-been where the bulk of the saga takes place.  The doctor suggest he might not want to take everything so literally, but then he takes a bite of a candy bar (like the one Klarion was impressed by?) and blood runs down his chin, so obviously the doctor is not someone Shilo should be trusting.  He suggests this is all about the war within a man's soul, but Shilo asks him what if it's true, and he lives in a world where evil won?  The doctor is dismissive of that notion, but it comes back to a world of dreary reality, where superheroes are a childish fantasy.  We have seen this before, in the JLA Classified arc, where the Ultramarines are injected into a world that has no superheroes, and of course, throughout this entire arc, where the idea of heroes is scorned by "grown-ups," meaning authority figures.  Shilo is, technically, grown up, but he still has the immature mindset - he's an escape artist, after all.  He wonders why his self esteem is still lousy after seeing the doctor for three years.  This mirrors the self esteem workshop that Zatanna went to in issue #1 of her series - both of them fail to find what they're looking for from vacuous "adults."  Only when faced with a true challenge will they make it through to where they need to be.

As Shilo leaves the office (and walks under a sign that misspells "Apollo" - presumably it's the Apollo Theater), he sees a grumpy old man in a wheelchair, whom he originally thinks is Metron.  The guy tells him that he did bet Metron that Shilo would lose it all at the beginning because he is too soft.  Then he kind of obliquely reveals that he is the Black Racer, who used to cruise around on skis.  Yes, skis.  He holds a pawn and drops it as he tells Shilo he needs to be tested.  Suddenly cars start flying (some literally) at Shilo, and he's caught in the Drive-By Derby!  And ... scene!

Yes, we end on the Drive-By Derby.  When I first read this, I was amazed by how stupid that was.  Now that I'm re-reading it, I'm amazed by how stupid it is.  I suppose it's some weird tribute to the insanity of Kirby's concepts, and I suppose if anyone can make a Drive-By Derby work, it's Morrison, but considering we just came from The Manhattan Guardian #4, where the kookiness of the Newsboy Army concept didn't destroy the tragic nature of their fate, in this issue, we haven't quite yet invested in Shilo Norman, so when cars start flying at him, we shrug our shoulders and think, "So?"

The entire issue is like that.  Sure, Morrison is again bringing in the themes he has been toying with throughout the saga, and Shilo certainly is a man who needs to understand what it means to be a hero, so of course he needs to be tested.  The Fourth World trappings, however, keep us strangely distant.  More than the other series, Morrison seems to be phoning it in on this series, probably because if you write a series about Mister Miracle, it's apparently in the contract that you must reference every single figure in the Fourth World.  Or maybe Kirby had a good contract and he stipulated it.  That makes this far less compelling than a "regular" Morrison comic book, because he has to bring in all these characters who really aren't that interesting.  Metron, for example, is just dull.  All he ever does is spout this pseudo-mystical crap and fly around on that stupid chair of his.  Darkseid should be a fascinating character, and certainly in "Rock of Ages," Morrison made him pretty interesting, but usually he's just kind of a blustery bully (I say "usually" because some writers have made him okay, but those portrayals seem few and far between).

It does get better.  Morrison manages to tie it into the main saga, and Aurakles, of course, provides a crucial piece of the puzzle.  The problem with this issue is that it feels half-formed, and as we go through the series, the ideas of different worlds in different dimensions gets a little more development.  It's typical Morrison metafiction, but since New Genesis and Apokolips exist in different dimensions that the regular DCU (don't they?), this could easily have been the mini-series that examines fiction and how heroes become myth.  It doesn't quite pull that off, but it at least approaches that.  But so much of this feels like it's not springing from the brain of Morrison, whence so many good things about Seven Soldiers come.  Even the biblical connections to the word "Shiloh," which we could easily believe coming from the fertile imagination of The God of All Comics, isn't his, as Shilo Norman existed prior to this series.  So not much in this first issue feels distinctively Morrisonian, and although some people might say that's a good thing, in conjunction with Seven Soldiers, it's not.

Of course, I can't let you go without pointing out the annotations!  If you know of any reviews that are nicer than mine (although, in the context of the entire epic, this gets the job done), let me know!

Next: Zatanna gets in a weird fight!

4 Comments

• At December 18, 2006, ninjawookie wrote:

  taken from the Pasqual Ferry Biography Interview from Newsarama

  NRAMA: Though Mr. Miracle was lined up, you're no longer on the ...

• At December 19, 2006, Mike Loughlin wrote:

  I've always liked the New Gods, and I loved the idea of Darkseid & co. subverting human ideals from within, ...

• At December 20, 2006, Evan Waters wrote:

  Honestly, I think this is the miniseries that reads the strongest on its own. I loved Morrison's re-invention of the ...

• At January 3, 2007, nick marino wrote:

  i thought Mr. Miracle (all four issues) was great.

This is a pretty huge issue, isn't it?  It is called "Sex Secrets of the Newsboy Army," after all.  How many of you thought it was called "SIX Secrets of the Newsboy Army" at just a cursory glance?  It's weird.  The title provides us with a decent clue about something that is very subtle in the book.  And it does give us tons o' info about the Newsboy Army specifically and the overall saga in general!  Cool beans!

The whole flashback portion of the issue reads like a sensationalistic newspaper.  We begin with "Wouldja believe? .."  Of course we don't believe - it's a comic book!  This kind of introduction prepares us for the wackiness that is to follow.  It is easy for comic book readers to "believe" what happens in the book, even though it is basically unreal.  Morrison also wants to us to "believe" the more unpleasant aspects of the book, which are, unfortunately, all too believable.  Belief, of course, is a crucial component of myths and legends, which we have seen is an integral part of this whole thing.  The story Ed tells Jake is so unbelievable that we shouldn't accept it, but like myths, we have to accept it on faith.  Eventually, Jake must decide if he accepts what Ed tells him and act upon it, even though he doesn't have to take it entirely on faith - he does, after all, see the Sheeda warriors at the end of the issue.

So we begin in "darkest Africa," a corny anachronistic phrase that reeks of racism but is used here in a somewhat ironic fashion.  The deliberate stereotyping of the natives is another example of this.  Morrison is hearkening back to the thrilling tales of yesteryear, but with tongue firmly in cheek.  I haven't read any reviews expressing anger over this, but they could be out there.  Anyone know of any?

The Newsboy Army is trying to fix their plane, which has crashed in the jungle.  Baby Brain - Ed Stargard - is trying to explain how they should fix it while being held by L'il Hollywood.  I'm surprised that L'il Hollywood didn't show up at the self-esteen workshop with Zatanna, but she does appear in Bulleteer.  The black kid with the top hat on couldn't possibly be Ali Ka-Zoom, could it?  Well, of course it could be!  On the tail of the plane sits Kid Scarface, otherwise known to us as Vincenzo, the undying don, and on the wing is Chop Suzi, who doesn't have a pleasant fate, as we'll see.  Suddenly Millions, the richest dog in the world (Ali Ka-Zoom mentioned him in Zatanna #3), and Cap (whose "official" name, I guess, is Captain 7 because of his jersey number, but nobody ever calls him that) come running out of the jungle, chased by cannibalistic natives wearing bowler hats.  Cap is carrying a Cessna engine that the natives have been worshipping as a god since "their ancestors" brought in there on a safari package tour.  This is interesting, because it implies that "natives" aren't actually natives, but tourists who went native.  This gives this little vignette a very Lord of the Flies vibe, as well as a Peter Pan vibe, and we've seen that Klarion, among others in this saga, has a curious Peter Pan complex.  This also reminds me of The Gods Must Be Crazy, which I've mentioned before in relation to Klarion, as well as the Jon Frum cargo cult (although that might just be me).  Notice that Cap also says "Wouldja believe ..." when he tells them about the engine.  We must suspend our disbelief even more!  As he throws the engine toward them, he asks, "How lucky are we?"  Not very, as it turns out.  Kid Scarface catches the engine, Ali Ka-Zoom distracts the natives with stuff coming out of his sleeves - doves, cards, and the like - and Baby Brain tells Chop Suzi to get the engine installed.  It's probably just me again, but the propeller on the plane, which is a modified ceiling fan, has those tacky flower light bulbs that nevertheless resemble lotus blossoms.  The lotus, of course, is a symbol of rebirth and/or creation.  James Bond also drove one in two movies - The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only.  Come on, that has to be significant!  Suzi gets the plane working, and Baby Brain mutters, "Machines love her too."  This statement, of course, implies that one or all of the Newsboy Army loves Suzi - a statement that becomes more meaningful later in the issue.  The plane takes off, they scoop Millions up in a butterfly net, Cap says he got a spear in the glutes and hopes it's not poisoned (contrast this with the arrow through Don Vincenzo, which is definitely poisoned), and they fly toward a land of golden top hats (with one of them saying, "Wouldja believe ..." again).  But, as Ed points out, that's another story.

We're back in the present, and Jake is still trying to figure out what's going on.  Ed tells him that he has the biggest story of them all - the editor of the Guardian is a big baby man, but Jake doesn't care about that.  He just wants to know what's up.  Ed tells him that if he had grown up normally, he wouldn't have a chance to save the world.  Jake says he has to quit because the job is wrecking his life.  Here we see the dilemma that runs throughout the series - Jake has his self-respect back, but he's losing his girl.  Which is more important to him?  Ed asks to be heard, and he tells him that the Army was different, so they tried to make a difference.  Millions had inherited money from a "crazy old eccentric," so they built a junkyard HQ and a printing press and blew the rest on candy.  Of course they would!  We go into flashback again, and the Army stands in front of the United Nations building and swears to make things better.  They say, "And nothing will ever divide us," another one of those ironic statements Morrison loves writing, considering what's coming up.  Notice there are seven members, so they have a good shot at winning.  Later, they leave Millions at home, and things go FUBAR.  Back in the present, Jake coldly tells Ed that it will take more than sympathy to keep him around.  Ed says their old enemies are coming back, in "flying murder factories as big as cities," which is a fine description of places like Castle Revolving.  Jake freaks a little and tells Ed he needs to explain better.  So Ed does.

We go back into flashback, and Ali Ka-Zoom shows up at the printing press, where the Army is publishing the Nowhere St. News with a headline about Mo Colley knocking out Ted Grant, otherwise known as Wildcat.  Ali tells them that Mo himself is murdering cops in Nowhere Square.  "El Mar" called him and told him.  This is Larry Marcus, Carla's father, who got Jake the job with Ed.  I mentioned when I wrote about the first issue that Larry was a member of the Newsboy Army.  It appears that he wasn't really, just friends with them.  Maybe he was like Snapper Carr!  The kids can't believe it (Mo's best friend was a police horse - possibly named Horsefeathers?), but they run to the rescue.  Mo is in the square, pulling the eyes out of cops' heads, twisting their necks, acting like a mindless Grundy, and speaking in the Sheeda language.  L'il Hollywood tries to talk him down, and we see the Sheeda clinging to the back of his neck.  Mo looks like he's had a stroke, if you notice.  Hollywood manages to get through to him, and Mo rips the Sheeda off the back of his neck and tells L'il Hollywood, "I gone and ruined my big comeback."  The cops immediately gun him down, leaving L'il Hollywood spattered with blood and holding a dead Sheeda.  It ends up in a jar, which eventually finds its way to Cassandra Craft's store and we see it in Zatanna #2.  Baby Brain lets us know that it takes control of the central nervous system via the brainstem and could be the reason for human legends - that word again - of changelings.  Baby Brain mentions that between Gotham City and New York is Slaughter Swamp, where there was a report about a man being harassed by "tiny medieval fellers riding bugs."  Baby Brain, for some reason, suggests they split into two teams.  Why, exactly?  L'il Hollywood is upset that Millions has to stay behind, but Kid Scarface points out he's getting too old for adventure.  Baby Brain, as smart as he is, doesn't understand what happens to groups of six, which is what they'll be if they leave Millions behind.  Both Suzi and Cap 7 are ambivalent about going to Slaughter Swamp.  Suzi says she told her parents she'd help out at the laundry - another stereotype! - while Cap has to go to college.  Baby Brain points out that it's for Mr. Colley, and Kid Scarface says, "It's two fuckin' teams all right!"  The annotations say that Millions is Team One, while the rest are Team Two.  That seems kind of flawed, but maybe it makes sense.  Speaking of which, something I missed the first time around is that Suzi is pregnant.  She is holding her belly in two different panels, and in one, she's obviously pregnant.  But who's the father????  Could it be the other member of the group who doesn't want to play kids' games anymore?  Could it????

The next page sees our heroes in Slaughter Swamp, and Baby Brain says, "I concede that the two teams idea was intrinsically flawed."  He says that sticking together seems smarter.  So they should have brought Millions?  How does Baby Brain know that the two teams idea was flawed?  What has convinced him of this?  Kid Scarface uses "Wouldja believe ..." again, as he checks out the black flowers.  As Cap mentions that he has to be on a plane to college the next day, they see Cyrus Gold's cabin ahead, with the lights on.  Jake makes a joke about hunting fairies as Ed continues.  They enter the cabin and see the sewing machine that we saw in Seven Soldiers #0.  It's surrounded by tiny flying Sheeda.  In the background Gloriana Tenebrae is speaking to her magic mirror, keeping with the fairy tale motif we've seen before.  A bald man scoffs at them and tells them that some day black flowers will cover the earth and kids like them won't be worth a damn.  We know that the black flowers represent a secret, and the bald guy is hinting that kids won't be around, because everyone will have secrets and therefore be "grown up."  We already know that two member of the Army have secrets, and they are the most "adult" - their secret involves sex, after all.  The mirror tells the Queen that "seven will come, by roads unseen, unknown.  And end the Queen of Terror's reign with a spear that was never thrown."  We'll get back to the "spear that was never thrown," because it comes up again, as it must.  The first part is interesting, too, as Ed figures out what it means, and will tell Jake soon.  The bald guy - who Ali, in Zatanna #3, explained was the Terrible Time Tailor - tells them that he brought Gloriana Tenebrae here to kill people like them - superpeople, apparently.

Back in the present, Ed says that Cyrus Gold's cabin, like Miracle Mesa, has come unhinged from time and space.  He also mentions that Shelly Gaynor and "six" other superheroes were lost at the mesa.  Ed obviously doesn't know that only six heroes showed up, but we'll forgive him for that.  He asks Jake, "Can you feel the strands of the web tightening?" in an obvious reference to both Ali Ka-Zoom's "mystery thread" and the spiders that show up throughout the saga.  The Terrible Time Tailor, meanwhile, tells them that his world has no place for smart-ass kids - another reference to the "grown-up" world, and then asks Ali Ka-Zoom for his top hat.  What's up with top hats, anyway?  The Newsboy Army go to the Land of Golden Top Hats, Giovanni Zatara obviously has one, Ali Ka-Zoom gets one somewhere after the bald guy takes his, and Cassandra's mysterious visitor has one!  Could he be the same bald man in Slaughter Swamp?    Ed gives us some crucial information in the present, as he quotes the Terrible Time Tailor: "Now go try on the clothes I've made.  Do it or I'll kill you and the fucking dog.  I make special clothes, you see.  Suits you'll wear when you're older."  We then see how the Army will turn out as adults.  Kid Scarface, of course, is Vincenzo, and he's a "guilt-ridden undead mass murderer" - notice the presence of guilt, once again.  L'il Hollywood is an alcoholic, Ali is a homeless schizophrenic, Baby Brain is a reclusive freak.  Chop Suzi is "dead at 14," which means she didn't make it far past the events of this comic.  Millions is also "dead at 14," which means he had a pretty good life.  But, we'll see him still alive in Seven Soldiers #1, which means the timeline is screwed up somehow.  Finally, Cap is a "child molester/murderer."  In the next panel Cap says, "No.  She wanted me."  Then, we see Kid Scarface knocking Cap into Ali Ka-Zoom's cabinet with a baseball bat at Ali and L'il Hollywood look on, cheering viciously.  Ali told Zatanna that in the cabinet was a hole, and they put a boy in there who did something they decided was wrong.  We can infer from the issue that Cap got Suzi pregnant, who died perhaps because of complications from the pregnancy.  Cap, of course, might have actually killed her, since he is called a "murderer."  The fact that he says "She wanted me" makes it sound like he did, in fact, molest Suzi.  As Cap is probably 18 (he's going to college) and Suzi is 14, this is the definition of inappropriate sex, but from earlier scenes, it seems like the sex was probably consensual.  It's a debate that can go on forever.  Did Cap and Suzi have consensual sex?  Did Cap force himself on her?  His words seem to imply that.  Did Suzi die from a miscarriage or other complications?  Finally, did Cap kill her himself?  The grief of the Army is obvious - they all loved her, as Baby Brain implies in the beginning of the issue, so their reaction might not have to do with anything more than Suzi dying and their need to find someone to blame.  Notice that Cap is blindfolded.  Did they gouge his eyes out?

After this unsettling scene, we're back in the present, and Ed tells Jake that the Sheeda take all the time in the world, because "in their world, only a day will have passed."  This makes sense, as the cauldron left Castle Revolving only a few minutes before Justine followed it, yet Vincenzo appears to have possession of it for years.  Ed also tells Jake he doesn't think the Sheeda are aliens, and that they've come to get him, not Jake, because they don't know about Jake.  The legend says when they come to harvest the earth, seven soldiers will overthrow them.  That's why they went after the Justice League.  Ed tells Jake that they don't know about the latest Seven Soldiers because none of them recognize each other - this is an ingenious plan, if you think about it, and we wonder how much Ed had to do with the other soldiers.  Jake figures out that Ed and Larry set him up, and Ed says that all Jake needed to become a superhero is a good origin story, and that's what this is.  As the Sheeda invade the building, Ed asks Jake to try to stop them.  Jake takes both Ed and Lena, Ed's personal assistant, with him.  He calls Carla and tells her, "it's not about the job or the money, it's about being in the right place at the right time to do the right thing.  And knowing you're gonna do it even if you don't want to."  He tells her he's coming to get her, and then the three of them hit the streets!  Notice that Jake sums up the heroic theme of the saga so far - Klarion has already realized the same thing, that he has to save Limbo Town even though he doesn't want to.  Justine already understood it, and she gets a lesson in it when she kills Galahad.  What is Zatanna's lesson?

The grand theme of this issue is, of course, growing up.  The saga has concerned itself with becoming a hero as a metaphor for growing up, but in this issue, we see the both the darker side and the brighter side of growing up.  In the issue "prior" to this, we see Justine go through a transformation that, as Ragnell argues, marks her journey from girl to woman.  In this issue, Morrison returns to this idea that adulthood somehow marks the loss of heroism, as the kids grow up and lose their youthful exuberance and innocence, highlighted, of course, by the sexual relationship between Suzi and Cap.  The Time Tailor, like Melmoth, makes repeated references to growing up, and makes it sound horrific.  Adults, after all, have secrets, and it's this that binds them to places like Slaughter Swamp.  When Ed was a child, he roamed the streets freely, fighting injustice.  Now that he is an adult, he hides himself away, because he's ashamed.  The Newsboy Army are not, in the final analysis, true heroes, because of the fact that they don't grow up properly.  In the present, after years of wandering in the wilderness, is when they become true heroes.  Ed makes sure that the "Seven Soldiers" concept might work this time.  Vincenzo shelters Vanguard and fights the Sheeda to the death.  Ali guides Justine and refuses to die until he gives comfort to Vincenzo's soul.  Years after their dissolution because they "grew up," the Newsboy Army has grown up for real.  Morrison does indicate that there is a loss of something wonderful when we reach adulthood, but it is possible to still remember what it was like to be a child and incorporate that into your new personality.  Jake had forgotten that, but this issue (and the mini-series up to this point) reminded him of it.  We can't stop puberty and the onset of adulthood.  But we don't have to become soulless in the process.  We can still do the right thing regardless of "the job or the money."  We can still be children at heart, even though we have to make harder choices and face more dire consequences.

In this issue, Morrison also does something else he enjoys doing - using Silver Age ideas but showing us the dark underbelly of it.  The world of the Newsboy Army is shiny and bright, as they take their oath in front of the UN building, full of hope.  We never expect to see Mo Colley plucking the eyes out of cops or getting gunned down, and we don't expect the sexual undercurrent that runs through the story.  Even the prologue, in "darkest Africa," has a disturbing edge.  Morrison knows that when we read Silver Age stories today, we read them with a jaundiced eye, so he does it for us.  It's disturbing, because we can never be sure how explicit the writers of that time were being.  Here, it's obvious how explicit Morrison is being.  It ties into this idea of growing up.  We can no longer enjoy olde-tyme comics like we did when we were children, because we see things differently.  Whether this is a good thing or not I'll let others debate, but it's certainly true.  Morrison is one of the few writers who is very good at setting something in a Silver Age milieu and then putting a modern twist on it.  When he does this, it makes for an unsettling reading experience.  And in this way, the fourth issue of this series reflects our reading of comics in general - the natives at the beginning are presented relatively unironically, so that a kid can enjoy the thrilling adventures, but as we move through the book, it becomes more and more "mature."

This is a very good issue just for the story and art, as Stewart does a nice job with the flashbacks, giving everything a patina of nostalgia.  The old scenes look like a newsreel, and their grainy quality is charming when the story remains light and creepy when the Newsboy Army ventures into Slaughter Swamp.  Stewart, as usual, does a fine job with the present-day scenes, giving Ed's nerve center an ultra-modern look as well as a heavier line.  It's a nice contrast.

I always need to point out the annotations, which are good for this issue.  Jog has very good thoughts about it, too.  Marc Singer, someone else who is smarter than I am, makes excellent points.  Any others?  Shout them out!

Next: A new, weird mini-series!

14 Comments

• At December 18, 2006, david brothers wrote:

  Millions is also “dead at 14,” which means he had a pretty good life.

  I was going to say "Dogs ...

• At December 18, 2006, ninjawookie wrote:

  Millions was also mentioned to still be alive in that comic con issue of bulleteer.

• At December 18, 2006, RAB wrote:

  On Larry Marcus: note that every group of seven in the series has an eighth unofficial or unacknowledged member...all the ...

• At December 18, 2006, Phil wrote:

  I can't help wondering if the black flowers in Seven Soldiers relate to the 1980s anti-nuclear political-thriller TV show Edge ...

• At December 18, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  Phil - that would be neat, even though I would bet the black flowers in Slaughter Swamp predate the 1980s. ...

• At December 19, 2006, Dru wrote:

  [quote]The next page sees our heroes in Slaughter Swamp, and Baby Brain says, “I concede that the two teams idea ...

• At December 19, 2006, Dru wrote:

  Mmm... Formatting disaster. Sorry about that.

• At December 20, 2006, Matt Brady wrote:

  Of interest is the revelation in the crossword in Seven Soldiers #1 that Ed's assistant Lena is Chop Suzie's daughter. ...

• At December 20, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  Lena and Lars, I think, are supposed to be Chop Suzi's twins. I'll get into that more when the ...

• At May 25, 2008, Kazelfvf wrote:

  Hi webmaster!

• At May 25, 2008, Kazelctu wrote:

  Hi webmaster!

• At July 2, 2008, Kazelxba wrote:

  Hi webmaster!

• At July 3, 2008, Kazelaxc wrote:

  Hi webmaster!

• At August 12, 2008, where can i buy wrote:

  Hi webmaster!

Man, check out Gloriana Tenebrae on that cover.  It's a good thing she's in Los Angeles, because she probably found an excellent plastic surgeon.  I mean, look at those things!

The issue begins with our favorite Queen of Terror sitting on her throne, flanked by some minions and I, Spyder.  She is commenting on both Justin and our pitiful world - both are "trembling, uncertain, doomed to perish."  Then she picks on Justin's fashion sense, which she really shouldn't be doing - I mean, look at what she's wearing!  She says that he was not the only one to survive the fall of Camelot - the "perfect knight" spent some time at Summer's End and was spoiled.  She re-introduces Justin to Galahad, who once "served virtue" but now has "a different creed."  The idea of the Seven Virtues contrasted with the Seven Sins has come up before, and here is the living embodiment of the corruption that can occur.  Incidentally, back in the good old days (when Rome ruled the civilized world!), virtus meant "goodness," but its primary meaning was "manliness."  Only later did it acquire the more simpering definition of today.  Vir, in fact, is the Latin word for "man."  Galahad has lost his manhood as well as his goodness.  So Justin has to fight Galahad - considering what's coming, it's the "unmanned" knight versus the "never-a-man" knight.  Galahad has some keen characteristics.  He has a pentagram etched on his chest.  A pentagram has many meanings, but, interestingly enough, it appears on Sir Gawain's shield in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  Galahad is gray, which evokes both the golem and Solomon Grundy - an effect heightened by the fact that he's obviously not all there in the head.  On page 2, Bianchi draws him with six arms (four are after-effects of moving, but they're still there) and, of course, two legs - eight limbs (like a spider).  I'm not the only one who sees freaky crap like this, I know!!!!  The Queen is overconfident - she says that the last time they came, humanity was strong and vigorous, and even then they could barely resist the Sheeda.  Galahad shatters Justin's sword (which can't be Caliburn, can it? it looks like it, but what exactly happened to Arthur's sword?) and rips that ugly, shapeless tunic he has worn since he met Ali Ka-Zoom.  The Queen, self-aware as ever, asks Tom Dalt if he appreciates the metaphor of heroes fighting each other while the Sheeda swoop in.  Dalt enigmatically answers, "A great day, milady.  For some."  Oh, that Tom Dalt!  Always conniving!

We return to Vincenzo's mansion, where he is immersed in the cauldron (following the attack on him during which he was shot with a poison-tipped arrow).  As we know, this was a bad idea, because now the Sheeda know where the cauldron is, and as we also know, this will avail Vincenzo naught, as he's soon going to be riding the ghost bus along with his old friend.  But it's nice that he's defiant now.  We quickly switch back to the combat between Galahad and Justin, as the perfect knight asks Justin if he'd like to be a eunuch.  Ha!  The Queen suddenly smells "the blood of a womb," and realizes that Galahad is employing unintentional irony, because Justin is actually Justine!  What?  How could that be?  We'll get back to this revelation, obviously.  Galahad bashes Justine while a tiny messenger "from the east" arrives riding a lizard.  He tells the Queen that her husband, "dark Melmoth," still lives, which causes her to retire to her chambers to ponder this new development.  Melmoth, of course, is stirring up some trouble in New York with Klarion.  Who knew he was Gloriana's husband?  Isn't that cute?  The Sheeda language, by the way, resembles (is?) Ogham, an old alphabet, and thanks to our own Dread Lord and Master, you can read what the Sheeda are saying.  Except for this first time, it's nothing important, although it is funny.  As she leaves, the Queen tells Galahad to break Justine to slavery, and make her beg to love the Queen.  We're back to this fairy tale motif, as well as the idea of control.  The easiest way to control someone is to make them love you.  That's what the Queen wants.  Interestingly enough, in order to salute the Queen when she leaves, Galahad puts down his swords.  Who's that reaching for them?  Why, it's Justine!  Stupid, stupid Galahad.

We head back to Vincenzo's, where Crazyface tells him he's been in the cauldron for five hours, and most of their guys are dead (remember, Neh-buh-loh is out there wreaking havoc).  He thinks it's a hit by the East Coast mob, but Vincenzo tells him this has nothing to do with Silencio.  You'll recall Silencio from the beginning of Klarion, issue #3.  Vincenzo asks Vanguard if he's willing to make up for his part in this Apocalypse (what part, exactly, has Vanguard played?) by helping the don fulfill a violent childhood fantasy.  He understands his place in things - he's at the "end times" and tells Crazyface and Strato, "This is where we make our peace with who we are and go down fighting."  Crazyface tries to convince him otherwise, but Vincenzo is having none of it.  We're back to the idea of legends and myth - Vincenzo tells Vanguard, "This is fucking mythology calling," and he decides to become a myth, like Butch and Sundance, with a "violent childhood fantasy."  Outside, the Sheeda carry green lanterns (again with the green lanterns?) and survey the carnage, and then Neh-buh-loh hears the door opening, and out comes our heroes!  Vincenzo blasts Neh-buh-loh's mount, which he sees is a robot.  What the hell?  When Misty sees it in Zatanna #3, it looks like an actual living being.  So which the hell is it?  As his spider falls, Neh-buh-loh throws his spear through Vincenzo, who is down, but not out.  Vanguard kicks Neh-buh-loh from behind, and Vincenzo blasts him with "special bullets" (we never find out what they are - silver, perhaps?), shouting, "This is for Mo Colley, you bastard!"  Um, who?  We haven't actually heard of Mo Colley yet, although we have seen the Sheeda that possessed him in Cassandra Craft's store in Zatanna #2.  What's neat about this epic is that Morrison planned it to read this way, so that he introduces the name in this issue, and in the "next" issue we learn about Mo, even though the "next" issue is in a different mini-series.  In the same way, he subverts our expectations for this issue, because we already know that Vincenzo is dead and Neh-buh-loh has the cauldron.  It's a neat way to structure the saga.  Vincenzo, strangely enough, knows that Neh-buh-loh is an actual universe, as when his bullets stagger him, he tells Strato to cut his globular clusters out.  Neh-buh-loh, however, recovers in time to destroy Strato.  Poor golem dude!

Justine, meanwhile, is begging Galahad, which is nice.  She's asking him to find one spark of honor in his heart, but he has none, which makes the fact that she then chops his face in twain a bit easier.  She does ask him to forgive her, indicating that she, too, will be dealing with guilt over this act.  Now that we know she's a girl, it isn't that big of a leap to conclude she once had the hots for Galahad (she could have even if she was a boy, I know, but - let's face it - most of us are more comfortable making those kinds of logic leaps with heterosexual relationships).  As she carries half of Galahad's head out, she speaks of red ravens following at her heels and says that she is Gloriana's death.  We see the imagery of carrion birds again here.

Outside, Vincenzo repeats "mythology" a few times, then dies.  Let's all notice Vanguard behind him in the first panel, looking quite bloody and dead.  Chronologically, the next time we see him the Sheeda are trying to tie him down, so what's going on there?  Anyway, let's notice something else.  Between panels 2 and 3, the entire second half of Zatanna #3 takes place.  In panel 2, Vincenzo sees Castle Revolving above him as he dies.  In panel 3, Neh-buh-loh already has the cauldron.  So Zatanna and Misty found Vincenzo's body, Ali Ka-Zoom took his soul away, Misty confronted Neh-buh-loh, and escaped on Vanguard.  But this makes no sense, because Neh-buh-loh, in panel 3, is referring directly to what Vincenzo says in panel 2.  So he went inside to get the cauldron, railed at Misty, then thought, "Oh, wait, I have a witty rejoinder to that dead guy outside."  Talk about l'esprit de l'escalier!  I'm not sure if this is a mistake on Morrison's part.  Anyone want a No-Prize and explain this?

But that's in the present.  We end the mini-series where we began, 10,000 years ago, as the Sheeda overrun Camelot.  Galahad girds for battle, and his page, "Justin," helps him.  Justin asks for news from Castle Revolving, and Galahad tells him that 140 horses ("seven score") horses have been killed, and 140 warriors were slain by "weapons without names."  He cradles the dead Tristan in his arms, but tells Justin he can't stay, because Lancelot calls them to glory.  Justin asks Galahad to make him a knight, and Galahad tells him that the Sheeda have faced their finest warriors and "sent them to the ravens" - another carrion bird reference.  Justin is persuasive, however, and Galahad knights him, saying that in these times, "the lowest shall be called to the highest service."  Camelot was a Golden Age, but they still had class distinctions!  And so we're back where we started - the knights fall, Justin rides Vanguard to Castle Revolving, where further adventures await him.  The narration repeats the quote from "The Spoils of Annwn" that we saw in Seven Soldiers #0 (and will see again).  It's all about circular motion, people!

The major theme of this issue is, of course, transformation.  We have seen how these heroes are on a path to transformation, into full-fledged heroes or, you know, grown-ups.  Justine doesn't really need to become a hero, because she is the most fully-realized hero of the bunch, despite Zatanna's Justice League credentials.  But transformation is still at the heart of this issue, because of Justine's "shocking" revelation.  How does this retroactively color our viewing of the series?  Does it?  It makes Justine's concern for Olwen much more interesting, for one.  It also makes her relationship with Gloriana Tenebrae much more akin to Misty's.  Misty is the stepdaughter, while Justine is the spiritual heir to the Queen - they are both warriors, after all.  It also recalls Eowyn's triumph over the Witch King of Angmar - no man can defeat him, but she's not a man, baby!  Justine's "transformation" into a man shows us the cracks in the glorious Avalon - men and women have their place, and a woman's place is NOT in battle.  Is this why she is able to survive, because Gloriana is faced with a foe she doesn't understand?  Interestingly, this series barely dealt with gender issues, like Bulleteer does.  Perhaps the most intriguing thing about Justine's revelation is, ultimately, how meaningless it is.  It changes very little.  So why does Morrison do it?  Perhaps to set up the possibility of either Misty or Justine succeeding the Sheeda Queen - neither of which happens.  I'm not sure why the "change" of gender was necessary.  Theories are welcome.

As we have seen throughout the series, Shining Knight is very concerned with mythology and legend.  Obviously this pertains to Justine and the knights of Camelot, and at the end, Justine certainly thinks she is going off to die gloriously in Castle Revolving, and thus become part of legend.  This "successful" "Charge of the Light Brigade" is contrasted with Vincenzo's from earlier in the issue, which ends, predictably, in disaster for all concerned.  Vincenzo is also concerned about becoming part of mythology.  We still don't know for sure that he was a member of the Newsboy Army, but once we get confirmation of this, we understand that he, like Ed Stargard, knows what it takes to be a hero, and therefore doesn't shirk his duty when the time comes.  Vincenzo has drifted far from his heroic roots, but when it is time for him to return to those roots, he steps up and does what is necessary.  We saw his "ascension," so to speak, in Zatanna #3, where the bus (and Ali Ka-Zoom) can be seen as a Valkyrie, taking Vincenzo's soul to his eternal reward.  Vincenzo's behavior can be contrasted with Klarion's, as Klarion needs to be shamed into doing the right thing, whereas Vincenzo is eager to do it.  Similarly, we have seen Jake ready to quit his job, and Zatanna run around the countryside shirking her responsibilities.  Ali Ka-Zoom, meanwhile, refuses to die because he has responsibilities.  These older heroes are trying to show the younger generation what it takes.  They understand the power of myths.  Despite Vincenzo's failure to keep the cauldron from Gloriana, he remains an inspiration, much like the knights of Camelot inspire Justine.

It seems that a lot of people were unhappy with Bianchi's artwork in the latter half of the series.  It's certainly sloppier than it was in the first issue, but I wonder how much of that is by design.  I want to give Bianchi the benefit of the doubt, even though I think the art is still good in issue #4.  I do admit it's rougher.  But let's consider - the first issue takes place as Camelot falls - certainly a place for rough art, but it's still a place of magic and power.  As Justine moves through Los Angeles, the art gets darker and rougher, mirroring the city in which our heroine finds herself.  In this issue, the art matches the two bloodbaths that are occurring - one in Gloriana's arena, the other at Vincenzo's mansion.  It is, I would argue, supposed to look sloppy, because the notion of heroism is slipping away.  Even Justine does something unheroic - chops Galahad's head in two.  Yes, she needed to do it, but it's still something horrific.  The art is not helped by Dave Stewart's colors, which are far murkier than they have been during the rest of the series.  Again, this is, I would argue, a conscientious choice.  There is little to uplift us in the issue, despite the fact that two people act like heroes.  They are heroes because they do what they have to do, not because what they do is necessarily heroic.  And remember - Vincenzo fails in his task.  So too, we could argue, does Justine - she fails to reach anything noble in Galahad, and so is forced to kill him.  Our heroes do the right thing, and it's still not enough.  Hence the art reflecting this rather downcast ending.

So the first of the seven mini-series comes to an end.  Will Justine die?  Who knows.  Will she get her revenge on the Queen of Terror?  Luckily for her, she knows that Gloriana Tenebrae is heading east, to New York, and that's where she is bound.  What part will she play in the grand finale?  Oh, that's a fine question.  Maybe she and Zatanna and Alix Harrower can go shoe shopping.  That's what chicks in New York do, right????

The annotations are brief, but pretty good.  Jog makes some excellent points about why it's NOT a very good issue.  And commenter Douglas points out Ragnell's very excellent analysis of the entire series.  That's why most people on the Internets are smarter than I am!  Of course, I'll appreciate any other reviews that you point out.

Next: The Secret History of the Newsboy Army!  How can you not love it????

10 Comments

• At December 16, 2006, Axel M. Gruner wrote:

  Nitpicking: Ogham is not an old Celtic language, but an old alphabet. It is also a mnemonic device to remember ...

• At December 16, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  Whoops! I should have known that, because it says so right at the link. I'll have to go ...

• At December 17, 2006, Douglas wrote:

  I really like Ragnell's take on Shining Knight in toto, at http://ragnell.blogspot.com/2006/01/shining-knight.html

• At December 17, 2006, The Mutt wrote:

  Not having read the series, I always assumed that Justin was changed to Justine because TPTB insisted that the Seven ...

• At December 17, 2006, david brothers wrote:

  Not having read the series, I always assumed that Justin was changed to Justine because TPTB insisted that the Seven ...

• At December 18, 2006, The Mutt wrote:

  Totally an assumption.

• At December 18, 2006, Nico wrote:

  Justine was also the heroine in De Sades most famous book - as far as I know she continued to ...

• At December 20, 2006, Matt Brady wrote:

  Wasn't the character referred to as Justina (or Ystina) in the comic? Or is that just what people called ...

• At December 20, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  You never see her name in the comic, although I can't remember about Seven Soldiers #1. "Justine" is an ...

• At January 5, 2007, Barry wrote:

  I know a lot of people named Justina, so it is a valid name.

We learn a LOT about the saga in this issue, so I will do my best to SPOIL it for y'all.  Don't be like Klarion on the cover, all shocked at what you find!

I love that cover.  Melmoth is everywhere!  Even in the pavement.  Now that's neat-o keen-o.

On the first page, Mister Silencio, one of Melmoth's underlings, explains the Croatoan mystery to his other underlings.  Silencio, we'll learn, is an East Coast mob boss involved in a gang war with the recently-deceased Don Vincenzo.  Silencio is standing in front of the same map in front of which the Submissionaries became the Horigal, and telling the others about the Puritan colony at Roanoke, Virginia, which vanished in the summer of 1590.  The only clue was the word "Croatoan" scratched in a tree, and Silencio says nobody ever really found out what happened to them, but now they know.   Even though we never found out what happened to them, we're fairly certain, but it's not dramatic enough for The God of All Comics!  Silencio says that the Puritans had "intimate" contact with something not entirely human, and when the "changelings" were born (remember Olwen from Shining Knight #1 is a changeling), the people reverted to an older, darker religion and burrowed deep underground to "hide their sins."  He then turns the floor over to their consultant, Melmoth.  Silencio's brief history explains many things about Klarion's world, not the least of which is why they're all blue.  It sets the stage nicely for Seven Soldiers #1 and Klarion's actions, as Sheeda blood runs in his veins, so why wouldn't he act like one occasionally?  It also begs the question again of what the Sheeda actually are.  They're "not entirely human," okay, but if they're not entirely human, a part of them is human, and the mystery deepens.

So Melmoth takes over, and says that he runs a hostel for underprivileged children, a fine euphemism if there ever was one.  He tells them about Klarion, who is now under his "protection," and how he experiences the new culture into which he has come.  To him, everything is new and, more significantly, "holy."  Klarion has become a newborn, and this is crucial as he transforms, as we'll see.  Melmoth (who in one panel on page 2 appears over Klarion's shoulder, as if he's the "devil" tempting him) says that by using Klarion, they can find Limbo Town.  As he leaves the details of his plan a secret, we see a close-up of his neck, which appears to have stitching in it.  We know that Frankenstein will be appearing at some point in the saga.  What is his connection with this stitched-up Melmoth?

Klarion, meanwhile, is riding in a Pumpkin taxi, which we first saw in The Manhattan Guardian #1.  There's a connection, obviously, to the fairy tale nature of this epic - for these children, midnight strikes when they turn sixteen and go through to the Red Place.  The children he is with are punks like Klarion, splashing a group of prostitutes and drinking beer.  Hooligans!  They end up at a museum of superhero history, which has to remind us, just a bit, of the Hall of Justice from the Superfriends.  Or is that just me?  Klarion pukes because of his experience in the taxi, but then asks to do it again, which the gang thinks is great.  The driver, Billy Beezer, who is all pimped out (making the splashing of the prostitute somewhat ironic), mentions Goldenboy, who taught the gang members.  We'll see Goldenboy soon, but his name reminds me - again, it could be just me - of Sir Justin, who is, after all, decked in golden armor.  Klarion tries to prove his worth by sending Teekl into the museum.  One of the gang is a girl named Murderella-rella - another reference to Cinderella.  We also learn that Billy's gang is called the Deviants, and when they turn sixteen, they go to Team Red.  More interesting stuff we'll get to in time.  Klarion looks through Teekl's eyes and sees "a great empty hall of light, filled with flags for men and women to wear."  According to the annotations, the costumes on the left are for Stripesey, the Star-Spangled Kid, and the Crimson Avenger, all members of the original Seven Soldiers of Victory.  The one on the right is Miss America from the Invaders.  A Marvel character!  What the heck?  Teekl informs Klarion about the guards, two of them, one of whom smells like cheese, the other of brine.  What significance there is in that I don't know.  Then Billy Beezer leads the rest into a robbery.

So the kids fool the two old guards with misdirection.  They appear to know the Rules of Magic quite well.  Murderella-rella mentions an "avenging ghost," which doesn't exist, but fits a few characters in the saga, such as Ali Ka-Zoom (sort of).  The kid who looks like Frankenstein (I can't remember if he gets a name, and if he does, I'll figure it out later) breaks into a glass case containing a "weather generator."  Hey, remember Hurricane Gloria, raging down in the Gulf of Mexico?  I wonder if it's a coincidence.  I'm sure it is, because Morrison nevers does stuff like this, right?  In another panel we see an "Iron Hand" on display, which also comes up again.  This is why reading a Morrison comic is fun - nothing is wasted.  Billy Beezer gets the keys to the room displaying "Super Machines of the Golden Age and Beyond."  I like how in Morrison's DCU (and, I suppose, the DCU at large, considering the presence of the JSA), they are as self-conscious about the "ages" of heroes as we are.  Billy and Klarion enter the room and are confronted with the "sapper drill" from World War II.  Although we see Batgirl's motorcycle and a Blue Beetle flying bug in the room, apparently the sapper drill, which would have been used to undermine trenches and perhaps dig under fortifications, is a Morrison creation.  He hands Klarion a manual (presumably the operating manual of the drill) and a map.  Klarion is to drive the drill to a given location.  On the next page, Klarion and Billy arrive at Melmoth's underground headquarters, where two of his toughs have been discussing movies from a feminist viewpoint.  I love stuff like that, and Morrison does it very well - humanizes ancillary characters just a bit.  Klarion does not look happy, but it's unclear if he's not happy because Billy is a jerk (how do you like it, Mr. Dish-It-Out-But-Can't-Take-It?) or because he realizes Melmoth is going to subjugate Limbo Town.  Probably the former.

Billy doesn't think Klarion is good material for the Deviants, but Melmoth isn't so sure.  He says a few interesting things.  He tells Billy that "curses come to this one [Klarion] as naturally as breathing does to you and me."  We know he knows quite a bit about Limbo Town, but it's interesting that he knows so much about Klarion.  Is he already subtly grooming a replacement?  Then he tells Klarion that "we keep our familiars small and we keep them inside where I come from," which I'm sure many people (including people at the annotations) took as a reference to Philip Pullman's excellent His Dark Materials trilogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass).  There's no reason to go that far, however.  We see at the end that Teekl serves as Klarion's conscience, so Melmoth could just mean that our moral compass is inside us, rather than externally as a talking cat.  It's still interesting to hear Melmoth talking of "familiars" so, if you'll forgive the pun, familiarly.  Billy gets all grumpy and throws a can of Coke at the cat (product placement!), and one of the Deviants trips him as he chases Teekl.  The Frankenstein kid says, "William, fear is anger, anger is failure and the beginnings of being a grown-up."  Billy turns sixteen at midnight, so he will "become" an adult then and join Team Red.  This is another interesting statement that I'll get back to.  You'll notice there are seven Deviants now that Klarion is there, even though they will lose one at midnight.  Is six the optimal number because they aren't "good guys"?  This seems to be the idea throughout - "good" teams have seven members, but "bad" ones have six.  Billy fights Klarion, and when he gets him on the ground, Klarion's eyes light up with an unholy glow and he asks Billy, "Shall I tell you the hour and date of your death?"  Billy, not surprisingly, backs down.  What does he care?  He's sixteen in three hours!  This is just another clue that Klarion plays very, very nasty.  Melmoth likes it.

That night, Billy lies in bed as the clock strikes midnight.  While Teekl watches, he goes out into the hall and sees Goldenboy, who wears a mask and goggles and carries what looks like a pickaxe.  He falls forward toward Billy, who asks him if he's okay.  Goldenboy says that all their dreams were lies, and that Team Red is a hard labor gang, mining gold in the "red place."  Goldenboy looks prematurely aged.  Melmoth comes out into the hall as Goldenboy grabs Billy.  Melmoth smiles and tells him it's "time to put away childish things."  This is a direct quote from 1 Corinthians 13:11: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."  Melmoth takes what is a nice chapter (it's the "faith, hope, love" bit) and twists it into something sinister.  He tells Billy he's going to go through an Erdel gate (named after the scientist who brought J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter, to Earth) to Mars, where he will work to make money for Melmoth, because "a man needs a job."  Goldenboy, who was faking his distress, drags Billy through the gate.  Teekl sees the whole thing.  Klarion is watching through Teekl's eyes, and tells the rest of the gang that Melmoth is "a liar, a devil, and a betrayer, as I suspected."  His experience with Ebeneezer Badde has made him suspect all adults, which is a good thing here.  Teekl follows Melmoth down to the drill, where Melmoth says they're going to plunder a society unchanged since the 16th century.  Good times!  The gang wants Klarion to lead them, but Klarion walks away, telling them they're free to do what they want (just like he rejected Leviathan's offer to stay).  Teekl tells him that evil will come to Limbo Town, but Klarion doesn't care.  He walks away, but Teekl stays, drawing Klarion back to him.  Klarion knows that he has to go back to protect his home, so he walks back down into the subways.

The big theme of this issue is, of course, growing up.  We have seen that Klarion wants nothing to do with growing up (he's gleeful when he realizes that Croatoan doesn't exist, because then he can remain a witch-boy forever!), but in this issue, growing up is forced upon him.  In the beginning of the issue, Melmoth makes the point that everything to Klarion is new, because he's in a completely new situation.  This idea of Klarion, rising from the earth to be reborn (more Christ allusions, although probably not worth going into), means that he has another chance.  He has left the old world behind, and is now a newborn.  How will he grow up, and will he?  We see him go through a sped-up adolescence until he reaches the crucial point at the end, when he must decide between his own selfish desires and doing what is right.  He is forced, by his "conscience," to take responsibility for his actions - he stole the drill, after all.  It's interesting that he takes this action pretty much on his own, if we accept that Teekl is part of his personality.  The more "heroic" of the soldiers, Jake and Zatanna, have still not taken this step, as they are busy out playing hero.  Jake is further along the road than Zatanna is, but Klarion passes him in this race to "true heroism," which is surprising, as Klarion began as the most immature of them all.  Klarion's not perfect, certainly, but he is coming to the realization that we can't always do what's easiest, because the right thing isn't always easy.

Klarion isn't the only one who grows up.  Billy also grows up, in a much more horrific way.  We have seen that Morrison seems to think that "growing up" equals a total loss of imagination, but in this issue, things are much more subtle than that.  On the surface, this appears to be his message.  Melmoth tells Billy that a man has to get a job, and the job for this man is awful, back-breaking, repetitive work.  Morrison might as well have put his children in cubicles for all the subtlety inherent in Melmoth's statement.  There's also Kid Frankenstein's statement about how fear equals anger, which equals failure, all of which means you're an adult.  Children fear nothing - hence Klarion trying to experience all these dangerous things, plus the kids stealing the drill - and they can't fail because of this lack of fear.  Kids are, of course, angry all the time, but it's a fleeting anger and has to do with frustration, not with failure.  Children don't fail, because they have no idea of what it means to fail.  This is the loss of imagination that Morrison associates with becoming an adult - we understand failure, and therefore don't attempt as much because we fear failure.  The moment Billy becomes an adult, he fails - he fails to escape his fate.  Klarion fails, too, but in a different way - he also fails to escape his fate, but he makes the choice not to.  It's this choice that makes Morrison's presentation subtle.  Klarion wants to remain a child, and as a child, he would go off and have many adventures.  But he understands that an adult has responsibilities, and maybe an adult doesn't always want to take care of them, but he has to.  This is the "good" side of becoming an adult - you can fix your mistakes, if you take responsibility for them.  Klarion does, and therefore heads down instead of up.

There's plenty of fairy tale stuff in here, naturally, which ties into the whole "growing up" thing.  Billy is taken at midnight, the hour when his Cinderella childhood turns into a pumpkin reality.  The other children can continue to exist in this fairy tale or seize responsibility and get out.  The idea of Klarion replacing either Billy (as leader of the gang) or Melmoth (as ruler of the Sheeda) is also part of fairy tales, which often deal with children (usually girls, but Klarion is kind of androgynous anyway) replacing the older generation, and that generation fighting back.  We have seen Gloriana Tenebrae freak out when Misty is coming of age.  What is Melmoth's game with regard to Klarion?  We'll find out eventually.

This is the most clear example of the transformation of our soldiers into something else.  The others have been struggling along the way, even though Justin doesn't have far to go, as he began as the most heroic of the four (yes, there are three more, but we haven't seen them yet).  Each one of them has grown, but Klarion, it seems, has gone the farthest.  The problem with Klarion growing up is that he's not necessarily becoming a hero.  Despite doing the right thing and going back to help Limbo Town and despite this being a mark of his maturity, he's doing it not because he loves the people of Limbo Town, but because it's his fault.  He feels guilt (yes, there it is again) for giving Melmoth the means to attack the town, and he doesn't like Melmoth, so he wants to thwart him.  This may negate everything I've written before this, but I don't think it does.  He does the right thing, but people do the right thing for the wrong reasons all the time.  It's still the right thing, and it's still not always the easy thing to do.

By the way, what happened to Klarion's die?

The annotations have a lot of good information that, while interesting, is not part of what drives the issue.  But they're still neat!

Next: Justin reveals himself!  Eeeewwwww!  Not like that!

3 Comments

• At December 15, 2006, Axel M. Gruner wrote:

  “William, fear is anger, anger is failure and the beginnings of being a grown-up.” is a parody/variant of "Fear is ...

• At December 15, 2006, Conor E wrote:

  I never noticed Melmoth's face on the cover. Ugh, I'm not very observant.

• At January 5, 2007, Barry wrote:

  Miss America is a DC character. Witness current issues of Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters, as well as ...

Oops.  Was that a SPOILER?  Well, even if it wasn't, there are plenty of SPOILERS ahead!  I mean, can you believe what happens to ... but that would be SPOILING!  Read on!

There it is.  Why no butt, Ryan Sook?  Has anyone ever gotten to the - forgive me - bottom of this?  This might be the most disturbing image of the entire series.

We begin at a graveyard.  A bus pulls up and drops off a bunch of ghosts.  Ghost Rider himself is driving!  He asks the guy in the back if he's getting off, and the old guy tells him he has one more stop to make.  If the bus looks familiar, it's because we saw it at the end of Shining Knight #2.  If the old guy looks familiar, it's because we saw him, too, at the end of Shining Knight #2.  We have read carefully enough to realize that it's Ali Ka-Zoom, who was named in Zatanna #2 when our heroine and Cassandra discussed his cabinet before trapping Gwydion in it.  We also know that he was a member of the Newsboy Army, so he has a connection to Ed Stargard and the Manhattan Guardian.  We don't know yet that Don Vincenzo, who is stabling Vanguard at his mansion and who has just been attacked because he possesses the cauldron, was also a member of the Newsboy Army.  Do we know that for sure yet?  I know it because I've read the whole thing, but I don't think that connection has been made yet.  It doesn't matter - Vincenzo was in the Newsboy Army.

With that prologue, we switch to Zatanna and Misty confronting the Tempter, who tempted a dieting group into eating themselves to death.  Zatanna is unimpressed, but the Tempter makes a good point that in today's society, there is very little that is forbidden, so it makes his job harder.  He does offer to tell Zatanna a secret about Misty, and although we know now, in hindsight, that it's a doozy, Zatanna scoffs at the notion that Misty could have secrets.  The Tempter tries to entice Misty, but she tells him that they are there to exorcise him, and they do.  All is well.

This is an interesting little sequence, for several reasons.  Remember, this is a fictional work, and it's written by Grant Morrison, so we should always remember that writers, and Morrison in particular, rarely waste words.  So when the Tempter says Misty has a secret, we should believe him, even though Zatanna doesn't.  Misty, remember, appeared suddenly, controls a magic die, uses Zatanna's spells, and is named "Misty," which is a nice, ethereal kind of name.  The Tempter, meanwhile, is simply an embodiment of what everyone goes through - and something heroes are supposed to overcome, but occasionally fail to do.  I keep coming back to Zatanna's biggest sin - erasing the memories of DC's heroes and villains, including the Big Nocturnal Dude.  She succumbed to temptation and took the easy way out.  This is her penance.  We also get some meta-commentary from Morrison - the Tempter is an old DC villain, but has become obsolete.  Zatanna isn't there to fight him, but "remove him from the continuity," so to speak, something that has obsessed Morrison since Animal Man.  It's interesting that Morrison is doing this with the Tempter, because of his obvious love for characters precisely like him.  So why get rid of the Tempter?  Well, Zatanna, as I mentioned, is doing this for selfish reasons.  She as much says so on the next page.  Zatanna is falling into the trap that the other Seven Soldiers are falling into - namely, searching for something outside of themselves to give them absolution.  Zatanna can't exorcise the guilt in her heart, so she searches for a symbol of that guilt - the temptation that pushed her into mindwiping Dr. Light and Batman, among others - and "defeats" it in the same way she would any other supervillain.  But she still hasn't learned a thing.  This issue, I'm pretty sure, came out chronologically before Will Pfeifer had Zatanna show up in Catwoman, where Selina used that old bugaboo, guilt, to get Zatanna to mindwipe people again.  That was a decent story, but if Zatanna had grown up at all, she would have refused Selina's request.  That would have been the act of an adult.  Zatanna, even after this series, is still a child.  I understand that in the corporate world of DC, character growth is a complete afterthought when there's a story to be told, but with talented writers such as Morrison and Pfeifer (who isn't as good as Morrison on many levels, but is doing a very good job examining Selina psychologically) failing to move Zatanna forward, what hope does anyone have?

Misty intuitively grasps the Fourth Rule of Magic: Preparation - always keep at least one card up your sleeve, which she gets probably because she herself has a doozy of a card up her sleeve.  That gives us: 1. Nothing is what it seems; 2. Learn to fool the experts; 3. If you can't keep it down, don't bring it up; 4. Be prepared.  Misty asks her if this is what she does, for no money.  Zatanna is trying to be maternal and give Misty a chance, because - and here she slips into self-pity, the refuge of the loser - as far as she's concerned, she (Zatanna) can't suffer enough.  Jeez, Zatanna, would you like a few nails to take up on that cross with you?  Before Zatanna can whine a bit more, she runs into - literally - Ali Ka-Zoom, who is luckily incorporeal and so doesn't get hurt.  That was nice.

Ali drags his cabinet out of the back of Zatanna's station wagon and tells them a bit about it.  A dozen cops went in there (actually, "about" a dozen - might it have been 13?), including a "metanormal investigator," but none ever came back out.  Agent Helligan is a metanormal investigator, as is Cameron Chase - maybe she's in Ali Ka-Zoom's cabinet (oh, fret not - I know she's alive and well in the DCU).  Ali tells Zatanna he needs to burn it to release its energy, which upsets our heroine - Cassandra paid $20,000 for it.  Ali says she can make a better one for three dollars (the cost of a comic book?) and that there's nothing in it - just a "big deep hole, where we dropped a poor, foolish boy" because "he did something the rest of us decided was wrong."  Ali is speaking of the Newsboy Army, and Captain 7, whose sad fate we'll see in The Manhattan Guardian #4.  So fret not!  All will be revealed!

While they burn the cabinet, Ali continues to reminisce: "There were seven of us, just kids.  Oh, and I musn't forget the dog.  Richest dog in the world: that's what the Guinness Book of Records called him."  Ali tells her that their last adventure took them to Slaughter Swamp, where they met the Fairy Queen and the Terrible Time Tailor.  This is the first time we have heard of the Terrible Time Tailor, but not the last, as he will remain a force in the saga from now on.  It reminds us of the big sewing machine in Seven Soldiers #0, and the Seven Unknown Men, and the fact that there were only six of them.  Is the Terrible Time Tailor the seventh?  Did he go rogue, as apparently each iteration of teams of seven must have a traitor among them?  We'll see.  Ali asks Zatanna if she thinks it's a coincidence they ran into each other, and mentions that it feels like a "mystery string" is holding everything together.  Morrison is indulging in some meta-commentary once again.  This won't be the last time Ali mentions things being held together.

The next page takes us to a familiar mansion, belonging to one Vincenzo, the Undying Don.  Zatanna is a bit put off by the fact that Ali is taking her and Misty off on his own agenda, but Ali ignores her.  We get some more good information - Ali tells her about the cauldron of rebirth and plenty (until now, we had known it only as the one of rebirth) and how it ended up in the hands of "a kid called Scarface, from the Lower East Side."  Scarface grew up and forgot his friends.  Ali doesn't state it explicitly, but we can infer that Scarface was another member of the Newsboy Army - we get confirmation of this later.  They drive onto the estate and see corpses all around, pierced by many arrows.  They also see a giant spider that has been ripped apart, which Misty approaches.  She whispers that it's still breathing, which confused me.  Are those things that Neh-buh-loh rides living or not?  Does he switch from robots to actual giant spiders?  This also is the first clue that this issue, although released before Shining Knight #4, actually takes place chronologically after it.  When last we saw this spider, Neh-buh-loh sat confidently upon it, riding into the estate to lay waste to it.  There was a great battle here, but we missed it.  Not to worry - we will see it in good time.  Zatanna freaks out when Misty gets close to the spider, saying, "You don't know where it's been!"  Misty says she does know: "It's been all the way from the dawn of time to the last days and back ..."  She then says it's like they killed one of her favorite toys.  If we weren't suspicious of Misty before now, we should be when she makes this speech.  She knows, for instance, that the spider has traveled through time - from the dawn of time - Justin's period - to the last days - where the Sheeda come from.  She also thinks of it as a toy.  Considering that her "evil stepmother" - Gloriana Tenebrae - made her spin, just like the good princesses of fairy tales, this must mean that the spider, or one like it, was a companion of hers, or maybe she just felt a kinship to it.  Remember the myth of Arachne, who claimed to spin as well as Athena and was turned into a spider for her arrogance.  Morrison spills the beans about Misty later in the issue, so it's not like we don't get confirmation of our suspicions, but it's interesting language that she uses right here.

Zatanna doesn't have time to ask her what she means, because Ali spots Vanguard (and calls him "Horsefeathers," which is what Vincenzo called him - I haven't been able to figure out why both men use that term), who is being menaced by Sheeda soldiers.  Note the spear in the chest of Vanguard - very Christ-like.  Misty tells the Sheeda to stop, and they do.  Zatanna isn't sure why, although Misty wonders if they are afraid of her die.  Vanguard talks in the language of Avalon, but switches to English and brings Zatanna up to speed (off-panel).  Vanguard also mentions that "two nights" ago, Ali Ka-Zoom saw Justin alive, so he has to go look for him.  While Misty wonders why a halo of flying knights is familiar, Zatanna seeks Ali's advice.  Ali, however, ignores her in order to administer to Vincenzo.  It turns out he really is dead (which we could guess, since he was on the bus in the beginning) and he's there to take Vincenzo with him.   He calls him "little soldier," further strengthening the link between the Newsboy Army and the Seven Soldiers.  He takes Vincenzo's soul, then tells Zatanna that the Seven Unknown Men of Slaughter Swamp are her best hope now.  Is this a reference to the Seven Unknown Men we know about, or is he referring to the so far unknown Seven Soldiers, implying they are the new Unknown Men of the swamp?  He leaves by telling Zatanna to make sure she tells Misty the last rule of magic: The magician has to vanish along with his trick, leaving the audience and his beautiful assistants to carry on without him.  This seems to imply that Zatanna will die or at least vanish at the end of the saga, but we find out that's not true.  He could be telling this to Misty, who has another trick to play.  He could also be referring to Giovanni, who did this very thing.

Ali takes Vincenzo onto the bus of souls, where the Tempter sits, complaining about his fate.  He sees Vincenzo and mentions that they met in the Haunted Hall of Mirrors when Vincenzo was eleven.  He tries to sit down and talk, but Ali shoves him out of the way.  He implies to the driver that something unpleasant is going to happen to the Tempter.  Poor guy!  Notice that Vincenzo doesn't speak throughout this entire scene.  Presumably it's because he can't, because he's dead.  But Ali says that he himself is dead, so why can he speak?

Zatanna and Misty, meanwhile, are still at Vincenzo's mansion.  Zatanna steps over Crazyface's corpse as the cloud of Strato floats by.  I assume it's Strato, because Misty says it "has a face like a dead Japanese guy."  Zatanna gives us a bit of a summary, then wonders what happened to her day.  Misty reminds her to always be prepared, and asks if they can call in the Justice League.  I'm glad someone thought of that!  Zatanna, however, is not prepared to do that, because of her actions.  She says, "I was a really bad superhero, Misty.  I did lots of stuff superheroes shouldn't do and what's worse, I got caught."  Let's revisit that below.  Suddenly they see Neh-buh-loh carrying the cauldron.  Zatanna wants Misty to run, but Misty says she knows him.  Neh-buh-loh asks, "Princess?" and Misty knows his name.  Zatanna realizes that there's a lot more to Misty than we all thought, and Misty flashes back to a scene where she's at her loom and the Queen tells Neh-buh-loh to cut out her heart, as she plans to live forever and therefore has no need for an heir.  In anguish, Neh-buh-loh takes her on his spider out to the forest, but, as he explains, her "symmetry," "grace and laughter" touched his heart, and in a moment of weakness, he couldn't do it.  He brought back the brain of a 31st-century telepathic savant and she told the empire you had died.  Some at the annotations speculate about which Legion of Super-Heroes member this is.  If, at some point, Neh-buh-loh shows up in that book, that would be the coolest thing ever.  Anyway, he tells them that mourning continued, significantly, for 13 months, and then, without the cauldron, Gloriana and the empire withered.  Misty, her memories coming back, says they made her sit in Castle Revolving and spin a cobweb dress, and the more she spun, the less she remembered.  Neh-buh-loh says he must take the cauldron back, and that he sees no beauty in Misty now, only "guilt made flesh."  There it is again.  Misty says that her stepmother rules Summer's End, and if she gets the cauldron she'll live forever.  Neh-buh-loh, meanwhile, is about to go nuclear, telling Misty, in a last attempt at decency, to run for her life.  Zatanna summons Vanguard (apparently her powers are back - does it have something to do with Misty regaining her memories and therefore transferring Zatanna's powers back to her) and the three of them flee the scene.

This is a fascinating scene, because it ties into so many archetypal fairy tales.  The annotations (link below!) offer many interpretations, and there's a link to an article about weaving in mythology, if you're so inclined.  Of course, weaving is creation, like any artistic venture, so there's that, but we also use the metaphor in speaking of writing a story, and Morrison is being self-referential here again.  Misty is at the loom of stories, and Gloriana Tenebrae is trying to stop her.  Given that Morrison is trying to create his own version of the DCU, could Gloriana Tenebrae be the old comics guard, stifling creative thought and lopping it off whenever it gets too high?  Could this be a grand metaphor of the comics industry in general?

Well, sure, why the hell not, but I'm not going there, no sir!  I'll stick to more literal interpretations, and the idea of the older generation trying to stifle the younger generation, which is a theme that runs through fairy tales, is as far as I'm willing to go.  There is also a return to the idea of control, as the Queen of Terror wants to control every aspect of life, to the point where she defies the natural order to live forever.  However, the scene with Neh-buh-loh returns to our grand theme of guilt, guilt made flesh, which is of course what the Mood 7 Mind Destroyer is.  Neh-buh-loh does the right thing, but he has been bred to destroy, so he lives with the guilt of doing the right thing, and it almost drives him mad.  We will see what destroys him in the end: the presence, deep inside him, of superheroes - specifically, the Ultramarines.  They "infect" him with just the smallest nugget of goodness, and this, perhaps, is why he spares Misty in the first place.  He struggles against his "programming" and succeeds for a moment, giving Misty the chance to escape.  So even the villains deal with guilt, and cannot overcome it.

We see Zatanna still struggling with it, and this ties back into the idea that these "soldiers" need to learn how to be heroes.  Jake and Zatanna are, so far, the most "superheroic" of the soldiers, but Zatanna is coming at it from being an insider - she's a JLA member, after all.  She has lost that heroic ideal, and is struggling to regain it.  But she's in danger of sinking more and more into self-pity - whenever she gets any time to reflect, she comes off like a whining martyr - she's in her Jesus Christ pose, you might say.  She really reaches her nadir when Misty asks her about contacting the Justice League.  She has taken the burden of mind-wiping Dr. Light and the others solely on herself - sure, she did the actual "surgery," but it was goddamned Oliver Queen (hmmm ... Queen ...) who rubber-stamped the actions.  Zatanna is guilty of being susceptible to peer pressure, sure, but the idea that the JLA will have nothing to do with her after what she did demeans them.  They're heroes, right?  They were all in it together, right?  Batman has used plenty of people, and many of them have died.  You don't see him losing any sleep over it.  Suck it up, Z!

But she can't.  The guilt has gotten deep inside her, and it's inhibiting her from rediscovering her heroic roots.  Again, you'll notice that Morrison is not allowing his heroes to deal with these emotions, instead throwing obstacles in their way that allows them to ignore the emotions.  I reiterate that it's a superhero epic, but it remains interesting that Morrison is actually addressing these issues (which many superhero epics do only superficially) while still not dealing with them.  It continues to be a problem throughout.

So that's issue #3 of Zatanna.  A pretty good issue, even though it doesn't do much to advance the plot.  In fact, as we read through these, it's becoming increasingly clear that there aren't plots as such as factors moving the entire plot forward.  Zatanna, after all, has stopped Gwydion pretty easily, and in this issue she simply gets a lot of information.  But it's good information to know!

You can check out the annotations here.  As I mentioned, there are some interesting thoughts about Misty and her various fairy tale connections.  Occasionally I skip Jog's reviews, because he doesn't have much to say, but his review of this issue is really good.

Another one bites the dust!  Next: Melmoth does nasty things to Klarion!  Oh, Grant, how could you?

2 Comments

• At December 14, 2006, Jon H wrote:

  The butt is missing, yet it draws the eye like a magnet.

  Mix-a-Lot wouldn't approve, I can say that.

• At December 15, 2006, RAB wrote:

  "...could Gloriana Tenebrae be the old comics guard, stifling creative thought and lopping it off whenever it gets too high?"

  Gloriana ...

You know what?  This was kind of a disappointing issue.  The whole robot thing is just not terribly interesting.  It gives us some nice character development, but overall, it's kind of dull.  It sets up the very good final issue, however, so I guess that's something.  But you're here for trenchant insight, not my whining!  So what are you waiting for!

Hey, guess what?  SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!!!!!!  You know the drill!

We begin at Century Hollow, New York's most unusual science park.  The narrator, whom we learn is Hanna Control, says that they transformed Frank Lloyd Wright's Ellis Island Key into a working model of world demographic dynamics!  Like the vision of New York that we saw in Seven Soldiers #0 when Shelly was flying through town, this is a project that never was.  It's mentioned briefly in this article.  Hannah and her husband, Jorge, reduced the earth's population to a small scale, creating a statistical portrait of the world.  Unfortunately, the robots have turned on the tourists and attacked!  Nobody, it seems, has mentioned the similarity to Westworld.  Is that too old-school for y'all?  Luckily for everyone, Jake Jordan is parachuting in to save everyone!  As he flies down toward a map of the world, Ed is in his ear explaining the entire project.  If you reduce the entire population of the world to 100 people, Ed explains the statistics, then says that Hanna and Jorge used "ex-military robots" to act out the whole thing out.  Didn't they know it would go wrong?  It's like Small Soldiers, for crying out loud!!!!!  And I'm sure it's like a bunch of other movies about technology gone horribly wrong!  We get it, Grant - technology sucks and will bring the Sheeda down on us!!!!!

Phew.  I just had to get that out of my system.  On the next page, we meet Jorge Control, who is both award-winning and hen-pecked.  He enters the control room, where all the workers are dead.  Jorge talks to himself, and we learn that he gassed them all, but all he wanted was to teach his wife a lesson in realpolitik.  Good job, Jorge!  He introduced a killer virus, a Spartacus code, into the robots, which turned them into rebels.  He was grumpy because Hanna turned his map of political and social reality into a "tawdry" theme park.  In the park, an old man named Ike is in full "I told you so" mode.  He predicted that the next war would be against pissed-off household appliances.  He says he's unimpressed with these new-fangled robots, because he fought "Communist hunter killer refrigerators in the jungle of the Far East."  He might be unimpressed, but the robots do succeed in killing him.  They're about to kill an elderly woman and a small child, but Jake shows up and bashes them good!  Hanna shows up and automatically assumes Jake is on the SWAT team.  Jake doesn't speak, just leads.  We get a flashback as he fights the robots, as Lauren, Carla, and Jake sit in Lauren's house, and Lauren talks about how much she misses Larry.  On the television the weather report mentions that Hurricane Gloria has reached epic proportions off the coast of Honduras.  Hurricane Gloria, incidentally, hit the Atlantic in 1985.  If you think that a big storm named after the Queen of the Sheeda is a coincidence and won't play any part in the rest of the saga, you don't know Grant Morrison very well, do you?

The flashback continues with Jake and Carla at dinner, where Jake proposes but Carla turns him down.  This is an interesting section, as Carla tells Jake she was happy when he quit the force and she didn't have to worry about him dying.  Jake snaps back that she can't say she was happy when he was "broken down and beaten like a dog."  Carla is upset about her father's death, so she pushes Jake away, saying she doesn't want to get dragged into this new world he's a part of.  She is angry that he seems to love it so much, and Jake tells her it's just that he finally got his pride back.  This conversation seems to put Carla in a poor light, but we have to remember that she's just experienced a tragedy.  It brings up an interesting point - at the beginning of the series, Carla is clearly not happy that Jake has no pride, and when he does get the job, she's skeptical but is at least supportive if it will help him recover that pride.  She even tells him that she's been missing his smile, so her anger now doesn't ring true.  Does Carla have a bit of a domineering side, and even though she says she wants Jake to stand up and "be a man," when it happens, she can't deal with it?  It's possible, but that's an unflattering view of Carla, and she doesn't act that way the other times we see her.  But it's a thought.  The real point of this conversation, interestingly, is to set up a situation where Carla needs to be rescued by Jake - I'm not going into gender roles here, but maybe I will at another point - and if Jake had been the same kind of person before he took the job, he wouldn't be able to do it.  Another thing to ponder is if Carla is angry that Jake got his self-esteem back from something external to their relationship - she was unable to break him out of his funk, but the job was.  Jake defines himself by his new job as Manhattan Guardian, and Carla fears that she won't be enough for him anymore.

The fighting in the theme park continues, as Hanna explains to Jake that she "may" have caused the disaster by calling her husband "a pitiful bag of dead meat" that morning.  Gee, you think, Hanna?  Here we have a contrast to the Jake/Carla situation, as Jorge and Hanna are also having problems in their relationship.  Jorge "solves" his self-esteem problems by reprogramming the robots to go berserk, while Jake becomes a superhero.  Both men are spurred on by a need for approval from their women.

Hanna blasts some robots, Jake bashes some others, and the Newsboy Army parachutes out of the sky to lend some support.  Jake flashes back again to his argument with Carla, as they stand on the street in the rain and Carla finally lashes out, telling Jake that he could have saved Larry's life.  She knocks Jake's engagement ring onto a grate and walks away as Jake says, "But I had to save yours.  Carla."  This is a poignant line, because Carla doesn't know that Larry pleaded with Jake to save her, and she doesn't realize that her father was, in fact, a kid superhero who knew the meaning of heroism.  Larry didn't need to live on, Carla did, and Carla is now experiencing what Jake did - guilt, this time over surviving when Larry did not.  It shows us, once again, what people need to go through in order to grow up.  We're not sure if Jake is completely over his self-doubt, but now Carla has spun down into it.  Note the taxi in the background when Carla walks away from Jake.  Isn't Klarion in there? 

Jake defeats all the robots (yay!) and then we're in the control room, and Jorge is trying to convince the police that terrorists took over the park.  It's interesting that he says the terrorists were "speaking in ... in tongues."  It's strange religious terminology to describe a terrorist.  Hanna, however, is having none of it, and says there "was only ever a jealous, homicidal madman who thought I loved the lawnmower more than I could ever love him."  Jorge says that she has sex with the machines and laughs at his humanity.  This makes Hanna angry, as she doesn't want the news to get out, and threatens to sue the Guardian for damages because Jake led her to believe he was a policeman.  Obviously, Jake did no such thing, but she's a bit upset.   Jorge gets his final line, "I made you, Hanna Control!" and this, combined with the other things he says on this page, leads us to believe that Hanna is a robot.  Over at the annotations there is speculation about whether she's a robot or not, but I don't think there's much doubt, is there?  We'll discuss this more below.

Jake returns to the Guardian, where he tells Ed that he's quitting.  Ed tells him that he has a story that might change his mind, and reveals his true self to him: Ed is a small man, almost like a baby, with a large, deformed head.  He is hooked up to an IV machine and sitting in a large cushioned chair that looks like half of an egg.  He tells Jake he's going to tell him the secret history of the original Newsboy Army.  Well, this should be interesting!

As I mentioned, this isn't the greatest issue of the mini-series, but it does bring in a theme that runs through the saga, and that is of control.  What does it mean to control something?  Is it a good thing or not?  What are the consequences when we lose control?  Morrison has been dealing with this subtly (and not so subtly) throughout, and here it becomes the focal point.  We have various control relationships in this issue: Carla wants to control Jake, possibly because of grief, possibly because of love (she wants Jake to quit not because she's angry at him, but because she fears he too will die).  Jake wants to control his guilt and fears.  Ed wants to control Jake to convince him that he's a hero who will fight the Sheeda.  Jorge wants to control Hanna, Hanna wants to control public perception, they both want to control the robots.  All of these relationships get highlighted in this issue, which is why, despite it being disappointing, it's still interesting to examine in the context of the larger saga.

Technology allows us to control nature.  The Sheeda want to control that technology and, by extension, control the way we evolve.  As we saw in Shining Knight #3, the knights of Avalon tried to control nature, and it backfired on them.  But most of human nature is about control - it's not necessarily a bad thing.  So in this book we see the dark side of technology - the robots rebel against their overlords, because they don't want to be controlled anymore.  Technology draws the Sheeda to us, but it also allows the humans to fight back.  What is Jake, after all, but a product of technology?  What about Shilo Norman, Alix Harrower, and Frankenstein?  All products of technology.  These heroes must find the balance between controlling technology and being controlled by it.  We see the Sheeda as ultimate controllers of technology, but they are also so dependent upon it that they can't move forward as a culture.  They have reached a dead end of evolution because they are so dependent on their tech.

The idea of control in relationships is not new, but still worth looking at.  Did Jorge build himself a woman?  The clues say yes, but just like the robots in the park, she too rebelled against him.  Jorge is a visionary, despite his rather skewed outlook on life, so it's not hard to believe that he would create a woman for himself.  Hanna, whether she's a robot or not, also wants control - of Jorge, most intimately, but also of the situation at the park.  She doesn't want negative publicity, and threatens to sue the Guardian in order to keep things quiet.  In her personal life, she has emasculated Jorge (which must gall him even more if, in fact, he built her) and, you could say, driven him to this point.  We shouldn't let Jorge off the hook, but at the same time, we can understand his actions.  Theirs is a wildly unhealthy relationship, and it stems from an unwillingness by either of them to let go of control.

Jake and Carla mirror Jorge and Hanna, but we have reason to believe theirs is a more healthy relationship.  Jake does not appear to want to control Carla, and even though Carla has some control issues, she doesn't insult Jake, like Hanna did to Jorge, and she attempts to discuss her fears with him.  In these two relationships, we see the dark side of control and a more benign side.  Carla wants to control Jake, sure, but she is full of grief over her father's death, which might cloud her judgment, and she is worried about him because she loves him.  Her love blinds her to the fact that she was NOT happy when Jake was tortured by guilt, and that this Jake is much better for her than that Jake was, but it's still love.  Her attempts at control are attempts, not to dominate the relationship, but to make sense of a life that has suddenly spun out of control.  The only thing that makes sense to her now is the life she used to share with Jake after he reached his nadir.  That, at least, she could understand, even though she was unhappy.  She has lost some of the control in her life, and, as anyone can tell you, that's an upsetting feeling.  So she grasps at straws to keep from sinking.

Finally, there's Ed, who has been controlling the situation from the beginning.  We'll get more insight into his character in issue #4, but it's interesting that we finally see his true body in this issue, because it lets us know that he is another person who has no control over a part of life that we think we can easily control - our body - and so therefore he has created a world where he can control everything but that one thing.  Even his creation of the golems can be seen as an extension of this desire to dominate - he creates perfect bodies to offset the problems he has with his own.  He has tried to manipulate Jake into fighting the Sheeda, but in the end, he realizes the only way to truly manipulate Jake - and get him to do what he wants - is to relinquish some of that control and let Jake in on the secret.  Ed has learned a belated lesson, and his new knowledge shows the way for someone like Carla, who must relinquish some of her own desire for control in order to deal with the new paradigm of her relationship with Jake.  Jake, in his own way, must give up some of his desire for control and trust that Ed will tell him the truth and that it is very important to fight the Sheeda.  So they all must move forward and learn, once again, what it means to be a hero - and by that, I mean accepting responsibility and being a grown-up.  Only then, Morrison seems to be implying throughout these series, can the Seven Soldiers have a hope of defeating the Sheeda.

The annotations for this issue are, not surprisingly, somewhat thin, as it is mostly fighting.  But they're good for a look, anyway.

Next: Zatanna meets Ali Ka-Zoom!  What fun!  I will try to get back on schedule.  We'll see.  I am undaunted!

6 Comments

• At December 13, 2006, veghead wrote:

  Well, don't beat yourself up too much. After all, you named it 31 Days of Seven Soldiers, not 31 ...

• At December 13, 2006, Matt Brady wrote:

  In Seven Soldiers #1, there was a panel where Jorge wanders by, carrying the robot head of Hanna. Or ...

• At December 14, 2006, Rebis wrote:

  I've fallen WAY farther behind that you, Greg, in even reading the posts much less the issues that correspond with ...

• At December 15, 2006, Rob A wrote:

  Well done on another thought-provoking analysis (of what I had previously considered one of the least complex entries in the ...

• At December 15, 2006, Greg Burgas wrote:

  Thanks, Rob. I'm game if they'll pay me!!!!

• At August 13, 2007, Tremaine wrote:

  I know I'm very late (now reading and being creeped out all the issues...in august..) But the ex-miltary robots turning ...