|
|
 |
 |
|
Friday, March 25, 2005
Seven Soldiers so far…
As a big fan of Grant Morrison’s work (Q: how can you tell if someone is a Grant Morrison fan? A: They have a comic book blog) I was excited to hear his plans for coming back to the DC Universe included him having his own mini-line of comics. They were connected to each other and they weren’t, each series could be read on its own as well as be taken in as a piece to a much larger story. That sounded alright to me, a way to have a big superhero event without making it one of the tedious affairs that they have shown to be throughout superhero comic history. It’s about time someone let Morrison go wild with whatever he wanted to at DC. It’s all good right? Well…let’s take a look.
His supposed-to-be-triumphant return to the JLA served as a prequel of sorts to the whole event. Unfortunately, like Tim, I found the three issue run of JLA: Classified to be an unsatisfactory experience. Oh sure, it was cool to see Morrison write a cool Batman that said things like “Did my flying saucer arrive from the factory?” and we can all say how great the book was compared to most superhero stories because it has a talking gorilla in it, but ultimately the book failed to share with the reader its joy for balls-to-the-wall superheroic action (which is something Morrison has accomplished in the past) or make interesting characters out of the Ultramarines (another thing Morrison has proven quite capable of doing, getting the reader interested in obscure characters). The second part was the most troubling. After all, the whole Seven Soldiers idea is based around reworked version of B- and C-list DC characters like Zatanna and Shining Knight. To be fair, a large part of why the JLA story didn’t work was because the art team of Ed McGuiness and Dexter Vines turned in some artwork that, as Jog explains nicely, was just not working. I have enjoyed their work before on Mr. Majestic (although I don’t think Vines inked that book) so I felt letdown by them, as well. Here I was all ready to go with this project and I was starting to feel low about it before it even began.
Then things changed, not least of which my mood on that matter. Seven Soldiers #0 arrived, the true kick-off to the whole deal, and things felt right again. It was here that I picked up on what Seven Soldiers is about. Now that Morrison has worked with the royalty of the DC Universe, he’s going to start dealing with the “blue collar” superheroes. The ones that are closer to the proletariat and do not have it all worked out like a Superman or Batman does. There’s a scene early on in his Animal Man run where Superman swoops down to say hello to Buddy Baker because Supes is all friendly like that. Instead the unwanted effect is that Baker feels more insecure than ever after standing next to a superhero of Kal-El’s stature. Things seem set for Morrison to explore situations and emotions like that in the Seven Soldiers world. Seven Soldiers #0 has The Whip joining a group of misfit superheroes who call themselves the “Seven Soldiers” even though there’s only six of them including her. There’s an older female superhero who depends on plastic surgery and gossip to make herself look more vital, a fanboy who is only a superhero because he had the winning bid on two old magic rings and an old grizzled cowboy who complains about arthritis and high blood pressure when meeting new members of the team (the western stuff also give artist J.H. Williams III a chance to show off his Gil Kane chops). Also among the soldiers is Spyder, who was revamped by seven unknown men from his earlier appearance in the beginning of the book (where Alan Moore’s revamp of Swamp Thing was also mentioned). That seems to be the other major theme of Seven Soldiers, these blue collar superheroes getting new makeovers, perhaps to unleash the majesty that has been there all the time? I think Williams’ art was used well in this book to create a type of grandeur for this quirky bunch. Whether that is Morrisons plan or not it, didn’t seem to help the team collected here as one of the villains from JLA: Classified, the living universe Neh-Buh-Loh (who isn’t far off from this Ditko creation), kills of the whole lot of them. That leaves the seven unknown men scrambling to find a whole new team to save this imminent threat to mankind (or at least superhero-kind) and we can assume, although there’s always bound to be surprises when it comes to Morrsion, that this group will be the seven superheroes given their own books in this venture.
As an side because I couldn’t fit this thought into the above paragraph, I find it interesting that the infant universe that Neh-Buh-Loh is meant to be made up of is hinted to be our real world at the end of JLA: Classified #3. The idea of that real world being harmful to superheroes, with the lesser known ones receiving the majority of the damage, is an interesting idea to explore in the midst of DC’s bummer of an event Identity Crisis. While writers like Brad Meltzer like to bring the gritty and dark, often mistaken to be “real,” to the world of DC, Morrison seems to want to do the opposite and show why the other is a futile exercise. It’s another theory of mine that might not bear out at all but if it does I think I know whose side I’m on.
So far two of the seven mini-series have started and my mind has not been completely put to ease about how well Seven Soldiers is going to work. The first is Shining Knight. Simone Bianchi’s art is well suited for the fantasy genre, but unfortunately it’s a genre I’ve never been that big on (I couldn’t even make it through that first Lord of the Rings movie). Sir Justin’s talking horse had some great moments of Morrison humor but after reading Seaguy and currently going through Vimanarama! a witty Mr. Ed didn’t exactly impress, which I suppose ultimately speaks well of Morrison’s ability to come up with the weird and wonderful. I do want to read about Sir Justin’s adventures in modern day Los Angeles, if Seven Soldiers #0 was about bring out the majesty of street level heroes will this show us the street in majestic heroes?, so let it not be said that Morrison can’t come up with a good cliffhanger.
This week saw the beginning of Guardian, notable for re-teaming Morrison with the artists on Seaguy, Cameron Stewart. Here the “working class” aspect seems to be laid on real thick. Jake Jordon is having trouble making ends meet so he becomes the superhero for The Manhattan Guardian, a newspaper that claims to not only to report on crime but to fight it as well. It’s certainly fun to see things like subway pirates show up in a comic but this was a book that struck me as probably the most by-the-numbers comic Morrison has written in a long while. It’s far from bad but as Brian Nicholson noticed, and he’s harder on the book that I am, it feels like the set up to an NES video game. I like stuff like Double Dragon and Battletoads but I was excepting greater stuff from Morrison and Stewart. Of course, I still might see it in this mini-series.
I still don’t doubt that Seven Soldiers can become something beautiful when taken as a whole, as I plan to read it. There are themes that Morrison is hinting at that few other superhero books coming out want to deal with. With artist like Ryan Sook and Pascal Ferry coming on chances are things are certainly going to look good. I just fear that for all of Morrison’s talk of the mini-series being self-contained that anyone who only wants to pick up one of the books, for financial reasons or because only one of them had a concept that jumped out at them, will not only be not getting a story as good as the person who devoted him/herself to the whole line, but not even getting that good a story in the first place. There are still plenty of books left and Morrison is that good a writer that he can prove a dope like me wrong, but so far I do have some worries about something that overall I’m confident about.
Permanent Link: 3:54 PM |
0 comments
Comments:
-- Home
|
|
