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Thursday, December 15, 2005
Seven Soldiers: The Half-Way Point
“This time around, I’m going to leave metaphors in my drawer at home. Many readers tend to overthink my work when I give them too much theory…”
-Grant Morrison
"If you choose to buy only Klarion: the Witch Boy, say or The Manhattan Guardian you'll still get a complete and satisfying four-issue mini-series which sets up the characters and establishes them for future adventures," said Morrison.”
-Grant Morrison
If I’m not going to believe one quote I might as well not believe the other.
When I went over the Seven Soldiers project in its beginning I was starting to worry if the project was not going to live up its potential. Already the promise of self-contained issues was broken but I’ve gotten pass that. What has changed my mind and given me a new appreciation on this project has been reading each mini-series in its entirety. It was reading all four issues of Shining Knight in one sitting that I found the storytelling to be a lot better but also all these themes running through the book and in the entire series. It’s made me think that perhaps Morrison will be able to successfully reach up to his ambition.
In the second issue of Klarion a girl in the subway dismissed the helmet of The Manhattan Guardian, who flew right by in his battle with subway pirates. Klarion tells her that if you turn the helmet upside down it could be a pot. “It depends on how you look at it,” is the way Klarion explains it. That idea of transformation and reinvention is the heart of this series. The book starts off with taking forgotten characters and puts them through a trial that will make them see what kind of heroes they can be. Jog, whose examination of the Seven Soldiers series is the best you’ll find anywhere, has noted that all the heroes go through the same path of self-doubt and then embracement of their heroism (the best example of this would be Zatanna, mainly because all four issues are fairly self-contained and you can really see the four stages Morrison puts his heroes through). It’s the classic hero myth and it actually seems a little too Joseph Campbell-ish or even Manichaeistic for the man who brought us Invisibles. Then I started noticing that Morrison layers his book with many meditations on the idea of transformation and rebirth. These are still superhero books that take place in the DC Universe so there is that Good (Seven Sodleirs) versus Evil (Sheeda) mentality running through it but there are also more complex notions underneath the surface.
As Jog pointed out, none of the Seven Soldiers fit the archetype of the white, male superhero with the flowing cape and wide chest. Going back to the proto-Soldiers in Seven Soldiers #0 the only character that could perhaps fit that role is Spyder but he was a bit of a creep. There are women like Sir Justin (in disguise as a male) and Zatanna as well as black superheroes like The Manhattan Guardian and Shilo Norman as Mr. Miracle. Then there are the freaky guys like Klarion and Frankenstein (whose original Mary Shelly story might be that of the ultimate “rebirth” character). They are all at least one removed from the grand superhero tradition of the DC Universe but Morrison takes that “under the radar” status as a reason to give these characters a new sense of mission and dignity. Guardian gets the most out of the working-class hero story and Bulleteer explores ordinary people who want to be superheroes. The most popular heroes are Zatanna and Mr. Miracle, one being a former JLA member, the other being the successor to a former JLA member and both are famous as entertainers as well as superheroes. They are unhappy with their status as “name” superheroes, Shilo Norman specifically. Morrison starts every soldiers’ book off with the protagonist unhappy with their place on the superhero totem pole and instead of moving them open or down in stature, Morrison gives them a reason to believe in themselves regardless of their fame or notoriety. The rebirth is not in giving the hero new powers or a new costume, it’s in the way they see themselves in their surroundings. As Big Ed says in Guardian “We’re telling stories about human dignity, Jake. Stories of how human beings make culture and meaning for ourselves, even down in the garbage.”
The opposite of rebirth is stunted growth and that also gets consideration in the books. Marc Singer noted how Big Ed himself is “a perfect hypostasis for superhero comics: aged and matured but still eternally youthful (or, depending on how you want to look at it, developmentally arrested).” Jog (hey, I really like his take on things) saw the Newsboy Army in Guardian #4, truly the best issue of the project since Seven Soldiers #0, as the embodiments of the innocence of Golden Age superheroes growing up and getting darker, as superhero stories are known to do. I feel that Morrison here is justifying his interest in rejuvenating these characters by pointing out what happens when superhero stories become stale: they cannibalize themselves into irrelevance. Another example is the use of Grundys in Klarion’s world. The dead die but instead of resting in peace they are resurrected to an afterlife of forced labor. It is a bastardized transformation of a decadent society. Compare that to how many superhero characters die and then come back to once again to star in stories not so different from the ones that were written for them decades ago.
The idea of entire cultures dying and then new cultures arising from the ashes is also apparent in Seven Soldiers. In Shining Knight Sir Justin is haunted by the idea that since she left her world it fell to Sheeda and now this modern world is threatened, too. In the third issue of that book Sheeda mentions “There are people who believe that the rise and fall of great civilizations is a cyclical occurrence. Our world is over six billion years old, after all. Our own civilization dates back a mere 6,000 years.” Every civilization has gathered their Seven Soldiers to fight Sheeda but lost. It leads Mr. Miracle to ponder “What if I live in a world where evil came out tops?” Is this the natural cycle or is Morrison imaging a way for one culture to not just rise and fall like all the rest but keep rising to newer and better heights? I thought it was interesting to think of cultures dying and being reborn on the cosmic scale while we also have examples of it happening on a much more human level. Zatanna takes over as a superhero and performer for her father Zatara. Shilo Norman takes over the Mr. Miracle mantle from Scott Free who himself took it over from Thaddeus Brown. These are examples of the same thing just happening on different levels of existence.
This is just one part of Seven Soldiers but I feel it is the most important part. I would also like to go over the Jack Kirby influence on these books one day (three of the books are based on Kirby characters, four if you count the Infinite Crisis book OMAC Project and I’m pretty sure IC and Seven Soldiers will meet up somewhere). I didn’t even talk about the wonderful artists who drew these books but if you’re reading them than you already know how good Cameron Stewart, Ryan Sook and others are.
Special thanks to Jog (there he is again!) for helping me with this essay. It was good to be back writing something substantial on the blog. Be ready for more.
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