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7 Soldiers of Victory
In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that this is a little bit of cheating; I only just read 7 Soldiers of Victory last month (June 2008), so it doesn't exactly fit in with the 'influential comics of my reading career pre-2007' which I intended these written pieces to describe. But the 7 Soldiers' writer, Grant Morrison, has made a career so far of muddling timelines, breaking rules of narrative and defying expectations, so it's sort of fitting that I stick this in anyway.
In fact, it's Morrison's particularly eclectic style that has made him a bit of Marmite writer for me in the past. I absolutely loved the high concept and hyper-realism of his sci-fi yarn We 3, and I certainly enjoyed the first arc of his run of JLA (despite it's generic 90's style bulging-muscles superhero artwork). On the other hand, I was personally left a bit cold by the first few arcs of his New X-men run; his reinvention of the iconic mutants created an interesting status quo, but failed to engage me in any of the characters. The Jack Kirby/Bollywood cross-over Viminirama seemed like a terrible waste of a great concept, and I couldn't get past the second issue of his epic metaphysical thriller The Invisibles without getting horribly lost. I've often felt that Morrison can 'over-write' a book; derailing the reading experience in his attempts to put an original spin on the accepted comic norms. Actually, the truth is that for over 20 years he has consistently spun experimental plots, with intellectual scripts and challenging storytelling techniques; they sometimes just don't fit with my particular groove.
In 2006, Morrison must have wanted a new challenge, as he chose to simultaneously relaunch 7 minor/ obscure characters in the DC comics pantheon, each in their own self contained 4-issue limited series, but within an overarching mega storyline which would touch upon each of the series and serve as bookends to the entire 29 issue epic. Two intriguing factors differentiated this crossover from the slew of comics 'events' that were crowding the shop shelves at the same time. Firstly; the genres of the seven series would span every corner of the DC canon, from superheroes to fantasy, science-fiction to off-beat black comedy. Secondly; the seven heroes who formed this disparate superteam would never actually meet throughout the course of the story. The final inspiration for this off-beat collaboration was taken from The 7 Soldiers of Victory; one of the pioneering super-teams from the 1940's who hadn't seen regular publication in fifty years or so.
The timing of this ambitious undertaking unfortunately coincided with DC's biggest publishing event in 20 years; Infinite Crisis. Far more mainstream in focus, Infinite Crisis encompassed dozens of the biggest DC superhero titles, and placed some considerable demands on the comic-buying budgets of many fans at the time. When the 7 Soldiers crossover debuted with the introductory special 7 Soldiers of Victory issue 0, I was intrigued by the set-up, but my wallet couldn't accommodate the extra demands of the 28 issues to follow. I wonder if the series was possibly denied it's fullest audience because other potential readers may have been suffering a similar financial pinch? Luckily for me; DC collected the entire epic into a series of 4 trade paperbacks, which I was able to take out of my local library.
In the opening chapters, I did still find myself slightly frustrated by the rampant Morrisonisms; the moments of storytelling shorthand and absence of explanations for some of the more surreal developments. The Zatanna miniseries suffers from this particularly, as several crucial plot developments were confusingly muddled. But at a certain point I found myself slipping into the Morrison mindset; this is both a sequel to the original adventures of the 7 Soldiers, and yet also a re-imagining of several elements of it (adventures of the original 7 Soldiers from the '50s are referred to here, although the new Shining Knight character seems to be an unconnected reboot of the similar Shining Knight character in the original line-up); so the reader shouldn't expect everything to be completely coherent. The mixture of genres complement each other surprisingly well, and there is certainly an outlandish 'anything can happen' mentality to the story developments. This is comes to an impressive crescendo in the Zatanna series when, at the climax of a magical incantation, the title character breaks the fourth wall and reaches out of the comic page to touch the reader.
The artwork is diverse, and fairly uniformly brilliant. Some top drawer talent was assembled for this event, including JH Williams III, Simone Bianchi, Ryan Sook, Frazer Irving, Pasqual Ferry and Doug Mahnke, who all excelled in some of the more off-beat series. I was also impressed by Cameron Stewart; whose work I hadn't seen before, but who produced art with dynamism and warmth for The Manhattan Guardian, probably the most conventional of the heroes here. My personal favourite has to be Mahnke's work on Frankenstein, which particularly plays to his strengths (black humour; visceral horror and a hulking protagonist) as well as introducing some new delights (his alien/futuristic panoramas are jaw-dropping). The weak link in the chain unfortunately is Mister Miracle; Pasqual Ferry's sci-fi art is a perfect fit for the classic Jack Kirby character, but he left the series after the first issue, and a suitable replacement was never really found over the next 3 issues. In fact, I found myself being quite frustrated by the Mister Miracle story in general; it bore minimal relation to the other 6 mini's, and the plotline didn't really seem have much direction to it. In hindsight it's now clear that the themes introduced here (the covert machinations of evil New God Darkseid on earth) were a direct set-up to Morrison's next 'big DC project', the super-hero armaggedon-level event known as Final Crisis. It is good to see that, as a result of Mr Miracle's involvement, this quirky event will ultimately be tied very firmly into DC comics continuity, but I still feel the latter parts of the storyline would be stronger without it.
I was a little confused at first that the 29 issues were not collected together by specific miniseries, but were instead arranged in order of original publication (the mini's were published in a staggered schedule). It turns out that this choice was pretty crucial for enjoying the unfolding storyline that interlinks each of the mini's. And in fact it's the key to the success of the whole event. It forces the reader to step back from each separate character and consider the whole; as well as highlighting the subtle and often touching ways in which Morrison was interlinking the various series. This is a fantastical adventure unfolding as commentary on how we live our everyday lives; each one of us having an indirect effect on the lives of hundreds of others around us, whether we are aware of them or not. And at the end of day, despite it's faults, I hope that is what will make the 7 Soldiers of Victory warrant revisiting again and again, after the more spectacular crossovers of Marvel and DC have faded from memory.
Secret Wars
On the face of it, Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars was a 12-issue maxiseries that was published between May 1984 and April 1985, although the story was infact conceived as a thinly disguised marketing device for a series of action figures being produced by Mattel at the time. As would be expected, Secret Wars was hugely hyped at it's time of release, not only was it the flagship comic of the Marvel superhero universe, but it was the lynchpin of a lucrative licensing empire that was being built around Stan Lee and co's creations. Hailed as the first company-wide crossover every published, it built upon 2 decades of comics continuity since the Fantastic Four first debuted in 1961; and it was followed exactly 20 years later by a sort of spiritual sequel, Secret War by Brian Michael Bendis in May 2004, which in turn would serve as the spring-board for the recent era of blockbuster event driven storytelling from Marvel. It's therefore tempting to view Secret Wars as something of a nexus in the history of Marvel comics; a culmination of all that came before and a portent of all that would follow. Or this could just be wishful thinking on the part of ageing fan-boys who clamour for the halcyon days of their comics buying youth.
Speaking of which; I was 6 years old in 1985 when the Secret Wars franchise landed in the UK in the form of comic reprints, sticker albums, toys and fancy-dress costumes. At that age, my attention span was too short to follow the story through the entirety of the comic run, although I do remember picking up several issues; in particular being mesmerised by the iconic cover image of the heroes being trapped in a cave-in, with only the Incredible Hulk supporting the weight of an entire mountain which was about to collapse ontop of them. The Doctor Doom action figure was one of my favourite toys at the time; to the extent that I even dressed up as the character for Halloween that year. My main exposure to the brand was without a doubt through the Panini sticker collection, which I collected and swapped with my primary school friends. The sticker album recounted an editorialised version of the epic story, and this was my first exposure to mind-blowing characters such as Charles Xavier's X-Men, the villainous Absorbing Man, the bewitching Enchantress and the awe-inspiring Galactus. To be honest though; my fickle attentions did move on pretty quickly, when the Thundercats cartoon and toy-line launched in the following year with a big a splash and an even bigger range of collectible figures and accessories.
As part of Marvel's new deluxe 'Omnibus' model for publishing reprints, Secret Wars became available on nice glossy over-sized pages in one big bumper hardback, and I recently snapped up the opportunity to revisit it. Fittingly for a comic which serves to advertise a toy line; the pitch for the storyline is childishly simple. As the first issue opens, two groups of characters, comprising respectively some of Marvel's highest profile superheroes and supervillains, have been teleported from earth and are being transported to a mysterious planetary body, constructed before their startled eyes by an omnipotent force known only as 'The Beyonder'. The heroes are led by the courageous Captain America, while the villains are begrudgingly under the leadership of Doctor Doom, and Professor X forms a splinter group of his X-Men and Magneto, who keep their allegiances deliberately ambiguous. The only explanation which is offered for this cosmic-level display of technology and power is given by The Beyonder's brief introductory monologue: "I am from beyond... Slay your enemies and all you desire shall be yours... Nothing you dream of is impossible for me to accomplish!".
The plot and script in these opening chapters, by then Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter does a brilliant job of introducing over thirty different protagonists, even if it does lay the expository dialogue on a bit thick. With this volume of characters, it was obvious that each would be largely 1-dimensional, but the characterisation of the various heroes and villains is established with colourful drama, and it lays a solid groundwork for the alliances that are made and broken over the first two acts of the series. The artwork in the opening chapters, by Marvel stalwart Mike Zeck is spectacular stuff, delivering a dynamic and modern interpretation of Kirby's classic cosmological designs. The creation of Battleworld is a particularly striking image, and is one that I still have memories of from my youth. I don't know if time contraints were an issue for Zeck, as Bob Layton was brought in as a replacement penciller on issued 4 and 5. In later issues of the series, Zeck's style does become noticeably looser and cartoonish, although Doctor Doom's spectacularly brutal battle to the death with The Beyonder in issue 10 marks an artistic high-point of the series.
A lot of mileage is wrought out of the attack and counter-attack developments in the plotting of the first 8 or 9 issues. There's a healthy sense of self-awareness aswell, particularly in the tongue-in-cheek commentaries from some of the more comedic characters like The Thing and Spider-man, or the Absorbing Man and the Wrecking Crew. Although in retrospect, perhaps this exchange between the supervillains wasn't intended to carry quite as much latent homo-eroticism...
When it gets into full swing, Shooter was gleefully spinning soup opera style subplots into the mix, celebrating the sort of high-drama that Lee/Kirby/Ditko et al. revelled in throughout the silver age. The love triangle between the Human Torch Johnny Storm, alien native hottie Zsaji and lovelorn X-Man Colussus is particularly cheesey, and can be enjoyed in a so-bad-its-good sort of way. It's not all poops and giggles though; and there are plenty of nuggets of real drama, like the aforementioned mountain cave-in, Thor's doomed stand against the army of supervillains, and further developments that I'd rather not spoil. For the most part, there is a palpable sense of danger, and there are fatalities amongst the main cast (even though these are almost universaly reversed by close of play). It's a storytelling mix which, surprisingly, reminded me of the tv show 'Lost', in the best possible way.
There are two critical flaws with the series though. Firstly, it goes on for about 2 issues too long; the high stakes end-game of the heroes versus Galactus, then The Beyonder, then Cosmic Doctor Doom is thrilling stuff, but it arrives too early. The pace slows to a crawl in issue 11 and by issue 12 the denoument asks the reader to swallow a plot-reset conceit which amounts to 'wishing everything better'. Secondly, the whole story really doesn't have any point; over a year of comics, absolutely no plotting was attributed to explaining the omnipotent motivations of The Beyonder, or the reasoning behind this gathering of Marvel universe misfits on a savage new planet. As plot holes go, that's a pretty bloody big one. By the time Jim Shooter wrote Secret Wars he had a wealth of experience under his belt; with 18 years as a comics writer and 6 years as the EiC of Marvel comics. He had overseen, and no doubt learned from, such groundbreaking super-hero writing as Chris Claremont's X-Men and Frank Miller's Daredevil, and amazingly he was still only 33 years of age; young enough to be clued into his adolescent target audience. It is quite surprising then, that Secret Wars is not infact more of a magnum opus, and that despite a strong initial concept, drawing upon a load of cosmic plot ideas and some cracking characterisation, it collapses in the later stages under the weight of tired plot devices and a series of ridiculous deus ex machina resolutions.
Some criticisms which are commonly levelled at modern Marvel superhero crossovers are that they feature decompressed storytelling, and are editorially driven to shift the overall continuity onto the next status-quo. In their defence though; I would argue that the newer storylines (particularly the shorter, more self-contained series like World War Hulk and Seige) benefit from relatively strong internal logic, foreshadowing of critical plot developments and, most importantly, a sharp focus in theme. The real legacy of Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars has perhaps been to allow today's creators to learn from it's mistakes.