I'm reading Seven Soldiers of Victory as background for Final Crisis. If anyone can explain this series in seven coherent sentences, I'll send you some kind of legitimate prize. I think maybe it was written in magnetic poetry.
Seven different (mostly obscure) characters that are doing seven completely different things are really doing the same thing, but not as a team: Kill the Sheeda.
Sheeda being a race that are a) blue b) from the future c) very scary and d) a little hell-bent on finding a culture that's at its best and taking all the cool stuff and leaving a burning pile of rubble behind--this time Current Earth (established I think pre-Infinite Crisis. I think and these sentences don't count, dammit! ;)).
There was a prophecy that Seven Soldiers would kill the Sheeda, so they are hunting down every team of seven--to get around this, the Seven Unknown Men of Slaughter Swamp are subtly directing our seven characters seperately, so they never form an actual 'team'.
So each character goes through her/his own individual troubles, with every single one of them leading to or finding the Sheeda.
It all culminates in a huge battle at the end where they're still each doing one part of a whole, not actually realizing what they're doing to affect the outcome/help the other.
The Sheeda are killed/taken over and it's revealed that Darkseid, basically, has discovered the Anti-Life Equation and sold the Earth down the river in order to get Aurakles, which is just a way to get Mister Miracle D.E.A.D. and also done in order to someday kill the New Gods that are hiding on Earth.
Klarion The Witch-Boy is the awesomest awesome that ever did awesome and I recommend reading this series twice--there's much, much better absorption the second time through once the skeleton is in.
(I considered doing this in Haiku, but my kids are sick and therefore most definitely lap-consuming. Next time, Gadget!)
Um, yeah, Girl Friday pretty much summed it up nicely. The great part is that Morrison takes basically 7 hoo-hum characters and makes them cool again. I HATED Klarion the Witch-Boy until this take on him. And now I love him as a character. It also introduces a nice origin for Solomon Grundy and his ilk.
"Seven Soldiers" is also a none-too-subtle commentary on Modern Comics As They Is Made.
The Sheeda are our descendants from a zillion years in the future, and to survive, they reach into the past and plunder it, strip it nearly bare, and retreat to the future, leaving the world just enough to recover for a future plundering. -cough- No, no commentary on modern superhero comics there. Nope.
Also, that most of the SSV are Kirby creations, no, that wouldn't tie in to the theme at all, would it. Ahem.
The counterpoint to the Sheeda are the SSV themselves, who bring back the past, but with new stories and new vigor. It's not a plundering of the past, but a rebuilding. That theme gets worked an awful lot. (The giant aged baby-man in "The Manhattan Guardian," for example.)
SSV benefits greatly from multiple readings. I kinda-sorta liked it the first time, enjoyed it the second time, and worshipped it by the third. Tons and tons of interconnective junk hides in the stories, and the metatext games can sometimes be fun. "Mister Miracle" is a giant mess without the overall themes of SSV in mind. Then it becomes fifty gallons of awesome in a two-gallon pail.
6 comments:
Seven different (mostly obscure) characters that are doing seven completely different things are really doing the same thing, but not as a team: Kill the Sheeda.
Sheeda being a race that are a) blue b) from the future c) very scary and d) a little hell-bent on finding a culture that's at its best and taking all the cool stuff and leaving a burning pile of rubble behind--this time Current Earth (established I think pre-Infinite Crisis. I think and these sentences don't count, dammit! ;)).
There was a prophecy that Seven Soldiers would kill the Sheeda, so they are hunting down every team of seven--to get around this, the Seven Unknown Men of Slaughter Swamp are subtly directing our seven characters seperately, so they never form an actual 'team'.
So each character goes through her/his own individual troubles, with every single one of them leading to or finding the Sheeda.
It all culminates in a huge battle at the end where they're still each doing one part of a whole, not actually realizing what they're doing to affect the outcome/help the other.
The Sheeda are killed/taken over and it's revealed that Darkseid, basically, has discovered the Anti-Life Equation and sold the Earth down the river in order to get Aurakles, which is just a way to get Mister Miracle D.E.A.D. and also done in order to someday kill the New Gods that are hiding on Earth.
Klarion The Witch-Boy is the awesomest awesome that ever did awesome and I recommend reading this series twice--there's much, much better absorption the second time through once the skeleton is in.
(I considered doing this in Haiku, but my kids are sick and therefore most definitely lap-consuming. Next time, Gadget!)
Now that's what I'M TALKING ABOUT. Prize on its way! Eventually!
Any others wanna try to beat that?
Can't beat that. Bonus is now I don't have to read it either!
Oh I'm still going to read it, but the cheat sheet helps :).
Um, yeah, Girl Friday pretty much summed it up nicely. The great part is that Morrison takes basically 7 hoo-hum characters and makes them cool again. I HATED Klarion the Witch-Boy until this take on him. And now I love him as a character. It also introduces a nice origin for Solomon Grundy and his ilk.
Girl Friday nailed the basic plot.
"Seven Soldiers" is also a none-too-subtle commentary on Modern Comics As They Is Made.
The Sheeda are our descendants from a zillion years in the future, and to survive, they reach into the past and plunder it, strip it nearly bare, and retreat to the future, leaving the world just enough to recover for a future plundering. -cough- No, no commentary on modern superhero comics there. Nope.
Also, that most of the SSV are Kirby creations, no, that wouldn't tie in to the theme at all, would it. Ahem.
The counterpoint to the Sheeda are the SSV themselves, who bring back the past, but with new stories and new vigor. It's not a plundering of the past, but a rebuilding. That theme gets worked an awful lot. (The giant aged baby-man in "The Manhattan Guardian," for example.)
SSV benefits greatly from multiple readings. I kinda-sorta liked it the first time, enjoyed it the second time, and worshipped it by the third. Tons and tons of interconnective junk hides in the stories, and the metatext games can sometimes be fun. "Mister Miracle" is a giant mess without the overall themes of SSV in mind. Then it becomes fifty gallons of awesome in a two-gallon pail.
Damn, I loved that mini.
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