DC's SEVEN SOLDIERS!!!

Er, what's Hush?

Also oboyoboyoboy!

(Plus that picture of Zatanna excites me in ways I'm not sure are proper)

(Feel free to correct me if y'all think I missed it.)

PS to Bat editors (Beditors? Batitors?) - LESS GANG WAR, MORE CLAYFACE!

(something similar happened with Parasite in Superman comics a while back, Lois was being all bitchy and then she died, but it was really Parasite!)

They have comic book stores there!

My pick: Zatanna. Identity Crisis has gotten me interested in this character for the first time in the DCU proper since ever, and the first time anywhere since Books of Magic. This is one of those B-list characters that doesn't even need someone of Morrison's caliber to be made a star, but with him doing it, how can it fail?

For the art: Guardian w/Cameron Stewart

The bookends with the Promethea artist should also be very cool.

They have comic book stores there!

-- Jordan (jordan...), November 17th, 2004 11:27 PM.

I don't want to lug a load of comics around with me though. I'm resigned to going cold turkey for a bit.

Yes, I am a giant nerd!

I wonder what they'll "number" the other bookend - Seven Soliders#0 #2? The Other Seven Soldiers #0? Seven More Soldiers? #0?

Moon-face from Flex Mentallo = Giant Pen guy from Teh Flith (I fucking hate that series) = the giant sewing machine / locomotive (or the people inside it) from SS#0?

you think? I just saw it as him going "oh yeah, remember how I invented deconstructionist superhero comics*? I thought of some tasty new juice to squeeze out of the concept now that everyone else has pissed in the old bits of it, check me out!"

*at the same time that Rick Veitch and Alan Moore were inventing etc etc, steam-engine style

I've just read #0; picked up Shining Knight and Manhattan Guardian today. Figure Zatanna and Klarion sometime over the weekend, depending on availabilty.

I remember the MM series being quite fun, although it's probably terrible (one of those omnipresent JLI-funny-tone DC comics that never worked quite as well as the original.) The end of the run syncopated with me quitting comics for a while, so I don't really know what happened after.

Grant being Grant, of course, he will probably ignore all this.

As for reading, definitely first four series before the last three. That would be ZATANNA, SHINING KNIGHT, GUARDIAN and KLARION before FRANKENSTEIN, BULLETEER and MISTER MIRACLE. Don't forget JLA CLASSIFIED 1-3 as a prequel and the zero issue, too. The proposed paperback publishing schedule is pretty useless in my estimation, though. Makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

xpost - http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=11c542fb39c3dbdebd805d5e90fb8535&threadid=37134

Check out the preview pages - the hands didn't make it in.

An alternate 7S read order is featured here. Which is the order in which I read them and it worked rather well. The only alteration I would recommend is reading Zatanna 1 between JLA:C and 7S 0. But that list was also made before Zatanna 4 (which I still haven't read) was released, so I don't know if that necessarily still works as the ending to the first wave.

BRRRRR . . . I fear the giant Infinite Crisis tie-in in SS #1!

I can actually see GUARDIAN selling lower numbers. I love Cameron's work to death, but not everyone else does (and lots of folks might be suffering flashbacks to SEAGUY.) SHINING KNIGHT was beautiful, but storywise has been the weakest so far (and I don't see a reason for that to change.) Just stunning art, though.

Have to say so far that storywise GUARDIAN and ZATANNA are above the pack, but Frazier Irving's work on KLARION was astounding. I'd dearly love to see a GUARDIAN/Newsboy Army series after all is said and done, but I think it'd be me and ten other people buying it...

(It's been explained before, but: GM = EJ == Newsarama meme stuck in someone's sig file, saying something to the effect of: Elton John has great melodies, but good luck trying to figure out what he's trying to say!)

I thought folks would say something like "Grant Morrison = Liz Fraser's vocals", really. But then they'd have to know both sides of that equation.

I'd argue the opposite, slocki. He sets up and sets up and distracts with ideas that are cool and illuminate another facet of what's going on, but the payoff doesn't seem the critical thing for him a lot of the time. Or maybe I've just read too many GM comics and marvel in nearly all of it as it rolls along.

(I don't mention Morrison's NXM run enough, do I?)

We3 had one of the most dramatically satisfying conclusions of any comic ever. And the double-ending of Doom Patrol was BRILLIANT.

Less thrilled by the ending of Vimanarama, but it's not like it was a letdown or anything. Ditto for Seaguy.

Good writers whose endings leave something to be desired: Bendis, Miller. I like a lot of Alan Moore's endings, but he tends to do the equivalent of the bubbida-bubbida drum roll at the end of an arena-rock show--LOOK! Here is the ENDING!!! Morrison's endings sneak up on you.

"Death is the drive-by that never ends."

!

I might still be getting things wrong and missing LOADS of stuff, but, anyway - FUN!

Vol. 1: SS #0, Shining Knight #1, Guardian #1, Zatanna #1, Klarion #1, Shining Knight #2, Guardian #2, Zatanna #2

Vol. 2: Klarion #2, Shining Knight #3, Guardian #3, Zatanna #3, Klarion #3, Shining Knight #4, Guardian #4

Vol. 3: Mister Miracle #1, Zatanna #4, Klarion #4, Bulleteer #1, Frankenstein #1, Mister Miracle #2, Bulleteer #2

Vol. 4: Frankenstein #2, Mister Miracle #3, Bulleteer #3, Frankenstein #3, Mister Miracle #4, Bulleteer #4, Frankenstein #4, SS #1

And it's certainly possible that 7S is Morrison's rejoinder to PROMETHEA (I certainly got some of that feeling from ZATANA in particular). I'd note that if so, it's classic Morrison "do magic by action" as opposed to Moore's "doing magic by learning hermetic secrets" approach. I say that this is possible, but I'm not convinced that it's a case of anything more than thematic overlap. The explanation laid out in the Barbelith FAQ seems overly complex, but I guess it's possible that Morrison has internalized all this to such an extent that it's coming out naturally in the work.

Or maybe Lee's right after all...

Right-- it's straight-up "middle way" stuff, and I'm loving it. Greatest magician working in comics today? I'd like to think so.

Howev, maybe I'll get caught up with the trades in time to read Sev Sold #1 when it comes out! (though, um, probably not, since the final trade will include SS#1 and be held a long time).

http://members.at.infoseek.co.jp/metalhead/influences/coverdale/cover_dale/others/coverdale_page.jpg

http://audiobasics.com/acatalog/Product_presence.gif

http://home.aland.net/m05614/XC-BOSTON-86.JPG

I think this might be my favorite caption ever.

Why are all of these series so fucking awesome (except for Mr. Miracle, and even there a wholly unexpected and fucking phenomenal #4 almost redeemed the impenetrable crap that was #1-#3)?

http://joglikescomics.blogspot.com/2006/04/seven-soldiers-short-list.html

-- Douglas (ilxo...), April 27th, 2006.

yeah! also:
"One billion years later!"
&
"THEY DRANK THE WATER!"

my friend picked up issues 1, 2 & 4 of Frankenstein yesterday - is the rest of Seven Soldiers this unhinged?

As someone ignorant of much of the DC universe backstory, Zatanna and Mr. Miracle are the only two characters who weren't "created" for this project, right? (IE, other authors/stories established them before these miniseries happened.)

Do we think Frankenstein is going to die, or will it be Mr. Miracle?

On re-reading I decided this:

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE: Guardian, Klarion, Zatanna, Bulleteer
GREAT STUFF: Frankenstein, Shining Knight
HMMM: Mr Miracle

I think your picks for 'die' are probably right, cos all the other 5 are clearly people with tons of story potential (and Zatanna is an actual Valuable Property).

Actually maybe Klarion doesn't have so much story potential. But I'd like to think he does!

The Bulleteer is based on the old Fawcett character Bulletman:

This version of Frankenstein is modeled on the '70s "Spawn of Frankenstein" character who appeared as a backup in Phantom Stranger.

A different version of the Guardian has been around since the '40s--he was created by Jack Kirby, and was usually accompanied by a group of kids called the Newsboy Legion, although it was Morrison's stroke of genius to have him directly affiliated with a newspaper:

Klarion was another Kirby creation, from 1973, a supporting character from The Demon. Here's a sample Kirby page with him and Teekl. Morrison threw out the whole back story and basically just kept the name and some of the character design.

The familiar Shining Knight (who was one of the original Seven Soldiers of Victory) has been around since 1941; Sir Justin. Ystin is a thoroughly reconceived version of the character.

Also, there are tons of allusions to the original Seven Soldiers comics from the '40s (and their '70s revival in JLA), but they're concealed well enough that if you've never read 'em you'll never know the difference.

"SEE ME NOW, KLARION! SEE ME NOW!!"

Nope, they all have some kind of DC background, although most of them are new versions:

Dude, this is actually exactly what Tom said. Except for Klarion, who was active six or seven years back, in the big DC crossover. I thought it was more the case that he was having backstory filled in rather than scooped out?

Anyway, if one is going to really die, I hope it's Mr. Miracle, the least interesting one. Frankenstein is AWESOME. And Morrison loves him, he has stated that he could write lots of stories about him. So I'm hoping he isn't the one slated for death.

so, I've just finished reading "Infinite Crises 07" and I've noticed that ALL the Soldiers are there...except Mr. Miracle. And since Morrison has stated that Seven Soldiers takes place a week before IC...well I think we've got our winner!.

Could this mean that the MM mini sucked IN PURPOSE?.

And according to the huge-ass double spread at the end of Infinity Crisis, it's ---

--- SPOILER!!!

Mr Miracle!

He's the only one who isn't present and correct... although I guess he was there earlier. But earlier doesn't cut it! OR DOES IT?

So I've come into some comics spending money and was thinking of going into one of these maxiseries-type things - did this series hold up?? or should I take a look at the Fourth World omnibi instead??

I like it so much I almost feel like I shouldn't say anything.

Did you happen to blog about it? I'd like to read that. I don't think it held together, but I absolutely loved reading it.

What I've read of it, I've really liked.

I didn't blog about it, but I wrote about it some in "Reading Comics." And I think it totally does hold together, although it takes multiple readings to see how all the pieces fit...

It held together at least as well as most other multi-title maxi-events lateley (which is to say I shrug my shoulders), but yeah, wall-to-wall fun even when y're baffled. I especially liked the Frankenstein.

oooh i have a two-day sojourn at my parents' coming up, i might dig out all of these and read them without the two three-month gaps

still not getting the hate for mr miracle i gotta say.

Like much of Mozza's recent work I find it exhilarating yet vaugely unsatisfying. I've only read the first two trades though.

Mr. Miracle was the only section of this that pretty much remained impenetrable to me; everything else was either self-contained enough or had enough exposition to explain what was going on. My perception is that MM is the one that leans the most on presupposed DC knowledge out of the seven series but that's probably because I'm least familiar with the stuff that series was playing around with.

Shining Knight was fucking balls-out awesome IMO.

okay i'm in! i think i saw an issue of klarion(?) that looked pretty cool,

Fool that I am, I'm gonna make the same offer I made Mordy about Final Crisis: post what you didn't understand about any of the Seven Soldiers series here, and I'll do my best to explain with reference only to stuff that's in 7S itself.

I didn't understand who most of the peripheral ppl in Mr. Miracle were and why I should give a shit about them.

i don't think i had that problem with miracle man (as far as the new gods stuff), and i had only the vaguest awareness of those characters before 7S.

i kinda forgot about 7S but it was pretty fun to read these as they came out.

It holds together if I make it, but I don't know if that counts. What, eg, did Zatanna actually do in SS#1? I had something last I read it (and I've read the whole thing a good 5-6 times), but it needs active thought while reading to hold in mind. This isn't a bad thing, at all. It's good. And I ADORE this series. I think I just wish Grant'd been given 20ish extra pages for the finale.

i always forget that pretty much the only 70s comix i have read = jack kirby's mister miracle run and a couple other new gods things. and that this was the year before seven soldiers came out. which probably explains why i liked mister miracle disproportionately.

Oh also - should I track down JLA Classified 1-3 also??

YES

Niles, as I understand it, Zatanna uses the Merlin (in the form of the texts we've been reading) to join forces with, how do I put this without spoilering it, the same person she requested help from in SS:Z #4, in order to bring all the Soldiers' stories into sync with each other.

Dave K, if you enjoyed SS, that JLA Classified arc is a nice little prequel, involving Sheeda and Neh-Buh-Loh--you can even connect All Star Superman #10 to it!--but not a necessary component.

SPOILERS!!

I just read this whole thing through for the first time, and it definitely wasn't a disappointment. I feel like I want to immediately read it again, just to catch all the details I missed the first time. But first I thought I'd like to write down a few things about it...

As I understood it, the Seven Unknown Men represented comic book creators (being yet another example of Morrison lookalikes inserted into his comics), maybe also the reader as a co-creator (I'll come to this later on). And their Time Sewing Machine is basically a superhero writer's tool of changing continuities, imagining and reimagining stories and characters. So when they wipe the Spider character's previous identity away and give him a new identity and a new purpose, that's also what Morrison is doing to the seven characters in the series: reimagining (since they all have had a previous incarnation in comics) characters, giving them a new identity and a new purpose. And by the end of the story, that's also what the Seven do Zor, the rogue Eight Unknown Man. He becomes Cyrus Gold, who is killed and later turns into the zombie-like Solomon Grundy of DC universe (I had to check Wikipedia for this, as I didn't know the origin of the character before). So he too is reimagined, though in a retroactive sense. And of course Grundy is then reimagined as the Grundymen in the Klarion series.

But the Seven Men are seen in this light, what does it mean that they fight against the Sheeda? In some issue of the series (I think maybe Frankenstein #4) it's mentioned that when the Sheeda "harvest" a civilization, they not only feed on it's material products but also on its culture. And the Sheeda's own civilization is described as an "imitation of culture". So if the Seven Unknown Men are the powers of imagination, who can recycle old ideas into something new, then the Sheeda are scavengers who feed (i.e. "recycle") on culture and ideas without anything new coming out of it. And this means, as a force of unimagination, the Sheeda are then analogous to the Outer Church in The Invisibles. If seen from this light, there's an irony in the fact that the Sheeda are also the fairies of human history; fairies, I think, are often seen as a sort of a symbol of human imagination, but here they serve the exact opposite function.

What remains kinda unclear to me is, what is the "third way" mentioned in the end of the final issue (and in some of the previous issues as well)? It's hinted as being the road between the road to Paradise and the road to Hell. In many ways these stories are about unreluctant superheroes, people who for one reason or another would not want to be heroes coming to accept that they are needed as one (though I'm not sure if The Shining Knight and Frankenstein really fit into this interpretation). So does the "third way" refer to this? Or does it also have to do with imagination and anti-imagination?

One more thing, I think there's a signifigance to the fact that in the end of the final issue, when one of the Seven Men gives the rogue Eight Man "miser's coat", this is all seen from the point of view the reader. The obvious explanation is that the miser's coat, "threadbare and ragged... the work of too many hands to ever fit properly" is a metaphor for the whole tapestry-like story and how it comes (or doesn't come) together by this final issue. So the Unknown Man sewing the miser's coat on the Eight Man is a metaphor for Morrison trying to explain to the reader how all these bits might fit together. But if we take the idea a bit further, in this sequence the viewpoints of the reader and the Eight Man are one and the same, so does that mean that the reader is (or has become) the Eight Man? This would mean that the reader is also the rogue creator responsible for inserting the "Sheeda strain" into "the fabric of our universe" (as mentioned in Zatanna #4). And the Sheeda strain is the thing that bring these seven stories together, so it's the reader's interpretation of the whole thing that makes it a whole. Hence the idea of the reader as a co-creator, the Eight of the Seven Men. Or am I reading too much into this?

i am only on the issue ones, rereading, but i have one — who is the seventh soldier who doesn't show up in #0? n.b. if this was answered upthread apols.

It's Bulleteer. It's revealed in some issue of her series that she was supposed to join the Western guy's themed, but got some doubts about the whole hero business.

"Western guy's team"

i probably forgot that in the six months between them, first time round. up to #4 of shining knight, going in publication order, still don't know these —

2. what's the connection between misty's die and the one in guardian/klarion?

3. who are the adult versions of the various members of the newsboy legion?

2. "croatoan is a sophisticated artificial intelligence system and it comes in the form of a pair of dice", okay n/m

3 i think also sorts itself out. who was larry, though?

Thomp: you'll see the dice together later on.

As for the Newsboy Army:

Li'l Hollywood: turns up on the convention circuit in Bulleteer 3, looking much younger than her actual age
Baby Brain: editor of the Manhattan Guardian
Ali-Ka-Zoom: the Merlin of the Ghetto, as seen in Zatanna and Shining Knight etc.
Kid Scarface: Vincenzo the Undying Don
Chop Suzi: got knocked up as a teenager, gave birth to Lars and Lena, then died
Captain 7: apparently killed Chop Suzi, thrown into the cabinet by the other Newsboys
Millions the Mystery Mutt: the rumor from Bulleteer 3 pays off at the end of SS #1

I think Larry was just a friend of the original Newsboy Legion. There's a bit of confusion what happens to Captain 7 (the kid with the football wear)... Presumably he could've escaped being thrown into Ali's magic cabin and have become Larry, but when Zatanna sees the cabin later on, she speaks of a "murder case", so I assume Captain 7 died and Larry was just some other kid they knew, not a member of the Legion.

(x-post)

4 who picked up jake jordan's engagement ring (as seen in the background of one of the other issues)?

Jake Jordan, poorly coloured. Yeah Douglas that sounds about like what I was thinking, it's not exactly clear but as I said, it's good to think. THINKING IS FUN!

"Oh also - should I track down JLA Classified 1-3 also??"

Dude, this might just be the most perfect superhero work of Grant's career. Pay in gold if you must. Nice trade of that and a pretty cool/wacky WildCATS crossover avail as "JLA: Ultramarine Corps".

it felt very different on rereading, this. i guess lots of it had less of the MAN, THAT WAS AWESOME rush to it reading it all at one sitting.

also it's structured (i think) so that all the metafictional stuff & all the our-heroes-are-linked-and-don't-even-know-it stuff peaks in the middle, with the newsboy army reveal and the whole zor sequence.

frankenstein i noticed improved a lot if i tried to read each issue in under two and a half minutes.

i think the actual ideal reading order is whatever you do sitting there with all of it trying to figure it all out or find whatever issue it was that some background detail just made you think of.

I probably need to reread this, but I think last time I read this, I assumed the third way mentioned in SS #1 was his way of indicating the integrated worldview that allows for all paths along the spiral to co-exist. Granted, this was after reading the whole Spiral Dynamics theory of Seven Soldiers and Ken Wilber's A Theory of Everything (which argues that the higher levels of consciousness development will allow for a worldview that allows the healthy development of everyone regardless of where they are on the spiral, which sounds to me like King Mob's rhetoric at the end of Invisibles).

Not sure how this ties in with your theory about imagination and anti-imagination (or nostalgia vampirism or whatever terms works best).

I've tried to read about that those spiral things, but it seemed like a way too easy "explain-it-all" form of sociopsychology, so I couldn't be arsed to go further. Anyway, I don't thing it's the answer... Even though Morrison's work is obviously influenced by all sorts of mystical and (quasi)scientific theories, I don't think he expects the readers to know all about them in order to read his comics "properly". I think the key to understanding his stories can always be found within the story itself, and I didn't see any mention of the spiral things in Seven Soldiers.

The "third way" beyond easy binaries of course plays and important role in the third volume of The Invisibles, and since the Seven Men and the Sheeda can (in my opinion) performing a similar function the Invisibles and the Archons, it could be the explanation for the "third way" is similar here too. But I'm not totally convinced by this, because 7S seems more like a typical good-versus-evil type of story than Invisibles ever was, so the mention to "third way" seems more superfluous, something Morrison tagged to the story just to say that he's really beyond the sort of binaries presented here.

I've just read the annotations to the story at Barbelith, and according to them the protagonist in the poem quoted does indeed choose a third path beyond the ones leading to Heaven and Hell, and that leads him to the Elfland. Don't know what to make of that.

"can be seen performing a similar function"

"as the Invisibles and the Archons"

I can't write...

All right, just reread SS#1 (which is always weirder and better than I remember it). I think you're certainly right that it's dealing with the same issue as the Invisibles, which was presented as a fairly binary struggle up until the last volume. I never really figured out what Morrison was talking about with the talk of creating a world in which everyone (even the Archons) gets what they want until I read that Wilber book. It's certainly overly pat new age-y sociopsychology, but it certainly seemed to me to be talking about what Morrison was trying to get at. One of the two major changes Wilber makes to the Beck and Cowan theory is the explanation of what the higher levels of the development would entail - it's pretty explicit about allowing all the other levels of development (some of which look horrible from the dominant green society we're in) to continue to exist with the understanding that it's all part of the greater system.

All of which seems to be saying that the next stage of human mental development is the understanding of Spiral Dynamics, which seems a little self-promoting to me, but it does at least offer one way to view Morrison's writing.

And, as you say, I'm not sure that's what he's getting at here. If we chuck all that junk aside, and assume that he's associating Elfland with the immersive fiction presented by comics, it seems pretty much the same as the fictionsuit solution presented in The Invisibles.

To complicate things more, this time through the whole framing story reminded me of the Gnosticism by way of PKD that cropped up in the second volume of Invisibles (with the diety who has accidently been trapped inside his own creation). I'm not sure if the implication is that the diety should just enjoy being part of the story (which seems to go against the "rescue mission" tone of most of his previous works), or if the idea is that the particpants can regain their creative role (which probably ties in well with his personal worldview) instead of falling into false dualism.

Given how much New Age/spiritual tourist/magic bullshit really gives me the hives, I'm surprised I like Morrison and Moore so much. Quality of the writing (usually) trumping the beliefs of the writers, I guess.

Ha! Me too. Though I have less tolerance for Moore's, um, Mooreisms. Totally passed on Promethea after the first book, but lovedLovedLOVED Top 10.
Morrison at least (usually) peppers his magicks with a palpable sense of glee and wonder.

I think Morrison's views on new stage stuff and magic aren't distracting because he usually manages to make them part of the magic of the stories themselves, instead of lecturing about "real" magic like Moore does in Promethea. Usually there's multiple readings to Morrison's comics, and magic in his stories can be see on a purely metaphorical level. The only place where his new age mumbo jumbo did irritate me was Invisibles Volume 3, and even then parts of it were kinda cool.

As for Moore, has he actually tried to propagate his views on magic in any other comics than Promethea? There were some bits in From Hell, but they fit easily into the main story. Of his newer comics I've only read the ABC stuff, but I haven't noticed any magic stuff there besides Promethea. Top 10, for example, is about as down-to-earth as an Alan Moore comic can be. Maybe Promethea helped him get all that stuff out of his system, so he doesn't need to lecture about it elsewhere?

I think From Hell and Promethea are similar in that in both cases the use of magic fits into the main story, but that's because both characters (Promethea and Gull) are magicians. You could still have done From Hell without the magical bits, but I don't think he was interested in doing so (and you'd have lost the amazing "tour of London" issue, which I really should reread now that I actually live here).

He's done a lot of magic stuff in his comicbook adaptations (usually with Eddie Campbell?) of talk/performances that he's given. Birth Caul, Snakes and Ladders, I think there's one other but I can't remember, and Wikipedia isn't helping. Though hooray, the The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic is due out in 2010!

The tour of London doesn't really need magic to explain it, does it? Okay, the spots they visit form a pentagram on the map, but that could be totally arbitrary. Gull could've (consciously and subconsciously) just picked the sort of historical places to visit which would form a pentagram. It's not like it would be very hard to do in a city as old as London. The only bits in FH that are truly supernatural and can't be interpreted as products of Gull's imagination are his visions of the future.

Erm... no. All the places that get visited are related in the whole Hawksmoor/Masonic conspiracy. It's really explicit and if you didn't absorb that then I think you've missed pretty much everything about From Hell.

Oh yeah, I forgot about the Hawksmoor thing, it's been ages since I read FH. Anyway, it's not very hard to draw pentagram between five different spots on a map, as long as they are far enough from each other. Or maybe Hawksmoor planned them that way? I really don't think that issued requires a supernatural explanation.

You really didn't read it, did you.

aldo dude, taking aggro across threads is the kind of thing that's made the rest of ILX a hellhole, like.

But yeah, Tuomas, that issue is more than just a jaunt in a cab, you should probably reread it. If anything, From Hell is a stronger statement of the this tendency than either Promethea or Seven Soldiers, as it's actually set in our world, rather than DC or a fantasy version of the future.

Well, what's wrong with my interpretation then? What's the correct way to interpret that issue? It's been years since I read FH and I can't remember that particular story that well, all I remember is thinking that it didn't necessarily require any supernatural explanation, unlike Gull's visions of the future.

(x-post)

I'm not taking it across threads, I'm just as frustrated here as I am there, but sorry if it came across that way.

The trip across London is an explanation of how the esoterics and occultists have manipulated the London landscape over the decades/centuries and generated a giant engine for their theorising and energies which has led to the inevitability of Gull's activities, that London has been led up to this exact point without realising. It cribs heavily from Iain Sinclair's work in this area.

Okay, this was why I asked if Hawksmoor planned them that way? Which I think was the interpretation Moore was trying to get at, though not the only possible one. I mean, all this still doesn't require a supernatural explanation, just the supposition that Masons and occultists have had a strong influence on London architecture and city planning.

Yes, it does, the interpretation Moore is aiming for is that they were deliberately placed where they were do amplify the occult energies. The only one not planned was St Mary Woolnoth, which was on a site known for ritual worship for 800 years by time of building.

From the Wikipedia entry on Hawksmoor:

Hawksmoor is the subject of a poem by Iain Sinclair called 'Nicholas Hawksmoor: His Churches' which appeared in Sinclair's collection of poems Lud Heat (1975). Sinclair, a practised psychogeographer, argued that Hawksmoor's churches formed a pattern consistent with the forms of Theistic Satanism.

This idea was developed by Peter Ackroyd in his novel Hawksmoor (1985). In this, the historical Hawksmoor is refigured as the fictional Devil-worshiper Nicholas Dyer, while the eponymous Hawksmoor is cast as a twentieth-century detective charged with investigating a series of murders perpertrated on Dyer's (Hawksmoor's) churches. The novel is arguably a good example of magic realism.

Both Sinclair and Ackroyd's ideas in turn were further developed by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell in their graphic novel, From Hell, which speculated that Jack the Ripper used Hawksmoor's buildings as part of ritual magic, with his victims as human sacrifice. In the appendix, Moore revealed that he had met and spoke with Sinclair on numerous occasions while developing the core ideas of the book.

(x-post) It requires occultists!

Yeah, it requires occultists and their belief in the supernatural, but not actual supernatural forces. The comic doesn't show the buildings being used to channel supernatural energies, even if it says they were planned to do that.

lolz I saw the name "Hawksmoor" and instantly started scanning upthread for mention of a Morrison-penned version of The Authority.

There is one! Well, there's two issues.

Tuomas, if you cast your mind or eye back three hours, you'll see that I was talking about the things that would have been missing if you'd taken the magickal elements out of From Hell, and that's why I listed that chapter. I didn't say that they have to prove that occultism works in the world portrayed - I think Gull's visions do that well enough.

Wait, which issues???? Why don't I remember this

#1 came out Dec 2006, #2 came out May 2007, nothing else ever got published.

It was during the Wildstorm Relaunch, so about when Gail Simone started Gen13, I think. He wrote one issue of WildC.A.T.S and two of the Authority - the first of them was set almost entirely within our world, someone investigating a deep sea wreck or something that turns out to be the carrier. The second, which I think was greatly delayed, had actual Authority in it. Art by Gene Ha.

<a href="http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=154312";>Apparently, it won't be back, but WildC.A.T.S will</a>.

The second issue has The Doctor and Jack Hawksmoor in a New York comic shop buying the trades of The Authority and complaining about the price. It ends iirc with Apollo shot down by US forces in Afghanistan; the Midnighter standing over his unconscious body and about to open a can of whupass on an approaching tank.

There's also some foreshadowing stuff about something horrible and terminal happening to the Earth if they don't get out of our universe and back to their own.

Tuomas, if you cast your mind or eye back three hours, you'll see that I was talking about the things that would have been missing if you'd taken the magickal elements out of From Hell, and that's why I listed that chapter.

Okay, I see your point, but what I was trying to say is that Moore doesn't really put forth a "magic is real" idea until Gull's visions in the end. When I first read FH I thought all the Masonic conspiracy and occult stuff was just there to make Gull into a more interesting character. The tone of the whole comic is mostly very realistic, so I thought all that stuff was just Gull's ramblings and hallucinations, I totally didn't expect the ending to be what it was. I'm still not sure if was good choice on Moore's part... As fascinating as it all is, I think it takes away from the über-researched "this is how it could've actually happened" nature of the rest of the story.

I don't really think it has such a nature - there's an entire chapter* on how there are a million different theories, and he just picked and chose between them to write a story he was interested in. He even has a scene that the footnotes admit was largely added "so that I can say more scurrilous and unpleasant things about Freemasons".

*admittedly the last, I think.

Of course there were a million different theories (like in historical research in general, there's never one "true" history) but the comic itself gives the impression, more on an aesthetic than "truth" level, that this is how it could've happened, until it breaks away from it with Gull's illusions.

Even all the occult stuff that's in the comic before the final revelations could be interpreted as a serial killer case study, a key to his madness.

I like Frankenstein because he kills people and it has an exclamation mark.

okay now I remember the Morrison Authority

grrr

Morrison also ghosted one issue of Millar's Authority.

He's done a lot of magic stuff in his comicbook adaptations (usually with Eddie Campbell?) of talk/performances that he's given. Birth Caul, Snakes and Ladders, I think there's one other but I can't remember, and Wikipedia isn't helping. Though hooray, the The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic is due out in 2010!

Moore's never adapted these himself: Eddie did The Birth Caul from a tape someone made him of the CD because Moore hadn't kept a printout; on Snakes & Ladders Moore did make a photocopy of the text, but that was the extent of his involvement. Those are the only two that got adapted, but several more came out on CD: The Moon & Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre Of Marvels, Angel Passage and The Highbury Working. The last two are specifically psychogeographic.

You can get both the adaptations, along with Eddie's interview of Moore from Egomania #2, in A Disease of Language

(There's also a non-magical CD of Moore doing the CIA eagle's monologue from Shadowplay.)

I reread all of Seven Soldiers, and on second reading it felt like the all the stories do make into an interesting whole, but it's more on a thematic level than on the actual story level. While there is a lot of interconnection between the miniseries, and while Morrison does manage to bring it all together to some degree with SS #1, I think the big narrative does leave a lot of open questions and unresolved story threads. When I have the more time I think I'll try to write a larger analysis on what I thought were the main themes of SS... But since it's fun to speculate, I'll try to sum up the questions I thought were left unanswered in the series (some of them intentionally so, no doubt):

* What exactly were Guardian's and Mister Miracle's contribution to the whole Seven Soldier's scheme, i.e. the fight against Sheeda? Guardian lead the New Yorker's counter-attack, I guess that counts, though his contribution would have had more emphasis if SS #1 would have actually had enough pages to show the battle of New York in proper comics form. But what about Mr. Miracle? I know that his whole story ties to others on a thematical level, but on the story level his only contribution seems to have been freeing Aurakles. And since Aurakles had already thrown his "spear" 40000 years ago, I don't see how freeing him now helped to defeat the Sheeda. Which brings me to my next question...

* Was I, Spyder actually the Seventh Soldier all along, and not Mister Miracle? Did the Seven Unknown Men know that he'd become corrupted by the Sheeda, and therefore plan his role as a double agent beforehand? Was he faking it all along, or did he only come to his senses in Bulleteer #3, where he deliberately missed Bulleteer? Anyway, his role in bringing down Gloriana was so crucial I think it's possible he was the secret Seventh Soldier.

* What was Zor's motivation in aiding the Sheeda? Based on his comments, when he met the original Nesboy Army in Guardian #4, it seemed like he just enjoyed exposing people's guilty secrets and corrupting them. If the Seven Men are comic book creators, maybe Zor can be seen as a rogue creator, someone who enjoys bringing all this nasty stuff like illicit sex and murder and mental problems into the world of the wide-eyed idealistic superheroes, just like he did when he gave the Newsboy Army their new "suits" in the end of Guardian #4. So maybe he's yet another way of Morrison criticizing the "grim and gritty" superhero writers, just like the whole series can be seen as his attempt to find the "third way" in superhero comics between naive idealism and gritty pessimism.

* So Alix was the "spear that was never thrown" because he was a direct descendant of Aurakles? Which would mean that the "spear" is actually a metaphor for, er, Aurakles' sperm? I can't help but to think Alix's husband had something to do with Aurakles' spear as well, with such a significant first name as "Lance", but this bit was left unclear. It felt kinda flat and anticlimactic that the terrible Gloriana would die in a car crash, but I did appreciate the way all this tied to the Bulleteer miniseries. Alix's story is all about her rejecting the traditional superhero role and all that comes with it, and by the end of the series she's like, "Screw saving the world, I'm outta here!", yet she ends up inadvertently saving the world anyway, because it was always her destiny. Hence her final scene in SS #1, when the police officer says "You're free", and her answer is, "Am I?". She knows she's been just used as a pawn in a game. Note also that according to SS #1 the spear's name was both "Love" and "Vengeance". In on sense this describes Aurakles haing kids and forwarding his vendetta to them, but I think it also refers to Alix's special power of empathy, even towards her enemies. Is she hadn't decided to take Sally Sonic to the hospital, her car would have never hit Gloriana.

* I've read some comments where it's said Klarion was the traitor among the Seven Soldiers, but did he really betray them? In SS #1 Misty says that even if Gloriana is killed, she will then have to assume the mantle of the Sheeda Queen and nothing will really change. But Klarion takes that responsibility away from Misty, and there's nothing to suggest that he will lead the Sheeda the same way Gloriana and Melmoth did. Maybe the Sheeda will stop their harvests now that he's their king? Does anyone know if anything's come out of this storyline in other DC books? Have Klarion and the Sheeda reappeared somewhere else?

* What about Frankestein? Does he remain servant to Klarion, or does he manage to subvert the Grundy wand, and maybe defeat Klarion? I thought he got the crappiest ending of all the Seven Soldiers, especially considering how cool he was as a character.

* I was kinda confused by New Gods apperances in this series. I haven't read that much of the mainstream DC books, so can someone explain whether they're actually tied to Earth bodies like the Mister Miracle series suggested, or if it was all just part of Shilo Norman's imaginary life? If they really do inhabit Earth bodies, how did that happen? In general I thought the New Gods bits could've maybe been left out of the whole series. It was kinda hard to see how they connected to the Sheeda, so it all just made the story needlessly complex.

* Theoughout the series we see six of the seven treasures given to Aurakles re-emerge in modern times, but never see The Hammer. As far as I understood, in the Arthurian backstory it was used by Sir Bors to split the atom, but after that it's never seen again. Does it disappear, or is it maybe seen in the story in some metahphrorical disguise? Does this relate to its capability of splitting the atom? The story doesn't really explain what the Arthurian knights did with the atom bomb they created.

* "Ebeneezer Badde"? Does this mean Morrison now thinks E's are bad? Compared to some his previous work, SS seems to paint drug use in a more negative manner, just like New X-Men did with The Kick. Has Morrison changed his mind, or does he merely he distinguish between good and bad drug use, with only the latter taking place in SS?

And last but not least...

* How did Millions the Mystery Mutt escape the fate prescribed to him (in Guardian #4) in order to become the Dogfather?

Actually, I think i just figured out the answer to the last question. The caption under Millions' picture in Guardian #4 says "dead at 14". But as have seen with the Undying Don, the Undry Cauldron can actually revive the dead. So maybe Kid Scarface and Millions stayed as partners even after Newspaper Army broke up; Millions funded the Don's mafia empire, and some time after he died the Don revived him in the Cauldron, making him immortal. So now that the Don is dead, Millions is left in charge of his empire.

Gah, now I'm going to have re-read the whole series again. But it's worth noting that Morrison is sticking with the "New Gods trapped in human bodies" idea for Final Crisis. I assume that, in the continuity Morrison has in mind, the New Gods (or at least some of the New Gods) fell and became human sometime before Seven Soldiers, and we're just now getting the conclusion of that storyline now.

Of course, that only makes sense if you ignore any non-Morrison-written DC title from the last couple years, but that might be for the best.

Okay, I just thought that it was weird SS never explained why and how the New Gods got those bodies, except for some vague mention that Darkseid won the war. But if he won the war, why would he take a human form too? I guess it'll be explained in Final Crisis, maybe I'll read it some day.

I don't think it's a matter of being trapped in human bodies; he's talked about how gods are the pure forms of human concepts, so they can express themselves through humans. When you crush somebody's will, you're being Darkseid.

While I've certainly heard him say that, and I think that's what he's getting at metaphorically, we're now getting Darkseid saying he had a fall and complaining about how quickly bodies wear out. That sounds more like a literal "New Gods in human form" than the theurgy Morrison talks about in his personal worldview.

I will say, though, that I clearly am not a very detail-oriented reader of GM's stuff. I get so wrapped up in the metaphor I stop paying attention to things like plot, so I barely even remember any of the events Tuomas is talking about here. I just thought it was interesting that he's basically creating his own thread of continuity with JLA Classified, Seven Soldiers, and Final Crisis.

I just finished the last Seven Soldiers book this afternoon. I thought it was a great read, maybe my favorite of what Grant Morrison has done for DC.

I think the thing Grant Morrison is playing up about the New Gods is that really they are behind the whole shebang. They gave fire to humans starting the whole circle that ends with the Sheeda. Shiloh even says something to the effect to 'Dark Side' that he knows he is ultimately behind all of this. Mister Miracle is the embodiment of will to be free or at least the opposing force of the anti-life equasion.

After reading 7 Soldiers and 52, I think that DC really screwed up. They had some really cool stuff setup in those two books and pretty much missed completely on follow up.

Okay, I finally did read Final Crisis, but I think it made some of the stuff in Seven Soldiers even more confusing. So, apparently the New Gods are dead, but were they dead already when Seven Soldiers came out? Did they die and then "fall" into the human bodies we see in the Mister Miracle mini? If so, why don't we see the human versions of New Gods in Final Crisis (except for Metron)? And why does Darkseid go through so much trouble to inhabit Dan Turpin's body in Final Crisis, when he already has the "Dark Side" body shown in Seven Soldiers?

Also, in Final Crisis we see Frankenstein among the heroes fighting for Earth... Apparently he managed to break Klarion's spell and return back to our time, but when and how did this happen?

After having read the whole Seven Soldiers for the third time, I'm pretty sure now that Klarion actually isn't a traitor among the Soldiers. Throughout his miniseries Morrison shows that Klarion can think outside the box, that he is against conformity and wants to seek out new things, whereas the Sheeda are shown as totally lacking any imagination. They're vultures who've built their whole culture by robbing ideas from the cultures of past, that's why they're shown as stereotypical fairy tale creatures: the fairy queen, the evil stepmother, the huntsman, etc. Like Archons in The Invisibles the Sheeda are anti-imagination and pro-conformity. So, (besides saving Misty from becoming the next Sheeda Queen) by becoming their king Klarion might lead them to new, unforeseen directions and find a way out of their cultural cul de sac, hence cancelling the need for any future Harrowings.

wait, ppl thought Klarion was a traitor?

And this might explain the reference to the Third Way in SS#1: it's not a binary story where the good guys beat the bad guys, but instead the bad guys become something else via the force of imagination. Just like The Terrible Time Tailor ends up becoming something else too (Solomon Grundy, to be precise). So maybe the Third Way is imagination... Like most of Morrison's major works, Seven Soldiers is ultimately about the power of imagination and what it means to us.

wait, ppl thought Klarion was a traitor?

Yeah, many people on the Barbelith board seemed to think that way. Apparently the promo material for SS said that one of the Soldiers will die, and one of them will turn out to be a traitor. So people automatically assumed the traitor was Klarion.

Though if their really was supposed to be a traitor among the Soldiers, I don't know who it was. Maybe the promo material was acutally referring to I, Spyder, who did indeed turn out to be a traitor, but no the way people thought. His betrayal essentially turned him into the Eight Soldier.

well isn't the point kind of that Klarion was more of a traitor to his own ppl by not actively fighting against the Sheeda Queen

No, I don't think so. He doesn't meet the Queen at any point, and it isn't even clear whether he knows about her existence. And he does go and warn his people and fight against Melmoth when Melmoth tries to enslave them. That's a pretty essential bit in his mini, as it shows he's grown to accept that he has some responsibilities too. Hence it wouldn't make much sense to think that he goes all evil in the end when becomes the king of Sheeda.

So, apparently the New Gods are dead, but were they dead already when Seven Soldiers came out?

Depends on how you look at it – they fell backwards through time when they “died”, so they hadn’t died yet in their own timeline, but they were dead already at the time of the events.

Did they die and then "fall" into the human bodies we see in the Mister Miracle mini?

Looks like it.

If so, why don't we see the human versions of New Gods in Final Crisis (except for Metron)?

We do, we see at least a dozen of them. They’re fairly major characters in Final Crisis!

And why does Darkseid go through so much trouble to inhabit Dan Turpin's body in Final Crisis, when he already has the "Dark Side" body shown in Seven Soldiers?

Because he has almost worn that body out, and needs to find another body/mind tough and tenacious enough to support him. This is pretty explicit in the text IIRC.

Also, in Final Crisis we see Frankenstein among the heroes fighting for Earth... Apparently he managed to break Klarion's spell and return back to our time, but when and how did this happen?

Hey, Kids! Comics!

ie it doesn’t matter at all, just like the leaps between times and locations from issue to issue of Frankenstein didn’t matter.

If so, why don't we see the human versions of New Gods in Final Crisis (except for Metron)?

We do, we see at least a dozen of them. They’re fairly major characters in Final Crisis!

Really? I guess I have to reread the whole thing again then, because all I can remember is Metron appearing to that Monitor fellow while he was imprisoned. Where do the other New Gods show up?

ie it doesn’t matter at all, just like the leaps between times and locations from issue to issue of Frankenstein didn’t matter.

I don't totally agree, because despite the leaps you could pretty much see why and how Frankenstein got from place to place. Whereas by the end of SS#1 his fate is left totally uncertain, and there's nothing inherent in the story that would explain how he got from there to Final Crisis. Also, knowing what happened to Frankenstein might also shed some light on what happened to Klarion, which I think is even more interesting.

You don't need to have read Seven Soldiers to read Final Crisis, so it REALLY doesn't matter how he got there. He had some off-screen adventures! The end. Or if you DIDN'T read 7S: "Wow look, a fighting Frankenstein monster!"

I'm sure there's lots of talk on the FC thread about various of the New Gods in their human shells (including Perps, early on, calling everyone else deadshits for not realising that they occupied multiple hosts, then DISAPPEARING FROM THE THREAD (dun dun dun!) when asked to point to a single example of this), so I won't spoil it for you here by citing any yet - it really is a big part of the fun trying to spot them as you go! (Although some are VERY obvious.)