why do I keep buying Seven Soldiers comics?

Zatanna seems to be the best of the ones thus far, IMO.

Really feeling: Shining Knight, #0

Feeling: Zatanna

Hur hur.

I'm guessing Shining Knight is going to work the stranger-in-a-strange-land angle, Zatanna is depicting magick in the "real world" (its lack of practical application re: trying to live a normal life & so on), Guardian is more urban and down-to-earth (from the hero working for a newspaper, to the pirates scourging the subways, to the golems - "down to earth" monsters!), and Klarion is an archaic god-fearing rebellion / coming-of-age story. So, yeah, what's your drug of choice?

Me, I'd set aside $20, get all five books, and see how you feel about the enterprise as a whole (though I'm gonna guess, Leeeee, that you'll get the most out of Zatanna). If anything, the art's real purty in these books (regardless of what kit's railing on about in the STW threads re: the "unreadability" of Shining Knight).

On the "single issue" question: I have to say not really--kind of the point of Seven Soldiers is how the different titles relate to each other. They're all pretty different in tone, and we're just starting to see how they all fit together.

Note that the artist is coloring his own work on that title.

I really wish Cameron Stewart would start coloring his own art full time. The best stuff I've ever seen by him is stuff he's colored himself. It just raises his game sooooooo much.

This whole things seems to be animated less by the spirit of wacky silver age DC comics (seven soldiers isn't as light) but by Jack Kirby. The comics these resemble the most are Jack Kirby's Fourth World, especially the Jimmy Olsen quality. But when Kirby does it, there's a sort of weird kitschy power to it. Anyways, this connection is sort of obvious, w/ the Guardian and all the newsboy stuff. I think part of the problem is that a lot of these 7 soldiers ideas are sort of generica and formulaically wacky: a flying horse! superpowered pogo sticks! If you look at them for more than a moment, then they don't seem very interesting--this is bad, as Morrison usually zips things by so quickly that his ideas don't force you to scrutinize things as much.

I think when Morrison makes the ideas all there is, like in, say, E is for Extinction or Rock of the Ages or the Fantastic Four series, the story picks up this wonderful translucent lightness. Here, where he claims to be trying to do a "realist" story, he seems to weigh everything down unnecessarily, without really being very good at the realist story part. I don't think you ever get a sense (throughout almost all his work) that he's terribly interested in people, because people are not ideas. Empathy lacks thrillpower.

What surprised me the most were the references weaved between the different titles and the panel layouts. Oddly enough, they remind me of two indie titles that GM has usually talked smack about: Love and Rockets and Acme Novelty Library. While the actual ideas for the different 7 sold titles don't seem that interesting to me, the way he weaves them together so far has seemed sort of deft, sort of like how Jaime would reference one thing in an issue several years later. The art also seems really stunning in how, like We3 or a few pages of New X-Men (the escher maze in Logan's mind or the Moebius-like wordless issue), the panel layout actually has some sort of conceptual shape to it, sort of like the Acme Jokebooks. I'm thinking of the scene in #0 with the maze or when Zatanna and Co go outside the universe. Also, I know he's done pastiche before (the INvisible issue where Jill Thompson draws Rob Liefeld style, poorly), but here, the artists seem good enough to pull it off.

Weirdly enough, I dislike the Cameron Stewart art the most, even though I liked him in The Filth a lot.

Cameron Stewart = Seaguy, Manhattan Guardian
Chris Weston = The Filth

Tribute-wise, it seems as much 2000AD as it does Kirby.

>I am very confused by "where he claims to be trying to do a "realist" story" - I've not read any interviews or anything, but how is any of this remotely like realism? I mean, even by superhero comic standards?

The trade has a two-page intro where he says, weirdly enough, that he decided that it wasn't enough to have interesting ideas, but that he wanted to tell a compelling realistic story with heart, like Watchmen and The Ultimates. His words, not mine. I think that's why he has things like the woman sleeping w/ the Spyder in #0 or Manhattan Guardian's generic backstory about shooting a kid and so on.

Actually, contrariwise, Klarion is a loan character as well (haha I actually had his last previous appearance, when he did that kid-to-adult switch in the Young Justice-based summer crossover), and I loved the spooky little bastard.

"I think No-Beard and All-Beard represent the eternal fight between Grant Morrison and Alan Moore."

I had to read his sentence in the intro twice to fully parse it, but what he was actually saying was that he wanted the stories to have an element of realism to them, but that he didn't think the "real world" settings of Watchmen and The Ultimates would suit the stories as well as the DC Universe would, for all its Houses of Secrets and Super-Gadgets, etc.

I'm about halfway through the first trade and #0 reads better the second (or third time through--and there was a really interesting story in the National Post last weekend about some olden times Scottish practice of killing Upper Class people in swamps so that they'd be sort of preserved and between two worlds and stuff, and that all seemed to fit in perfectly with the story of Solomon Grundy and Slaughter Swamp, which is where #0 opens), and so far I can definitely see the "realism" sidled up against the fantastic (eg, Zatanna's support group, Manhattan Guardian needs a job, etc). I kinda liked the Shining Knight #1, and WTF, was that Green Lantern (presumedly Alan Scott's) the horse was carrying?

WRONG! Well, not that I give a shit about how DC treat the character in any given year or anything, but he's been fun in various Demon series over the decades.

The only series I really dislike and am finding completely opaque and unrelatable at the moment is Mr. Miracle but I'm still going to buy it because it's only 4 issues.

1. The mention of Solomon Grundy and Slaughter Swamp in SSoV #0 and the zombies in Limbo Town being referred to as "Grundies"- is there any real connection there or is it just Morrison having fun? I was under the impression that the name came from a nursery rhyme, though I might be wrong.

2. Am I correct in assuming that "Baron Winter" in Zatanna is the DCU's Cain, and his house the House of Mystery?

and 3. The, er, Turquoise Hexagon Sun in the astral-travelling bits of Zatanna #1, in King Ra-Man's realm I think. I doubt it's a Boards of Canada reference, but is it another occult-y trope that both BoC and Morrison are referring to (like the number 23, etc.)?

Apologies if this post is a bit incoherent, I have an absolute bastard of a headache right now.

2. Baron Winter is a different character from Cain, with the same goatee. He was the lead character of an '80s comic called Night Force; he never leaves his house, but he sends agents out to face supernatural threats (and, often, death or dismemberment). In one of Alan Moore's issues of Swamp Thing--#50, I want to say--there's a seance at his house involving various longtime DC mystical characters, in the course of which Zatara, Zatanna's father, is fried to ash. Hence "not again, my dear..."

3. Not quite a trope, but both a turquoise hexagon and then-Prince Ra-Man appeared in a story involving Eclipso in House of Secrets #76--see http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=19751&zoom=4 .

Hope this is helpful...