Seven Soldiers of Victory part 1

Seven Soldiers of Victory part 1

Seven Soldiers of Victory #0, Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight #1-4, Seven Soldiers: The Manhattan Guardian #1-4

Originally released in 2005

Written by Grant Morrison

Art by J.H. Williams III (#0), Simone Bianchi (Shining Knight), Cameron Stewart (Manhattan Guardian)

I'm going to take some time to build up to reading the increasingly inaccurately-named Final Crisis event; it shouldn't take as long to get to as Hickman's Secret Wars did, but I figure I'll have to do some reading beforehand to prepare.  The Seven Soldiers of Victory series is thirty issues long - a prologue, four issues on each of the random superheroes and supervillains who were gathered to be the team's members, and an epilogue - and while only one of those four issue mini-series seems to tie into Final Crisis, I think I'll read all of them.

After an initial plan to kill a giant spider leaves a team of Z-list superheroes slaughtered by godlike beings, a mysterious group of men set plans in motion to gather seven replacements in order to save the world.  The team consists of Shining Knight (a character from some kind of alternate take on King Arthur), the Manhattan Guardian (one in what appears to be a long line of people who use the Guardian name, based on a Jack Kirby creation that's extremely similar to Captain America), Klarion (a witch-boy, general nuisance, and foe of Etrigan), Zatanna (a stage magician who can do actual magic, and the best-known member by far), Mister Miracle (not Scott Free but Shilo Norman, Scott's apprentice from the Jack Kirby days), Bulleteer (wife of a mad scientist who creates a metallic skin and covers them both in it; he dies, while she barely survives), and Frankenstein's Monster (a monster created by Dr. Frankenstein).

I'm going to focus on the first two for now, as trying to cover thirteen issues in one day is a bit much.  While trying to defend Camelot from an attack by beings that are either magical or extra-dimensional (from their perspective, those would probably be the same thing), the Shining Knight is sent forward in time to a modern day city.

What follows feels like a mix between the Terminator and the ending of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as the Shining Knight is almost immediately arrested by police officers.

Meanwhile, the Shining Knight's flying talking horse is found by a mafia boss who supposedly can't die.  The two plotlines don't intersect, weirdly enough, though it leads to some entertaining moments.

With each story only being four issues long, it results in some plotlines feeling like they abruptly end or aren't fully resolved.  However, the set-up of the Seven Soldiers gives Grant Morrison an opportunity to show off their range when it comes to writing.

The Shining Knight's story is one of paranoia, bloody revenge, and tragedy, while the Manhattan Guardian's story is more ludicrous.  It still has it's darker elements, but some of it is played for dark comedy.

The very next panel is this:

The Manhattan Guardian is a mascot-slash-reporter for a newspaper that will seemingly cover everything from robot uprisings to subway pirates. The subway pirates make for entertaining antagonists in terms of how over-the-top they are, though their actions have a devastating impact on the Guardian.

Jake Jordan, the man wearing the costume, is more confident with this job after an extended period of unemployment and depression, but being the Guardian wreaks havoc on his personal life.

Unlike the Shining Knight's story, the Sheeda are only barely connected to what happens in the Manhattan Guardian's issues. These characters aren't really a team (they don't interact with each other, and seemingly won't until Seven Soldiers of Victory #1, which is the last issue of this story), but seemingly, their plots are going to come together to result in the Sheeda's defeat, and I'm curious about how that happens.