 Noteworthy
Items:
by DAVID
BIRD
pp 01-05: Prologue
- True Thomas
The prologue gets its title from a thirteenth century Scot
named Thomas Learmonth, aka Thomas the Rhymer. He was a prophet,
or more correctly, a clairvoyant, who was said to have predicted
the death of a king and the resulting wars. He was called
True Thomas because the cost of his gift was that he wasn’t
allowed to lie. Thomas Ludlow Dalt is not an honest man – a ‘True
Thomas’. Perhaps the title refers to the revelation
of his true nature. He’s a killer. He is not a good
guy. He was brought to Slaughter Swamp to kill “seven
unknown men… mystery men.” That story was a
cover, but he didn’t know that. Interestingly, ‘mystery
men’ is a DC term for a Golden Age hero. You know,
like the original Seven Soldiers.
Thomas is being taken to the old house of Cyrus Gold, aka
Solomon Grundy, who had been killed long ago. The man taking
him there is obviously one of the “unknown men,” but
the imagery reminds me of Charon, the ferryman of Hades.
The lines he is quoting are from the ballad Thomas the Rhymer,
which tells the story of Learmonth and how the fairy queen
gifted him with the ability to see the future. In the ballad
she shows him three roads. The ferrymen only quotes the first
two, the third is the road to “Elfland” (fairy
land). Dalt is told of it later.
Two things happen on route to the house. They discuss Gold
and his death and allude to his transformation; and a Sheeda
rider stings Dalt. I like that he swats it away. The JLA
story made them seem all too efficient. Of course, this one
arguably did its job before being killed. Still. Others have
pointed out that the dead fairy’s body is shaped like
the number seven. Personally, the image reminds me of a page
out of Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book. That’s
a book that will add nothing to your appreciation of this
story, but it’s very funny nevertheless.
The inside of the house is much bigger than the outside,
with seven numbered doors leading out from the foyer. I don’t
know if the hall Dalt is taken down is through one of them,
or another passage altogether. Six voices are speaking; each
indicated by a different colour. In the Zatanna story we
will learn of the seventh. They clean him up, strip him down,
and send him to the showers. They don’t think much
of their guest. They talk of that third road and explain
that “Slaughter Swamp is one of those in-between places,
where solid things turn soft and change.” They then
change him. We don’t know how or into what, but the
colour seems to be running off him and down the drain. If
Slaughter Swamp is a road to fairy land, does that make it
a vulnerable place when it comes to the harrowing?
The prologue ends with the words of Shelley Gaynor, our
narrator for the remainder of the issue.
TOP
pp 06-11: Part
1 - Shelley and the Super-Cowboys
Shelley Gaynor, aka The Whip,
legacy hero. A crime fighting Candace Bushnell. We first
see her flying through the air. (Not literally flying. She
doesn’t fly. But you know what I mean.) Behind her
is a fantasy New York, full of buildings that were actually
conceived, but never built. The architecture figures more
in the Manhattan Guardian mini.
Gaynor is a columnist for the New York Daily Recorder, and
she has written a bestseller and has a new book coming.
In the first image of her – in spite of the flying
and the fantasy city – she looks bored. And she is
bored. She feels she has hit a plateau, and it’s not
hard to see why. Everything about her is screams C list hero.
Her costume looks like an off the rack dominatrix outfit
and she is fighting guys on suped up pogo sticks. Gaynor
answers a classified ad by Greg Saunders, an original member
of the Seven Soldiers of Victory; a team that included her
grandfather, the original Whip. This will tie her into to
her superhero legacy, the subject of her first book, and
enable her “to get into the whole team phenomenon.” In
her head, she has it all worked out. She calls her costumed
identity a trademark and says the experience will be great
publicity, but beneath the cynicism she wants to be, to borrow
a term from Saunders, “JLA list.” She imagines
her team’s composition, dying to save the universe,
even being universally mourned.
pp 9-11 have vertical, ‘picket fence’,
panels. Four on the top, four on the bottom. She is at home.
Presumably an apartment. Drinking red wine and morbidly fixating
on blood. The only light is from her monitor. Her various
cuts from her battle with the pogo gang are emphasized. The
panel gutters are the same bright red. She brings up Saunders
on the internet and the red of his mask mathces. Interestingly,
as she tells us of her desire to go to other dimensions,
fight ‘rogue gods’, etc, there is a shot of her
wine glass (p11, panel 3). It looks too much like the image
of the drink Black Death poisoned in JLA
Classified #2 for it to be a coincidence. This is when
she calls Saunders. As foreshadowing, it doesn’t inspire
confidence.
TOP
pp 12-27: Part
2 - Big Time Country
Greg Saunders gives Gaynor a tour of the neighbourhood.
She isn’t that impressed, it just looks empty to her,
but he turns her around with two things: first he shows her
a newspaper article, from 1875, about him and Johnny Frankenstein
fighting the “Miracle Mesa Monster” (a giant
spider) and then he takes her to a web. It’s huge,
with birds caught in it, and it’s not abandoned. He
speculates that the spider was in some form of hibernation,
but we already know that he has travelled in time. Either
way, he feels he has some unfinished business.
Saunders had wanted to recreate his old team, the Seven
Soldiers, but it sounds like he has fallen short. Gaynor's
first thought on meeting them is “It could not get
worse.” Besides the Vigilante (Saunders) and the Whip,
the recruits include:
Gimmix: a twenty-six
year old already getting face lifts and who lives on the
convention circuit, telling all of her adventure with Aquaman.
Boy Blue: a
Mexican kid with “a ghost suit that makes him lighter
than air or harder than diamond.” He also has a special
horn. Of the group, he is the only one who appreciates the
idea of a secret identity. He tells the others as little
as possible. We don’t fully learn how much he is hiding,
however, until Bulleteer
#2.
Dyno-Mite Dan: the
fanboy. He even bought his power – rings that allow
him to fight crime by literally blowing himself up – on
e-bay. Is this how Morrison sees us?
I, Spyder: the
return, from our prologue, of Thomas Ludlow Dalt. The Mystery
Men certainly have changed him. He arrives in his own helicopter.
The word that best describes him is creepy. Barfly, tattoo
parlour creepy. And he does have tattoos now, something he
didn’t have in Slaughter Swamp. I guess a lot of people
find spiders creepy. Like the Whip, he has a lineage tie
to the first Seven Soldiers team. His father was the member
who betrayed them to the Nebula Man (aka Neh-buh-loh). I
haven’t read the original stories. It’s possible
that the Vigilante doesn’t know about the betrayal.
And it’s possible that he doesn’t know about
the connection between the Spider and I, Spyder. Possible,
but unlikely. So why would he be trusted?
While the other three aren’t directly linked to members
of the original team, they do have Golden Age antecedents.
Gimmix is the daughter of Mary, Girl Of A 1000 Gimmicks,
Dyno-Mite Dan’s powers are those of TNT & Dan the
Dynamite, and Boy Blue’s predecessor was Little Boy
Blue.
p 21: A great series of images, showing
us how our heroes spent their first night. In spite of immediately
hating Dalt, Gaynor spends her night with him. Gimmix drinks
herself to sleep. Dyno-Mite Dan sleeps the sleep of the just.
Boy Blue spends the whole night gaming (note: he isn’t
actually sitting on the floor). Saunders spends the night
in a dark mood. I think he realizes just how far things have
fallen. The new team is only nominally a team, its members
only nominally heroes. The last panel is the skull from the
cover. The de facto seventh Soldier. Death, failure, whatever
you call it, its all over this mission.
The next morning they are all at the breakfast table. Gimmix
is name-dropping with every breath and Dalt is explaining
how to hunt spiders. Saunders rallies the team by showing
them their state of the art air scooters. Gaynor calls him
their Ahab. More gloomy foreshadowing. We get three instances
on three pages. (Interestingly, he is called Sanders here.
Earlier – and later – it’s Saunders.)
Evening comes. They are all out on their new bikes. Dan
is telling them the importance of the number seven. Six is
unlucky. There are only six of them. The second instance
of foreshadowing. Dan gives examples of to illustrate his
point, but he only gives six:
Seven Champions Of Christendom:
A group of national patron saints, who were the subjects
of popular 16th century book by Richard Johnson, Famous Historie
of the Seaven Champions of Christendom. They weren’t
an actual group, per se, their only connection being their
inclusion in Johnson’s book. They were: St. George
(patron saint of England), the Apostle Andrew (of Scotland),
St. Patrick (Ireland), St. Denis (France), St. James Boanerges
(Spain), St. Anthony the Lesser (Portugal), and St. David
(Wales).
Seven spirits at the throne of God:
Described as lamps in front of God’s throne in Revelations
4:5, which in turn is thought to reference Isaiah 11:2:
And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit
of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD;
The seven spirits being wisdom, understanding, counsel,
might, knowledge, and the fear of the Lord. That’s
only six. The seventh is the unity of these six. This is
a traditional, but not universally accepted, interpretation.
Others believe that the number seven is merely used to mean
perfect, which the number seven also represents, and that
there aren’t seven literal spirits.
Seven Virtues And The Seven Sins:
The former were thought to counter the latter. Ranked in
order of importance, they are: Humility vs. Pride; Kindness
vs. Envy; Patience vs. Wrath; Diligence vs. Sloth; Generosity
vs. Greed; Abstinence vs. Gluttony; and Chastity vs. Lust.
Seven Sleepers:
An early Christian legend that was later incorporated into
the Koran. Seven young men were ordered by the Roman officials
to denounce Christianity. Instead they gave their possessions
to the poor and went into the mountains to pray. There they
slept in a cave. When the authorities found out that they
hadn’t renounced Christ, they were sealed in the cave
while they slept. Decades later the cave is opened and the
men return to the city, not realizing that any time has passed.
When the miracle is discovered they praise God and die.
Seven Wise Masters:
This story is believed to be of Indian origin, but has
many variants in Europe and the Arab world. In the European
version, a Roman emperor sends his son away to be schooled
by seven wise masters. Later the young man learns, through
his horoscope, that he must remain silent for a week or he
will die. During this week he is approached by his step-mother,
who seeks to seduce him. When he refuses, she becomes angry
and accuses him of trying to attack her. Because he must
remain silent, he cannot defend himself. The seven wise masters
delay his execution by telling the emperor stories of the
craftiness of women until the young man can speak and the
truth is known. The step-mother is then executed.
The six hunters find the cast off exoskeleton of the spider
they are after. It’s heading towards Pepper City, population
250,000. Dan asks I, Spyder about his knowledge of spiders
of Dalt tells him that the spider is his totem and that someday
one will kill him (that’s three for three!). As they
approach it Gimmix asks Blue Boy to pass her her Zoom Glasses
while she applies “anti-spider lipstick.” I didn’t
just make that up! I, Spyder tells them that the Mystery
Men gave him perfect aim and Boy Blue, using the Zoom Glasses,
tells us that the spider is wearing reins and a saddle. Gimmix
freaks. She wants her glasses and she wants out. But Dan
activates his power and the rest of the team, including Gimmix,
moves in for the kill.
This is the longest and most complex part of 7S #0.
Everything about our new team just screams failure. Gimmix
brags on teaming up with Aquaman? A character that, rightly
or wrongly, is a byword for lameness. Dyna-Mite Man takes
on the name of a Golden Age hero’s sidekick? Even the
name I, Spyder reminds me more of the kids’ game ‘I
Spy’ than anything else. The only thing the team really
has going for it are the great icons Williams makes draws
to represent each one, and those exist only for the readers,
not the characters. Of course, by the time this issue was
released readers already knew that this team would not be
the Seven Soldiers we would be reading about.
TOP
pp 28-37: Part
3 - Midnight At Miracle Mesa
As they close in on the Ghost Spider, Blue Boy blows his
horn. Instead of musical notes, we see runes. The Vigilante
ropes it and the Whip ensnares its jaws. Saunders then shoots
it with a silver bullet and Cimmix finishes it off with a
freezing spray. The only team member to freeze was fanboy
Dan. But their victory is short lived. They are suddenly
surrounded by Neh-buh-loh and his troops and they are slaughtered.
The Harrowing has begun.
Gaynor’s narration gives us a couple of great lines:
My apartment and my fears about money and the future and
never being good enough… compared to this everything
seems so #$%&ing stupid and unreal.
This is the world turned upside down. Hunting giant spiders
is real and life isn’t. Talk about living one’s
fantasies.
How do you know when you’ve become a superhero and
not just some crazy fetish person with a death wish? Is it
when you join your first team and finally have your psychosis
validated by group consensus?
Is this what draws superheroes to form teams? Not world
ending threats, or publishers attempts to cash in on their
popularity, but the need to know that they aren’t they
only one out there in brightly coloured spandex, beating
up on the criminal element?
I made a little chart of the runes from Boy Blue’s
horn:
I’ve tried to keep it all simple and straight forward.
As far as I know, they don’t actually spell anything
out, but I could be wrong. Anyone? I have gone with the Anglo-Saxon
names because Morrison has grounded with story in British
mythos, but the German and Scandinavian meanings are usually
the same, or at least similar. If you want to find out more
about the Aurochs, you can here.
Three questions and an observation:
- Why is Saunders packing silver bullets?
- Why would the spiders use webs and shed exoskeletons if they’re machines?
- The skeletal spider riders: Do they reappear in the story?
The ghost spiders and the Miracle Mesa have been discussed in terms of Native
legend, but the city that appears above them – the Castle Revolving – doesn’t
look remotely native.
TOP
p 38: Epilogue
- Save Seven
The issue ends with a one page epilogue, “Save Seven.” But
does the title mean to ‘rescue seven’ or ‘except
seven’? Either way we’re back to the six Mystery
Men of Slaughter Swamp, another team short a member.
The First one (their dialogue is colour coded): Our soldiers
are dead!
Second: “And thrice enough to fill Great Arthur’s
ship, we went into it… Except seven none returned
from Revolving Castle.”
First: This wasn’t supposed to happen – they
were supposed to save the world.
Third: Plan B is already underway gentlemen.
Fourth: Seven more conscripts?
Second: And if they fail?
Fourth: The Sheeda are here! Leave the time-sewing machine!
Sixth: We’ve done what we can!
Third: This world is on its own.
Various Sheeda riders are saying: No one! No one! No one
can stop the Harrowing!
So, we learn from the first that they expected Saunders
and his team to defeat the Sheeda. Or, at least this one
did. It doesn’t seem to add up, given what we’ve
seen of Saunder’s team and what we know of the Sheeda.
The third one assures him that there is a Plan B, and the
Fourth understands that they are conscripts. They were chosen.
They are not volunteers. And that’s the extent of their
involvement. This world, as the third says, is on its own.
Except for the boxes. As they talk they are preparing boxes.
The first thought is that it’s the seven weapons readers
were trying to identify in the story, but theose are named
in 7S #1: the sword, the cauldron of renewal, the fatherbox,
the hammer, the Merlin sprite, the flying horse Pegazeus,
and an enchanted spear. Instead, the one in the foreground
in putting the Shining Knight’s tunic in a box, the
one in the center is passing the Manhattan Guardian’s
helmet to another, and the one on the right is loading a
glove, a disc, and a gun in a box. The glove appears (to
me) closest to the ones Klarion wears and the gun is Frankenstein’s.
I am not sure about the disc. It has occultic symbols and
both Klarion and Zee use magic, but I don’t remember
seeing it. I’ll keep an eye out as I re-read.
The lines the Second Mystery Man is quoting are from an
Arthurian poem called, Preiddeu Annwfn. Wikipedia has an
article about it here, and you can read the poem itself here.
In it three ship loads of men went after a magical cauldron,
but only seven escaped. They were all lost, save seven!
Observations:
- The time sewing machine is shaped like a train, a visual
link to the second chapter of the 7S, Manhattan
Guardian #1.
- There are six Mystery Men, each carrying a box. But
there are seven Soldiers of Victory. Are the contents mixed,
as the box on the right implies, or is someone short a
box?
- The association of time and sewing is not new. In classical
times our destinies were determined by the Fates, or Moirae,
who measured each life with a thread.
- There are parallels between this story and the one in JLA
Classified. In both the focus is on a team that isn’t
really the star of the series. In both that team falls
disastrously short. There is another parallel, one I
have referred to above, between Saunders team and the
Mystery Men. Both are supposed to be teams of seven,
and both are missing a member. If the missing member
of Saunder’s team had shown up, would they have
defeated the Sheeda and their Queen?
- Barbelith lists this as page 37, but I’ve counted
and re-counted and its page 38.
It’s an interesting way to start a series, by killing
all the heroes. Of course, one of them, in spite of all we
saw and will hear, isn’t dead, but from the looks of
things, the Harrowing is here and no one can stop it – save
the Seven Soldiers of Victory!
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