Seven Soldiers of Spring is coming hot off the presses! Well, we're 20 years after the fact, but the presses are still hot.
Jake Jordan's a former cop just drifting through life after he shot an innocent kid he thought killed his partner. Jake's father-in-law-to-be convinces him to apply for the on-staff superhero for The Manhattan Guardian, a paper where, 'the readers are the reporters.' While his boss, a projection on a TV screen named "Ed" claims Jake's not a reporter, I'm not clear on whether Jake's gear is actually recording his battles with subway pirates and cyborgs programmed to model the real world twisted to revenge, as a way to cover the news.
Guardian is the mini-series that feels most like a traditional superhero book. Jake's caught between rival pirate crews seeking a 'six-sided god-machine,' or airdropping into a Disneyworld where the animatronics are repurposed (but not necessarily reprogrammed) military killbots. His back-up is a Newsboy Army of kids who parachute in with flamethrowers while a disclaimer from the paper blares that it's not responsible for what the newsboys do. He saves his girlfriend from the pirates, at the cost of her father, and possibly the cost of their relationship. Real superhero melodrama stuff.
Stewart and Bauman give it the bright, clean look of a superhero adventure as well. Jake's uniform is always pristine, no matter what he goes through, and shows off his muscles in a way his everyday clothes don't. Everything is bright and sometimes otherworldly, whether that's the blue in the place the engine is hidden, or the eerie green of the monitors in Ed's secret room.
In terms of sins and virtues, Pride keeps coming up, the opposite of which Wikipedia tells me is Humility. Jake wants to feel proud of the work he's done, to walk tall again, but loses sight of other things. Carla's mourning her father, and worried about losing Jake, while Jake's assuring her he can take care of her and her mother financially with this job. Jake has to, after an issue of considering giving up, come to the conclusion it's about doing the right thing when it's needed, even if you don't want to. He takes a few more words to say it, but it boils down to the old adage about power and responsibility. You can do something to help others, so you should, even when it's hard.
(It's weird this comes up, given tomorrow's book.)
As far as connections, the 'god-machine' will be a matter of repeated importance over the course of this whole event. I wonder if the place where Allbeard and No-Beard find it was the place where the last few knights went to ask the dwarves to split the very essence of matter itself (aka, the atom), ending the previous age of man, as we're told in Shining Knight. Chains dangle from the ceilings, and apparently glow with radiation (although it's the water beneath that glows), and there's medieval weapons strewn about, but I'm not sure that's an actual connection, or just something I'm seeing that isn't there.
Ed turns out to have been part of his own group of seven when he was younger (although his body never grew up.) The original Newsboy Army, who fell apart as they aged and the adult world intruded with things like college and working in the family laundry. They (but only six, because the dog was too old) went on one final mission, to Slaughter Swamp (aka, where Solomon Grundy was born) and ran into something they weren't ready for.
I don't know if Millions accompanying them would have made a difference, or if they were never the right seven. Also, was the vet who told them Millions was too old under Sheeda control, or was that just another sign of time creeping in and stealing their childhood visions of the future? Their group magician, Ali, will pop in at least one other mini-series, and Lil' Scarface grew up to be Don Vincenzo, the undead mob boss in Shining Knight. Not a nice man, but one who still remembers the strange world he inhabited as a child.
2 comments:
As I recall, all this business in the subway tunnels ties in with Klarion too, but it's been a long time since I looked at any of this.
It does, a bit. Klarion sort of crosses Guardian's trail, after the fact. Klarion's up next, so I'll touch on that a bit then.
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