Seven Soldiers of Spring wants to know if you believe you can fly? No? That's OK, neither can the lead of this week's entry.
Alex Harrower taught autistic kids, while her husband was a scientist trying to perfect a super-hard alloy, a "smartskin" that would make a subject indestructible. More critical from his perspective, it would make that person a superhero, so they could hang out with other (hot) superheroes, and it would keep them young forever.
Alex didn't see the appeal, but in one of life's curious twists, Lance testing the alloy on himself kills him, but when he infects Alex, she comes out of it fine. At least, that's how Lance and everyone else sees it. Alex sees she lost her husband (and learns he was spending a lot of time on x-rated sites with "teen" superheroines), lost her job (the kids freaked out because they thought she was a robot), and is stuck with this skin that she can't take off, hide or be otherwise rid of, which prevents her from killing herself (her attempt ends with her saving a bunch of people from a trainwreck instead.)
After that, it's Alex trying to pay bills and find her footing within the strange world of superheroics. It's almost an isekai manga, the character from "our" world dying and landing in some fantasy world. Except a lot of those involve people who understand the rules of the fantasy world and can exploit their special gifts to break the game, so to speak. Alex is the person who gets dumped into a fictional world she knows nothing about.
She turns down an offer she sees in a paper to join a group of superheroes for a mission out west. This turns out to be Vigilante's attempt to recruit a team to finish what he and the 1940s Seven Soldiers started (meaning Alex gained her powers prior to Seven Soldiers of Victory #0.) Instead, in issue 2 Alex acts as muscle for an FBI agent investigating Saunders' subsequent death out there. Agent Helligan was also the one brought in to question Sir Justin in Shining Knight #3, after she surrendered to the cops. Helligan is dying from the bite she received from the Sheeda-Queen at that point, but has Alex carry her to her sister's wedding to stop it. Turns out the groom is a werewolf.
(Helligan mentioned in Shining Knight the wedding was 'tomorrow', so this takes place the day after, yet the world Paquette draws does not appear to have descended into chaos. I mean, there's traffic, but it's not, "oh my god, run from the monsters emerging from the flying castle" terrified traffic, so it must be before the final issue of Manhattan Guardian. Helligan also used something she lifted from a museum of superhero memorabilia in an interrogation, and mentions the stealing of a subterranean digging machine gave her cover to do it. The theft was by Klarion and the other "Deviants" in issue 3 of his mini-series.)
Issue 3 finds Alex at a convention, populated by z-list heroes (and Booster Gold), acting as bodyguard for a mermaid. There's a panel of women heroes that includes original Newsboy Army member Lil' Hollywood, who learns from one of the attendees about Vincenzo (Lil' Scarface's) death at the end of Shining Knight, so we're somewhere past issue 4 of that. Alex is targeted by the newest Spyder, who was also recruited by Vigilante (possibly to give the family name a chance at redemption after the 1940s version betrayed them in their battle with Nebulon?), but has apparently changed sides.
Except the guy misses. Some archer. Also, Paquette's version of Nebulon must have the least amount of stars of any version we see across these mini-series. He's mostly a big purple guy with curling goat horns and three ellipsoid red eyes, and a few stars peeking through in the shadows of his body. Not impressive, but if you took it as us seeing the footage through Alex's perspective, maybe she's not immersed deeply enough in superheroics to see the true nature of the beast, so to speak.
Alex also took in a young art student as a renter to help pay bills, but this turns out to be "Sally Sonic," teen superhero turned super-villain (by some vengeful British criminal) turned x-rated camera girl. She was the one carrying on a virtual affair with Lance, and didn't appreciate Alex trying to track her down. They fight, but Alex really wants no part of it. She doesn't want revenge, doesn't want to hear Sally's "sob story", doesn't want to have a knockdown, drag-out super-brawl like all the boys love to see two girls do. She never wanted in the costumed world, never wanted the "immortality" that seems to come with being a superhero like Lance did. She tried to make the best of the hand she was dealt. And now she wants out.
The vice pretty clearly seems to be Lust, though not strictly in the sense of wanting to fuck or whatever. Though there's plenty of that. Practically everyone in costume except Alex seems perpetually horny. Morrison has Mind-Grabber Kid (from this issue of Justice League of America) at the same convention as Alex in issue 3, hoping to win "Comeback Hero of the Year" (he loses to Aquaman, who shaved his beard.) Mind-Grabber Kid plays the helpful veteran to Alex, but he also seems pretty clearly to be trying to get with her, when he isn't encouraging her to open her bustier as fans swarm her or whining about how he could totally use his powers to make girls sleep with him, but doesn't.
But it seems to really be a lust for youth, or fear of mortality/aging. Alex is only 27, but Lance mentions she has lines on her face she didn't used to. He's frequenting sites of teen heroes, who will supposedly be young and hot forever. As it turns out, Sally Sonic is actually decades old, but her body stopped aging as a teen (in the superhero comic version of a teen, who looks like a supermodel.) So that's what everyone treated her as, and it seems she never learned not to trust people until it was too late. Falls in with an older guy pretending to be a hero, he encourages her to give him what he wants, when she balks, he uses 'Doctor Hyde's Evil Serum,' to get her personality more in line with his interests.
Paquette leans into the cheesecake. The very first page is Alex standing in front of a mirror is lacy underwear, positioned so we can see her chest and her ass simultaneously. She spends a lot of time walking around her apartment in a t-shirt that stops above the navel and underwear that rides high. Her shirt does not survive her saving people from the train. When she and Sally fight, it sure seems like their movements and the POV are set so butts are in the center of focus, and things are shaded or colored so that it might seem like they're wearing less than they really are.
I mean, without even getting into the phallic aspect of that helmet, there's no reason for Bulleteer to be up on her toes in the splash page, right? She's not actually wearing heels, but it shows her off. Here she is, perfect as polished steel. No blemishes, no defects, can't be harmed, scarred, altered from how she is. Untouched by aging forever more. It's what people want to be - the first issue mentions there are lots of cases of people admitted to hospitals after trying to give themselves powers, and the medical staff hate dealing with it - or want to have.
But not Alex. The bullet that didn't ask to be cast, and refuses to be fired. The opposing virtue to Lust is Chastity. As mentioned, Alex isn't interested in fucking anyone, but chastity can also mean purity in conduct and intention. Alex tries to help people, tries to understand. As the Spyder notes from his observations, she listens. She doesn't succumb to Mind-Grabber Kid's come-ons, but she'll encourage him to help her track down the woman her husband was talking to online. They can have a "team-up", a real one like superheroes do. She helps Agent Helligan keep her sister from marrying that werewolf, even though that probably wasn't what she was paid to do, and it pains her that Helligan dies after. The fact 'monster hunters' showed up to corral the groom-to-be hardly registers with her. It's the person who died that concerns her.
She doesn't want revenge on Sally, just to ask why she went after Lance, and once the fight is over, she calls the ambulances to get medical help for both of them. She's not acting out of revenge, or spite, or ego. She does certain work to pay the bills, but she tries to protect people when they're in danger. Which sounds like purity of conduct to me.
2 comments:
I forget; was there ever a connection drawn between Alex's surname and the Sheeda Harrowing? Or was it just a red herring?
My vague memory is that nothing came of it, but it's been years since I looked at any of the comics.
I honestly didn't make that connection until last week, when i was writing the last of these Seven Soldiers posts (which will go up in two weeks.)
But, Alex is the one driving the car that truly kills the Sheeda Queen, which makes her the "spear" the hero Aurakles threw 40,000 years ago, apparently. I was never clear on what the "spear" was of the 7 treasures the New Gods left Aurakles, so I don't get that part, but that's what the story says. The sword is Excalibur that Justin's wielding, I think the two dice are a couple of the weapons, the rest, I don't know.
So a Harrower ends the Harrowing, or does some harrowing of her own?
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