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7 Soldiers: Guardian

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Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

03:48 / 14.04.05

the Newsboy Army reminded me enough of the Blue Blaze Irregulars in Buckaroo Banzai that I was forced to watch the dvd right after reading.

I liked it, its a good counter to the serious and dark 7S books out so far, and Klarion is looking to be pretty dark as well, so a brightly lit costumed hero makes for a good variation on the theme i think.

chucklehound

15:45 / 14.04.05

ok, it's been a couple weeks since i read this, so i think i've got my thoughts in order. first off, the art was excellent - i'm a sucker for cameron's art and i think he's a perfect choice for a kirby homage (in that it's similar in mood, if not a direct, derivative recreation). i think my problem with the comic stems from an over-familiarity with kirby's run on jimmy olsen. even with subway pirates, disembodied jack kirby-voices, etc, it's not nearly as weird as the original comic was.

of course, this is only the first issue, and i would be deeply pleased if this does become more deeply weird (as jake realizes he's gotten into a far weirder profession than he realizes) i can only hope don rickles and his twin brother show up.

H3ct0r L1m4

14:07 / 18.04.05

loved this! a perfect Saturday Morning cartoon [except for the "map extraction" scene, probably, heh], too much fun, man, lots of great ideas. could indeed be made into an ongoing, or a series of minis [if Jake isn't the one who's sacrificing himself at the very end]. it could be the Kirby influence in the writing or the troubled character, but - as someone mentioned before - it looked like a good Marvel comic from the 60s.

that was a great revamping of the whole concept; Newsboy Army = Indymedia?

very good one, Cameron, and a slightly different style from SEAGUY too. don't know if I'm way off, but the artwork reminded me of what a lovechild of Will Eisner [or John Bogdanove] and Neal Adams would be like.

finally, way to go:

50 - 66.19 JAN050317 SEVEN SOLDIERS GUARDIAN #1 (OF 4) $2.99 DC

FinderWolf

17:23 / 18.05.05

#2 is out today, methinks.

Aertho

22:14 / 18.05.05

"I am you. You am I."

Hm. The walls in my apartment have not opened for me. I suppose I'll have to scream them through a bullhorn for the right effect.

I think Hands is a homeless boywhore. Which makes NoBeard a fairy. See? There're Sheeda involved in this story.

Horigal meets a surprising end.

And six-sided cubes from the Brightworld come in pairs with nearly every Parker Brothers product. Strange.

Will we meet Creepy Jean? Are these words from the future?

Aertho

22:16 / 18.05.05

Also... a god in shackles may be Mister Milo.

Mr Tricks

22:33 / 18.05.05

I wonder id Guardian inadvertanly saved Clarion's life in that tunnel.

Mention of trading with Puritian baby stealers from hell.... wonder if they're blue.

Would that six sided stone be related to the 6 sided sun seen in Zatanna?

Mention of GREED on page 1 may indicated that Manhattan may have been built by Sheeda? just like L.A.

I wonder if some of those Pirates smoked the Blue mold growning in those tunnels.

fun stuff.

The Falcon

16:43 / 19.05.05

I don't think the Sheeda did build LA.

Anyway, this was much better than #1, and had the additional bonus of 'Fights-With-Chains'; a character I've waited two years for.

"...you were just okay..." In the end, who wears the chains?

Aertho

17:05 / 19.05.05

Lovely Ambiguity. The irradiated gestalt, natch.

Aertho

17:08 / 19.05.05

Oh, and Sheeda built LA and NYC the same way that Sir William Gull, from Hell, gave birth to the 20th Century.

Circumstantially.

LDones

22:09 / 19.05.05

Aye, this issue had a most sincere shout-out to Bio-K9. I even teared up a little.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:45 / 20.05.05

Even "Falsebeard". It's a toss-up between this and Klarion as to which 7S I'm enjoying most right now.
As always, Cameron, nice one on the art. I loves them pirates.

CameronStewart

18:48 / 20.05.05

Seven Soldiers mentioned in Entertainment Weekly, with Guardian called "the best (of the series):

The Falcon

18:43 / 21.05.05

So, did Jake throw down his helmet as a trade-off for safe-passage with the Limbo Townies? I mean, he's obviously in the role of 'trolley-man' there.

vajramukti

14:04 / 22.05.05

I just reread zatanna, and when they do the big ritual, king ra man refferences a 'magic stone' floating behind him, that looks like a hexagon but is in his words actually a flattened projection of a cube...

Regrettable Juvenilia

18:25 / 22.05.05

I thought issue 2 was great - it had just the right mix of human interest (as the papers) call it, and creepy fantastical shit. It reassured me by being better than issue 1, because I was a little worried that each miniseries would start strong and then tail off. And a high bodycount is always satisfying, if 'satisfying' isn't a horrible way of putting it.

There's something very appealing about how hard Jake is on himself - unlike, say, Uncle Ben's death, Larry's death really wasn't his fault, but you know he doesn't see it that way. He doesn't have any powers, he's just a guy who grits his teeth and pushes himself to get it done - that in itself could be a cliche, but somehow Morrison & Stewart have made it work for me.

Dead Man's Junction gave me the shivers...

The Falcon

21:48 / 22.05.05

This now feels very much like a Marvel comic ought to, I find.

FinderWolf

13:39 / 23.05.05

I was intruiged by this issue focusing so much on the culture of the subway pirates...and the fact that No-Beard didn't seem much worse or better than All-Beard, yet the script wants us to like All-Beard more, for some reason, as Hands says ("he was better than you" and such).

The Newsarama link to that article says "EW gives Seven Soliders the WUB" - what the hell is WUB? Were they just trying to have a cutesy headline, a la 'show us some wub' like 'show us some love'?

FinderWolf

13:41 / 23.05.05

>>I wonder if some of those Pirates smoked the Blue mold growning in those tunnels.

Also, All-Beard's speech "I'm peaking on the drugs" and such is totally Grant's famous speech on the Disinfo DVD ("I'm just coming up on the drugs so if I start babbling and raving, get ready").

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:06 / 23.05.05

Wiggum, it's twenty-four pages long. How much "and such" can there _be_?

I think that Hand's frustrated complaint that he didn't work for the bad-ass pirate might resonably be counterbalanced in narrative terms by the way All-beard kills Guardian's father-in-law and plans to enslave his wife. Near as I can tell, the point is that the pirates, romanticised or no, are pretty much indistinguishable from an ethical standpoint. In the final analysis, it doesn't really seem to matter who wins the battle over the magic stone - it's just mad old homeless guys, and they'll be dead soon. The pirates are casualties of a greater storyline the edges of which they inhabit, as the homeless more generally are casualties of a normal world the edges of which they inhabit.

_Boboss

15:11 / 23.05.05

and you know, moore gets the treasure, but haus' wifie gets to live forever in a radioactive death train, so it kinda balances up.

what a silly comic? 88% of readers say I'm wrong.

CameronStewart

16:30 / 23.05.05

>>>In the final analysis, it doesn't really seem to matter who wins the battle over the magic stone - it's just mad old homeless guys, and they'll be dead soon. The pirates are casualties of a greater storyline the edges of which they inhabit, as the homeless more generally are casualties of a normal world the edges of which they inhabit.<<<

Ding!

In the script Grant said that for the final image of the rotting zombie pirate piloting the train, the readers shouldn't be able to tell if it's No-Beard or All-Beard. Only after I started drawing it did I discover that trying to make an ambiguous image of two characters that are visual polar opposites of one another is pretty difficult. Also I was already over my deadline so I kind of had to blast it out in a couple hours...apologies if the image and its point is kind of unclear.

Glad Haus nailed it though.

Mario

21:06 / 23.05.05

You succeeded admirably. I couldn't work out who won.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

17:50 / 28.05.05

Issue 2 has me liking the Guardian series a lot more. I'm not sure what it was that put me off initislly, maybe I'm just a ninja at heart...

ThePirateKing

20:04 / 30.05.05

I enjoyed the second issue slightly more than the first, but still not that much. Finding this Seven Soliders titles the least enjoyable of the lot. For the record I rated Zatanna the best, with Klarion in second place. Still it's over in two more issues and better wonders wait around the corner in other of the series I think.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

09:54 / 31.05.05

I thought it was clearly no-beard. Soz, like.

That was much, much stronger. Guardian #1 and Zatana #1 almost soured me on the whole deal but the #2 issues actually get round to having nice stories that I like, even if the Sheeda arc is still flustratingyly vauge.

Who's the mystery man for Guardian going to be? I get the feeling there'll be a motif of meeting a mystery man in each #2 or #3 to prepare them for their pay-off to the central crisis in #3 and/or #4.

So far:
SHINING KNIGHT: Homeless grant
ZATANA: possibles: magic girl, the dude who turns up at the end of #2 that I don't want to spoil
GUARDIAN: poorly fleshed out father figure, jack kirby ex machina

CameronStewart

12:28 / 31.05.05

>>>#2 issues actually get round to having nice stories that I like, even if the Sheeda arc is still flustratingyly vauge.<<<

I've seen a lot of people (elsewhere) commenting that they're not liking Guardian because they don't see how it's connected to the overall Seven Soliders storyline of the Sheeda invasion. Don't forget that this ISN'T a crossover series in the traditional sense - Grant is intending that these series can be read independent of one another and still be complete stories. Many of the connections are very subtle and will only be come clear later...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:48 / 31.05.05

I think it's Klarion #2 that's supposed to be a non-link up with Guardian, in that Klarion is supposed to be walking round the railway tunnels (this isn't a spoiler, it's in the next issue box for Klarion!) so that thing go squish could be the monster from the end of Klarion #1...

Mr Tricks

15:33 / 31.05.05

That's my bet... Klarion is inadvertanly saved by the Manhatan Guardian.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

16:21 / 31.05.05

It's happening across all the books so far save Shining Knight. I want to feel the sense of doom that gripped me at the end of the first bookend build and grow, want the little bastards to be a proper fucking threat. When Nebulon turned up at the end of SK #2 that was a proper "pants: shitting" moment. Most of the links so far seem really forced ("OH, I SOLD A FEW MORE OF MAGIC GIZMO FROM ISSUE #1 LAST WEEK") which makes me worry this is being padded out with irrelevant bits from the notebook. Still, early days.

Billuccho!

21:56 / 01.06.05

Over on CBR's Permanent Damage column, Steven Grant uses Guardian #1 as an example of comics writing techniques (scroll down). Worth a look, aye?

CameronStewart

23:08 / 01.06.05

It's worth noting that ISN'T Grant (Morrison)'s script that (Steven) Grant uses for his column, but one of his own writing that he extrapolated from looking at the artwork in the final comic.

Billuccho!

17:29 / 01.07.05

Ahh, just picked up #2, and now the 'Lith is back. Huzzah!

Anyway, I hope I wasn't the only one that thought "All-Beard = Moore" & "No-Beard = Grant" and how it reflected their battle for supremacy over the comics medium. Both kinda crazy and ignored by the majority of the world, but kings within their environments.

Then again, maybe it's just me.

(Looked like No-Beard won, by the way.)

Aertho

02:29 / 02.07.05

(Looks more like All-Beard won.)

Check out the bodies in Klarion 2.

Billuccho!

02:49 / 02.07.05

That would be hard, as I have yet to get Klarion #2, as it mysteriously never showed up in my pull box! Without me noticing, apparently.

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