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As much as all the Time Tailor/Newsboy Army stuff is as fantastic and unsettling as everyone has already said, it's the final pages of this issue that really get me. Particularly that panel with Jake on the phone and the Sheeda outside the window: something about their silence is just really menacing, and I wonder if that's intentional. A sense of how nasty the Sheeda are has really been building and building, reaching its peak with this issue, and here they are in New York and who's going to stop them? An ex-cop with no superpowers, just a shield and a stick. Impossible odds, stubborn heroism. YESSSSSSS.
In some ways Jake Jordan would be the most appropriate soldier to die saving the world - he's just so goddamn noble! - but I find myself really hoping he doesn't.
My only complaint is that this a hell of a cliffhanger to leave us with until April 2006, if indeed that is the case. It's quite possible that this isn't the case, but I don't quite know how that will work in terms of the other series... Is the Sheeda's arrival in New York part of a full-on final assault on Earth, or are they just their for Melmouth and Ed? If it's the later, I suppose we could find Bulleteer or Mr Miracle stumbling upon the aftermath of this fight, but where would Jake be by that point?
At the moment, it's looking like Morrison will have an insane amount to tie up in the final bookend. I'm not saying it's beyond him, although he's sort of left himself more than he could tie up before. I don't want to be cynical, though: at this point, Seven Soldier is shaping up to be career-best stuff, IMHO.
Couple of thoughts on the Time Tailor: in Zatanna #3, Ali tells Zatanna that her best hope lies with the Seven Unknown Men of Slaughter Swamp. Since he's met the Time Tailor in Slaughter Swamp, and presumably knows what the Seven Unknown Men look like, can the Tailor really be a traitor? That doesn't quite fit - but nor does the Seven Unknown Men being evil, unless Ali's in on it too. And yet the Time Tailor's nastiness makes a lot more sense of I, Spyder's treachery, if indeed Spyder was a traitor proper and not just turned by the Sheeda after the battle, a la Galahad. And what are we to make of the fact that the Sheeda swarming around the Time Tailor's machine looks just what appeared to be the Sheeda attacking the Seven Unknown Men at the end of SS#0?
Weirdest of all, what does it mean that the Time Tailor says "I brought her kind here to kill people like you", implying the Sheeda answer to him, rather than the other way round? |
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