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It's no fun to call a girl by a boy's name!
Read Beastmaster's and Jog's interpretation
OK... well, Beastmaster's entry on #4 seems to be just a series of quotations.
Here's Jog -- "Note the triumphant sundae (which unfortunately appears to be vanilla, not chocolate) and the undone straightjacket in that final splash.
“Be free. Free the gods. Free all of us.”
So says Metron, meeting up with Shilo on the seventh day, the biblical nature of that number now pertinent."
I don't want to take easy shots here, but when someone has to present as elements worthy of note the fact that a black character isn't eating a chocolate sundae, and that seven is a key day in the Bible as well as in the name of this series, the comic book text itself is lacking any obvious qualities to discuss and celebrate. I don't think you have to point out that kind of tenuous cross-reference, obscure and crass at once (assuming the color of the sundae is important, but drawing what seems to be an incredibly simple observation from it) if the comic actually gives you something satisfying at face value.
More than any other miniseries in this project, this story seems to be looking forward to further adventures down the DCU pike, beyond the confines of this bottled metahuman world; it maybe isn’t too forward to wonder aloud if perhaps this arm of the project was initially conceived as its own separate entity, and one day found a way to get published, with perhaps some enhanced sales appeal, by latching itself onto a larger thing.
= this comic doesn't fit into "Seven Soldiers" and was shoehorned awkwardly because that's the only way it would see print and get sales. This seems to agree with something I suggested above.
If so, there’s no denying that the themes at least fit right into the larger Seven Soldiers saga
The themes fit in? I should be thankful that chapter 35 of a book fits in generally with the themes of chapters 36 and 37, never mind whether it has any connection with the plot and characters?
This one got a bit better as it went along; it’s still bumpy, and kind of obscure, and I can just imagine the reactions of those readers completely unacclimated to the New Gods mythos, but it does offer a coherent, appealing point of view. Not the strongest of the Seven Soldiers minis to me
Again, I tend to agree. I don't think a whole segment Seven Soldiers should demand a prior knowledge of the New Gods to get any concrete understanding or pleasure from it.
and then follow up with what Imaginary Mongoose Solutions is saying. I think it's brilliant.
What IMS is saying is intelligent and coherent. Although the bottom line from IMS is, as I understand it, Zatanna and Mister Miracle are both about escaping and challenging the confines of the comic-book text with its frames and fourth wall (Fourth World), and as such form a hyper-sigil that, Morrison may feel, is going to enable the DCU to break the prison of fiction.
That adds value to Mister Miracle in particular, and may as I suggested be giving the comic levels of interesting meaning that weren't intended and which elevate a messy, unsuccessful comic into something more advanced.
If those devices were intended:
(i) they are hardly new themes for Morrison -- they date back at least to Animal Man and were last seen in The Filth. So while consistent, it's not really a radical notion for him.
(ii) they only seem present in the final episodes of Zatanna and Mister Miracle, which is a weak way of constructing a hyper-sigil and seems kind of half-hearted if that's the central theme of Seven Soldiers.
(iii) the hyper-sigil concept was central to The Invisibles and, despite my respect for Morrison's belief in magic and my own belief that it gives his work intriguing dimensions, I suspect it's not actually going to work. Fiction will not, I think, become real because Morrison breaks the fourth wall in a comic, any more than it will because the Coyote looks out at the viewer for a second before plunging from a cliff.
(iv) it still doesn't excuse the fact that Mister Miracle does not (seem to, at this very late point) interlock with Seven Soldiers or add anything to our understanding of the wider narrative, except in terms of some themes, some potential connections and two extremely brief cameos.
Ferry was leading us there, if you sense the design language he was using...
Again, I feel this is stretching. Maybe it was intentional on Ferry's part. But this feels like making excuses for a middling piece of work.
I don't think anyone's mentioned the Superman t-shirt on page 1 and, more obviously, Batman t-shirt on page 3. Are they of any relevance? |
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