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Underground > Comic Books >

Seven Soldiers Sucks

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Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

23:56 / 24.10.06

[Re: I ALMOST MARRIED A DECADES-OLD WEREWOLF!]

John: Also, it was another way of making the story about someone other than Alix, which seems to be a theme in her series and is what leads to her twatting Sally with the car-engine - "Enough of everyone and their problems! What about me?!" - rather than the standard super-hero fight that you seemed to have been expecting.

Additionally, I still have this nagging feeling that there's supposed to be a secondary tier of Soldiers and Helligan is one of them. She is, at best, a supporting character but the narrative and possibly the Seven Unknown Men conspire to thrust her ahead - she is, after all, pure of heart enough to pull out Excalibur even if she doesn't see the significance. It's the Fates working to give Helligan the chance to save the day right before she dies from Gloriana's bite.

Honestly, calling it a coincidence doesn't seem like much of a stretch to me, as we're encouraged to view Coincidence and Synchronicity as important themes to Seven Soldiers - "Sometimes it's like there's mystery string holding everything together" - and Klarion in the pumpkin cab splashing on through both Jake Jordan's thread & Shilo's (especially after Jake unwittingly saves his life).

Alix's fight with Sally was designed to be, well, secondary to the Story of Sally, I think - and, well, Alix doesn't feel like a superhero, not really. And if it comes across as a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie? Does VD call 911 afterward to get his opponents to the hospital?

05:25 / 25.10.06

>>>if you have a look at the last 4-5 pages of #4 they look very unpolished; I think Cameron may have mentioned at the time being rushed, but after seeing how long Mahnke and Sook took over their finales, I do wish he'd taken the extra week or so.<<<

Dude, you and me both. You're right that the last few pages of #4 were rushed - at the beginning of working on the series it was drummed into me that this huge Seven Soldiers project was a house of cards and it was very very important that all the deadlines were met because of the delicate nature of all the interweaving narrative threads and so on and so on. I'd slipped a little here and there on the first three issues (nothing that caused any delays in publication, but still enough to put me behind) but as the deadline for #4 drew near I realized that because I was leaving for the San Diego convention - and from there over to Vietnam for a few weeks immediately after - that I had less time to work on the book than I'd anticipated. So, fuelled by coffee, Jolt Cola and loud music I worked for days and days with very little sleep to bring that sucker in before I had to go. One day away from leaving I still had several pages left to draw so I had to make the unfortunate compromise of drawing them print-size and first-draft, and sacrifice the polish that I usually like to give my work. I literally had a taxicab waiting downstairs for me as I put the final touches on, scanned them and sent them in. No one is more embarrassed and unhappy about those pages than I, but again, I was doing my agreed-upon professional duty to finish them on time, driven by fear of screwing up the precarious schedule of this enormous project.

And then, you know, it all gets screwed up anyway.

I would have loved the extra time, and had I known that the rest of the series would have been delayed as much as they were I would not have been quite so anxious about finishing on time, but I like to think that given the circumstances I made the proper, professional decision.

05:27 / 25.10.06

Also thanks to Haus for the kind words!

06:21 / 25.10.06

I realized that because I was leaving for the San Diego convention - and from there over to Vietnam for a few weeks immediately after - that I had less time to work on the book than I'd anticipated.

Well, judging by The Other Side #1, the time in Vietnam was very well-spent.

I have a hard time making any kind of judgements about SS as a whole project, basically because I moved around so much last year (between 3-4 different locations in San Diego, a few months in New Jersey, and a few months in Baton Rouge, with trips to Europe, Las Vegas, Texas, Lake Tahoe, and Seattle in between) and I didn't get to take my comics with me each time. I think I have them all now, either in storage or in my bedroom, but I have no way of knowing for sure without digging through more boxes than I want to.

Under those conditions, there's no way that SS could seem anything but incoherent, and while I was frustrated by my inability to keep track of various plotlines and sequences of events, I can't tell how much of that was a failure on GM's part (or the parts of the artists) and how much of that was because of my situation.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:16 / 25.10.06

I have to admit, first time round a lot of it did seem very incoherent- that was largely due to my rubbish memory and the fact that I was reading them as they came out*- ie with big gaps in between. Now I'm reading the trades, the whole thing hangs together much more- it works as a complete epic, which is another reason why the delay in SS1 irks me so.

*I mean, don't get me wrong, I liked all the individual minis (though MM was my least favourite)- I was just having great difficulty fitting them into the overall storyline.

14:08 / 25.10.06

Not a very helpful contribution to make, I fear, but I’d have to agree that much of GM’s work in recent years has left it to the reader to plug the gaps (the end of his X-Men run being the worst offender), and 7S has been an offender in this regard. And offhand, I think that only Mister Miracle works as a vaguely standalone story, though as someone pointed out, it’s only really tangentially linked anyway.

And I have to be utterly honest and say that, having read the comics in the order of release, and not gone back and re-read them with the attention to detail that people here clearly have, I remember barely any of the story at all, what with it being x months since the last issue. Eeeh, it’s like Camelot 3000 all over again.

14:46 / 25.10.06

Couldn't guess those pages were rushed, Cam. Brilliant and scary.

Anyone noticed Croatoan pronounced backwards sounds almost like 'New York' (without the t)? And what about Helen Helligan - 'hell and hell again'?

Threadrot I know, sorry.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:59 / 25.10.06

I assumed Croatoan meant the lost colony went underground.

17:40 / 26.10.06

Just wanted to say that I could never have guessed Cam's work in Guardian 4 was even slightly rushed - it was still great stuff...

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

20:54 / 26.10.06

Stoats: I assumed Croatoan meant the lost colony went underground.

There's also the Harlan Ellison short story, "Croatoan," which has much to do with Leviathan, bad fathers, & sewer kingdoms.

09:32 / 27.10.06

i think 7 soldiers is typical of the things i really like about GM (fizzing with ideas, micro and macro level brilliance, dense, fun) but also his weakness as a writer ( plotting tends to be a bit baggy, unravelijng at the end of long arcs, not achieving satisfactory cohesion of ideas and lacking the infrastructure to do the great ideas justice)
also he talks a better comic than he often ends up writing, for pretty much those reasons. i think i prefer alan moores immaculate plotting, which i heard described as like a massive chandelier recently, really AM has seldom a panel out of place and brilliantly paced, even if it has less ideas per page then GM.

10:08 / 27.10.06

As usual with Grant's stuff, I find the first opening gambits puzzling and sometimes uninteresting, and then six months later I'm scavenging through them spotting all the things I missed now that the plot is underway.

I think Grant has said a few times that he's been going for this super-compressed style of story-telling. Seven Soldiers seems to be the epitome of this kind of writing. It's not so much that each four issue miniseries is supposed to stand alone, it's also that almost each and every issue is supposed to stand alone. That's not the case maybe with Miracle, but I definitely got that feeling elsewhere.

And I have to say that I love it. I love the fact that the writing in one issue of Grant's work - particularly in this series - has as much story in it as four issues of most other writers. I love the fact that I'm awed by the pace and the density of it all. I love the fact that while there are clichés, there are many many more times when the clichés are subverted or pushed in unexpected new directions. And I love the fact that once you've got through an issue and it's sort of been a stimulating and invigorating experience in and of itself, it starts getting cumuluatively more interesting and complex and with more recurring characters and strands and insights and play the more that you correlate it and connect it to the rest of the series.

I think it's fair to say that not all of these correlations came off perfectly. I think it's fair to say that it's clear here and there that the artist gets things wrong, or that Grant didn't supply sufficient guidance. I think it's also absolutely and totally clear that in some places a few extra pages and a little extra clarity would not have gone amiss. The last issue was extraordinary, for example, but I would not have been unhappy if it was practically twice the length.

But generally, I'm stunned that people think it's anything less than a triumph. It's been the most fun, intricate, complex and dribbling-with-ideas orgy of spectacle that I've seen in the comics industry in years.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:57 / 27.10.06

I've re-read Guardian, Shining Knight and Zatanna so far and they hang together a lot better than I remember, I think the big problem is that trying to read most of this project in single issues just doesn't work at all.

My one question is going to be how the different realities Mister Miracle inhabits in issue 4 fit with our reality, as the place were the pirates find the die is the place where that God was imprisoned that mister Miracle frees and how that all works. I suspect it involves the view of reality we see in Zatanna #1, realities not being distinct 'What If?' alternate universe Elseworlds, but a number of different realities converging on a single point in space-time (also I think Mister Miracle 4 has to have happened after Guardians #1 & #2, so how the timelines work is another question).

But when someone mentioned that Grant makes his readers work, there's a differenec between working out that say Ali-Ka-Zoom was one of the Newsboy Army before you are told and say, working out something where there's been a cock-up in the art/colouring/lettering/editing states.

I also think it's perfectly valid to complain that these miniseries don't stand up unless as part of the maxiseries at all, with the exception of Mister Miracle which has almost no connection at all.

The Natural Way

12:56 / 27.10.06

See, Dr Beck, there's one thing I don't get nearly enough from Alan's plodding perfection and that's the YES!!!111!! moment. Grant's definitely rawer and tattier, but his work fucking ignites whereas alan can make the most gleaming, sci-fi, far out shit come off as kind of, well, err, meh. It's immaculate, sure, and very beautiful, but kind of cold.

The Natural Way

14:19 / 27.10.06

Substitute the 'meh' in the above post for 'dry'.

14:34 / 27.10.06

But on the other hand, Moore can on occasion do something that has more emotional punch than Morrison seems capable of. The Birth Caul is a prime example, but also the last few issues of Promethea, much of Voice Of The Fire, and a few other bits. Moore is the only comic writer who's made me cry...
I think Moore comes off as overintellectual whenever he does whizz-bang million-ideas-a-second SF, which is obviously where Morrison shines; but Moore is better able to do small-scale human emotion than Morrison. I think overall Moore is the better writer, but they're so different that comparisons are futile.
Interestingly, 7S seems to be the kind of thing one would more expect from Moore - the complex interconnecting plot thing seems to be more his kind of thing.

10:08 / 28.10.06

I've got the episode of Animal Man in my head shortly after his family has been killed and I could not disagree with you more.

16:17 / 28.10.06

I don't think Moore is necessarily better at invoking the small-scale human drama, just more likely to do so - with Morrison, the drama tends to take a back seat to the plot, whereas Moore is often more character-driven, although both can do both quite wonderfully when they're at their best.

18:13 / 28.10.06

Really? I dunno man. WE3 ("Help find home, boss."), Vimanarama ("Wherever you are, I'm still with you little brother."), Seaguy ("DON'T DIE CHUBBY!!!"), Animal Man (being reunited with his family), Doom Patrol (c'mon, who wasn't powerfully moved by Cliff and Crazy Jane???), etc and so on, from Zenith to New X-Men, 7Soldiers and beyond. One of Morrison's strengths is the emotional punch. He invokes the small scale human dramas all the time. And to great affect, for me at least, although he is definitely more dazzling with his reality-bending mind-warping sci-fu blockbusters.

22:36 / 28.10.06

I agree with Stone K
King Mob fixated on that moment with Jacqui kissing in the kitchen on E, KM again with his cats, Greg with Tony (in fact practically everyone with their cats), I could keep on reeling off moments that rely on the feelings of individuals.
I think he does 'human' and 'small scale human' really well, they're the anchor that gives meaning to the 5 dimensional love squids. For me he's a very emotional writer...the universe cracks because the heart is broken...

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

23:23 / 28.10.06

100% correct. That's why I love his work. Because all of it, weird shit to mundane, is rooted in human emotion. Pretty much no one does that as well as he does.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

06:38 / 29.10.06

I have to agree, there's also the bit with Bruce and Clark having a mindmeld in the last issue of WW3 in his JLA run. X-Men is a bit emotionally constipated though, everyone spinning in their own little world.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:29 / 30.10.06

Yeah, come on, in The Filth- on the surface, one of George's "coldest" comics- some of the stuff with Greg (as has been mentioned, especially with Tony and the other cats)- was dripping with emotion. The scene where he's burying one of the cats (can't find my copy at the mo', otherwise I'd quote the relevant passage, but it's in about issue #3 or #4) was utterly heartbreaking.

I think he's exceptionally good at doing emotions where the bond between humans and animals is involved- in SS#1, "did you think I'd let you fall?" was probably my favourite part- it had the "fuck yeah!" of all implausible rescue scenes, and there was a real love in it. I guess that's a very "mileage may vary" kind of thing, though- if I hated animals, I'd probably have thought We3 sucked.

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