Seven Soldiers of Victory, Vol. 2 [Paperback]

Grant Morrison (Author), Simone Bianchi (Illustrator), Cameron Stewart (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 22, 2006

This second volume in the series features the continuing exploits of four of the seven soldiers: the Shining Knight, the Guardian, Zatanna and Klarion the Witch Boy! Independently, each of these characters is featured in a story arc that redefines their purpose in the DC Universe. But their stories also interweave with the other soldiers’ tales, and tell a grander story of a devastating global threat to mankind. Together these reluctant champions must arise and somehow work together to save the world...without ever meeting one another!

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

In the second set of stories featuring four of the titular seven soldiers (a 1940s superhero team whose original members Morrison has replaced with obscure, neglected characters from DC's long roster), Klarion the Witch Boy makes his way from his subterranean home to the surface of New York City, the Guardian meets the mysterious newspaper publisher who hired him to be his in-house crimefighter, the now-powerless magician Zatanna learns that her new protege, Misty, has a surprising past, and a yet more unexpected secret about the time-traveling warrior called the Shining Knight is revealed. The heroes' paths are converging, but they remain unknown to one another even though all are battling the same menace, the Sheeda, a race of interdimensional demons that attacks Earth every few centuries. Considerably tamer than Morrison's genuinely experimental early superhero work (e.g., Animal Man) and his nongenre titles, The Invisibles (1996-2002) and The Filth (2004), Seven Soldiers is still relatively innovative and satisfyingly complex. And if never remarkable, the artwork--each story has a different illustrator--is consistently compelling. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: DC Comics (March 22, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401209750
• ISBN-13: 978-1401209759
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.3 x 10.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #567,998 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Compelling Series, August 13, 2010

By 

E. David Swan (South Euclid, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Seven Soldiers of Victory, Vol. 2 (Paperback)

Volume Two was actually a much easier read than volume one which I had to read through twice in order to understand the plot. The Shining Knight and Guardian storylines end in this volume with no real conclusions but that may be ok. The various storylines have started bleeding into each other and although the Shining Knight and Guardian have reached their final issues the overreaching tale is far from over. On the other hand it's perfectly possible that Morrison could fail to sufficiently tie up the story by the end of volume four making this whole exercise futile. My final score is based on the assumption that Morrison will be successful in creating a conclusion that is at least as compelling as the story thus far.

I haven't always enjoyed everything Morrison has produced but so far I'm really impressed with the Seven Soldiers series. The Shining Knight had a twist in it that perhaps I should have seen coming but it really worked well and showed how bold Morrison is in experimenting with established characters. I would also like to give special nod to Simone Bianchi whose art in the Shining Knight is absolutely spectacular. This is some of the best artwork I have ever seen in my three decades of comic collecting and combined with Morrison's exemplary writing it creates quite a combo. The ending of the Guardian story really felt more like a beginning and I certainly hope it gets wrapped up in one of the other series or I'm going to be very disappointed.

Morrison uses a very subtle hand in ever so slightly tying the disparate stories together. There is an occurrence that happens in the Klarion story that references back to something that happened in the Guardian story in volume one but wasn't then explained. Zantana's story collides with the Shining Knights but at no point do any of the seven soldiers actually physically meet and I assume this will continue to the conclusion of the Seven Soldiers series. We still have yet to see Mister Miracle, Bulleteer or *ahem* Frankenstein but I eagerly await their arrival.

I was worried whether I might like this series. The reviews are mixed and I've been burned by Morrison in the past but this time Morrison scores big time. If I had known it was going to be this good I would have sprung for the hard cover versions rather than the paperback. That leaves me with a big dilemma. Do I pick up the second two books in paperback or wait until March 2011 to get book to in hardcover. These stories are worth reading multiple times and I think the more you read it the more you get out of it as you discover things that were previously overlooked. I'm going to give this volume five stars but it's all contingent on whether or not the conclusion successfully brings everything together.

1 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Graphic SF Reader, September 3, 2007

By 

Blue Tyson "- Research Finished" (Legion clubhouse) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seven Soldiers of Victory, Vol. 2 (Paperback)

This iteration of the Seven Soldiers, gathered together to fight the influence of the Sheeda, after the first batch of low rent heroes Vigilante gathered were butchered, are :-

Shining Knight
Guardian
Bulleteer
Klarion
Frankenstein
Zatanna
Mister Miracle

In this case, it is the 'other' Mister Miracle, not Scott Free. Further in to the story, they begin to understand a little of what is happening, but are still a bit freaked, in general.

2 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pretty but ultimately poor series, July 20, 2010

By 

Ryan "R. Frazier" (West Sacramento CA, CA, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Seven Soldiers of Victory, Vol. 2 (Paperback)

It's a pity that so many talented artists wasted their time on this series. Morrison spends the entire series promising a resolution that he has no capacity to deliver. This is a pretty book and many of the individual series' are fun to read, but read as a unit, Seven Soldiers is more of a jumbled mishmash than a book with anything interesting to say about anything.

It's too bad the collections are presented as a unit, as the book would probably read better if you just ignored the "framing story" and read each of the separate character's stories as stand-alone tales with nothing to do with each other.