Seven Soldiers: Bulleteer #2 - "Who Killed Seven Soldiers?"
- The star of this one is agent helligan!
- Alix was the seventh soldier who was supposed to be part of Greg Saunders' group back in #0
- I, Spyder killed his brother! And he did die in battle against the sheeda, so most likely resurrected by Gloriana
- The Iron Hand from #100-102! His nephew was Blue Boy, and he gave the cosmic trumpet to summon Nebula Man (that's how Solomano summoned him back in #100 to fight the Seven Soldiers!)
- He hated Greg Saunders because he thought he was racist towards mexicans, but didn't realize he was just aggressive with a Werewolf, because he himself was a werewolf!
- Thats why Greg used silver bullets in the #0
- The ghost of Vigilante shot a bullet into the soul of Iron Hand, so he dies.
- The Black Baron and Big Caesar are both old villains from the Vigilante's rogues gallery. It's likely Goss was one too.
- Helligan succumbs to the bite from Gloriana on the way to her sisters wedding, revealing that her sister's husband is a freaking werewolf, the same guy that Greg was aggressive with in the flashback!
- She also apologizes to her brother for mixing fish oil into his milkshake
- Alix gets acquainted with her new roommate, who turns out to have super strength
- Neh-Buh-Loh is searching for the Seven Treasures of Camelot. The Lost Citadel in the Himalayas is Gorias, where Zatanna sent Misty in Zatanna #4. The winged horses are the descendents of Pega-Zeus, of whom the Shining Knight's mount, Vanguard, is one.
- If I'm not mistaken, The Vigilante's back-up man in PANEL 2, the fellow with the whip who has confiscated Ramon's iron hand, is Rodney Gaynor a.k.a. The 'Golden Age' Whip mentioned by his granddaughter Shelly Gaynor in Seven Soldiers 0.
- Agent Helligan's "Big Picture" approach to investigation pays off unexpected dividends in the end. By investigating the murder of the Seven Soldiers, she turns up just the evidence she needs to solve her other problem: how to break up her sister's wedding.
- Frankenstein has tracked Melmoth to Mars, where Team Red mines for gold in ancient martian mausoleums.
- He reveals that Gloriana dumped him at the first fall of camelot. He survived with magic, but then replaced his blood with the waters of the cauldron of rebirth.
- He plans to use mankind as slaves instead of his wife's plans of harvesting and then coming back in the future.
- He will finance the war with the martian gold.
- The distress signal Frankenstein received was probably from the Deviants gang, which is how Franky got there, through the erdel gate.
- Melmoth reveals that Franky comes from him, he gave drops of his blood to Victor Frankenstein in 1816. He's a grundy!
- The red zombie tomb guardians awaken, and Franky is free!
- He lets the martian horses eat benito silencio and Melmoth, while leading the child slaves to the erdel gate, contemplating the revelation of melmoth and the coming of his wife, gloriana.
- “Fear” and “Terror” in the captions refer Phobos and Deimos, the moons of Mars which loom overhead. There’s a later reference to Grand Guignol, a Paris theater which became a byword for gory spectacle.
- The grafittied NASA landing craft pictured in the second panel is one of two sent to Mars as part of NASA's Viking Missions. The Viking I & II landers were the first man-made vehicles to land safely on the surface of another planet. I would suggest that we are looking at Viking I, which touched down on the western slope of Chryse Planitia, a.k.a. "The Plains of Gold." That sounds like an appropriate location for Melmoth's secret gold mines.
- Melmoth sires children upon the women of Roanoke, whose descendants all become Grundies when they die because they still have the Water in their blood.
- Gods of evil puts forth a new competitor to tear down Shilo in the form of Bedlam!
- ZZ is still brainwashed on the flat, Lashina has her talons in him.
- Shilo's girl Jonelle appears, but she is turned into a plastic person by Granny Goodness.
- Shilo is surrounded by the gods of evil in human form, and they steal mother box, leaving darkseid to infect him with the anti-life equation.
- Shilo is messed up, but Metron reminds him there's a life equation too, and he resists.
- He returns, but is unable to escape the omega sanction.
- Dark Side's goons beat, mutilate, burn, and castrate shilo, leaving him a crippled invalid.
- Mother Box is tortured by DeSaad.
- The New Gods find Shilo and prepare to help him escape the life trap.
- The sheeda storm approaches New York as it passes over Florida.
- Hilarious!
- Suli Stellamaris was in a billboard in Shining Knight #2... her and her son are a play on Lori Lemaris and the Aquaman origin
- I, Spyder is hunting Bulleteer because she was the seventh soldier in Vigilante's team (and other reasons)
- Big Thunder
- Mind Grabber Man from Zatanna #1... uses gay label to help him stand out
- Susan Park, the original bullet girl, and bullet dog
- Dumb bunny of the inferior five
- Man at panel claims Millions is immortal due to Kid scarface getting the cauldron of rebirth in slaughter swamp (and millions apparently runs the US banking system?)
- Lil hollywood!
- Mention of it being unlucky to go into battle with only six
- Alix learns about Sally Sonic, the eternal superteen that Lance messaged, from Thumbelina
- Mind grabber man is not actually gay
- He had an adventure with the JLA back in the 70's (#70)
- Spyder tries to kill Bulleteer but misses, which he believes he might have done intentionally to resist the sheeda control. He is then confronted by the ghost of Greg Saunders, who prepares to erase the sheeda programming
- Alix's roommate is revealed as Sally Sonic, and they fight.
- Lucian wishes he had ascended to the big leagues of the JLA Watchtower instead of peaking at “Special Guest” status at nerd conventions. Is this Grant Morrison expressing regret that he never made it in Hollywood or as a “serious writer”?
- Lil Hollywood looks quite young compared to her teammates. Later on in the issue, Lucian says that "She can make herself look a lot younger than she is." If so, then all the Newsboys have some form of immortality: Vincenzo's cauldron, Baby Brains' eternal baby form, Ali-Ka-Zoom's phantom existence.
- In the final panels of this issue, Sally Sonic hits Alix repeatedly with a refrigerator. "Women in Refrigerators" is a phrase coined to describe a phenomenon afflicting certain female supporting characters in comic books. "Women in Refrigerators Syndrome" occurs when a female supporting character is maimed, killed, or depowered as a plot device within a comic book story starring a male lead. The death or injury of a woman is often used to provide motivation for the male lead, and female characters seem to endure an unfair share of peril as a result.
- Franky gets recruited by clandestine organization known as SHADE, led by Father Time
- His wife, The Bride, is also a part of SHADE. She has multiple arms after an encounter with Red Swami who grafted multiple arms to make her a reincarnated assassin goddess before she was incapacitated and turned by SHADE
- A superweapon has escaped, known as The Water, a chemo like being who has infected the water supply of Salvation Valley, and turned everything against its nature.
- US military sent in a super-pilot to subdue/release the water, Zbigniew X, who has gone insane after communicating with the water.
- Franky and Bride defeat the two, and Father Time tries recruiting Franky for another mission against a time monster in tibet.
- Planetary crisis is occurring at the same time, while hurricane gloria moves up past pennsylvania, on a preprogrammed path...
- Morrison melds that idea with the crackpot ideas of Japanese pseudoscientist Masaru Emoto, whose books like “The Message from Water” claimed that water molecules have a memory which can be manipulated psychically.
- Zbigniew Brzezinski was an advisor to US president LBJ, who Father Time mentions as the founder of SHADE.
- Shilo is put through the life trap, the omega sanction! A gauntlet of synthetic lives meant to degrade and torture the inflicted.
- We see Shilo's backstory, how the death of his brother aaron created this need to escape.
- We see a future where shilo grows old and dezard torments him at his deathbed.
- We see Shilo's time as the warden of the meta-prison The Slab, where he converses with prisoner prepped for execution at the hands of Boss Dark Side: Aurakles the Oracle. Aurakles mentions running away across the multiverse from something (his gift of inter-dimensional sight? his responsibility to the cosmos?) and how he was the one trapped beneath New York. He asks if the Spear found its mark. He is in prison because he apparently killed a bunch of superheroes and civilians...
- Shilo gives his life to free aurakles, to which aurakles claims he is the lord thy destroyer who will set him free to save everybody.
- Asks Shilo if he is one of 666 monsters of chaos.
- Dezard discovers that the mother box's soul escaped into Shilo.
- Shilo communes with Omega, the embodiment of the Sanction/Life Trap and convinces it to escape with him.
- So the final reveal is that everything in this mini happened within the black hole's event horizon: a cosmic tug o war of Shilo being tested by the new gods and the dark gods. The Omega Sanction, the interactions with Dezard, Metron, Black Racer, Dark Side, and the homeless gods were all a game trying to break Shilo. He prevailed and is now chosen of genesis to free the gods after their fall from heaven against darkseid. He has overcome his trauma from the death of his brother and is worthy to be god of freedom.
- Based on his own description of himself, The Omega Sanction seems to be a personification of the Hindu/Buddhist concept of Samsara, in which the soul lives, dies, and is reborn into the temporal, phenomenal world in an unending cycle due to ignorance of the true nature of existence, which is timeless and selfless. Therefore, Shilo's attempts to escape the Life Trap are equated with the struggle to achieve liberation from samsara in the realization of Nirvana.
- Sally Sonic fights against Bulleteer. The impetus behind this seems to be that Sally sees the version of herself she wished she could be in Alix, and is taking out her repressed rage on her and letting out all the self-hate.
- We see Sally's backstory, how she was a teen hero but was immortal and didn't age, so everyone she knew died. Since she vowed not to break the law, she was helpless as child services took her into an abusive home, so she escaped. She fell into the hands of a sleazy manipulator super-pimp who used her for sex-photos. Little did she know that he did all of it to avenge his brother who died in prison due to Sally's father, a judge, locking them up.
- Alix beats Sally, but is then confronted by the ghost of Greg Saunders (possibly animated by the magic of the time tailors) who tells Alix that she herself is the spear that was never thrown, a descendant of the first super hero.
- She rejects her destiny, and takes Sally to the hospital.
- On page two, the two crooks in stripey shirts in PANEL 2 may be Dennis (a.k.a. Vita-Man) and his brother Chris, based on what we learn later in this issue.
- Neh-Buh-Loh states that he has lived for 3 billion years. He could have grown to replace the whole universe, but a flaw within keeps him small.
- The flaw prevented him from killing misty kilgore (rhiannon), melmoth's daughter.
- SHADE is the only organization available to deal with the sheeda invasion due to the fallout of infinite crisis.
- He defeats Neh-Buh-Loh, discovering that he is the mature form of Qwewq and Nebula Man, a cosmo-sapien, and the flaw within him was put there by the Ultra-marine corps when they invaded back in JLA Classified.
- Frankenstein sneaks onto Castle Revolving and follows Gloriana to summer's end, where she explains that the Sheeda are the remnants of humanity at the end of time, harvesting the past to feed the future, and leaving just enough for a new crop to grow. Frankenstein pulls an ozymandias and blows up the fleet, while commandeering castle revolving to the present!
- The message from the future is frankenstein himself!
- After Neh-Buh-Loh's attack in this issue, the pegazeus' shuttle Misty Kilgore to safety and meet up with Zatanna at the end of Zatanna #4.
- Currently in Manhattan, the Guardian and Baby Brain are taking the fight to the Sheeda in the streets outside the newspaper's headquarters, Guardian Heights. Klarion is racing towards the surface world in a stolen subterranean drill. Mister Miracle has just arrived back from his transcendent experience inside a black hole with a new purpose in life. Bulleteer has quit the superhero life and is driving Sally Sonic to the hospital. Hurricane Gloria is bearing down on the city. The Bride is diving out of the sky to join the action.
- Neh-Buh-Loh describes the Flaw as something that causes him to feel Compassion. It moved him to spare the life of Misty "Errrhiahchnnon" Kilgore. Frankenstein describes the Flaw as the presence of Death. The awareness of his own mortality makes Neh-Buh-Loh capable of feeling compassion for others.
- Justice League of America #100 revealed that there is a tombstone high in the Himalayas dedicated to "An Unknown Soldier of Victory." In Justice League of America #102, the JLA and JSA eventually discover that The Crimson Avenger's partner, Wing, is the Unknown Soldier buried at the gravesite.
- Are these Glass Giants a futuristic version of the same technology that produced The Water, whom Frankenstein fought in Issue #3, and Chemo? Could the giant green creatures seen attacking Avalon alongside the Sheeda in Shining Knight 1 have been Glass Giants?
- One of the time tailors has Zor, the renegade, in the gold cabin within slaughter swamp. The townsfolk of gotham are coming to lynch cyrus gold for killing children.
- The new gods came and evolved a neanderthal to become the first superhero, Aurakles. He gets seven treasures: the sword, the cauldron, the merlin-sprite, the hammer, the fatherbox, the pegazeus, and the spear.
- The epithet "Silver Arm" was used to describe Nuada in Irish mythology.
- Aurakles brings order to this savage earth. Neanderthal super scientists send a time machine into the future, but it is found by melmoth, who turns it into castle revolving and harrows the caveman empire.
- Arthur uses the merlin to find the sword and the pegazeus, and he leads an invasion to summer's end to retrieve the cauldron. Only seven return.
- The time tailor reveals that he killed the real cyrus gold by drowning him in the swamp, and he shaved zor's face to make him look like cyrus. The coat he is weaving is for him instead.
- Shelly Gaynor: "Every day is mythology when you use your x-ray vision to really, really look."
- Misty believes the only way to stop the sheeda is to take her step-mom's place
- Zatanna uses the sprite to activate the universe and unite the soldiers through mystery string to save the world
- Klarion takes the dice and commandeers castle revolving from frankenstein, becoming the new leader of the sheeda!
- Rolling two dice, he can get the seven (victory) that was impossible with one die alone. In fact, he can position the dice so that they add up to seven no matter which way you look at them. Together, the dice are the Fatherbox, the Darkseid-version of the Motherbox, one of the Seven Treasures of Aurakles. Klarion travels to the year One Billion to become king of the Sheeda in Gloriana’s absence.
- guardian reunites with carla!
- Shilo takes the place of Aurakles and is killed by Dark Side, with the death of freedom begins the dark aeon
- Spyder resists the sheeda programming and betrays gloriana; Alix runs her over. Sally dies in the accident.
- The time tailor (the ferryman) sews Zor up as Cyrus gold and leaves him to the mercy of the mob. A black flower grows for him.
- Millions, the dogfather, is the victor of the baldi/silencio war and claims the spoils!
- Shilo escapes death and rises from the grave!
- The Time Tailor finishes Cyrus Gold’s patchwork suit and describes it as “the work of many hands” which will not “ever fit properly.” This describes the way comic book continuity can never be perfect, considering how many different creators are involved.
- Alix Harrower's car careens off a pile of rubble, launching it into the air. The rubble was left there by Klarion's subterranean drill. If Klarion hadn't parked the drill just where he did, Alix's car wouldn't have crashed into Gloriana.
- Subtitles: "Bedlam on Broadway!" , "Never Be Nice To Your Nemesis!" , "Master at the game" , "The Last Headline"
No comments:
Post a Comment