If you’re anything like me and have already read the first two volumes of the Seven Soldiers series, then this will be the book you’ve been waiting for, as it introduces the remaining three characters.
Mister Miracle is an extraordinary escape artist, more David Blaine on steroids than full-on superhero, though he somehow manages to get roped in to this world-saving lark anyway. Bulleteer is a more traditional if somewhat reluctant superheroine, who becomes indestructable after her pervy mad-scientist husband tries to turn them both into metal-skinned superheroes, more through vanity than a desire to save the world. He doesn’t survive the irreversible process, but eventually Bulleteer comes round to the inevitable truth that there’s little for an indestructable woman to do except break down walls and save lives. Last up is Frankenstein, a square-headed Boris Karlov look alike, brought into the present and tooled up with some heavy artillery.
Klarion and Zatanna finish their stories in this book, though there’s little closure: we know there’s more to come from them in the next volume and we’re taken no further forward in the overall plot than in the stories that were completed in the previous book.
This makes it feel like it’s going through the motions – as if the story has a beginning, a middle and an end, but that there’s just too much middle. The art is great and the idea remains sound, but it somehow feels like it’s dragging its feet, as if there isn’t enough story to fill the concept.
We’re still looking forward to the finale in volume 4, but it might have felt more satisfying if we could have had the conlusion in this volume, rather than the relative heel-kicking of a bunch of new characters and another book to wait for.
Other titles in the Seven Soldiers of Victory series:
[catlist orderby=title numberposts=-1 id=144 order=asc thumbnail=yes template=new]