[I wasn’t the biggest fan of this mini-series, which led to some contrary opinions in the comments of this post. Oh well — it’s all good. Enjoy!]
Keeping with Keeping with The God of All Comicsā Official Reading Order of the Seven Soldiers Saga, we next turn our gaze to the weakest of the seven mini-series. You know itās true! This series started weird and never really got any better. Itās a shame it gives us crucial information about a crucial figure in the epic! But thatās the way it is. And of course, we canāt have a post without a SPOILER warning, so here it is: there will be SPOILERS in here. Let the SPOILING commence! And as we get closer to the end, I will be SPOILING future issues more and more!
Does someone out there know why Pasqual Ferry wasnāt on this the entire series? Did he go exclusive with Marvel or something? Iām sure it was big news when it happened, but I canāt recall why he left. The other artists try to ape his style, which Iām not sure was a good idea, because, letās face it — Ferryās art on this issue is only just okay.
The media is covering the latest stunt by the world-famous escape artist, Shilo Norman. Heās preparing to dive into a S.T.A.R. labs-generated black hole, just so he can escape it. The newspeople, predictably, call him āone of the seven celebrity wonders of the world.ā One wonders who the other six are. Shilo Norman, Mister Miracle himself, has been around for a while, but Iām not sure when Scott Free actually turned the mantle of Mister Miracle over to him, nor what Scott Free is doing right now. It doesnāt really matter, except that this series concerns itself greatly with the New Gods, so itās odd that Shilo didnāt learn more about them from Scott when he was learning how to be such a great escape artist. 
But, as I mentioned, you donāt have to know that much about Shilo to appreciate this series. You do, however, have to know more than probably should be necessary about the New Gods (even though we get a brief refresher course), a concept I have never found that interesting. Yeah, Kirby blah blah blah, but whenever any of these characters shows up anywhere, I get taken right out of the story. They donāt always ruin things for me, but they take some getting used to. Morrison, of course, has a nerd bonerā¢ for all things Kirby and specifically the New Gods, so itās not surprising they show up in the saga. Anyway, Shilo is suspended above the black hole, which is a tiny dot far below him. He is hung not unlike the crucified Christ, which can mean many things. This is, more than likely, foreshadowing on Morrisonās part. Shilo, after all, sacrifices himself for the good of the world. Morrison is obsessed with the Tarot, too, and thereās a Hanged Man in the deck (check out the cover for an even better view of this), which, apparently, can symbolize Odin, who hung from a tree for nine days to gain wisdom. So Shilo hanging above the black hole is fraught with meaning. That wacky Morrison! In the first issue of The Manhattan Guardian, of course, Jake hears about this stunt on the radio, which pegs when the series begins, at least.
As the countdown commences, Shilo asks the Mother Box (he calls it Motherboxxx) on his shoulder if they can use the time dilation effect as they fall toward the event horizon. Phew! Thatās quite a sentence. A Mother Box is one of the gadgets that the New Gods use, functioning as portable supercomputers that can also open trans-dimensional holes known as Boom Tubes. Pretty handy to have. Itās apparently semi-sentient, as well, and functions as Shiloās āfamiliarā throughout the series. Hmmm, where have we seen familiars before? The ātime dilation effectā means that some other time slows down compared to the observerās own time. Itās all about physics, people! This kind of thing occurs around black holes, because the gravitational field is so strong. The āevent horizon,ā beside being a really awful science fiction movie [Edit: Eh, I don’t hate it as much as I did then], is the spot at which the inward pull of the black hole becomes so great nothing can escape. So thatās not a good place for Shilo to be. The restraints come loose, and Shilo falls. 
Something immediately goes wrong, and Shilo Norman, as the news says, āhas, quite simply, ceased to exist!ā
Or not. On the next page we see that he is face to face with Metron, who asks him what took him so long. Our Dread Lord and Master, who has access to arcane knowledge, posted a while back about what the page was going to look like. With that in mind, we have to ask ourselves if Metron is simply asking Shilo what took him so long, or if heās asking the reader why it took us so long to reach this point — surely Morrisonās dense plotting is easier to comprehend than that???? Or, it could be a sly self-deprecating remark about Morrison himself — hey, Grant, why did it take so long to finish Seven Soldiers #1? Iām just spitballing.
Metron does his weird, annoying way of speaking, then tells Shilo that āweā are lost. Since heās not royalty, we have to assume heās speaking about more than just himself. This, as it turns out, is true. The New Gods need Shilo, presumably because heās an escape artist and can āfindā his way out of being ālost.ā Metron tells Shilo that inside the event horizon, even āheā cannot see or hear us. Again, part of the problem with this story is that it requires us to know that Metron, more than likely, is talking about Darkseid. Anyone who has only been reading the Seven Soldiers saga might think heās talking about the Terrible Time Tailor or Melmoth. Metron invites Shilo to get snuggly with him in his Mobius chair, which evokes both a Mƶbius strip and the comic book artist, Moebius. Shilo is still freaking out, and Metron tells him to let go of fear or be crushed. Weāve seen this before — fear playing a big role in keeping our heroes from being true heroes. Now Shilo has to deal with it. Mother Box kicks in and tells Shilo that the void in his soul is going to be filled but heāll have to be strong to bear it. Again, we see the idea of someone taking on responsibility and having to deal with it. Shilo is not a grown-up, because he has a āvoidā in his soul. But if itās filled, heāll have a responsibility to it. Mother Box hopes he can come through.
The next few pages gives us a brief history of the battle between New Genesis and Apokolips. The narration sounds like someone telling someone else a story, which it turns out to be. 
We can guess that Shilo is the one talking, and he is. He talks about how wonderful New Genesis was, but then there was a war, and the wrong side won. We see Darkseid standing watching the industrial machines of Apokolips, and the narration tells us, āThe dark side won.ā This goes back to Morrisonās anti-industrial (anti-progress?) bent, as Darkseidās nightmare world reminds us (as itās supposed to) of our own world, and it also recalls the knights of Avalon splitting the atom. As this is part of Kirbyās mythology, I canāt really hold Morrison responsible for coming up with yet another horrible industrial world, but itās worth noting that they tie Apokolips and the Sheeda, both with out-of-control technology, together. Metron tells Shilo that he can either free the bright ones — the New Gods — or be slaves to the dark. He then at least names Darkseid and tells Shilo that heāll meet him at the crossroads. Boy, Iām glad Grant isnāt going for tired old clichĆ©s denoting important life choices! They’re too clever for that, right?
Metron snaps his fingers (like a magician, like Giovanni Zatara?) and Shilo escapes from the black hole. As he kneels on the ground with the crowd going wild, he passes out. He wakes up to see his manager, ZZ, staring back at him. ZZ tells Shilo that everyone is having a party around him, but Shilo just wants to be alone. Shilo says that there has to be more to this life than what he has — another sign of growing up. ZZ says he understands a mid-life crisis — even though, as Shilo points out, heās 23 — and that Shilo doesnāt know what to do when heās done everything. During this speech, heās holding a glowing ball that emits weird wisps of light. We donāt find out what this is until the third issue, but it still doesnāt make much sense. Anyway, we finally learn that Shilo is talking to a psychiatrist as he narrates this entire sequence. I donāt know about you, but I was suspicious of that doctor from the first panel. I mean, he has that billy goat beard, which is really Satanic. And, of course, psychiatrists are evil in general in fiction. Come on, people, you know Iām right! The doctor prompts him to speak about the events leading up to his āoutburst,ā and Shilo says that as ZZ led him to āparty people,ā everything took on a āflavorā like in Metronās world, but bad. ZZ takes him up to meet some women. These women are a madam and her prostitutes, but theyāre really Granny Goodness and the Four Furies — Bernadeth, Wunda, Lashina, and Mad Harriet. Shilo figures this out, and Granny doesnāt help things by sticking her forked tongue out at him, so he freaks out and runs for it. Back in the doctorās office, he says he knows heās not crazy as he looks out at the New York-that-might-have-been where the bulk of the saga takes place. 
The doctor suggests he might not want to take everything so literally, but then he takes a bite of a candy bar (like the one Klarion was impressed by?) and blood runs down his chin, so obviously the doctor is not someone Shilo should be trusting. He suggests this is all about the war within a manās soul, but Shilo asks him what if itās true, and he lives in a world where evil won? The doctor is dismissive of that notion, but it comes back to a world of dreary reality, where superheroes are a childish fantasy. We have seen this before, in the JLA Classified arc, where the Ultramarines are injected into a world that has no superheroes, and of course, throughout this entire arc, where the idea of heroes is scorned by āgrown-ups,ā meaning authority figures. Shilo is, technically, grown up, but he still has the immature mindset — heās an escape artist, after all. He wonders why his self esteem is still lousy after seeing the doctor for three years. This mirrors the self esteem workshop that Zatanna went to in issue #1 of her series — both of them fail to find what theyāre looking for from vacuous āadults.ā Only when faced with a true challenge will they make it through to where they need to be.
As Shilo leaves the office (and walks under a sign that misspells āApolloā — presumably itās the Apollo Theater), he sees a grumpy old man in a wheelchair, whom he originally thinks is Metron. The guy tells him that he did bet Metron that Shilo would lose it all at the beginning because he is too soft. Then he kind of obliquely reveals that he is the Black Racer, who used to cruise around on skis. Yes, skis. He holds a pawn and drops it as he tells Shilo he needs to be tested. Suddenly cars start flying (some literally) at Shilo, and heās caught in the Drive-By Derby! And ā¦ scene!
Yes, we end on the Drive-By Derby. When I first read this, I was amazed by how stupid that was. Now that Iām re-reading it, Iām amazed by how stupid it is. I suppose itās some weird tribute to the insanity of Kirbyās concepts, and I suppose if anyone can make a Drive-By Derby work, itās Morrison, but considering we just came from The Manhattan Guardian #4, where the kookiness of the Newsboy Army concept didnāt destroy the tragic nature of their fate, in this issue, we havenāt quite yet invested in Shilo Norman, so when cars start flying at him, we shrug our shoulders and think, āSo?ā
The entire issue is like that. Sure, Morrison is again bringing in the themes they have been toying with throughout the saga, and Shilo certainly is a man who needs to understand what it means to be a hero, so of course he needs to be tested. 
The Fourth World trappings, however, keep us strangely distant. More than the other series, Morrison seems to be phoning it in on this series, probably because if you write a series about Mister Miracle, itās apparently in the contract that you must reference every single figure in the Fourth World. Or maybe Kirby had a good contract and he stipulated it. That makes this far less compelling than a āregularā Morrison comic book, because they have to bring in all these characters who really arenāt that interesting. Metron, for example, is just dull. All he ever does is spout this pseudo-mystical crap and fly around on that stupid chair of his. Darkseid should be a fascinating character, and certainly in āRock of Ages,ā Morrison made him pretty interesting, but usually heās just kind of a blustery bully (I say āusuallyā because some writers have made him okay, but those portrayals seem few and far between).
It does get better. Morrison manages to tie it into the main saga, and Aurakles, of course, provides a crucial piece of the puzzle. The problem with this issue is that it feels half-formed, and as we go through the series, the ideas of different worlds in different dimensions gets a little more development. Itās typical Morrison metafiction, but since New Genesis and Apokolips exist in different dimensions that the regular DCU (donāt they?), this could easily have been the mini-series that examines fiction and how heroes become myth. It doesnāt quite pull that off, but it at least approaches that. But so much of this feels like itās not springing from the brain of Morrison, whence so many good things about Seven Soldiers come. Even the biblical connections to the word āShiloh,ā which we could easily believe coming from the fertile imagination of The God of All Comics, isnāt his, as Shilo Norman existed prior to this series. So not much in this first issue feels distinctively Morrisonian, and although some people might say thatās a good thing, in conjunction with Seven Soldiers, itās not.
Of course, I canāt let you go without pointing out the annotations! If you know of any reviews that are nicer than mine (although, in the context of the entire epic, this series gets the job done), let me know!
Next: Zatanna gets in a weird fight!
