Batman v Superman I: The Silver Age Fights

Who wins?!

In 1938, Action Comics #1 brought us Superman, a vision of the best man we are capable of imagining. A year later, Detective Comics #27 introduced Batman, a vision of the best man we can imagine actually existing. This month, a movie will explore the question of which of those visions is better. Batman versus Superman… in a fight, who wins?

The question is not new. The two characters, owned by the same company, have fought against evil, side by side, hundreds of times, but have also squared off against one another in combat on many occasions. Who wins? A creator can imagine it either way, and both of the fictional heroes have wins to their credit. The outcomes of those battles may say a little about two fictional creations, and then, it may say much about what we would like to believe of ourselves, and our fantasies. Later this month, millions of people will consider the question: Who will win? This is a propitious time to look back at past battles and see how others have answered that question. Here is the most comprehensive look at what has happened when Superman and Batman have fought one another on thirty-three separate occasions.

Silver Age fights

1) World's Finest #74 (1955): Superman and Batman appeared together in one adventure as colleagues in the Justice Society of America, a meeting that was conveniently forgotten when they met for the first time again in Superman #76. In the fifth meeting of Superman and Batman in the new "Silver Age" continuity, we see Superman fight "Batman" for the first time. This isn't the real Batman, however, but an alien capable of changing his appearance. The shocker of seeing Superman punch Batman appears in the art, but the two heroes never raised a fist against one another. Result: No fight.

2) World's Finest #95 (1958): Superman and Batman battle for real, Round One! Batman gets superpowers and soon, he and his friend Superman quarrel, first as rivals in super-feats, then in a super fistfight. Robin soon discovers that aliens used advanced ray beams to give Batman superpowers and make both of the heroes hate one another. Their fight is interrupted and the aliens turn off the beams, returning everything to normal. Result: A tie.

3) World's Finest #109 (1960): A sorceror named Fangan enchants Batman, compelling him to obey three strange commands. Superman uses a ray beam in his Fortress to give Batman temporary superpowers so that he can fulfill the tasks, a plan that backfires when the third command is to defeat the world's strongest man. Using his powers, Batman throws Superman into space, which frees him from the magical spell he's under. Now that Batman is himself again, Superman reveals that he only pretended to be thrown, to end the ordeal. Result: No fight.

4) World's Finest #122 (1961): An alien named Klor convinces Batman and Robin that Superman must stand trial on his world. Using kryptonite, Batman sets traps to try to capture Superman, but fails on the first two tries. Although Superman is wary, a third trap succeeds, and Batman takes the weakened Man of Steel to Klor's planet, where the trial shows that Klor faked evidence to frame Superman. However, Batman's effort to trap Superman succeeds, in the first use of "prep time" to win a fight. Result: Batman wins.

5) World's Finest #143 (1964): Batman's morale is suffering from being upstaged by Superman on a mission. The heroes visit Kandor, where a now-powerless Superman tries to stage a fake emergency where Batman can rescue him for a change. Batman discovers the ruse and is so angry that the two fight a duel using stun-swords. Superman derives an advantage in the duel, but quietly decides not to go for the win. Batman therefore prevails the duel, and the convoluted adventure ends with the heroes resuming their friendship. Result: Although Batman is never aware of it, Superman could have won the sword fight.

6) World's Finest #153 (1965): An imaginary story merges the Silver Age origins of Lex Luthor and Batman by showing a world where a young Bruce Wayne mistakenly believes that Superboy has killed his father, Dr. Thomas Wayne. Wayne becomes becomes a crime fighter called Batman in order to avenge his father's death and pretends to be Superman's ally as part of an elaborate plan to take revenge on him. Allying himself with that world's Lex Luthor, Batman successfully captures Superman in a kryptonite trap intended to kill him. Luthor slips up and reveals that he framed Superboy all those years ago, so Batman frees Superman. In the resulting chaos, Luthor kills Batman, who realizes in his final moments that his whole life was devoted to a mistake. This story has a panel where Batman slaps Robin, which has often been used as an Internet meme. Result: Batman successfully ambushes Superman.

6) World's Finest #163 (1966): A space criminal named Jemphis lures Superman and Batman to a world with a red sun, and hypnotically commands Batman to kill Superman. Batman knocks the powerless Superman unconscious and is about to kill him, but Jemphis suggests a more sadistic finish, which allows Superman to escape. Then Jemphis stages a fight to the death in an arena. The night before the fight, Superman uses "prep time" to craft weapons that allow him to win the fight, but Superman refuses to kill Batman. This allows Batman to gain the advantage and is about to kill Superman when he overcomes Jemphis' mind control and the two join forces to defeat the villain. Result: It's complicated! Batman wins the first fight, but Superman prevails when Batman doesn't press his advantage. Superman wins the second fight, but Batman prevails when Superman refuses to kill him. Essentially, each hero gets the decisive advantage in one fight before deciding not to go for the kill.

7) JLA #63 (1968): The Key hypnotically commands the JLA to fight and kill one another after a one-hour delay. Before the command can be acted out, Superman goes back in time to switch places with the version of himself from three years earlier. The earlier version of Superman, unaffected by the command, physically overpowers the entire rest of the JLA, who are compelled to resist him. Superman easily defeats not only Batman, but also Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Arrow, Hawkman, Aquaman, and the Atom, all at the same time. Once he has forced them outside of their headquarters, they are no longer compelled to obey the Key's commands. Result: Superman wins big.

8) World's Finest #176 (1968): In his final performance, a dying actor named Ronald Jason poses as a pair of aliens in order to trick Superman and Batman into a duel. Batman recruits Supergirl to help him while Superman enlists the aid of Batgirl. The four heroes fight a grand battle, during which the actor succumbs to his illness and dies. Superman and Batman then reveal that they figured out the ruse from the beginning, but allowed Supergirl and Batgirl to be fooled so that Jason would have a bit of success in his dying part. Result: Supergirl defeats Batgirl, but Superman and Batman have no real fight.

9) World's Finest #180 (1968): The heroes' third battle of 1968 took place in an imaginary tale in which Superman loses his powers, becoming a non-powered hero named Nova. A villain named Mr. Socrates captures Nova and uses a surgical implant to control his mind. A non-powered Superman almost kills his friend before Batman manages to subdue him. Then, Batman allows Superman to escape so that he can follow him back to the criminal's lair. Superman regains control of his own mind and helps Batman defeat Socrates. The Nova name and costume was later used as the basis for the mystery hero Supernova in 52. Result: Batman defeats a non-powered Superman.

10) World's Finest #182 (1969): Superman learns that an ancient curse is placed on Batman, making him go berserk whenever he's in costume. Superman twice defeats the raging Batman easily, changing him into his Bruce Wayne clothes to stop the rampage. However, we later learn that the curse was placed on Superman, not Batman, and that Batman's rampages were only an act. By staying in Superman's presence, Batman prevents the curse from taking effect, because it was contingent on Superman being alone. Result: No actual fight.

11) World's Finest #185 (1969): A group of galactic gamblers abduct the two heroes, rob Superman of his powers, and compel them to fight to the death. The fight is inconclusive when suddenly it is revealed that Superman never lost his powers, and the two heroes were deliberately acting out a draw until they could overpower the gamblers. Result: No actual fight.

12) World's Finest #186-7 (1969): Traveling back in time to find the connection between Bruce Wayne and General "Mad" Anthony Wayne, Batman finds that Superman has turned evil and is trying to kill him. Batman has a youth fire a kryptonite pebble at Superman's head, which turns him back to normal. It turns out that an evil spirit had been inhabiting Superman and was banished by the effect of the kryptonite. Result: No real fights.

13) World's Finest #195 (1970): As part of a plan to bust a Mafia ring, Superman pretends to be allied with them. Jimmy Olsen and Robin are in on his scheme, but Batman is not when, in an effort to prove his loyalty to the Mafia, Superman decks Batman and pretends to kill Jimmy and Robin. He confesses his plan to Batman a minute later, but the quick knockout was a clean takedown of the Caped Crusader, fair and square. Result: Superman wins.

14) World's Finest #202 (1971): Brakh, a Middle Eastern madman seems to have Superman under his control and is using him to increase his power. Batman arrives on the scene and hopes that Superman is only pretending to be under the villain's control. Batman quickly loses the fight, and is about to lose his life when Brakh orders his super-servant not to kill Batman. We soon learn that it is a Superman robot, not Superman himself, who defeated Batman. So, there is no fight between the two heroes, but in a telling moment, before the fight with the robot, Batman thinks, "Of course, I wouldn't even try to beat him! I know my limits!" Result: No fight, but Batman loses to a Superman robot, and admits that he couldn't beat the real thing.

15) World's Finest #258 (1979): When werewolves are on the attack, Batman gets infected, and becomes a super-powerful were-bat in a violent, animal rage. With his powers, he is almost a match for Superman, but the resourceful Man of Steel flies the two of them into the upper atmosphere where the were-bat passes out from lack of air. Result: Superman wins.

16) World's Finest #320 (1985): In their final pre-Crisis showdown, Batman assists Superman when he is being mind-controlled by a villain named Rem. Superman, sent to defeat Batman, chases after him in the Fortress of Solitude, but goes slowly as his own will power fights against that of Rem. Batman escapes, then uses the Phantom Zone projector on Superman. Result: Batman wins.

Next time: Post-Crisis matchups!

Retro Review: Infinite Crisis

There hasn't been a "bigger" event in DC Comics than Infinite Crisis. The first word in the title seemed, at times, to describe the number of crossovers and related one-shots and miniseries. Essentially related to its predecessor, Crisis on Infinite Earths and the yearlong 52, which immediately followed it, Infinite Crisis stands as a transition between two eras, a sort of crossroads in the history of DC Comics more than it is a single standalone work.

Nevertheless, the seven issues of Infinite Crisis itself can be read alone, but woe be to the reader who picks it up unaware of the voluminous backstory. Writer Geoff Johns expects the reader to know the basics of COIE and pre-Crisis history and tries to reward those who also know the fine points and even the trivia. Several plots from various DC series spanning the year or two prior to Infinite Crisis are essential to understanding where Infinite Crisis picks up in issue #1, which from the very first scene feels much more like the middle of a longer story than the start of a new one.

Stripped to its barest essence, the plot goes like this: Alex Luthor, the last crisis' only survivor from Earth Three, aided by the Superboy from Earth Prime, dupes many villains and Kal-L, the Superman of Earth Two, into helping him carry out a plan to reboot the universe. Alex, Superboy Prime, and Kal-L each believe that the DC Universe created by COIE was flawed, unnecessarily dark, and that Alex should use his scientific skills to start the universe over, better, based on different foundations. The existing superheroes, notably Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman, begin the story in disarray, partly due to their own conflicts, and partly due to plots that Alex has secretly undertaken against them. Ultimately, Alex and Superboy Prime are stopped, but at the cost of several superheroes' lives, including that of Superboy, Conner Kent. In the process, the universe is indeed rebooted, but New Earth is only moderately different than the post-Crisis Earth, and not hewn according to Alex's wishes. At the end of the conflict, the superheroes are more unified and optimistic than they were when the crisis began.

It's a convoluted story that requires so much effort to summarize. Infinite Crisis aspires to higher things than Crisis on Infinite Earths did: The heroes have noticeably different personalities – which is what leads to their conflicts – and even the villains are nuanced: Alex Luthor's plan, at least a sanitized version of it, is presented to heroes like Batman and Power Girl, and they actually need some time to think it over before rejecting it. So the story is more nuanced than COIE. But aspiring to nuance and handling it well are not the same thing, and in trying to do so much, Infinite Crisis does only some of it well.

The plot is engaging for serious fans, and, defying the usual expectations of a superhero story, reads like a mystery: First-time readers began the story not knowing who the villain was, how the universe would be reshaped, or which characters would die. The use of characters who had been in another dimension since COIE made a dramatic splash on the last page of the first issue, breaking a rule that had been inviolate for the previous 20 years. The kidnapping of a very quirky set of superheroes (and Black Adam) posed a mystery that some readers solved – that the hodgepodge of abductees were selected to provide one each from a diverse collection of the pre-Crisis Earths. When Alex reactivated the many Earths of the Multiverse, it created a vast menagerie of worlds for readers to survey, from the prominent Earths like Earth Two to the hyper-obscure world of the Wonder Woman. The cosmic stakes involved were daring and exciting.

The plot of Infinite Crisis, unlike that of its predecessor COIE, is built around complex interpersonal dynamics. This indicates a higher degree of aspiration in the later story, which is certainly owing to the changing times – many great works published after COIE demonstrated that interpersonal dynamics and character development can work in the superhero genre. However, while Infinite Crisis attempts to work on this level, it does not succeed very well. Conflicts between the superheroes, and even the villains, are central to the plot, but they are not true to the characters involved, and do not transition from one status to another in a sensible way. Johns renders the characters in Infinite Crisis as unlike real people in their emotions as they are in their special powers and abilities, and this turns IC's aspiration to complex interpersonal dynamics into a failure.

This failure is most evident when one reads the first and last scenes that show the Trinity – Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman – and searches the story for events that bridge those two scenes. When IC opens, each member of the Trinity has grave misgivings about the way each of the others operates. Superman and Batman cannot accept that Wonder Woman killed Max Lord. Superman says that she has to answer for what she did, and she says that she will, when the time is right. Superman criticizes Batman's paranoia and spying on other heroes. Batman says that Superman does too little, and that the last time he inspired anyone was when he was dead. That's an abundance of discord in the opening. How does it end? Seven issues later, the Trinity walks off into the metaphorical sunset, happy and relaxed in their civilian identities. Clark Kent gives a speech about their common purpose and unity, and Diana concludes, "It's good to have friends." This is an almost miraculous turnaround from the opening scene. How did this change take place? There are some scenes that seem like they're trying to convey that tremendous change, but they are desperately inadequate for the task:

1) Clark Kent, working at the Daily Planet, hears that supervillains killed some of the Freedom Fighters. He tells his wife, "Bruce is right, Lois. He's always right… I want to stay and talk, but it's time for action." From then on forward, he works tirelessly to stop the chaos caused by Alex and the supervillains until the story is finished.

2) While Batman's out-of-control creation, Brother Eye, sends Omacs to kill the Amazons, Batman and Wonder Woman separately contemplate how his paranoia and her actions led to this outcome.

3) When Superman and Kal-L tussle on a briefly revived Earth Two, Wonder Woman shows up and argues on Superman's side against Kal-L's conviction that Earth Two should replace the post-Crisis Earth.

4) After Superboy, Conner Kent, dies stopping Alex's machine, the Trinity shows up on the scene, just a little too late. Superman and Batman voice that they should have been there, and need to prevent any such events in the future. Then they join many other heroes in a final battle against the villains.

5) When Alex Luthor is subdued, Batman aims a gun at him and has the opportunity to kill him. Wonder Woman breaks her sword and tells Batman it isn't worth killing him. He agrees and throws down the gun.

These five scenes are obviously offered as the mechanism by which the Trinity resolves their conflicts, but they depend upon characterizations of the heroes that had never been seen before, and as character development, hardly make sense. (1) indicates that Superman is prone to stand around as Clark Kent while the world goes to hell – when was that ever a characteristic of Superman? (5) indicates that killing an incapacitated enemy is something that Batman or Wonder Woman might normally consider, but such moments are not typical of either of them. (When Wonder Woman killed Max Lord, he was physically restrained, but not defeated. Wonder Woman killed him not out of anger, but in order to solve a problem with, seemingly, no other solution.) (2) and (4) give the heroes a motive to resolve their differences, but don't indicate how that resolution should take place. Cumulatively, these five scenes, along with the series introduction and conclusion is a ramshackle narration of interpersonal dynamics, and therein the story wastes several scenes, including the series' bookends, on a subplot that just doesn't work. It seems as though Johns decided that the story should open with conflict and end with resolution and then approached the path between them with little care for how it unfolded.

The conflict between Batman and Hal Jordan, however, is resolved in a more satisfactory fashion. When Brother Eye reminds Batman that he had reason to distrust many other superheroes, Batman, flying off with Green Lantern, says, "I'll take my chances." Though we see that decision arise in a moment of necessity, and can only guess at the thoughts behind it, the scene is at least powerful and conveyed with style.

The villains' plan in IC also offers more nuance than that of COIE. Though Alex Luthor is a despicable villain, his plan is curiously sympathetic. In many DC stories, a timeline-gone-bad begins to shape the world, then is prevented or undone by some cosmic maneuver or another. This first occurred when the Justice Society stopped Per Degaton's time travel-based conquest of the world back in 1947, and has happened many times since then. Alex Luthor merely asserts that the entire post-Crisis history is one of those bad timelines that should be erased, and he has some compelling facts to back him up. Even if his conclusion – that post-Crisis history is so bad that its timeline should be erased – is wrong, he's got a reasonable point. And, indeed, his basic idea wins over Kal-L and gets Power Girl to consider it. Even Batman mulls it over for a couple of panels before he rejects it. Unfortunately, after IC goes through the trouble of producing intrigue that perhaps Alex's goal is a worthy one, it gets lazy and makes Alex and Superboy Prime into despicable villains who should be opposed because their methods – not their goals – are objectionable.

One can see the quality of the story sink rapidly between the end of issue #2 and the end of issue #3. Both issues end on surprises: IC #2 ends with Kal-L telling Power Girl that Earth Two should be the basis of a rebooted world, and fans had to wonder how much this true, and to what extent DC may have planned to make that so. Several scenes in IC #3 show unlikely – and interesting – pairs of characters interacting, perhaps none more intriguing and memorable than the meeting between the Earth Two Superman and the post-Crisis Batman. But then, at the issue's end, Power Girl says that she thinks the heroes can come up with a plan to save everybody, Earth One and Two, and perhaps more, when her thought – one of the most interesting points in the story – is suddenly obliterated by a punch from Superboy Prime, who knocks her out with a sneer indicating that he is Evil with a capital 'E' and in so doing, he knocks the intrigue out of the story with the same punch that robs Power Girl of her consciousness. From here on out, Alex and Superboy Prime are mustache-twirling evil villains who will lie, cheat, and kill to force their agenda through. It's as though Johns met some desired quota of complexity in the first three issues and decided that the final four issues could get along without any more depth or nuance. From that point to the end, we see Very Bad characters in conflict against Very Good characters, and so many interesting possibilities are dismissed along with Power Girl's hopes.

In issue #4, when Superboy Prime later turns from a bitter has-been into a sociopathic killer, there's plenty of action and death and not much resembling normal human character development. In fact, Johns seems to narrate a criticism of his own work when Pantha (in the character's final speech balloon) says, "'You started this'? He's just a stupid kid." Yes, the dialogue is simple and stupid. Why didn't Johns write something less simple and less stupid instead of putting it in the final draft? Soon thereafter, when Superboy Prime says, "You're ruining everything! You're ruining me!" he, like Pantha, seems to be delivering a sound criticism of the story rather than speaking as a character within it.

Alex's great threat to the cosmos is, like all of the interpersonal dynamics in IC, ended suddenly and with a shrug. Conner Kent destroys the vibrational tuning fork that Alex needs to reshape the universe, and in so doing, ends Alex's experimentation. However, this is an uncertain victory. The universe was indeed changed by whatever the tower did before or during its destruction, and so the pre-IC universe was effectively erased and replaced by a new one. This is not so different from Alex's plan except that the new universe is not so very different from the pre-IC universe and the change is apparently random rather than any change that Alex or – for that matter – the heroes desire. The story once again gives up on the potential for interesting complexity when Wonder Girl tells her dying boyfriend, "You saved the Earth. You saved everyone." Did he? A lot of characters were changed by Infinite Crisis – were they (the old versions of them) saved? How would Wonder Girl know if they were living in a new timeline that had replaced the old one? Amnesia regarding old timelines is part of the science fiction in COIE, so she should be unaware whether this was a new timeline or not. In fact, it is a new timeline, even though it's similar to the old one, so how does survival and identity work? If someone exists in a universe that is replaced by a similar universe, does that person survive or are they deleted and replaced by a new person who happens to be similar to the first one? Those are interesting philosophical questions, but IC stopped asking interesting philosophical questions by the end of IC #6.

When IC does get philosophical, it also gets vague. What are the heroes like? How should they behave? When the Trinity criticize one another in the opening issue, Superman and Wonder Woman debate, using character names instead of ideas:

"I don't know who you are anymore." "…I'm Wonder Woman." "… I remember a time when you wanted to be called Diana." "…the world doesn't need Diana. The world needs Wonder Woman." Does that dialogue mean anything? Are all of the characters and all of the readers meant to have the same idea of what "Diana" means as opposed to "Wonder Woman"? I sure don't know what Johns means by them. The characters are arguing about whether or not she (whatever you want to call her) is too ruthless. Does "Wonder Woman" connote ruthlessness whereas "Diana" does not? That's never what those names meant to me.

Johns is on a roll, a bad one, and he uses the same ineffective style of discourse lower on the same page, with Batman going after Superman this time: "You're not human. You're Superman." "I know that." "Then start acting like it." How could Superman not act like Superman? Isn't however he acts what Superman is like? In real life, when someone isn't acting the way you like, do you tell them, "You're [the person's name]"? No, because that would be just as meaningless as it is in this scene.

It doesn't even feel like Johns finds this dialogue meaningful. Four issues later, the Earth Two Wonder Woman returns for one scene, to counsel her counterpart, and tells her, "…the one thing you haven't been for a very long time is human." That's exactly what Batman said that Superman shouldn't be! Is being human something Superman and Wonder Woman should be, or not? Or should they be "Superman"/"Wonder Woman"? Does anyone read this dialogue and think they understand what the characters are getting at? I sure don't, and when I put these scenes side-by-side, I don't think Johns does, either.

If there is something good that "Superman" means, the demolition of Kal-L, not to mention Superboy Prime, seems to undermine whatever that is. It must be said that the Kal-L in Infinite Crisis does not very much match the Golden Age character from 1938, nor the Silver Age character shown with graying temples in the late Seventies. In fact, he's rather a dupe, tricked by a Luthor into doing the wrong thing until it's far too late. He's naive, saying with wide eyes, "Superman always saves Lois Lane" as his wife dies. And, in an ignominious finale if there ever was one, he is beaten to death, fist-to-face, by a teenage version of himself. That scene ends with yet another Superman telling that teenager that being Superman is "about action." Kal-L's action in Infinite Crisis is a disappointing version of whatever Superman was ever meant to be.

An unpleasant irony of Infinite Crisis is that the four COIE survivors say that the post-Crisis world has gotten too dark and lost its way, and then Infinite Crisis shows a Superboy ripping people's arms and heads off while razoring other heroes in half with his heat vision. Black Adam pokes his fingers through a villain's face, and the superhero present on the scene is not outraged, but simply asks, "Was that necessary?" The villain Alex Luthor – the very one who felt that the world was too dark – promised other villains that they will be allowed to rape Power Girl. Yes, Alex Luthor is hopelessly sick and contradictory in this regard, but so is Infinite Crisis itself. If Johns feels that the DC Universe has gotten too dark, why does he up the ante? If he doesn't feel that way, why does he have so many characters – even the original Superman – say so?

Infinite Crisis is a mixed bag. It has many powerful and memorable scenes, as dark as when an obscenely powerful group of supervillains ambush the Freedom Fighters and as light as when the Flashes zoom in to run Superboy Prime right out of the universe. It dangles interesting possibilities before the reader, some of which are harder to appreciate now that the era has passed, but worked very well then as part of a mystery regarding not only the events in the story, but in the sort of DC Universe that it would go on to create. And it created a very fine DC Universe, ushering in an era of comics that were possibly the best DC ever has produced. But as a single work, it is deeply flawed, repeatedly biting off more than it can chew, or more than Johns decides to chew. It would have been greatly improved by trying to do fewer things, and then doing all of those things well. Instead, it attempts to be a character-driven cosmic, science fiction whodunit and manages to be a hasty, half-done rendition of all of those things. That extends to the art, which has multiple artists working on each issue, with unapologetically rough transitions between scenes, and some panels looking dreadfully rushed.

Crisis on Infinite Earths was a landmark work with an almost total lack of character development. Johns clearly took up the challenge of making Infinite Crisis a more complex sequel, but failed to deliver on that challenge. IC would have been a better work if the aspirations had simply been lesser. As the older Wonder Woman tells her younger self, "You can start by not trying to be so perfect." A simpler IC would have been a better IC. But when I spend a moment positing that Geoff Johns should have striven for IC to be something lesser, I quickly start to dreaming, instead, what if he had striven for something just as great as he had planned and then had managed to pull it off? That's a story that I wish I owned.

Retro Review: Seven Soldiers

Superman presents a certain kind of challenge that minor superheroes do not. That sentence describes an observation made by both the writer and the villains of Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers. A writer can change the small facts of the Man of Steel's life, place Superman in any of countless scenarios, put many words in his mouth, but the character must stay true to certain established truths, and there are limits to what a new story can get away with. A minor character, on the other hand, may be molded and manipulated to a far greater extent. That is what motivated Morrison to give the starring roles in his series to characters who had appeared in DC Comics before, but whose prominence ranged from second-tier (Zatanna) down to several tiers below that. Accordingly, Morrison was able to redefine the characters substantially, changing two of them from men to women, mutilating and killing another one, and so on.

The villains in the story, the murderous, gleefully corrupt Sheeda from Earth's future also decide not to include the leading figures of the Justice League in their plan. In a prequel printed in JLA Classified #1-3, the Sheeda attempt a frontal assault on the year 2005 and it does not go well. Neh-Buh-Loh, one of the Sheeda's warriors, stands atop a tall building and dares Earth to send its "world's finest" champions to fall at his feet, whereupon Superman flies out of the sky and effortlessly punches out Neh-Buh-Loh twice, unfazed by the villain's best blow. In response, the Sheeda retreat, with Neh-Buh-Loh warning "I have seen enough… I have tested my prey… When next my people come, it will be as whispers of death, unseen… goodbye, Superman…" This is, indeed, similar to the way Morrison kept the DC's heavy hitters out of his lineup, and it is more than that: Planned less than three years after the September 11 attacks, Seven Soldiers is the story of how a despicable enemy bent on the destruction of our civilization decides to strike by surprise in New York, wreaking havoc on the island of Manhattan. Sound familiar?

Seven Soldiers is thus a parable for our times, utilizing seven… actually, quite a bit more than seven… of DC's minor characters. The sprawling story is set in the DCU, uses DCU conventions, began with a prequel involving the DC's biggest stars, and has a menace that threatens the DC Universe, but with its focus on minor characters, was able to take risks that a series starring flagship characters could not. Morrison used that freedom with virtuoso skill, and crafted, in Seven Soldiers, one of the finest works that DC has ever published.

The structure is without an obvious peer. Morrison told the story in 30 issues consisting of single issues (Seven Soldiers #0 and #1) that bookend seven miniseries of four issues each. A reader may like one of these miniseries and dislike another, or like five and dislike two… but is likely to admire most of them and love some. Any of these miniseries can be read or re-read alone, but they are intertwined, and they work together to tell the story of one existential threat to the world.

Seven Soldiers and its various prequels present seven teams of seven: The original Seven Soldiers (1941), a Silver Age revival including Spider instead of Green Arrow, the Ultramarine Corps and the JLA in Morrison's JLA Confidential story, a lineup that fights and dies in Seven Soldiers #0, the Newsboy Army seen in flashbacks, and the lineup that defeats the Sheeda in Seven Soldiers #1. A shadowy group called the Time Tailors make an eighth group of seven – or group of eight – the number in these groups is also sometimes six, which is bad luck and portends defeat.

The fundamental inspiration for this series goes back to Mort Weisinger's introduction of the Seven Soldiers of Victory in Leading Comics #1, in 1941, when the seven heroes from five solo features joined forces to fight a master criminal named The Hand. A 1972 story in JLA #100-102 scripted by Len Wein revived the Seven Soldiers in a new battle against their first enemy, who, aided by a cosmic threat named the Nebula Man, made himself into a powerful force named the Iron Hand. Morrison pays homage to the original team by basing several members of his two lineups of Seven Soldiers upon the originals or their legacies. To complete the lineups, he uses or invents characters whose origins, in almost all cases, can be traced to other Golden Age characters or Jack Kirby inventions:

Seven Soldiers of Victory, 1941

Crimson Avenger

Shining Knight

The Vigilante

Green Arrow and Speedy

Star Spangled Kid and Stripesy

Seven Soldiers #0 team (Golden Age inspirations)

Vigilante (himself)

Gimmix (Star Spangled Kid's stepniece)

The Whip (The Whip's granddaughter)

I, Spyder (Spider's son)

Boy Blue (imitator)

Dyno-Mite Dan (imitator)

Bulleteer (imitator, not by choice)

Seven Soldiers #1 team (Golden Age inspirations)

Shining Knight (retcon of original Shining Knight, now a woman)

Guardian (retcon of original)

Zatanna (daughter of Zatara)

Klarion (retcon of original)

Mister Miracle (successor to the original)

Bulleteer (imitator, not by choice)

Frankenstein (DC character adapted from the novel)

One immediately notices an overlap in the starring lineups – as Zatanna says, "it's like there's mystery string holding everything together." Greg "Vigilante" Saunders is a member of the original and SS #0 lineups, while Bulleteer is a member of the SS #0 lineup (though absent) and the SS #1 lineup. But there are also overlaps in the supporting casts. Many of these come from a group of child crimefighters called the Newsboy Army (patterned closely on Jack Kirby's Newsboy Legion). Their heyday was decades ago, but many of them survive and surface throughout Seven Soldiers, having aged enough that their reappearances as adults make the reveals of their identity surprising. Another form of string holding things together are cameos that the cast of one miniseries make in the others. This includes the stars, the bystanders, and especially the villains.

Morrison's villains, as in several of his other works, arrive via a time loop: From Earth's future, the Sheeda prey on their world's own past, targeting the best and most prosperous eras, using evil magic and science and mind control powers – tiny fairies who ride mosquitoes like winged horses, and attach to a good person's spine in order to turn them bad. We see them topple Camelot and make small raids on other times leading up to a full assault on 2005 and the era of superheroes. They use a giant spider as bait to attract one lineup of Seven Soldier to Miracle Mesa, Arizona, and then wipe out the group that Vigilante had recruited for the purpose. Aware that they cannot defeat the Justice League, the Sheeda plan a sneak attack on New York, and are on guard watching out for any group of seven heroes who might organize to stop them. Along the way, in the seven miniseries, we see how seven heroes – some of them old, some new, and many of them very unlikely – take their places in the battle to come.

Shining Knight is Ystina, a young woman posing as a male knight named Justin, who sees her Camelot in the final stages of its fall to the Sheeda. She enters their time machine, Castle Revolving, and in her escape, inadvertently ends up in modern-day Los Angeles. Don Vincenzo, a mob boss, who is one of the Newsboy Army grown up (and turned bad) ends up with Ystina's winged horse, Vanguard. At the end of her miniseries, she is in combat with the Sheeda queen, Gloriana Tenebrae, who does not fear Ystina because she is only one, and prophecy says that seven will defeat the Sheeda.

Jake Jordan is a "big, tough" former police officer who is haunted by a deadly mistake that he made on the job. He applies for a job as a hero/journalist (a la Clark Kent?) with the Manhattan Guardian newspaper, whose boss happens to be another of the Newsboy Army grown up (or, to be precise – grown old, but not "up"). Donning a costume and shield as the Manhattan Guardian, he soon finds himself fighting pirates who live in the tunnels under the New York subway system, and ends his miniseries protecting his boss from the Sheeda.

Zatanna is by far the most famous of the characters in this series. A former member of the Justice League, she is psychologically broken and lacks the confidence to use her spellcasting power. We see in flashbacks that she has killed several people close to her in a mystic miscalculation, and the guilt of her role in Identity Crisis is also haunting her. She acquires a young sidekick named Misty, who is as mysterious as her name indicates, and who proves to be, unwillingly, heir to the Sheeda throne. Zatanna is being stalked by a magical villain named Zor, a Golden Age villain powerful enough to challenge the Spectre ("he brags that he brought the wrath of God to its white and wobbly knees," a feat he achieved in More Fun Comics #55 way back in 1940). Zatanna overcomes Zor with cleverness and boldness, so she and Misty can prepare for their key roles in fighting the Sheeda.

Perhaps Morrison's greatest invention in Seven Soldiers is Limbo Town, the world of Klarion the Witch Boy, where an isolated, underground community displaying puritanical severity (and fashion) follows black magic instead of Christianity. They are the Lost Colony of Jamestown, whose mysterious word "Croatoan" scrawled on a tree is the name of their new god. In the centuries since their disappearance, they have lived and bred underground after an early generation was raped by the Sheeda king, Melmoth. In a stroke of brilliance, Morrison concocts an army of zombie laborers who are the revived ancestors of Limbo Town residents, called "grundies," and possessing the general traits of longtime DC villain Solomon Grundy. Klarion, the quintessential small-town boy dreaming of a larger world, escapes upwards from Limbo Town to the subways of New York, where he almost meets the Guardian, and then spends some time in the surface world, known as Blue Rafters to his people, attracting the attention of his ancestor Melmoth, and setting the stage for Klarion to join the battle against the Sheeda.

Mister Miracle, like the Guardian, is a Jack Kirby character whom Morrison recast with an African American man instead of a white man. Shilo Norman was a youth serving as a minor character in Kirby's original stories, but in Seven Soldiers has grown up to adopt the identity, not as a superhero, but as a super celebrity escape artist. We see him at the top of his fame and renown, making his greatest escape ever from a miniature black hole, before things start to go wrong. We learn, and then he learns, that the people around him are the living embodiments of Darkseid and his cronies, living on Earth in human bodies. Darkseid tries to break Shilo Norman, but finds it more difficult than he imagined, and Shilo is still intact, a few lifetimes in alternate timelines later, and ready to fight Darkseid and his allies, the Sheeda.

Of all the Seven Soldiers, none is less enthusiastic about being a superhero than Alix Harrower. At the age of 27, Alix found out the hard way that her husband was living – at least in his own mind – a double, or perhaps triple, life. His attempt to give himself superpowers cost him all three of those lives, and gave Alix a super-hard metallic coating that she didn't want and couldn't undo. Thus, her husband's dream of imitating the Golden Age's Bulletman and Bulletgirl left her an unhappy widow who had no choice, medically, financially, or spiritually, but to begin a new existence as Bulleteer. As her miniseries ends, she is driving with her husband's psychotic cyber-girlfriend, ostensibly to a hospital, but unbeknownst to her, right into the middle of the battle with the Sheeda.

Frankenstein – or rather, Frankenstein's monster – is a cultural icon greatly predating superheroes. Morrison's version of Frankenstein, however, is a gun-toting badass who has been fighting crime for over a century, and is soon recruited by S.H.A.D.E. to fight as a government operative. On Mars, Frankenstein learns that he is immortal because his blood contains the essence of Lord Melmoth, which makes him the third major character in the story to owe his life to that villain. Less than grateful to Melmoth, Frankenstein leaves him to be eaten by monsters and excreted, still sentient, as their dung. Then, sent by S.H.A.D.E. one billion years into the future, he attacks the Sheeda capital and goes into the series finale mid-battle with Gloriana Tenebrae.

Seven Soldiers borrows several elements from Wein's JLA #100-102, including the fact that someone among the heroes must die at the end – a promo line echoed at the end of each miniseries' issue #4. In Wein's story, Crimson Avenger's sidekick Wing had died in the past and Red Tornado dies in the present. In Morrison's epic, it's Mister Miracle who dies, being summarily executed by Boss Dark Side after giving his life to rescue the ancient superhero Aurakles – a clever fusion on Morrison's part of the cosmic being Oracle from Wein's story (Oracle being highly reminiscent of Marvel Comics' The Watcher) and Greek mythology's Hercules. Fortunately, being the greatest escape artist ever, Shilo Norman escapes from the grave just as readily as he did from the black hole, and he's alive again in Final Crisis; it fits his showman shtick that we have no idea how he performed either of those impossible escapes.

In the battle of Manhattan, every member of the Seven Soldiers plus an ally or two plays his or her part, even though they never meet together as a group of seven in one place and one time, which is what allows them to avoid being detected as a threat by the Sheeda. And this is the essential, ironic, and heroic triumph of the story: Just as the Sheeda can attack our civilization so effectively because they launch a sneak attack and thereby avoid the Justice League, so the Seven Soldiers can attack the Sheeda so effectively, because the Seven Soldiers launch a sneak counterattack against them! In the years soon after September 11, this is nice spiritual salve for having, ourselves, suffered a sneak attack.

The finale is beautiful, chaotic choreography. Some of the Seven Soldiers have weapons drawn, Zatanna casts a spell to unite their actions, many spring into action though they have little idea what they are doing, and finally, Bulleteer is a weapon, and the Sheeda are overthrown, saving the DCU from them, for now. Darkseid skulks away to launch the threat in Final Crisis, which preserves the essential dynamic that runs through Seven Soldiers – nothing is ever really over, and a mystery string unites one team and one battle and one enemy to the next. The Seven Soldiers move on, the Sheeda move on (now led by Klarion), and the stage is set for the next big story. Morrison gave his Mister Miracle and Frankenstein significant supporting roles in Final Crisis, and Zatanna retains her stature as a fan favorite, but otherwise, the Seven Soldiers have remained obscure.

The story has a higher level, seen at its beginning and end as well as in the Zatanna and Guardian miniseries. As a means of explaining the mystery string that ties everything together, Morrison shows us a group of seven Time Tailors, the Unknown Men of Slaughter Swamp. These are comic book writers, and putting the writers themselves into the story is something Morrison has done in Animal Man and elsewhere. Though they all look alike – somewhat like Morrison himself – they represent all the writers over the years, certainly including Len Wein, Jerry Siegel, Mort Weisinger, and all the rest who number far more than seven. Morrison shows the Time Tailors doing what writers usually do – using their godlike powers to change characters, often to the characters' dismay. They make I, Spyder more interesting for this story, but doom him to an unpleasant fate. They ruin the Newsboy Army, giving them adult vices and killing most of them off. Zatanna manages to pop out of the story to interact with them directly, which helps her orient correctly for her place in the final battle, and they reward her by disposing cruelly of Zor in the final issue – as it is explained that Zor's vast powers are because he is really one of them, a Time Tailor who exists in the story itself.

Seven Soldiers is a triumph because Morrison capitalizes on its characters' statures as characters that are interesting within the DCU, but are obscure enough that he could do just about whatever he wanted with them. He ties Golden Age stories together with current-day big-time events and works his post-modernist magic into a sprawling 30-issue epic that flies in many different directions before all coming together at the end. Most of these characters are unlikely to headline again on a front cover anytime soon, if ever, and seen in that respect, Seven Soldiers is an epic and a mini-universe that had a definite beginning, middle, and end and is now over and done with. It showed that a respectably large audience will pay attention to obscure characters if their story is handled with care, even if that is not a potential that has not been realized again in the decade since Seven Soldiers ended.