MYTHCOMICS: SHINING KNIGHT 1-4 (2005)

Prior to this post I’ve only reviewed the ZATANNA section of Grant Morrison’s multi-part “Seven Soldiers” continuity. A science-fiction writer, whose name I’ve forgotten, coined the term “mosaic novel” for a novel-length work composed of sections related only by theme rather than by plot, and that distinction applies well to Morrison’s overall project here. Unlike the usual comics-crossover, in which protagonists of various serials appear in one another’s features until some interlinking plot is resolved, the various “Seven Soldiers” segments largely stand independently of one another in terms of plot, except for a two-issue “wrapup” title. Not all of the standalone segments qualify as mythcomics, but given that the four-issue SHINING KNIGHT miniseries deals with matters as mythic as the Matter of Britain, it is at the least a strong candidate.

In DC Comics’s Golden Age, the original character called “Shining Knight” was one Sir Justin, a paladin of King Arthur’s court, though unlike most such warriors Justin had a steed right out of Greek mythology: a winged horse named Winged Victory. Reversing the course of Twain’s Connecticut Yankee, Justin gets catapulted into modern times, giving him the chance to wield his sword against modern-day crime. To comics-fans of the last thirty years or so, Justin’s solo crime-fighting career proved less resonant than his membership in the Seven Soldiers of Victory, which united seven (sometimes eight) of DC’s heroes after the fashion of the same company’s more successful Justice Society of America. All of the Soldiers were revived in the 1970s, although most of them, including the Shining Knight, had no more status than occasional guest-stars in other heroes’ features. Morrison’s Shining Knight, however, might be described as a sidereal version of Sir Justin, having only a few general aspects in common with the original. Similarly, Morrison’s references to DC’s Seven Soldiers group does not follow established DC continuity.

The strongest point of comparison is that both Sir Justins come from the court of Arthur, and both are hurled into modern quotidian times. But Morrison’s knight beholds the Fall of Camelot—one very different from either the standard depiction or even Jack Kirby’s rendition for his title THE DEMON. Camelot falls not to human plotters like Mordred and Morgan LeFay, but to an inhuman race of pale-skinned humanoids known as “the Sheeda.” This name is indubitably derived from “Sidhe,” the archaic Celtic name for the faery-folk, but the humanoids seem independent of any earlier DC-depictions of faeries, and appear to hail from another dimension, sometimes called “Eternal Summer’s End.” With superior technology, the Sheeda harrow Camelot and force humanity to forget that “one brief shining moment” before the Sheeda leave for the next ten thousand years (by the reckoning of the Sheeda’s ghastly queen, at least).

Sir Justin, however, unhinges the Sheeda’s future victory. She—and yes, this is the big reveal of the mini-series; Justin is a female knight—enters the Sheeda-queen’s Castle Revolving, and tries to wreck the invaders’ plans by hurling the queen’s Cauldron of Regeneration into a pool of magical fluid. Justin’s action does nothing to avert Camelot’s fall, but she and her winged horse—called Vanguard, and given the ability to speak-- plunge into the pool after the cauldron. Thus Justin, her horse and the cauldron end up in twentieth century America, where all will become involved in the Sheeda’s next attack upon humanity.

The mini-series, however, merely sets up the resolution of the second invasion, and thus the main plot of SHINING KNIGHT deals with Justin’s attempt to cope with the fallen modern world, particularly after being separated from Vanguard. The Sheeda-queen even sends a smoky demon called Guilt to torment the outcast knight—though the demon’s name should probably be “Survivor-Guilt,” as the creature seeks to convince Justin of the futility of all struggle, now that the world and friends she knew are all gone. Naturally, being a hero, Justin manages to reassert her defiance. Nevertheless, the Sheeda-queen has yet other schemes with which to subdue the defiant Justin—and one scheme involves the corruption of one of the last surviving paladins of Arthur, the one known in his time as “the Perfect Knight.”

In keeping with other Morrison works like TALES OF HOFMANN, the author is at his strongest when devising complex poetic metaphors for the ugliness of the ordinary, and for the beauties of the extraordinary. The high seriousness of the hero and her main opponents doesn’t give Morrison much outlet for his antic sense of humor, but said humor does manifest in a supporting character, Vincenzo, whose history is given more detail in another “Seven Soldiers” segment. For a good portion of the story, Vincenzo takes custody of the injured Vamguard, bestowing on the winged horse the name “Horsefeathers”—which might sound merely descriptive, until one recalls that in an earlier time this was a cleaned-up way of saying “Horseshit.”