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.”
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