Bullet Points Commentary on Seven Soldiers of Victory Archives V 3

By Scott Jamison

To recap, the Seven Soldiers actually had eight members (ethnic
sidekick Wing not getting full status), were published in the
quarterly Leading Comics magazine, and stuck pretty closely to
the "split up for individual adventures, then regroup for the
finale" formula.

This volume contains their last few Golden Age adventures from
Leading Comics #9-14, plus a special extra.

"The Chameleon of Crime"--The Law's Legionnaires battle Mister
X, a master of disguise. It seems that Mister X, who never
wears the same face on two different days, has made bets with
several underworld figures that he can outwit the Seven
Soldiers. The chapters each revolve around trying to figure out
who Mister X is in each crime; it's easy enough for genre-savvy
readers, but there are some amusing twists, such as the time
Mister X's disguise is the gang's trained gorilla.

"King of the Hundred Isles"--Another switch-up on the usual
formula. The Seven Soldiers are in the South Pacific looking
for a lost scientific expedition when their ship is sunk in a
storm. The Soldiers are driven apart in pairs, but not their
normal ones. So the Crimson Avenger teams up with Speedy, Green
Arrow with Vigilante, Stripesy with Wing (this chapter is
amusing since both are sidekicks, used to taking orders, and
have difficulty working on their own) and the Shining Knight
teams with Star-Spangled Kid. The villains are generic thugs
hiding out on the island chain with their leader, "King
Babyface", who has a never fully-explained plan for exploiting
the local exotic fish species.

"The Hard-Luck Hat!"--Natty mob boss Handsome Harry suddenly
discovers that he is not, in fact, wearing his lucky hat. He
has it fetched from home, but before he can don the happy
haberdashery, the Seven Soldiers attack his organization. The
hat blows away, Harry chases it and inadvertantly gets away from
the good guys, but doesn't catch up to his hat. The
intervening chapters trace the hat as it passes from owner to
owner, bestowing improbable coincidences on them, usually bad
luck. Finally, it returns to Harry, now a hobo, and changes his
luck...but is that really a good thing for him? The stories are
even more loosely connected than usual, but are fine little
tales on their own.

"Million Dollar Challenge!"--Eccentric millionaire Weldon
Darrell invites the Seven Soldiers to his mansion...by warning
them to stay away! Once there, he challenges them to find five
hidden treasures using vague clues, in exchange for which Mr.
Darrell will give $1,000,000 to charity. The heroes are
somewhat hampered by their peculiar actions being seen as an
indication that they've become criminals. Once the five
treasures are gathered, the Law's Legionnaires realize there's a
last twist to the case....

"Trophies of Crime!"--The Barracuda, mastermind of crime, has
gotten all the money he could possibly need, all the comforts he
can use...but it still isn't enough for him. His ego demands
that he build a museum of crime, to celebrate the greatest
criminals (himself at the top) and capers of all time. As a
start, he sends his top lieutenants out to fetch five seemingly
ordinary items used in sensational crimes. At this point, the
Seven Soldiers show up to raid the Barracuda's headquarters.
The criminal mastermind escapes, but leaves behind the list of
trophies to be gathered. The heroes reason that the lieutenants
will be able to lead them to their boss, so it's splitting up
time. A building stone, a rubber dagger, an iron ring, a
drinking cup and a square of canvas each hold a secret history
of crime. By the final chapter, the Seven Soldiers still
haven't caught the Barracuda, so use the trophies to bait an
irresistable trap.

"The Bandits from the Books"--A mad scientist creates a means to
bring fictional (public domain) characters to life.
Unfortunately, he's a little absent-minded, and forgets how to
send them back. Worse, he forgot to lock the door to the room
he was keeping them in, and some of the book people escape to
cause havoc. Good thing the Seven Soldiers are on the case! A
rather frothy tale, but with a great line-up of guest
stars--Hamlet, Old King Cole, Humpty Dumpty, Long John Silver,
Falstaff (WHO TALKS LIKE THIS), The Old Man of the Sea, Uriah
Heep(!), the Giant from "Jack and the Beanstalk", the Chesire
Cat and an army of Lilliputians. A fine final issue.

But that's not all! It seems there was one last script for the
Seven Soldiers of Victory, written before management decided to
turn Leading Comics #15 into a funny animal comic. This script
was lost from 1944 to 1974, when it was discovered in a drawer,
modernized a bit, and drawn to appear in Adventure Comics
#438-443. That version is not reprinted here--instead we get
the original script, unabridged.

"The World of Magic"--In the framing story, would-be movie
producer John Shoman is exhibiting his film of a recent
adventure of the Seven Soldiers of Victory. It seems they were
confronted by a man named Willie Wisher, with the ability to
turn his wishes into reality. He sends the heroes and a film
crew to the Land of Magic, where they have weird adventures
before finding their way back. In the subsequent fight, Mr.
Wisher shows that his powers prevent the Seven Soldiers from
defeating him, though he is clearly toying with the heroes
rather than using his wishes effectively. After a consultation,
the Law's Legionnaires come up with a new tactic. They
guilt-trip Willie into wishing he'd never been born, causing the
whole adventure to never have happened.

Unusually for the Golden Age, the audience makes the "fridge
logic" connection immediately--if the adventure retroactively
never happened, then it couldn't have been filmed, and therefore
this "documentary" is a fake. But an awfully good fake, given
the special effects of various parts of the story would have to
be amazingly good to fool an audience up to that point.
Fortunately for Mr. Shoman, the real Seven Soldiers are in the
audience, and on the promise that all proceeds will go to
charity, convince the crowd not to lynch the producer.

Yeah...a whole issue devoted to a fake adventure...that wouldn't
have been a good note to go out on. But still an interesting
story.

So, what happened to the Seven Soldiers of Victory after the end
of their run? Crimson Avenger and Wing had already fallen by
the wayside. Wing was killed in the JLA/JSA crossover that
brought the Seven Soldiers into Silver Age continuity (something
of a mercy killing) and the Crimson Avenger disappeared for a
few years, before being killed off in a back-up story titled
"Whatever Happened to the Crimson Avenger?" It was, however a
nice send-off. Post-Crisis, CA was reconned into being the
first full-time costumed crimefighter of the Golden Age, and a
legacy character appeared in the JSA series.

The Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy feature didn't last out the
war. When they were brought into the "present", SSK was
actually the most active of the Soldiers, getting a power
upgrade care of Starman and joining the JSA along with Power
Girl and Huntress. He was later a main cast member in Infinity,
Inc., eventually changing his name to Skyman before being
killed. Stripesy retired, eventually donning an armored suit
codenamed S.T.R.I.P.E. to aid his stepdaughter, who had co-opted
SSK's gear to become Stargirl. He's still alive, last we saw.

The Vigilante appeared off and on through the Fifties. After
the move to the "present", he continued appearing off and on,
though his codename was borrowed for other characters. Last
seen in the first framing issue of the Grant Morrison Seven
Soldiers, where he apparently died.

Shining Knight also appeared every so often through the Fifties,
including a stretch where his adventures had art by a young
Frank Frazetta. In the present, he pops up every now and then,
especially since he was given time travel capabilities. He's
still alive and active, and it remains to be seen how he'll
interact with the new Shining Knight.

Green Arrow and Speedy had the longest career, appearing
regularly without much change all the way through to the Silver
Age. Since by the time the Seven Soldiers were brought back,
there was now a firmly established Earth-1 GA and Speedy who
were too similar for comfort, the Golden Age versions were
simply shoved off-stage until being killed off in Crisis on
Infinite Earths and subsequently retroactively erased from
history--which has caused all kinds of continuity problems for
the Seven Soldiers when they're mentioned in subsequent series.

This volume is a bit thicker than some other Archives to cram in
all the issues, but the price is $59.99, so I can only recommend
it for the Golden Age fanatics like myself, and those that are
huge fans of the characters.

SKJAM!