562 SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY
utilized in the popular Justice Society of America, and ran for the fi rst 14 issues of
Leading Comics. Th e team’s members were drawn from anthology books, and included
Green Arrow and his sidekick Speedy, the Crimson Avenger, the Shining Knight, the
Vigilante, and the duo Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, as well as an unoffi cial “eighth
member,” the Crimson Avenger’s sidekick, Wing. Th is version of the team was reintro-
duced in Justice League of America #100 (1972), in a story where the Justice League
is contacted by their Earth-2 counterparts, the Justice Society. Th e society is seek-
ing assistance from the Justice League in locating the lost members of the legendary
Seven Soldiers, who were scattered across time and space—and seemingly erased from
collective memory—as an unfortunate consequence of their fi nal victory against the
threat known as the Nebula Man.
After this revival in Justice League of America, the Seven Soldiers franchise would
remain eff ectively dormant until DC’s company-wide retroactive continuity revamp
in the wake of Crisis on Infi nite Earths (1986). In the initial reworking of the Seven
Soldiers, Wing was promoted to full membership and the Vigilante’s sidekick, Stuff ,
was made an active member in order to replace Green Arrow and Speedy, who no
longer had Golden Age counterparts. Even this revised version would be subsequently
changed in the late 1990s, with Wing’s spot as a soldier now fi lled by the archer known
as Th e Spider, who had previously appeared in the Crack Comics feature, “Alias the
Spider,” published by defunct Quality Comics. Th is current version of the Seven
Soldiers parallels the scenario presented in Justice League of America #100: the forgot-
ten team is dispersed and lost throughout time after a battle with the Nebula Man.
Th e major diff erences are that newly added member, the Spider, is actually a villain
who sabotaged the team’s fi nal mission, and that the Vigilante spends 20 years fi ghting
crime in the Old West before being rescued by the Justice League and Justice Society.
Th is version of the team and its continuity is used as the starting point for Morrison’s
Seven Soldiers of Victory.
Th e plot of Morrison’s Seven Soldiers centers around an invasion from a fairy-like
race of beings from the future called the Sheeda. Th e Sheeda attack Earth periodi-
cally throughout history, devastating the planet through a process called the Har-
rowing, which leaves Earth and humanity with just enough resources to survive
and rebuild in order to be conquered again. Prophesy states that a band of “seven
soldiers” will eventually stop the Sheeda, so the army targets teams of seven during
their invasions. To counteract this strategy, the mysterious Seven Unknown Men of
Slaughter Swamp subtly orchestrate events that prod the current, individual soldiers
into battling the Sheeda without ever realizing that they are cooperating with the
others. Th roughout the separate miniseries, the characters occasionally cross paths
in their struggles against the Sheeda, and their respective journeys converge in the
second bookend issue that concludes the story, but they generally remain unaware
of each other and the ways their eff orts coincide. Ultimately, the Sheeda are defeated
and Klarion usurps the leadership of the assassinated Sheeda Queen, returning with
them to their future as king, thereby fulfi lling the prophesy that a soldier will turn
