By Joe Samachson & Arturo Cazeneuve (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1694-8
After the actual invention of the comicbook superhero the most significant event in the industry’s history was the combination of individual stars into a group. Thus what seems blindingly obvious to us with the benefit of four-colour hindsight was resoundingly confirmed: readers just couldn’t get enough of garishly-hued mystery men, and a multitude of popular characters would inevitably increase readership.
Plus, of course, a mob of superheroes is just so much cooler than one (or one-&-a-half if there’s sidekicks involved…).
The creation of the Justice Society of America in 1941 utterly changed the shape of the budding industry. Soon after the team debuted, even All American Comics’ publishing partner National wanted to get in on the act and thus created their own squad of solo stars, loaded with a bunch of their proprietary characters who hadn’t made it onto the roster of the cooperative coalition of AA and DC stars.
Oddly those eager editors never settled on a name and National’s squad of non-powered mystery men Crimson Avenger and Wing, Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, Sir Justin, the Shining Knight, Vigilante, Green Arrow and Speedy – who debuted as a unit in Leading Comics #1 in 1941 – were retroactively and alternatively dubbed The Law’s Legionnaires and/or The Seven Soldiers of Victory.
They never even had their own title-logo but only appeared as solo stars grouped together on the spectacular covers, the last half-dozen of which (by Luis Cazeneuve and Jon Small,) preface each of the epic sagas cunningly crafted by writer Joe Samachson and illustrator Arturo Cazeneuve in this final spectacular collection of Golden Age delights.
The tales in this third deluxe hardback compendium were originally presented in the quarterly Leading Comics #9-14 (spanning Winter 1943/1944 to Spring 1945), after which the title overnight converted to a vehicle for funny animal stars, making the team one of the earliest casualties of the changing fashions which eventually saw the virtual demise of superhero comics.
Following an incisive discourse, fascinating background and compelling history lesson from comics legend Roy Thomas in his Foreword, that war-time wonderment resumes with a startling romp entitled ‘The Chameleon of Crime!’
The sagas generally followed a basic but extremely effective formula (established by Mort Weisinger in the Soldiers’ first outing) wherein the heroes would meet to assess a many-headed threat before heading off individually to handle a portion of the problem solo, only reuniting to tackle the final foe together.
Here that plan deviates slightly as a conglomeration of five gangsters hiding out in a swanky underworld resort get to talking about the heroes they have fled from, and are overheard by a sixth. Disguise artist Mr. X boasts that he can outwit any and all of Seven Soldiers champions and a substantial amount of money is wagered…
The villain’s first targets are “The Crimson†and Wing as ‘Mr. X Marks the Spot!’, smugly warning his oblivious foes of his plan to steal a giant gem before promptly getting thrashed and nearly caught…
The malevolent mastermind plays it smarter in ‘The X-ploits of Mr. X!’, but still can’t resist giving The Vigilante a heads-up before robbing a rodeo show. This time he has to threaten innocent bystanders to escape without the swag but with his skin intact…
Two bets down and feeling rattled, Mr. X’s duel with the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy involves an assault on ‘The House That Couldn’t be Robbed!’ Here the Crime Chameleon takes an undercover, backseat role, keeping his identity hidden from his own men, but still can’t outmanoeuvre the quick-thinking patriotic partners…
A text chapter entitled ‘Interlude at Hoodlums’ Hideout’ finds the frustrated mastermind back at the crime hotel being gibed by Red Heister, Dodo the Dip and Lazy Dyers – all recent winners in the larcenous communal wager – but still boasting that his final schemes will succeed.
Anxious gambler Blackie Kraul feels his portion of the bet might still be saved and secretly writes a warning to the Shining Knight… exactly as Mr. X intended…
Returning to comics format, the daring double-cross occurs in ‘The Gorilla and the Gangster!’ as the valiant Paladin tackles a gang using a huge ape to smash steel bars and rip open safes. Thanks to the interference of Blackie however the Shining Knight falls into Mr. X’s trap and only good fortune and overwhelming determination allow the hero to triumph…
Again frustrated and sent scurrying for safety, the infuriated X tries one final ploy to save face by defeating Green Arrow and Speedy. Trusting only himself and acting as High Society magician ‘Inco the Unknown!’ the scofflaw plunders at will but comes a cropper after mistakenly deducing that effete partygoer and prospective victim Mr. Ponsonby is actually the Emerald Archer’s alter ego…
Again defeated, Mr. X flees. Sadly for him after each clash he has left a tiny clue, so when the heroes put their heads together for the ‘Conclusion’ they soon deduce the location of the hoodlum hotel and corner both the criminal charlatan and the foolish thugs who first pitted him against the Law’s Legionnaires…
Leading Comics #10 featured an exotic adventure in the Pacific as ‘The King of the Hundred Isles!’ finds the Seven Soldiers searching the vast ocean for a missing museum expedition. When a sudden storm sinks their ship too, the rescue team are separated and scattered throughout a myriad of strange little fiefdoms…
The calm aftermath sees a number of odd new alliances as ‘Crusoe and Crusoe Inc.!’ focuses on the novel team of Crimson Avenger and Speedy, marooned on a desolate rock until a band of mysteriously-displaced American gangsters arrive on a mission of murder for their mysterious boss.
Despite a few tense moments the makeshift hero-team eventually overcomes and leaves in the thugs’ motor-launch…
Elsewhere, Green Arrow and Vigilante have washed up on an isle decorated with buildings much like their hometowns and encounter ‘His Majesty… King Baby-Face!‘: a notorious mobster who had vanished from the USA years before.
Hiding out, Baby-Face Johnson had taken over the simple island populations with his legion of crooks and become obsessed with collecting fish. All that is lost now though as heroes and villain spectacularly clash and a major earthquake shatters everything the transplanted tyrant’s unhappy slaves had built…
Sidekicks Stripesy and Wing scrambled ashore on a small paradise populated by the gentle descendants of English mariners in the midst of a crisis. After two centuries of self-sufficiency the population put up no fuss when representatives of “The King†finally arrived to make them pay taxes in ‘Taskmasters and Toilers!’
However when the costumed newcomers point out that their ruler is a knave and impostor it leads to another War of Independence for the beleaguered colonists, only this time the heroic rebels are defeated…
On yet another of the Hundred Isles the long-missing scientists of the museum mission are passing their days cataloguing new piscine discoveries. Their enforced idyll ends when a pack of American wiseguys show up demanding their latest find for the King’s collection.
Luckily for ‘The Fortunate Fish!’, that was the moment Star-Spangled Kid and Shining Knight arrived on the Paladin’s flying horse…
As Wing and Stripesy face death and torture the colonists begin a counter attack in ‘Revelation of Roguery!’ and are greatly aided by the fortuitous arrival of The Kid and Sir Justin. With freedom in the air the costumed quartet quickly link up with their missing comrades in time to tackle Baby-Face and his army of felons, ensuring ‘Kingdom’s End!’
Issue #11 traces the fall of hardened racketeer Handsome Harry as he misplaces his talismanic chapeau in ‘The Hard-Luck Hat!’
Almost immediately the Seven Soldiers are on his trail and crush his gang in a furious fight. Only Harry escapes…
The story continues as the mobster’s hat falls into the hands of a shifty haberdasher who sells it to haughty J. Billington Bilker in ‘The Banker and the Bandit!’ The secret scoundrel is being squeezed by a bookie and agrees to let his cash-fat institution be robbed, but fortune is not on his side as Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy get involved in the case…
With Bilker jailed, his house and possessions – including that hat – are scooped up at auction by gang-boss Gas-pipe Grogan who has an inspired notion in ‘Muggs at Mealtime!’ Putting the squeeze on the restaurant industry by “taxing†table salt Grogan thought he had tasted ultimate success until The Vigilante weighed in…
The freewheeling, infelicitous fedora then ended up with Grogan’s flunky Bozo who had far less ambitious plans to get rich. He targeted a swank store owner with memory problems, intending to slowly fleece ‘The Absent-Minded Victim!’ but had the misfortune of meeting superhero-in-mufti Lee Travis…
The eagle-eyed Crimson Avenger soon involved himself and partner Wing in the cruel scam, ending Bozo’s greedy dreams forever…
The discarded, peripatetic titfer blew away on a breeze and landed on ‘The High-Hatted House!’ of inventor John Harrison just as band of escaped convicts broke in, drawing the Shining Knight into a deadly dilemma before justice and mercy finally prevailed…
That dilapidated topper then fell into the hands of a thrift-store owner who stuck it on his shop mannequin just in time for a maverick financier to buy the whole ensemble.
Mr. Jordan intended ‘The Dummy Director!’ to be his protest proxy on a Board ruled by a financial bandit but had grievously underestimated the murderous ruthlessness of his offended Chairman.
Luckily millionaire Oliver Queen was already on the case, acting as Green Arrow to ensure the guilty parties were all properly punished…
The tale turns full-circle in ‘Hat’s Haven’ as the lucky lid lands at the feet of a hobo. Recognising it instantly, hungry fugitive Handsome Harry immediately feels its power and soon is benefiting from a cunning con involving the “Haven for Homeless Hoboesâ€.
His shelter is in fact a college of criminality but before too long the Law’s Legionnaires have infiltrated the institution, determined to end Harry’s crooked ways for good…
Leading Comics #12 saw crotchety Croesus Weldon Darrel issue ‘The Million Dollar Challenge!’ to the Seven Soldiers, offering that princely sum to charity in return for their participation in an eccentric five-way treasure hunt. Naturally the heroes agree and ‘The Cache in the Canyon!’ soon finds Vigilante in the Wyoming badlands hunting for a box of valuables. Sadly the wild country is also the stamping grounds of a murderous bunch of bandits who immediately jump to some wrong conclusions…
Crimson Avenger and Wing head to a small town to test ‘The Power of the Press!’ discovering an old hollow newspaper printer is the location of a fortune in jewels. Of course the cheap thugs currently in possession of the press have their own ideas about “finders keepers†and accuse the heroes of theft…
Green Arrow and Speedy trace a meteorite to a museum in search of ‘The Safe from the Sky!’ only to find themselves hunted by the police whilst Shining Knight’s pursuit of ‘The Puzzle of the Pyramid!’ leads to a monumental boobytrapped modern edifice with crooks ready to murder and frame him…
Stripesy and the Star-Spangled Kid gain some inkling of what’s really going as ‘Murder in Miniature!’ sees the Red, White and Blue Duo investigating a toy town built to stash crooks’ cash and falling foul of the local law before the team reunites for the shocking ‘Conclusion’ to expose the astounding secret of the enigmatic, eccentric and unscrupulous moneyman…
Issue #13 featured ‘Trophies of Crime!’ and opens in an art museum where an odd assortment of mementoes donated by the Seven Soldiers hints at incredible feats of skulduggery.
Once upon a time the infamous Barracuda was intent on retiring from a life of extremely successful felony. To while away his idle hours he organised a collection of artefacts for his personal Black Museum and began acquiring them by callously sacrificing his top lieutenants to distract the Magnificent Seven whilst others went after his targets…
Learning early of the scheme the Legionnaires split up to stop them and ‘Crime’s Cornerstone!’ finds Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy battling killer robots to secure what appears to be a simple stone building block even as in a fantastic construction of steel and glass the Shining Knight battles a band of burglars over ‘The Cup of the Borgias!’
A bold robbery and seemingly impossible murder draws Vigilante to an experimental plantation where a ruthless gang try every dirty trick to steal ‘The Rubber Dagger!’ only to fail at the last moment whilst the Crimson and Wing take to the seas in search of a shard of canvas from ‘The Sails of the Sally C.!’ as Green Arrow and Speedy happen upon a strange and deadly bidding war with mobsters trying everything to get ‘The Iron Band!’ a simple metal worker purchases from a jewellers.
In every case Barracuda’s hoods came off worst but the mastermind escaped, at least until the Seven left their ‘Mementos of Victory’ on public display and laid a perfect trap…
The short reign of the Seven Soldier of Victory ended in Leading Comics #14 (Spring 1945) with a fabulous flight of fantasy that ranged them against ‘The Bandits from the Books!’ after a chance encounter with scientific paragon Dr. Wimsett who has discovered a process which brings fictional characters to life.
Whilst the likes of Humpty Dumpty and Old King Cole are happy mooching around the laboratory, a select group of very bad eggs the scientist had locked in a room take the first opportunity to abscond to the outside world to make mischief…
Their plans were overheard by helpful Humpty who happily shares the secrets with the Seven, so before long Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy are shadowing Long John Silver, his crew and a band of renegade natives from Last of the Mohicans to ‘Treasureless Island!’, whilst Green Arrow and Speedy follow Shakespeare’s roistering rogue on a gluttonous binge in ‘Food for Falstaff!’
Crimson Avenger and Wing hunt malignant Uriah Heep and the Old Man of the Sea as they brutally acquire modern wealth in ‘Hypocrites, Incorporated!’ even as Shining Knight battles ‘The Giant Who Got a Job!’ and a few of his big friends from the fairytales whilst Vigilante has his work cut out trying to wrangle ‘Little Men with Big Ideas!’ as the marauding armies of Lilliput go on a rampage in farms and a toystore… Soon however the troublemakers are all back in the lab but have one last card to play before they can be banished ‘Back to the Books!’…
Frantic fantasy would also have been the theme of the next adventure had there been one, but Leading abruptly transformed into a cartoon animal comedy anthology for the Summer issue. The changeover was so sudden that story was already competed. ‘The World of Magic: Joe Samachson’s Script for Leading Comics#15’ offers a wondrous glimpse of what might have been…
Moreover, when Paul Levitz rediscovered the script in 1974, editor Joe Orlando had it adapted as a chapter-play serial in Adventure Comics #438-443, illustrated by artists Dick Dillin, Tex Blaisdell, Howard Chaykin, Lee Elias, Mike Grell, Ernie Chua/Chan, José Luis GarcÃa López & Mike Royer.
It’s a true shame room couldn’t be found to include that saga here too…
With an informative ‘Biographies’ section to round off the nostalgic wonderment, it only remains to say that these raw, wild and excessively engaging costumed romps are amongst some of the best but most neglected thrillers of the halcyon Golden Age. Happily, modern tastes too have moved on and these yarns are probably far more in tune with contemporary mores, making this a truly guilty pleasure for all fans of mystery, mayhem and stylishly retro superteam tussles…
© 1943, 1944, 1945, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.