Guardian 4
From Barbelith
"Sex Secrets of the Newsboy Army!"
Barbelith thread: Jabunga Jalonga! Jabunga Jalonga! (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/20483/from/175#post489412)
| Table of contents |
Background and General Commentary
Synopsis:
Editor Starguard recounts for Jake the tale of his childhood adventures as Baby Brain with the original Newsboy Army: The corruption of beloved boxer Mo Colley at the hand of fairy spine-riders, the Newsboys' disasterous final mission to Slaughter Swamp, and the encounter with the Terrible Time Tailor that would leave them forever changed. Jake's been set up and now he's forced to face a fairy-tale invasion he can't even comprehend. As the Sheeda descend on Manhattan, Jake makes his choice: The Guardian's taking this fight to the streets.
Annotations
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Page 2
PANEL 7 - "Wow. Machines love her too."
Chop Suzi's power of Tech-Fu means that she gets along really well with machines and can fix them with ease. More importantly, however, Baby Brain's comment reveals that all the Newsboys love Suzi, in a way.
Mario - "The most relevant line in the issue may be 'Wow. Machines love her too.' I get the feeling that Suzi was loved by _all_ the Army. But only in the platonic sense."
Page 7
PANEL 2 - "And nothing will ever divide us."
The Newsboys' oath embodies all of their youthful optimism, but it takes on a terrible undertone, because as adults they do become divided in some of the worst ways possible.
The building behind the kids on this page is the headquarters of the United Nations in Manhattan.
Page 8
PANEL 2 - "My body never matured, it just got older."
LDones - "Ed is the spirit of superhero comics made flesh. Brilliant, visionary, but never matured, just gotten old."
PANEL 4 - "Now they're coming back, in flying murder factories as big as cities."
One such flying murder factory is Castle Revolving, seen in Shining Knight 1.
Page 9
The name 'Mo Colley' is almost certainly a reference to 'Shakey Mo Collier', the oddly-sweet archetype of all low-life street thugs and roadies in Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stories.
Page 10
Mario - "Page 10: The possessed Mo Colley says 'mmm...death'."
Page 12
PANEL 5 - "It takes control of the central nervous system via the brainstem and could conceivably be the lifeform behind persistent human legends of changelings..."
This Sheeda in a jar, the one that controlled Mo Colley, will appear years later in Cassandra Craft's magic shop when Zatanna visits in Zatanna #2.
Page 13
PANEL 1 - "Uncle Mo fought Ted Grant, The Wildcat, in Gotham City, right?"
Ted Grant, a.k.a. The Wildcat (http://my.execpc.com/~icicle/WILDCAT.html) is a long-standing superhero in the DC Universe. He is a former boxing champion and a member of the Justice Society of America. Sandman readers may remember him from the Prez storyline.
PANEL 4 - "Poor ol' Millions. Does he have to stay?"
Baby Brain's two-teams proposal basically means that Millions is going to stay at headquarters. Team A is Millions; Team B is everybody else. In this panel, Chop Suzi is holding her belly and we can see that she is obviously pregnant.
Chad - "Waitaminute. So nobody is looking at that post-funeral scene and thinking Chop Suzi is preggers? She's got her hand on her tummy twice, and she looks hella pregnant in the Poor Ol Millions panel. Then she and Cap 7 opt out of kid's games, and come up with excuses in the very next panel."
Page 14
PANEL 1 - "I concede the Two Teams idea was intrinsically flawed."
By leaving Millions behind a headquarters, the Newsboys are only six in number when they face the Sheeda and the Terrible Time Tailor. As we have seen elsewhere in the series, teams of seven members have a chance against the Sheeda, but teams of six do not fair well. Vigilante's team of six at Miracle Mesa is the most obvious example of six that failed.
Page 15
PANEL 2 - "Unn. I don't think we should be here. This is somebody's house."
The house belongs to the deceased miser, Cyrus Gold a.ka. Solomon Grundy. The device on the table is a Time Sewing Machine and belongs to the Seven Unknown Men of Slaughter Swamp.
PANEL 3 - "Mirror, Mirror, tell me true..."
The shadowed speaker is Gloriana Tenebrae, queen of the Sheeda. In the past we have seen that she shares characteristics with the Evil Stepmother from the fairy-tale story of Snow White. Apparently these characteristics include possession of a talking mirror.
"One day black flowers will cover the earth and kids like you won't be worth a damn."
According to one of the Seven Unknown Men in Seven Soldiers #0, "They say one black flower grows for every secret drowned in slaughter swamp." At the end of that issue, after six soldiers fall to the enemy at Miracle Mesa in a battle unknown to the world at large, six new flowers are seen floating on the surface of the swamp.
PANEL 4 - "Seven will come by roads unseen, unknown. And end the Queen of Terror's reign with a spear that never was thrown."
This prophecy made by the Queen's Magic mirror will become important later. The Spear That Never Was Thrown will be referenced again in Mister Miracle #4 and Bulleteer #4.
Page 16
PANEL 2 - "The Gold place had come unhinged from Time and Space, like Miracle Mesa out west, where the Daily Recorder just lost their star columnist, along with six other superheroes.
The Gold place is the house in Slaughter Swamp, which previously belonged to Cyrus Gold. The star columnist for the Daily Recorder was Shelly Gaynor, a.k.a. The Whip, who died in Seven Soldiers 0. As far as we know there were only five other superheroes who disappeared alongside Ms. Gaynor. Ed's information is incomplete. He doesn't know that one of the soldiers backed out at the last minute. We won't learn who the absent seventh soldier was supposed to be until Bulleteer #2.
PANEL 5 - "Give me that silly oversized top hat you wear, Ali. I'll look good in that. Give.
The Terrible Time Tailor is a renegade former member of the Seven Unknown Men. After this encounter, he will continue to wear a top hat similar to Ali's. In addition, he will grow a beard and start calling himself Zor. He next appears in Zatanna 2 and Zatanna 4.
Page 17
PANEL 6 - "Chop Suzi: Dead at 14."
Chad - "Bet it was miscarriage complications that killed her."
Keith has a plan - "I'm a little confused by the Captain 7 thing. I understand that a theory is that he killed Chop Suzi and maybe Millions."
Suzi is doomed to die soon after the Newsboy's visit to Slaughter Swamp. There are two different theories that could explain her death.
- Theory #1: Chop Suzi died due to complications during childbirth at a very young age.
- Theory #2: Captain 7 killed Chop Suzi.
In favor of the first theory, Suzi is visibly pregnant throughout the second half of the comic, Suzi is only 14 years old at most, and this story is presumably set during the 1940s, so given her young age and the state of medicine at the time, it is certainly plausible that Suzi could have died during childbirth.
In favor of the second theory, Captain 7's future suit as revealed by the Terrible Time Tailor labels him as a "Child Molester/Murderer" and the next panel shows the enraged Newsboys punishing him for his crimes. (Note that Suzi is not among the Newsboys in the punishment panel.)
Seven Soldiers #1 will reveal additional information that favors one of these two theories over the other.
PANEL 7 - "Millions: Dead at 14."
Millions the Mystery Mutt is the only Newsboy who doesn't go to Slaughter Swamp and his is the only fate that could be viewed as positive. He lived to a ripe old age of 14, which is 98 in dog years! That's great!
PANEL 8-9 - "Captain 7: Child Molester/Murderer"
"No. She wanted me."
By protesting his innocence, Captain 7 reveals that the sexual encounter of which he is accused has already occured. Given Chop Suzi's obvious pregnancy, it seems that she was the victim. Captain 7 is flying back to college the next day, which means he is at least 17, more likely 18, years old. Suzi is only 14 at most, so any sexual relationship between the two would legally be child molestation. Cap believes that the relationship was consensual, but that is likely self-deception on his part; we don't hear Suzi's opinion on that. If Suzi died due to complications during an unwanted pregnancy, one can see how the other Newsboys would hold the Captain responsible for her death, labeling him a murderer.
Spyder, Agent 317 - "On the 'She wanted me' line- this was just my interpretation and obviously I could be wrong, but I read it as Cap 7 trying to save his own ass. A lot of times people who rape will try to convince you that it was consensual when you confront them about it (in my experience anyway). I just read it as Cap pleading with them to try to get out of it."
Benjamin: Richardson Acolyte - "Of course it's not unheard of that a 17 year old had sex with a 14 year old, and until the incident at the Swamp, it's quite possible that they were having an admittedly awkward but consentual relationship. However, the flipside is just as likely. Cap used his good looks and age advantage to goad Suzi into a sexual relationship and shamed her into hiding it. ... It's the ambiguity there that seems to confirm the middle ground between the two options above. As much as its possible for a 17 year old and a 14 year old to have a "consensual" relationship, the chances of them fully comprehending the proper balance between what each of them truly wanted and was truly ready to allow are slim at best. But it could've just ended up an emotionally messy secret that they dealt with in private. Thanks to the TTT, the entire Army now knew all the details and they "decided" that Cap took advantage of Suzi, and again, I think Brain's feelings towards her had a lot to do with this.
On the other hand, it is a bit of a stretch to label Captain 7 a murderer simply because he got Suzi pregnant and she died in childbirth. That would only make him indirectly responsible for her death, not directly responsible. However, if the birth of Suzi's child gave Captain 7 clear reason to feel jealous and betrayed, if he lashed out at her in jealous anger and killed her, then the label of 'Murderer' and the Newsboys' reaction seem much more justified. For more on this theory, see Seven Soldiers #1...
PANEL 10 - The Newsboys punish Captain 7.
This panel must take place sometime after the visit to Slaughter Swamp. The Newsboys are wearing different clothes. The box is Ali-Ka-Zoom's magic cabinet, which will appear years later in Zatanna #2.
Maybe they're wearing the Time Tailor's clothes.
Page 18
PANEL 3 - "It doesn't matter how long it takes; in their world, only a day will have passed."
It seems that time passes at a different rate on Sheeda Side. In Shining Knight 1, Ystin throws the Undry Cauldron from Castle Revolving into the timestream and jumps in after it only moments later. However when he arrives in Los Angeles, it seems as if Don Vincenzo has had the cauldron for years.
Page 19
PANEL 3 - "El Mar. We called him El in the old days."
El Mar is short for Larry Marcus, Carla's father and Jake's would-be father-in-law who died in Guardian 2. Larry must have been a friend of the Newsboys in his youth. Ali-Ka-Zoom heard about Mo Colley when he got a call from El Mar on his mom's telephone.
Page 21
PANEL 2 - "What are you doing? It's all over for me, Jake."
"Nah."
This is the exact moment Jake becomes a super-hero. All through the series he's been following others' lead and his feeling of frustation and helplessness has slowly been growing. He followed Larry's prompting to take the interview and followed Ed's instructions on his first two missions. In #2, he's torn by his inability to prevent Larry's death. In #3, he's frustrated by the disintegration of his relationship with Carla, despite his best efforts. This issue the tension builds as he resists the weirdness of the world Ed has thrust him into, a world of alien invasions and mythical monsters. "I don't do Time and Space, Ed. Don't do this to me," and "Ed, this can't be happening," he insists, almost pleading. Like the Newsboys, he's a neighborhood hero forced to enter a world that is too wide and too real compared to what he's used to.
In that moment when Jake says "Nah," he stops following Ed's lead and starts being proactive, deciding what to do for himself. He embraces his identity as a superhero, because he knows it's just part of who he is, as he tells Carla moments later. Once he's made that decision, his seemingly insurmountable problems with Carla can be straightened out with one simple phone call. As Larry told him back in the beginning, "It's just confidence, that's all."
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