Restraint is not a word you'll find used to describe Guardian. The concept, a hired superhero acting as living mascot for a tabloid-esque New York Paper, is a little bit out there, but "a little bit" doesn't even begin to cover how weird Guardian #1 actually is. It stops short of the territory of the last Morrison/Stewart collaboration, Seaguy, but it does include subway pirates, bodyguard golems, mysterious electronic newspaper editors and one of the more strenuous job interviews I've ever read. It is also, as you would expect from this creative team, beautiful to look at and a whole hell of a lot of fun. As with Shining Knight, Guardian has only loose ties to the overall Seven Soldiers framework, making it quite accessible whether you're following the whole Seven Soldiers tapestry or just want to see one of the more intriguing new superhero concepts to come out of DC in quite a while.
Technically speaking, Guardian isn't new, so much as a complete re-invention of an older character, like the rest of the Seven Soldiers. I'm generally wary of that kind of thing, as it can so easily go wrong and wind up losing all the charm of the old while not being quite fresh enough to catch on as wholly new (see also the new Firestorm.) However, if there's one person I trust to do re-invention right, it's idea man Grant Morrison, and he hasn't let me down so far. Morrison and Stewart take the essence of what worked about the old Guardian and give it a new spin, a modern update. The Guardian was a former policeman and his previous costume had some police-like aspects, so Stewart makes that a little more overt and updates it to look like a blend of superhero and SWAT gear. The Guardian worked for The Cadmus Project, and had kid sidekicks in the form of The Newsboy Legion, so Morrison has given him a legion of operatives called The Newsboy Army that resembles the Shadow's network of operatives. Guardian passes the test of "reinvented" characters, namely "Would he be interesting if there were no old character foundation to stand upon?" and the answer is definitely yes.
That's due in no small part to Morrison showing off a surprisingly low-key, human side to some of his writing in this issue in focusing on Jake Jordan. His difficulties in life, along with a sense that at his core, he's a good man, make him a very sympathetic and likable protagonist. Seeing the realities of his life before he's flung into the craziness of the Guardian grounds the book in a very important way, and helps to keep the crazy fun ideas a little more relatable. Of course, the craziness is a whole lot of fun. The opening sequence of pirates raiding a subway platform is bizarre, chaotic and comical, but has an edge of seriousness to it thanks to the bloody behavior of the pirates.
This was likely to be my favorite of the Seven Soldiers projects anyway, as it features the work of one of my favorite artists, Cameron Stewart. There are two key components to making Guardian work visually, the human element and the over-the-top action element, and Stewart is great for both. The subtleties of Jake's crisis of confidence, or his father-in-law's feelings toward him, are conveyed as perfectly as the physical skills that Jake has to offer in his Guardian job audition. And as we saw in Seaguy, Stewart has no problem in delivering on the bizarre and making it fun. The two-page splash of the pirates invading a subway terminal (and the beautifully paced lead-up to it) or the crazy action sequence and almost macabre last page are great examples of that.
Seven Soldiers: Guardian is quite different in tone from the previous Seven Soldiers series. While the same sense of crazy big ideas and new blood into the DC Universe is found in all three issues released so far, The Guardian really reads more than anything like a modern version of the kind of thing Jack Kirby would have done. Strange concepts co-exist with the real world comfortably, and the focus is on superhero action, but the humanity of the characters isn't forgotten in the process. 10/10
