Broken Frontier

Justin is lost in Los Angeles, separated from his horse and surrounded by a world thick with the poison of the Sheeda.

Shining Knight #2 is the first second issue so far in Morrison’s Seven Soldiers epic and as a result holds on its shoulders the first real indication of how this story is to continue. Fans of Morrison are likely to be pleased by this as it plays with the meta-narratives common in his work: superheroes as myth and legend, the outside world as a veil for reality, etc. Morrison’s detractors will inevitably feel cast away by the loaded scripts and less than clear plot development.

In this issue, Justin escapes from the police who picked him up at the end of the last issue for wielding a deadly weapon and riding an unregistered winged horse. He takes off into the confusing city, alone and afraid. He quickly finds that this world he has landed in is one of filth and is in the grip of the evil Sheeda. The Sheeda send a tormentor in the form of Mood 7 Mind Destroyer, a monster impervious to danger that destroys his prey with his words. Can Justin withstand the onslaught of this evil being, regain his honour and reclaim this world for the forces of good?

Morrison crafts a fulfilling but confusing story. Reading this issue late at night, as I did, can make you feel like you are treading water. There is a straight forward plot here, no doubt about that but Morrison dresses this up with his trademark prose that to a sleepy mind can ever so slightly be perplexing. There are clear examples of an imagination hard at work as we see the symbols of the world’s heroes turned to t-shirt designs and a somewhat immortal mafia don whose enforcer is an Asian golem.

Morrison fills his stories with impressions of things, parts of ideas that infuse with the main story and lend the story important re-readability value. Much of these impressions and feelings would not work without the incredible art of Simone Bianchi. His Sheeda monsters are so creepy and his cityscapes are suitably drab and insidious. However, there are some problems that I have with his storytelling. Some scenes are just hard to follow. For example, at the beginning of the issue, Justin escapes from the police car and somehow grabs a cop’s gun. How he does this is not very clear at all and in the melee that ensues, it is not easy to determine who is hitting whom.

Shining Knight #2 declares boldly that this epic story will not be an easy journey but it will be a fulfilling one for those who take the plunge. Reading Morrison can be like treading water. There is always the danger that you will simply drown but to reach the end is relieving and rewarding.

-Matthew Clark