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The Story:

Bulleteer #2

Who Killed Seven Soldiers?

Written by Grant Morrison

Art by Yanick Paquette, Serge LaPointe, & Alex Sinclair

Alix Horrower meets FBI Helen Helligan, an agent specializing in meta-human activity. Helen Helligan has sought Bulleteer because she was supposed to have joined up with Vigilante and five other meta-human/superheroes to form the newest incarnation of the Seven Soldiers of Victory. However, Alix didn’t show up and the other six are now dead at the hands of the Sheeda. Helen, suffering from a vampire bite, brings Alix along to help learn more about what happened. This leads to the revelation that Neh-Buh-Loh is the same Nebula Man who faced off against the original Seven Soldiers of Victory years ago. His job: to hunt and kill the Seven Soldiers.

Featured Characters:

Obsessed with the idea of becoming a famous super-hero and preserving his beautiful wife's youth, Professor Lance Harrower invents Smartskin — a steel-hard living fiber which bonds with skin collagen. When his experiments go awry, Harrower is suffocated under a coating of steel skin. His wife Alix survives the horrific accident only to find herself an outcast and a freak. Now jobless, alone, and encased in super-hard living metal, she is a truly reluctant super-human.
Agent Helen Halligan
Ramon Solomano, the Iron Hand

 

Noteworthy Items:


Bulleteer #2 marks the second appearance of Helen Helligan. She first appeared in Shining Knight #3 where she was bitten by Sheeda Queen Gloriana Tenebrae. This issue takes place the day after Shining Knight #3 and a little after Klarion #3. Agent Helligan took the Ramon Solomano’s Iron Hand from the Manhattan Museum of Superhumanity after the Deviants raided the museum in Klarion #3.

"Stay with me. I know it's a lot of information, but that's the way I work. Everything at once. Next slide please." - Helen Helligan

A CBR user comments on the quote: "... Morrison's non-linear story-telling technique in SS? with a back-handed acknowledgement in the final sentence that, the comics medium being what it is, its basic sequential nature is impossible to escape in the end. And, of course, not only the comics medium, but language itself - even human thought - is subject to this limitation - at least at our present stage of development, we can do no better than attempt to approximate "non-linearity". Our minds aren't capable of seeing the whole "picture" (Helligan uses this word several times throughout the story) at once, at least not for very long (mystics and magicians may disagree)."

Boy Blue the nephew of Ramon Solomano, aka the Iron Hand. The Iron Hand was the original nemesis of the first Seven Soldiers team. Solomano is also a play on words. Solo = 1, Mano means hand. Solomano has one real hand, the other is an advanced prosthetic replacement.

From CBR Forum: "Speaking of the Golden Age Seven Soldiers Nebula Man and knowing Morrison, I think all the events from the Golden Age story will happen after the events of the current Seven Soldiers series, at least from the point of view of Neh-Buh-Loh. Somehow Neh-Buh-Loh will be sent to the past to fight the Seven Soldiers (which may explain why he doesn't have his trusty Spider sidekick in that old story).

Morrison loves that time travel/paradox thing.

Of course, this means that the final fate of Neh-Buh-Loh occurs in an issue of Stars and STRIPE where he gets embarrassingly killed by Courtney, but what the heck.

World's Finest #214 features Superman and Vigilante fighting werewolves. This could be the origin of Greg Saunder's lychanthropic (werewolf) curse.

 

Following information from Barbelith:

"Harris D. Ledbetter, a.k.a. Dyno-Mite Dan. He bought two hero rings off e-bay. 'Working fakes,' whatever that means."

The rings Dyno-Mite Dan wore in Seven Soldiers #0 never belonged to the orignal Dan the Dyna-Mite and T.N.T. We know from Zatanna #2 that Cassandra Craft has been selling counterfeit Dyna-Mite rings out of her magic shop. Since Dan was able to become a human bomb even though his rings were fakes, there must be something extraordinary about Cassandra Craft's abilities as a forger, or something extraordinary about Dan himself. "Learn to fool the experts," indeed!

"...See, in less than two hours my sister gets married to a scary guy who beats her up. My mom made me promise I'd find a good reason to stop her."

In Shining Knight 3, Agent Helligan mentioned that she had to fly to New York for her sister's wedding.

"He was searching for a treasure, for a Lost Citadel in the Himalayas. For a forgotten tribe of winged horses, from before The Flood.

Neh-Buh-Loh is searching for the Seven Treasures of Camelot. The Lost Citadel in the Himalayas is Gorias, where Zatanna sent Misty in Zatanna #4. The winged horses are the descendents of Pega-Zeus, of whom the Shining Knight's mount, Vanguard, is one.

"Many, many years later, my young nephew drew my attention to a personal column in 'Powerhouse' magazine and I knew the time had come to strike. So the boy infiltrated Saunders' Seven Soldiers."

The Boy Blue who joined Vigilante and his Six Soldiers at Miracle Mesa was Ramon's nephew and a traitor to the team. He used his horn to summon Neh-Buh-Loh and the Sheeda.

 

If I'm not mistaken, The Vigilante's back-up man, the fellow with the whip who has confiscated Ramon's iron hand, is Rodney Gaynor a.k.a. The 'Golden Age' Whip mentioned by his granddaughter Shelly Gaynor in Seven Soldiers #0.

 

"Wolfsbane and silver treatments kept the disease in remission for years but this was a Doctor's report; the condition was coming back. Any idea why Greg Saunders always kept at least one silver bullet in his pistol? It was for himself."

In Seven Soldiers #0, Vigilante used a silver bullet to shoot the ghost spider of Miracle Mesa. He also confessed to The Whip that he couldn't tackle the spider alone anymore because of arthritis, high blood pressure, and... other undisclosed health problems. I guess now we know why he trailed off.

"And he said they'd all be waiting, see? Waiting for me... The Black Baron... Big Caesar... Little Joe Goss..."

The Black Baron and Big Caesar are both old villains from the Vigilante's rogues gallery. It's likely Goss was one too.

"Tell 'em 'Sky High' said the starry guy and the fairy folk are from the future.

Agent Helligan confirms the origin of the Sheeda. The Sheeda are humans from the far future. Their spider-mounts and 'magical' weapons are the products of advanced technology. Because their society has become stagnant and decadent and because they have exhausted the resources of their era, they raid the resources and cultural achievements of the past.

"Don't do it, Sis! The guy's a werewolf!"

Agent Helligan's "Big Picture" approach to investigation pays off unexpected dividends in the end. By investigating the murder of the Seven Soldiers, she turns up just the evidence she needs to solve her other problem: how to break up her sister's wedding.

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