Sovereign Seven in Seven Parts: The Only DC Comics Title in the Top 10

Gene Kendall returns, as we continue our retrospective on Chris Claremont’s Sovereign Seven.

Launching a fresh property is never a sure thing, yet DC had reason to be a little optimistic. The release of Sovereign Seven was at least bolstered by the return of Chris Claremont to monthly superhero work and an art style that matched the splashy Image aesthetics of the early ’90s. Of course, this was 1995, not 1992.

The title debuted just as the early‑’90s speculator boom imploded across the industry -- by 1997, overall comic sales would collapse to just 14% of their 1993 high.

 

Sovereign Seven had incredible sales for the opening issue, cracking the Top Ten in May 1995. As noted by Brian Cronin in his CBR article on the series, Sovereign Seven was the only DC Comics title to hit the top 10 that month, moving 60% more copies than Batman. Joining Sovereign Seven in that top 10 was Spawn, still featuring work from the series creator Todd McFarlane, and a succession of X-Men titles...many of them spinoff series created years earlier by Claremont himself.

Yet within twelve months, Sovereign Seven’s sales had dwindled to just 40% of Batman’s, and it slipped out of the Top 100 entirely. The final issue in 1998 ranked at number 158 on the charts, selling only 12,653 copies.

Like most teenage comics fans, I was intrigued by the 1994 announcement of the series, and did indeed check out the first issue a few months later.

And I will confess that I did not stay on as a reader. Not because I was disappointed by the comic. It felt like, well, a Chris Claremont comic. And Tom Orzechowski was with him, the letterer with distinctive fonts and an ultra-clean style who’d always paired so well with Claremont during the Marvel era. As someone who latched onto the X-Men titles during my earliest days of fandom, the comic had the golden-hued, sentimental feel of something beloved from the past. A heady sensation for a boy just turning fifteen.

I didn’t stick around for issue #2 because...none of my local grocery store and gas station newsstands carried Sovereign Seven. I picked that first issue up during a rare trip to a comic shop in another town. Sovereign Seven would seem to be conceived as a colorful, mainstream spinner rack comic, but apparently my local vendors balked at ordering yet another new title.

Over the next year, I ended up with only two additional issues. And during one of those infrequent comic shop visits the year after that, I didn’t think to look for an issue on the racks.

I wasn’t turned off by my sporadic Sovereign Seven issues. But I also didn’t have an overwhelming desire to pursue the series.

The first issue, however, has a certain place in my heart. The production values are genuinely impressive, on par with anything being released by Image Comics in this era. The title’s thick paper stock was a signifier of a more prestigious title in those days.

Comic book publishers of the early ’90s engaged in a pricey contest of production values, each striving to outflank the other with ever more sumptuous stock. Gone were the halcyon days of frail newsprint that yellowed before your eyes. Instead, the new vogue favored glossy, heavyweight pages; the kind that suggested a publisher truly desired to earn your weekly allowance. It was this very paper that the founding artists at Image championed, tossing aside outdated pulp for a more dignified canvas.

By the summer of 1995, every marquee title boasted the premium finish, and DC’s decision to upgrade Sovereign Seven to that same stock was a bold vote of confidence. Yet confidence doesn’t pay the bills, and as fortunes shifted, the budget knife fell. Those slick pages persisted to the title’s end, but the underlying stock slimmed after a few issues, becoming no sturdier than the very newsprint it had once supplanted.

One justification for the ’90s switch to sturdier paper stock was the use of innovative computer coloring. With colors so elaborate they couldn’t be properly reproduced on cheap-o newsprint, it only made sense to also spring for an appropriate paper stock. In the early issues, Sovereign Seven boasted colors by Gloria Vasquez, augmented by the then‑revolutionary digital separations of Steve Oliff’s Olyoptics. Oliff’s outfit wasn’t merely dabbling in computers -- they were pioneers, the first to merge the color‑guide artist’s vision directly with the separation process. This approach had already earned acclaim on Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, whose multilayered palettes and lurid gradients sparked such fan fervor that Olyoptics became synonymous with boundary‑pushing color techniques. Paired with Vasquez’s deft hand for mood and contrast, Sovereign Seven emerged looking every bit as lush and finely tuned as Image’s crown‑jewel monthly.

With the finest lettering, colors, and paper stock available, DC and Chris Claremont faced a new challenge: finding an artist worthy of those lavish production values. In an age when “fan-favorite” often meant hyper‑stylized poses and anatomy that flirted with the absurd, the old guard of classical draftsmanship felt hopelessly passé to younger readers. Dwayne Turner emerged as their pick, a comics veteran of just five years who had hopped between the industry’s major players. Turner isn’t one for quiet subtleties; his strength lies in grand gestures and dynamic compositions. His character‑driven moments are serviceable, but it’s the bombastic flair that truly defines his work. His character designs -- reminiscent of Youngblood, WildC.A.T.s, and Cyberforce -- aren’t coy about any X‑Men influence. The aesthetics aren’t necessarily terrible, but they are very much of their era. This looks like a ’90s book, but all these years later, maybe it’s okay to say that’s part of the charm.

The very first issue of Sovereign Seven doesn’t waste a beat -- our heroes literally plummet out of the sky in the opening three pages. Claremont greets us with the opening line: “It was a dark and stormy night, when Sovereign Seven came to town.” From there, he sprinkles out clues sparingly, leaving you with even more questions. Who are these otherworldly saviors? Where in the cosmos did they come from?

Sovereign Seven “gloop” out of nowhere and straight into a hail of plasma rounds courtesy of horned demons with Gatling guns. Of course they can’t leave a defenseless mortal --Toby Merlin, yet another new Claremont creation and possessor of a mysterious amulet -- to his fate. A quick skirmish later, the demons are toast and we get a bit of banter that teases each hero’s powers and personality.

With Merlin knocked out, the Seven haul him to Crossroads, the name of both an inn and the town, which sits on the edge of several state jurisdictions. No sooner do they catch their breath than Jack Kirby’s Female Furies crash the party, eyes locked on that same amulet. If readers feel that a narrative with seven leads, a rescuee with secrets, and a cadre of newly-introduced demonic villains is too much, they should be thrilled when Darkseid shows up, clad in a fedora and trench coat. The big-bad of the DC Universe is here to reclaim the MacGuffin himself. Providing yet another cryptic hint, he quips that Cascade reminds him of her mother, the soul‑sucking Maitresse, a villain we meet in a few subplot pages this issue.

Fearing dismemberment, Merlin understandably hands over the amulet, and Darkseid and the Furies vanish, leaving Sovereign Seven to pick up the tab for the inn’s shattered walls. They’re granted a place to stay in exchange for taking jobs as cooks, dishwashers, and maids. This is one of the series’ strongest ideas, super-powered royalty from other worlds forced to work minimum-wage jobs in contemporary America, but Claremont’s always too distracted by other concepts to do it justice.

By the way, the subplot about the twin brooches disappears until issue #27, and it never receives a true resolution, but I’ll admit I still carry positive memories of this comic. There's just enough information to entice readers to try the next issue, just enough connections to the DC Universe to justify Claremont’s publishing arrangement, and the production values remain striking to this day. Fan response tended to be positive, overall. So, after launching with such a promising debut, we'll have to ask: what happened to Sovereign Seven?

 

That’s all for now. I’m also posting a video version of these essays on my YouTube channel along with some other genre essays and samples of my fiction. I’m also attempting to be active on Instagram and Substack, so a follow there would be appreciated.