Sovereign Seven in Seven Parts – Don't You Want Me, Baby?

Sovereign Seven was always a strange fit as a monthly DC title. Even so, Claremont clearly enjoyed his time in the DC sandbox, playing with toys that weren't his but showing some earnest affection for them. All three Sovereign Seven annuals had to bend to the company-wide themes for their respective years, and those issues produced some of the book's strongest material. 

Claremont even got to handle Superman during his electro-blue phase, when the Man of Steel suddenly had a whole new power set and radically altered visual. Claremont rose to the challenge, giving Superman a credible inner voice as he struggled with the changes, and musing in the letter column on directions this story could potentially go. (Even when dealing with corporate-mandated events, Claremont consistently looked to find the actual story. His work with the Beyonder during the Secret Wars days is some of his strongest writing in that era.)

During the early issues, Impulse cameos, taking a liking to fellow speedster Reflex. An arc in the first year also has the team encountering Robin during the Bat-titles' "Contagion" crossover. Additionally, Sovereign Seven takes part in DC's 1996 "Legends of the Dead Earth" event, only to get swept up a few months later in another line-wide apocalypse, "The Final Night." 

Both events seemingly follow the same basic formula: watch as the sky darkens, feel the cast squirm, and wait for the world to end…all within just a few months of each other. DC clearly liked the concept. Claremont does what he can to make it compelling, and while some sequences in the 1996 annual are genuinely confusing, Rick Leonardi's art lifts the proceedings. For all the occasional chaos, that issue ends up being one of the series' highlights.

In the final annual, part of DC’s "Plus-One" team-up gimmick, Saturn Girl steps out of Legion continuity to investigate Network, who in her timeline becomes a notorious telepath and the inspiration for laws designed to oppress her own kind. It's a clever conceit, taking one of Claremont's original characters and integrating her into that corner of DC continuity. But were moments like this enough to hook diehard DC readers, or did the occasional cameos and gimmicks only distract from the important work of establishing three-dimensional personas for these seven new heroes?

It's possible the exodus of readers can be read as a reaction to more promises than payoffs. Sovereign Seven #2 establishes that Crossroads' cellar bizarrely leads to a massive river that flows through gigantic rock formations. Between them is a dam that is apparently doubling as the prison that houses Cascade's mother. There's no immediate payoff to this major revelation, and it feels like dozens of distractions pop up before it's even mentioned again.

After the much-hyped debut issue, the follow-up story arc is, at times, a confusing mess that has Cascade body-possessed and forced by three mystery figures to free her imprisoned mother. The conclusion to the arc is needlessly muddled, offering no answers and hinting at future stories that never come. Add these mysteries to the fact that the entire cast is a mystery to us, and it's understandable that a decent number of casual readers hopped off. The opening few issues of a series shouldn't leave you feeling bewildered and unable to explain what you just read.

The third story arc isn't much more of an invitation to stay with the series. The arc opens with a team of government agents named Force Majeure arriving in Crossroads to apprehend Toby Merlin...then reveals nothing about Merlin...then is sidetracked by another plotline, involving a mystic force protecting the town's forest, an unrelated plotline involving the team using the internet to locate missing teenagers, and then a finale that has the team possessed by a strange spirit and participating in something called "The Wild Ride." (The letter column later advises confused readers to consult the work of Joseph Campbell.) So, no answers to anything. And the next issue, on to some other cryptic concepts that receive no real explanations.

Towards the end of the second year, the story leans heavily on the team's reluctance to stay at Merlin's Camelot compound, painting them as (perhaps overly) cautious and suspicious based on their preconceptions of the man. The problem is, Merlin himself has been introduced so haphazardly that the reader likely has no opinion of him -- assuming they can even remember which member of the bloated cast he's supposed to be. What's meant to create tension instead just underscores how poorly the series manages character introductions and issue-to-issue continuity, leaving the audience more puzzled than invested.

Sovereign Seven #13 kicks off an arc centered on Daisy and Casey, two brand-new teens who are suddenly taking the spotlight. This comes at a point when we still barely know the main characters, and have only the vaguest sense of what the series is even about. The arc follows the girls as they attempt to free a female shapeshifter, another character we've just met and have no reason to care about. For any readers on the fence about sticking with the series, it's hard to imagine an abrupt digression starring characters you just met is going to convince you to keep reading.

By Sovereign Seven #17, a gimmicky story arc has Cascade convinced Network was never really her friend. She's been manipulating both the team and the villainous Shogun from the very beginning, we're told. The justification? Network needs Cascade to play the hero and rescue a baby.  Even though, well, Cascade's a hero and wouldn't need to be manipulated into rescuing a baby. Even an ugly baby.

The issue that attempts to resolve this arc, as some future letter-column responses point out, makes no sense. Apparently, Network's ultimate goal was to ensure that an infant girl held by Shogun could be rescued and placed with a specific family. Somehow, that was also the reason she triggered Cascade's powers and helped her assemble the team in the first place…months and months earlier. It's never properly explained, and yet the plot treats this as a major turning point, using it to justify Cascade leaving the team. 

After departing the team, Cascade stars in her own backup story, which has both her and Clark Kent stumbling across each other in New York. Clark seemingly falls hard for Cascade, even though he's already married to Lois by now, and Cascade (as we're informed in that issue's letter column) is supposed to be a teenager. The backup serial is drawn by Dave Cockrum, who of course teamed with Claremont during his earliest X-Men issues. Cockrum had trouble finding assignments after mainstream comics art became so radically stylized in the late 1980s, and these backups might be the weakest work of his career. The figures all appear to be around four-feet-tall, the faces are often unattractive, and there's almost no energy to the pages. But everyone has an off-day.

Speaking of art, any discussion of a decrease in enthusiasm for this series has to acknowledge the departure of Dwayne Turner, who apparently had a deal that expired during the book's second year. After issue #16, he departs to pencil a Spawn spinoff for Todd McFarlane. He's replaced by industry workhorse Ron Lim. Who you gonna call when a deadline's due? You call '90s Ron Lim, that's who.

Lim is more consistent in his early issues, but just not as interesting. Turner could turn in some occasionally wonky pages, but you could also see some sparks of true inspiration. Turner's also adept at channeling the stereotypical '90s style without veering into something truly ugly. Lim, by the mid 1990s, had pretty much settled into a career as a fill-in artist, showing up on random jobs, or on titles the major publishers didn't consider a huge priority. Competent, but not a sales draw.

I feel bad saying this, as Lim's done work I've enjoyed in the past. (It's hard to deny his stints on Captain America and Silver Surfer aren't fantastic exercises in superhero storytelling.) During Lim's final issues, he seems to be developing a streamlined, less detail-heavy style that isn't nearly as appealing as his classic Marvel work, and doesn't suit a series with a cast of dozens. There also seem to be some production issues, as many of his pages appear to be improperly scanned, showing up in print with missing detail lines. It's an odd production blunder that appears in several issues.

Regarding the series' visuals, we can't ignore the departures of letter Tom Orzechowski and color separators Olyoptics after only a few issues. The sense you're reading a high-priority title diminishes greatly when creators of that caliber depart, and there's really no one that good showing up to replace them. Pairing Claremont with Orzechowski could always evoke fond memories of that legendary X-Men run, something the ubiquitous '90s lettering of Comicraft can't provide.

After issue #25, the cast of Sovereign Seven somehow gets even, ahem, bigger. Power Girl shows up in a story that immediately confuses the remaining readers: she's simultaneously preserved in amber in that canyon beneath Crossroads and also mind-controlled, fighting the team alongside the same mystery foes who'd previously ensorcelled Cascade. Seven superheroes weren't enough, and the sheriff is essentially acting as a superhero herself…now, let's add to the team Power Girl, a character notorious for a muddled backstory.

Sovereign Seven #26 introduces the cast to another guest-star: Hitman, the Wizard magazine favorite bad boy who only targets supervillains. At the time, Wizard wielded real influence in the industry, and its editorial staff weren't shy about taking little digs at Claremont. Hitman's appearance almost reads like Claremont trying to get in on the latest buzz, but as with Power Girl's appearance, the story's final pages hardly make sense. These guest stars might have been intended to pull in new readers or re-engage fans, but instead they simply crowd an already overstuffed book without clarifying anything about the main cast or central mysteries.

By issue #29, the series suddenly veers into what feels like a '90s sales stunt. The cast is told, quote, "You're all of school age" -- yet almost all of the cast is rendered as fully adult. Reflex can grow a full beard! Additionally, back in issue #10, Cruiser chastises Rampart for flirting with Casey, explicitly because she’s only "a girl." If Rampart is supposed to be high-school age, isn’t he then “only a boy”?

With the exception of Network, none of this cast has ever been portrayed as teenagers. Are they being retroactively labeled teens thanks to the success of Gen 13 and the teen superhero boom of the '90s? Exploring this new status quo in issue #32, we learn specifically that Cascade is a sophomore in high school…despite the fact that only a few issues earlier, Superman had a crush on her. And in the final issues, a potential romance is played up between Cascade and Prince Temujin, the adult leader of a Soviet breakaway republic. Was a hotshot financier by the name of Jeffery Epstein arranging their dates?

Issues #29 and 30 also feature what seems like a classic shock-death stunt to boost sales. Rampart is killed in the Louisiana swamps by a cloud-like monster…one that resembles a previous Claremont creation, the Shadow King. Much like Karma's apparent death years earlier in New Mutants, the teammates initially react with surprisingly little emotion. The one exception is Finale, who we learn has secretly been in love with Rampart since they met.

A few issues later, Claremont does pen a funeral story for Rampart, giving some lip service to an occasional theme in the title, the American immigrant experience, touching on the idea that assimilation might cost the cast what makes them unique. Even so, the death primarily feels like a sales gimmick, the actual story surrounding the event is never fleshed out, and poor Rampart's been a background player for so long, it's hard to feel overly emotional.

Following Rampart's death, Finale abandons the team to join Patsy and Violet, who drag her into some mystic mumbo-jumbo of their own design. By this point, several issues in a row are dominated by major plot points that are never executed coherently. The series piles on events -- deaths, departures, and sudden magical detours  -- but what the title needs is more time with the main cast, and stories with true, comprehensible endings. Readers are left trying to track the narrative while wondering which threads, if any, will actually pay off.

That wraps us up for today. In the meantime, find me on YouTube, Substack, and Instagram. And if you checked out my new novella Gutbuster (free on Kindle Unlimited!) I'd consider it a personal favor.