An Incomprehensible Condition: An Unauthorised Guide To Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers

If you haven't read Grant Morrison and co's epic Seven Soldiers maxi-series, there's probably not much point in you picking up this excellent book unless you want to see a brilliant mind spinning off in too many directions at once.Come to think of it, if you've not read Seven Soldiers, you really should get on that right away, here's your starting point -  Seven Soldiers of Victory: v. 1 . Seven Soldiers is easily one of the best superhero comics of all time, and what Andrew Hickey does for it here is to rescue it from the narrow, inward-looking confines of comic book criticism. Sure, like so many modern superhero comics, Seven Soldiers is built out of a mess of references to other comics so dense that light bends around it, but *unlike* so many similar works, the interconnected stories in Seven Soldiers actually warp the world around them in a number of alarming and beautiful ways.And so instead of focussing on the ongoing metcommentary as though Seven Soldiers was just yet another comic book about comic books, Andrew Hickey uses these brilliant, garish fantasies as a jumping off point to discuss modern scientific theories and not-so-modern religious poetry. Both Grant Morrison's comic book series and Andrew Hickey's book are about parenthood, authorship, entropy and how no plan survives contact with the enemy. I can't pretend that either of them will leave you feeling all right about everything, but if you're anything like me then both of them will leave you reeling from the sheer number of possibilities suggested within, and I don't think you could ask for more from comics (and books about comics!) about people in funny outfits trying to save the world.