Mood 7 Mind Destroyer

Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Simone Bianchi
Colourist: Dave Stewart
Letterer: Rob Leigh

Featured Characters:

			Don Vincenzo
	Guilt		Strato
	Crazyface		Ali Ka-Zoom
	Vanguard		Neh-Buh-Loh

Noteworthy Items:

by DAVID BIRD

pp 01-06: We pick up where we left off: Justin is in police custody. The cops are talking about what just happened, when one asks Justin his name… and Justin tells him. It’s an odd response from someone who doesn’t speak any modern languages. Justin, presumably, speaks some from Welsh, but in all the commentary I have found on this series I have never seen a proper or comprehensive translation of these passages, so I assume it is not really Welsh. I’d be happy to be corrected, though.

Our hero doesn’t stay in police custody for long. Displaying super strength, he kicks off the door and pulls apart his cuffs. I’m not sure, but he may also have survived a blow to the head from another car. It isn’t clear, but it would explain why he stayed in the car until it stopped. Once he gets out he shows a lack skill with modern weapons, briefly holding a cop’s gun upside down. He corrects himself, but is quickly shot. You can’t point guns at cops. He’s down for a moment, but his armour protects him from harm. Looking at him laid out on the ground, he certainly looks like a boy, though his face is more feminine. He’s up in a second, braining a cop with a car bumper, grabbing his sword, and escaping through a restaurant and out into the night.

There are a couple of odd things with this scene. The more famous of the two is the licence plates. They certainly don’t look like anything you’d see in North America. Most put this mistake on Bianchi and associate the plates with Italy. I googled Italian license plates. They don’t really look like them, either. The other problem is exactly how did Justin get the gun? There are partitions between the front and back seats of police cruisers and nowhere does Justin break though it to get at the gun. I guess we can blame Morrison for this one.

pp 07-11: He’s escaped the Sheeda and the LAPD, but he can’t escape himself. The narration makes Justin’s confusion clear, “blue soldiers rode clockwork insects through the air.” The police and their helicopters become the Sheeda, at least in Justin’s confused state.

He passes a movie poster. This is the first of this issue’s many links to the other minis. The female lead is Suli Stellamaris, who we’ll see in Bulleteer. Her name means “star of the seas”, but I suspect she’s Morrison’s take on Lori Lemaris, Clark Kent’s college sweet-heart and a mermaid. The alliteration is too much of a coincidence. The title of the movie, ‘The Cup Of Blood’, invokes the missing cauldron. Cup: cauldron; blood: life.

Justin wonders how long he’s been in the Castle and what has happened to Vanguard, when he is attacked by our title character Mood 7 Mind Destroyer. The narration winds up by telling that Vanguard is a descendant of Pegazeus and of “The Spoils of Unwhen.” This is actually Preiddeu Annwfn, the Spoils of Annwn, which is linked in my comments for Shining Knight #1. Its obvious that Guilt, blue and spider-eyed, is a Sheeda tool, even before he tell us.

Guilt takes over the role of narrator, telling Justin of all the terrible things that happened to Camelot. But how much of this is true? Guilt rots you from the inside, which makes it impossible for Justin to take up arms against it, but guilt isn’t always true. It lies, blaming us for things we aren’t responsible for. It tells Justin: “Perhaps everything would have been different, if not for Justin. The knight who ran away.” But Justin didn’t run away. He was late. If he had shown up on time, he would have fought and died with the others. As it was, he attacked the Queen herself. So Guilt gives us a lot of info, for much of it he is our only source, but he lies. That’s an important grain of salt.

He tells of Camelot’s fall. That “King Mordredd, The Dead” ruled for five hundred years, until the city was a ruin. He “Turned men to zombies. Elves to cannibals.” Everyone died and died ten thousand years ago. His ancestors have become undead slaves, set to work in their mills, and the Queen of Terror rules. But what if Justin had been there… Well, we’ve already considered that. The obvious parallel here is Klarion’s Limbo Town. They too used their ancestors as undead slaves, and if you go back to page 13 of Klarion #1 you’ll see mills churning black smoke in Limbo Town too. That Mordredd is an undead rulers suggests that he was a zombie surrogate for the Sheeda. But what of the elves? Elf is an alternative for fairy and the Sheeda are the fairy. They are also predacious cannibals living off the cultures of their ancestors. Justin is not the cause this. Quite the opposite, he’s the victim. But that’s guilt for you.

pp 12-13: A brief interlude to let us know what happened to Vanguard and to make a couple of links to Manhattan Guardian. Vanguard did survive the fall and has been taken to the estate of Vincenzo Baldi, the Undying Don. Vincenzo, like “Ed” Stargard, was a member of the original Newsboy Army. With him are two of his men, Crazyface and Strato. Strato is the air golem, one of the Golems Four made by Stargard. We saw the earth one in Manhattan Guardian #1. They have the horse and Justin’s helmet. Strangely, Vincenzo seems to recognize something of what’s happen. When he sees the winged horse, his response is “That I lived to see the end of the world...” Lacking any other clues, my assumption is that he knows of the Sheeda, of the missing treasures, and recognizes the connection between Vangaurd and Pegazeus. It’s a long shot, but we do learn that Stargard (and perhaps Larry, Jake Jordan’s father-in-law and another former Newsboy) knows of the coming of the Sheeda.

Vincenzo, apparently a Marx Brothers fan, names Vangaurd Horsefeathers.

pp 14-16: Things just get worse for Justin. Penniless, hungry, and tormented, he sits beside an old man. Guilt tells him he might as well kill himself, but is interrupted by two delinquents who’ve come to harass the old man. Justin tells them to leave him alone. They strike him, pour beer on him. Guilt seems to enjoy this, but the look in Justin’s eyes tells us that this may have been a misstep.

pp 17-19: Vincenzo brings Horsefeathers some quality hay and asks him about his rider. Vanguard answers him. Vincenzo is amazed. This is much like the scene in the police car. Justin’s name is asked for and given, yet neither understands the language the question is asked in. The scene is cut short by a poisoned arrow fired by Neh-Buh-Loh on a spider mount! Dropped to his knees, the Undying Don gives away the origin of his name: he has the cauldron. That’s why the Sheeda’s Hunter is there.

Did the cauldron play any role in Vanguard’s recovery?

The scene ends with Morrigan’s prophecy of the end of the world. These carry over to the next scene. Morrigan is a character from Irish mythology. Often characterized as a “war goddess”, her actual origins are unclear. And she’s an Irish myth and not Welsh – unlike others in this series.

pp 20-22: And it looks like we read the look in Justin’s eyes correctly. He throws off guilt through action. The fact that they out number him and one has a gun means nothing. Then the weirdest thing happens. Justin responds to the narration. A common enough convention, I guess. He declares that the evil will not win while a knight of Camelot remains. Good. Heroic. But suddenly his armour is suddenly covered by street clothes. Even stranger is his face. It looks like a mask. Which makes sense, of course. Justin isn’t who he seems.

Neither is the old man. He is Ali Ka Zoom – yet another former Newboy! This one is a connection to both the Manhattan Guardian and Zatanna minis. He has magical powers, which may explain Justin’s transformation. He coughs up “horsefeathers”, literally, though he suggests they may be angel’s feathers. He assures Justin that, while a dark time has come, he won’t be fighting alone.

While they talk someone wearing a Superman T-shirt puts coins in Zoom’s hat. He looks like Clark Kent. It would great to have Kent in a Superman T-shirt, but I think that’s pushing things. We’ve seen other background characters in this issue wearing comic T-shirts. A bus arrives for Zoom. It will take him into Zatanna #3.

What’s notable about this issue are all the connections to the other stories. Neh-Buh-Loh links it to the JLA Classified intro and Seven Soldiers #0. The zombie slaves connect it to Klarion. The air Golem and the former Newsboys to Manhattan Guardian. Zoom to Zatanna. The poster to Bulleteer. And the mention of Pegazeus is explained in Seven Soldiers #1. If you can point out ties to Mister Miracle and Frankenstein, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.