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Reworking the Seven Soldiers of Victory page to be about the general team.

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The unsung Seven Soldiers of Victory... Stripesy and Wing are off fighting for the last slot.

Seven Soldiers of Victory (or just Seven Soldiers) is a name used by various, mostly unrelated, teams throughout the history of DC Comics.

The first team to use the name were the Golden Age Seven Soldiers of Victory (also know as "The Law's Legionnaires). The team, starring in Leading Comics, was created after the sucess of the Justice Society of America, and followed the same style of the JSA's adventures in All-Star Comics: Taking heroes that starred in monthly anthologies, and putting them in a quarterly book that was essentially an Anthology of solo adventures, with a Framing Device of their Team-up.) The team was composed of Vigilante (from Action Comics), Crimson Avenger (from Detective Comics), Green Arrow and Speedy (from More Fun Comics), Shining Knight (from Adventure Comics) and Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy (from Star-Spangled Comics). Crimson Avenger's sidekick, Wing, was an unofficial eighth member.

After being replaced by comedy stories in Leading Comics, the team would only reappear years later, in Justice League of America #100-102. On the story arc, the team was revealed to have been lost in time during a fight against the Nebula Man. While they're rescued by the JLA and JSA, it's revealed Wing died fighting against the Nebula Man. The team disbanded, with members going their own ways.

After the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the golden age Green Arrow and Speedy were erased from existence. Many substitutes were introduced. Commonly, Wing was among them, being promoted to official membership. Young All-Stars #27 introduced Wing and Vigilante's sidekick Stuff into the membership, and made obscure golden age hero Squire an unofficial member. Later, in Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., Stuff and Wing were show as members, but the archer called The Spider was added in Green Arrow's place. In the DCU Legacies series, previous retcons were ignored, with the heroes TNT and Dyna-Mite being made members alongside Wing.

A second Seven Soldiers team (though they didn't use the name in-store), made up of Batgirl, Blackhawk, Metamorpho, Mento, Deadman, Adam Strange, and a new Shining Knight gathered together only once, in the 2000 flashback series Silver Age.

In Seven Soldiers of Victory (2005) by Grant Morrison, after a failed attempt at reforming the team by Vigilante to fight the villain know as Sheeda, led to the death or apparent death of its members, seven heroes (the JLAer Zatanna, the second Mister Miracle Shilo Norman, an revamped Klarion, the witch boy, and new heroes Shining Knight (Ystin/a), The Bulleteer, Frankenstein and The Guardian (Jake Jordan), helped defeat the Sheeda, without even meeting each other.

In the Stargirl Spring Break Special one-shot, Green Arrow and Speedy were restored to the membership of the original team, revealed as being their modern versions sent back in time by a fight with the Clock King. In it's sequel miniseries, Stargirl: The Lost Children, the team reformed, composed of Stargirl herself, original members Green Arrow, Vigilante, Shining Knight and S.T.R.I.P.E. (former Stripesy), plus Red Arrow (Emiko Queen) and new Crimson Avenger (Jill Carlyle).

In Wild CATS 2022, an new version completely unrelated to the others was introduced. Featuring classic Wildstorm heroes, they are the public face of the HALO Corporation, and rivals with it's black ops operation, the WildC.A.T.S.

Other Media:

• Justice League Unlimited had a Shout-Out to the original team in the episode "Patriot Act": The Shining Knight, Vigilante, Stargirl, STRIPE, the Crimson Avenger (sans sidekick Wing), Green Arrow and Speedy are the Only Ones who can stop a General Ripper hopped up on Super Serum.
• Stargirl (2020) based on the Courtney Whitmore Stargirl features Pat Dugan/Stripesy as one of the main characters, and the entire Golden Age Seven Soldiers is shown in a black and white photograph, albeit with Crimson Avenger in his original hat, coat and mask costume. The school janitor was revealed to be Shining Knight as well.

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Seven Soldiers of Victory provides examples of:

Leading Comics #1- 14

• All for Nothing: The Hand, villain of the first issue, learns he has a month to live, and decides to get together a team of famous villains and use them to pull off a series of high-profile crimes so the world will remember his name. They all fail, defeated by one of the proto-Soldiers, and literally as soon as he tries to salvage his plan by challenging them to attack his trap-filled house, he gets a call that a new procedure's been discovered that can save his life after all. But by then, thanks to him opening his big mouth, the heroes know where he lives and are on the way to arrest him.
• All Up to You: Good thing Speedy picked up that time travel device, or else the entire team would have remained in the past at the siege of Troy, where Dr. Doome tried to trap them. Score one for the sidekick.
• Anthology: Leading Comics, despite being a team book, is composed of a collection of short stories by different authors and artists. The actual team sections are usually confined to the opening and closing chapters of each issue, though there are occasional exceptions.

• Bad Luck Charm: In Leading Comics #11, gangster Handsome Harry loses what he considers to be his lucky hat. However the narration continually refers to it as an unlucky or evil hat, and bad things happen to everyone that finds it or comes in contact with it over the course of the story (mainly in one of the Soldiers noticing what they're up to).
• Badass Normal: Most of the Golden Age team were simply well-trained humans with a few gimmicks. The Shining Knight, however, had a magical sword, magical armor, and a flying horse provided by Merlin.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The Black Star uses his ray to create giant insects and birds to attack the Seven Soldiers.
• Captain Geographic: The Star Spangled Kid and Stripesy have an American flag motif for their costumes.
• Chronoscope: Dr. Doome is able to observe past events with his chronoscope, such as Pickett's Charge or mammoths during an ice age. He also observes his time-displaced allies returning to the past with this machine.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Shining Knight's magical armor which protects him from all harm. Except being hit on the head, so he could still be knocked out and put in a deathtrap occasionally.
• Color Character: The Green Arrow and the Crimson Avenger.
• Cool Car: The Arrowplane and the Star Rocket Racer.
• Cowboy: Greg Saunders was a singing cowboy in his Secret Identity.
• Crazy-Prepared: The Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy have their fighting maneuvers worked out ahead of time, and codes assigned for each one, which they'll call out in the middle of a fight.
• Death by Irony: One issue has its villain recruiting a bunch of criminals rescued from death row to be his henchmen. Every single one of them dies in some way identical to their scheduled means of execution (the one set to be killed by firing squad dies when he's accidentally shot by a fellow underling, the one sentenced to die in the gas chamber suffocates when the ship where he's trying to stow away's fumigated for rats, the one sentenced to solitary confinement's trapped aboard a rocketship flying out of control into outer space, etc.)
• Digital Destruction: Despite the generally excellent restoration work done for the DC Archives reprints of the Leading Comics issues, Oliver Queen's hair is often colored brown in volume one of the Archives when it was always blond (yellow) in the original comics.
• Divide and Conquer: The Copperhead attempts to turn the team against each other during a hunt for lost Incan gold, and for a while it works, until the various team members work out just what's going on.
• Domino Mask: The Crimson Avenger, Green Arrow and Speedy all wear tiny domino masks. Vigilante has a bandanna tied over his nose and mouth, which is probably marginally more effective as a disguise. The Star Spangled Kid wears a cowl, while Stripesy doesn't bother with a mask of any sort, oddly.
• Fake Wizardry: In what is probably a reference to The Wizard of Oz, the Wizard of Wisstark is actually an American stage magician who fakes being a wizard to rule the hidden antarctic city. Sadly, he's facing three genuine wizards in the city on the other side of the mountains, and needs the help of the Soldiers to fight them off.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Sir Justin, the Shining Knight, who was originally a knight for King Arthur before being trapped in suspended animation for a few centuries.
• Funny Robot: Oscar the robot, the wisecracking invention of a scientist who didn't quite realize what he had created. All his other robots were mindless automatons, but Oscar somehow ended up with a prankster personality.
• Genre Shift: Leading Comics switched to the "funny animals" format in Summer 1945. That was the end of the Seven Soldiers.
• Historical Domain Crossover: Leading Comics #3 has the Seven Soldiers of Victory working against Dr Doome (not Victor) who has used a time machine to summon up the Time Tyrants, Alexander the Great, Emperor Nero, Napoléon Bonaparte, Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Golden Age team has the distinction of being one of the very few superhero teams deliberately assembled by a villain! The Hand, believing he was dying, recruited five criminals (his "fingers") to pull off spectacular thefts he'd planned. And just to show off how perfect his plans were, the Hand sent invitations to five mystery men and their sidekicks to futilely try to stop the crimes. You can guess how it worked out.
  • What's even more hilarious in hindsight is that the Hand lived to a ripe old age (till a week before Infinite Crisis in The Bulleteer) and he was killed by Greg Saunders (Vigilante) who was, of course, one of the heroes he had summoned.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Stripesy often seems smarter and more prepared than the Star-Spangled Kid. He's the one who built their indestructible, transforming Flying Car, and taught the Kid how to fight.
• Kid Hero: The Star-Spangled Kid. Speedy is a sidekick, but he still counts.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Shining Knight
• Legion of Doom: The origin story possibly had the first comics Legion of Doom, called 'the Hand's Five Fingers' and made up of five foes of Soldiers members using plans given by the Hand.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!:
  • The formula for the Leading Comics stories goes as follows:
    • The first chapter (of seven) features everyone together and sets up the overall story;
    • The next five chapters feature an individual member of the team going through his side of the story (Speedy, Stripesy and Wing, all being sidekicks, are paired up with Green Arrow, the Star-Spangled Kid and the Crimson Avenger);
    • The final chapter unites the team for the finale.
• Lost World: While hunting for lost treasure in the Andes, Crimson Avenger and Wing discover a hidden Inca City whose inhabitants still hold a grudge against the Spanish and still live like it's the 1600s.
• Love Redeems: Happens to the Sixth Sense's hired henchman whose hearing has been amped up. He's so taken by the music of the person whose gem he's supposed to steal that he falls for her and turns against his employer.
• The Man Behind the Man: This is the Black Star's method of operation. He enlists the services of five other criminals to carry out creative robberies, and they know they're working for him, but it's all a smokescreen to divert the attention of the Seven Soldiers and allow him to carry out his real plan.
  • Really, with how every issue involves each hero going off and having his own adventure before getting back together in the last chapter, several issues of Leading Comics feature this trope as a master criminal hires others to work for him. The Hand, Dr. Doome, the Black Star and a few others qualify as The Man Behind the Man.
• Master of Disguise: Mr. X, the man of a thousand faces, who bets some other crooks that he can beat all of the Seven Soldiers. Each of them seperately pick up some of his tells, even though they never see his true face during his crimes, and in the end band together to track him down and capture him.
• Meaningful Rename: When the original Seven Soldiers returned in the Justice League story, the Hand renamed himself the Iron Hand.
• Monumental Battle: Atilla the Hun tries to trap and kill Vigilante on top of Mount Rushmore.
• Non-Powered Costumed Hero: Everyone on the team, except for Shining Knight.
• Noose Catch: This happens to a criminal in one story—he's already been sentenced to death by hanging and escaped prison to avoid that fate. Naturally, while fighting Green Arrow and Speedy, he manages to fall off a cliff with a rope in such a way as to hang himself.
• Not Quite Dead: The Hand, who was thought to be killed at the end of Leading Comics #1. He turns up as the villain in Justice League of America #100, thirty years later, having lost his hand in that original accident rather than being killed.
• Not Wearing Tights: Vigilante, who dresses as a cowboy. Technically Shining Knight as well, who is wearing armor rather than a super-hero costume.
• Obfuscating Disability: The Sixth Sense appears to be a paralyzed man who communicates through a robot that does his dirty work. The cripple turns out to be a mannequin, and the real Sixth Sense, Dr. Brett, is disguised as the robot.
• Oh, Crap!: The moment that Dr. Doome realizes the team is on to him.
  Dr. Doome: The Shining Knight? But that means... the Seven Soldiers of Victory are against me!
• Old Hero, New Pals: The Star-Spangled Kid ends up a member of the JSA and wielding Starman's gravity rod after the Seven Soldiers are rescued by the JLA and JSA from being lost in time.
• Older Sidekick: The Star Spangled Kid and Vigilante both have a sidekick that's older than they are. The Kid has Stripesy and Vigilante has Billy Gunn.
• Omnibus: All fourteen Golden Age adventures of the Seven Soldiers have been restored and collected in three volumes of DC's Archive series. The script for an unfinished 15th adventure is also included.
• One Extra Member: The original Seven Soldiers were Green Arrow and Speedy, Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, Vigilante, Shining Knight, and the Crimson Avenger and Wing. Wing, the Avenger's sidekick/chauffeur, was the "unofficial eighth soldier", even though there were two sidekicks as full members. When Green Arrow was removed from the line-up Post-Crisis, and replaced with the sidekickless Alias the Spider, Vigilante's sidekick Stuff, the Chinatown Kid was added, so Wing was still the unofficial eighth soldier.
• Pegasus: Sir Justin's horse Victory is essentially a Pegasus now, having been given wings by Merlin.
• Really 700 Years Old: Sir Justin, the Shining Knight, has been alive since the time of King Arthur. With Arthur supposedly living in the 5th or 6th centuries, that would make Justin at least 1400 years old, though he spent most of those years in suspended animation before being revived in the early 20th century.
  • Telos, the initial villain of Convergence, recognizes this. He tells Sir Justin that he's the oldest specimen in Brainiac's collection, and he wonders how that will affect his ability to fight for his life against his chosen opponent.
• Retcon/Remember the New Guy?: That whole thing about the Nebula Man? That was created wholesale in Justice League of America #100, along with the Oracle character. (Grant Morrison's series would later fill in the blanks through a bit of Arc Welding, see below.)
• Short-Runners: The Soldiers were the main feature in Leading Comics for only 14 issues. The book was quarterly, so that was only a three and a half year run.
• Sidekick: Two sidekicks are official members of the team, while a third is an unofficial member.
• Super-Senses: The hoods who work for the Sixth Sense get one sense enhanced as a part of his plan to steal five jewels. So one guy gets enhanced hearing, one gets super sensitive touch, etc. This is done through "hormone extract", oddly.
• Superhero Packing Heat: Vigilante
• Superhero Sobriquets: the Wizard Archers, the Western Waddy, the Larruping Lariateer, the American Avengers, etc.
• Super Team: The second one ever created, though they're not nearly as well know as the Justice Society.
• Time Travel:
  • How Dr. Doome recruits "the greatest villains in history" to be his henchmen, such as Napoleon or Genghis Khan. Thankfully, the possibility of Temporal Paradox due to removing these figures from history is avoided since Doome gives them a device that allows them to return to their own time if plans go awry. So every one of them escape when the Seven Soldiers defeat them and history is preserved.
  • The Dummy also attempts to get rid of the Seven Soldiers by stranding them throughout time. Fortunately Shining Knights meets Leonardo da Vinci, who proves to have invented a time machine of his own, and the knight's able to teach him enough about electrical engineering to make the power source that was only thing it was lacking.
  • This was how Green Arrow and the original Speedy's status as original members of the Seven Soldiers was restored: it was established in Stargirl Spring Break Special that an encounter with the Clock King sent Ollie and Roy back in time to the Golden Age, where they helped form the Seven Soldiers.
• Treasure Hunt Episode: The plot of Leading Comics #6 has the Seven Soldiers hunting for a lost treasure that they want to use for the war effort. The team gets a bit of Gold Fever, not because they personally want the gold for themselves, but because they decided to compete and see who could find it first. This, and a setup by the Copperhead, actually gets the team to think other members are trying to kill them, and they end up temporarily in a hero versus hero fight. Thankfully, common sense prevails in the end.
• Trick Arrow
• The Worf Effect: Issue 4 starts with a robot going around capturing crooks. Also handily defeating Shining Knight, the singlemost powerful team member, to show how big of a threat the villain is.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The Shining Knight speaks this way.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: A couple issues were about the villain trying to collect pieces of something in the earlier chapters. Naturally, while the heroes kick much villain butt in those earlier chapters, none of them are in time to collect the Plot Coupon that allows the villain to unleash his ultimate weapon in the last chapter of the issue.

• See Seven Soldiers of Victory (2005), for that comic's tropes.

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