Recently, DC Comics has been doing house ads to promote Brian Michael Bendis coming to DC. These ads intentionally evoked the ads DC used to promote Jack Kirby's similar migration to DC from Marvel in 1970. As significant as those two events were, a similar migration took place in 1995 when Chris Claremont briefly took up residence in the DC Universe with a unique superhero series called Sovereign Seven.

What made the book unique is that it was a creator-owned series, but it was set firmly inside the confines of the DC Universe. It is an arrangement that neither DC nor Marvel had ever made with any other comic book creators, but as the first new superhero series by Claremont after leaving Uncanny X-Men following a nearly 17-year run making the X-Men the most popular comic book series in the entire industry, it was a bet that DC was willing to make. We'll take a look at the three-year run that Claremont had on the series, working primarily with artists Dwayne Turner and Ron Lim.

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In many ways, Sovereign Seven was clearly intended to be Claremont's own version of Jack Kirby's Fourth World. Kirby burst on to the DC Comics scene in 1970 with the introduction of the ages-old battle between the worlds of the New Gods, New Genesis and Apokolips. In Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen and Forever People, we saw Kirby bring that fight, for the first time, to Earth. Similarly, the first issue of Sovereign Seven saw the cast show up on Earth.

Going even further, they specifically arrived on Earth in a Boom Tube...

They then fight against the Female Furies (also from Jack Kirby's Fourth World) to save a stranger who the Furies were attacking. Here is the cover for the first issue, drawn by the co-creator of the Sovereign Seven (although only Claremont owns the copyright to the characters), who designed the costumes worn by the group.

It almost seems out of place, doesn't it? It appears like the cover of an Image book circa 1992. Honestly, if Sovereign Seven was released by Claremont and Turner in 1992 with nothing else different about the comic book, it probably would have made so much money that Claremont could get himself a Money Bin to swim around in gold coins. However, it was instead released in 1995, with the speculator market of the early 1990s collapsing around the comic book industry (In 1997, comic book sales were at 14% of where they were just four years earlier in 1993!). Still, Sovereign Seven opened strongly, cracking the Top Ten in sales in May 1995. It was the only DC Comics release to make the Top Ten, selling 60% more copies than that month's issue of Batman. However, within a year, it was selling 40% of Batman and had fallen out of the Top 100 in sales. Turner left the series after 15 issues.

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The concept behind the team is that they are all royalty (hence the "Sovereign" part) from different worlds that were each destroyed by a mysterious "Rapture." They were each saved before their worlds were lost by the teleportation abilities of their leader, Cascade. It appears as though Claremont really intended them to come from alternate reality versions of Earth, but since the DC Universe, at this point in time, did not have an official Multiverse, then instead they each come from different planets that all just happen to seem like alternate reality versions of Earth.

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In this sequence from Sovereign Seven #1, we get to meet the team....

The members of the team were Cascade, a teleporter whose mother was a powerful, evil being, who wanted her daughter's teleportation powers to help her escape the prison she was trapped in. She had winged armor, but she could only fly when another team member used telekinesis on her.

That telekinesis was directed by Network, the telepath who cleverly connected the entire team together. Rampart created shields. Reflex was a giant who also had super speed. Finale was a mysterious masked woman with a sword. Cruiser was the team telekinetic, whose power fed off of his own body weight, so he had to eat constantly and always keep himself a little chubby to use his powers. Finally, Indigo was a mysterious being (without a set gender) who was the tactician of the group (and could also smooth talk anyone into doing pretty much anything).

When they landed on Earth, they found themselves at the mysterious "Crossroads Coffee Bar, owned by two sisters, Violet Smith and Pansy Jones, the comic book alter egos of the folk group, The Flash Girls, who Claremont was a big fan of (Violet Smith was based on Emma Bull, who was part of another group, Cat's Laughing, that Claremont had heavily promoted in the pages of his past comic books). The Sovereigns took up a gig working at the coffeehouse...

As the name might suggest, Crossroads turned out to be a sort of interdimensional nexus point, where doorways could open to all sorts of realities. This allowed Claremont to have a little fun by having all sorts of characters make cute little cameos. It did not take long before one of Claremont's old friends from Marvel made a visit. This is seriously in just the second issue that Wolverine shows up...

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Anyhow, that's the basic setup of the book. They are at an inter-dimensional crossroads, so crazy stuff could always just pop up. Cascade's mother is out there trying to break free from her prison. The Rapture is an impending threat. Plus, of course, they do typical superhero stuff like every other superhero team out there. If there is a problem in town, they show up and help.

This being a Claremont comic book, very often, characters were mind-controlled and turned evil and they got new, skimpier costumes when they were evil. Like when Network briefly went bad...

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The book was very much integrated into the overall DC Universe.

In their first annual, we saw how they came to Earth. It turns out that they saved Big Barda from Lobo and she paid them back by giving them a ride on her Boom Tube (hence the opening of issue #1)...

They had a team-up with the Legion of Super-Heroes (at least a group of the Legion who had gotten trapped in our present/their past in a storyline at the time), with Network becoming best friends with Saturn Girl...

Speaking on standard Claremont mind-control tropes, in just the second issue, Cascade is taken over by Nike, the goddess of victory (who is also the goddess of not wearing much clothes)...

And in #25, Nike possesses Power Girl...

They free Power Girl from Nike's control and she begins to hang out with the team. After Rampart is killed, Power Girl takes his place on the team in Sovereign Seven #31 (at the time, she was considered a Princess of Atlantis in DC continuity, so she fit into the royalty theme)...

The final issue saw the Rapture come to Earth. The Sovereigns end up saving the world and ending the threat of the Rapture forever. Then, we get the twist of a lifetime...none of this was "real"!!

Yep, the whole series had been a comic book created by two women (not even characters that we had seen before). Claremont pulled a total St. Elsewhere "Everyone was a figment of some random character's imagination" ending). The reason why this "had" to be done is since Claremont owns the characters outright, then he wanted them free and untangled from the rest of the DC Universe continuity that he could use them somewhere else.

The series only lasted three years, but it was an interesting experiment during its time in existence.

Recently, Claremont wrote a novel based on the Sovereign characters (since he can't do comic books for anyone but Marvel), so it will be interesting to see if that goes anywhere.