This is a new post, incorporating elements from a few previous posts.
In the midst of DC Comics' current (and welcome) series of facsimile editions reprinting individual classic comic books, here's a wish for a fauxsimile, a "reprint" of a comic book that never existed: Seven Soldiers Of Victory # 1.
In the mid 1970s, six consecutive issues of DC's Adventure Comics (# 438, dated March-April 1975, through # 443, January-February 1976) presented a previously untold tale of the 1940s team the Seven Soldiers of Victory. And I was stoked for it.
The Seven Soldiers (aka Law's Legionnaires) were DC's second-tier super-team in the 1940s, an attempt to replicate the success of the Justice Society Of America. Our valiant assembled Soldiers--the Green Arrow and Speedy, the Vigilante, the Shining Knight, the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, and the Crimson Avenger, with the Crimson's Asian stereotype sidekick Wing an unofficial eighth Soldier--starred in the first fourteen issues of Leading Comics, 1941-1945, their victories vacated when the title switched to a funny animal format with Leading Comics # 15. 
I first heard of the group via a text page in a giant-sized issue of Justice League Of America published circa 1970 or so, and I was instantly fascinated by them. They were revived in 1972 for an epic three-part Justice League-Justice Society crossover in Justice League Of America # 100-102, and that arc remains my all-time favorite JLA story. And it was a popular story, so maybe it wasn't all that odd a notion for editor Joe Orlando to consider reviving the Seven Soldiers Of Victory a few years later as a backup in Adventure Comics.
But it was a little odd that it wasn't a new adventure; "Land Of Magic!" was an unused script from the '40s, written by Joe Samachson for (one presumes) an issue of Leading Comics and scuttled when the funny animals of King Oscar's Court kicked Law's Legionnaires outta Leading. The script was plucked from the vaults three decades later, and given to artists: Dick Dillin and Tex Blaisdell for the opening and closing team chapters, Howard Chaykin on Shining Knight, Lee Elias on Green Arrow and Speedy, Mike Grell on Crimson Avenger and Wing, Ernie Chua on Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Mike Royer on Vigilante. It was set to run as a serial backing the Spectre (and later Aquaman) in Adventure. Odd. But intriguing; I confess I was a little underwhelmed with the results at the time, but I had certainly been looking forward to it, and I still have some fondness for it looking back. Here are some sample pages from all of the serial's chapters.
The entire 1940s Seven Soldiers of Victory chronicles were eventually reprinted in a series of three DC Archives hardcovers. Of course I own them all. Victory at last!
But not complete victory. Script pages from "Land Of Magic!" were reproduced in the third and final volume of The Seven Soldiers Of Victory Archives, but the published story and its artwork have never been reprinted.
I concede this is an unlikely candidate for DC to ever put out as a fabricated facsimile edition, but...c'mon! Wouldn't it be cool? Until that happens, this would-be Seven Soldiers Of Victory # 1 will remain A COMIC BOOK THAT NEVER WAS.
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Carl's new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now available, courtesy of the good folks at Rare Bird Books. Gabba Gabba YAY!! https://rarebirdlit.com/gabba-gabba-hey-a-conversation-with-the-ramones-by-carl-cafarelli/
If it's true that one book leads to another, my next book will be The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). Stay tuned. Your turn is coming.
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