Fourth of July "Funnies" Foolishness

How does a person like myself celebrate the Fourth of July?  Well... considering I'm operating on my girlfriend's sleep schedule for work, no late evening fireworks for me.  And as for parties?  My family is having a July Birthday package party... on Sunday the 7th.  But thankfully the IFC Channel has come through for me with a weekend marathon of the Adam West "Batman" television series.  AND I decided earlier this week to celebrate the occasion with not one, but TWO, Friday entries.  One I had decided upon as of last weekend, but another hit me in a blast of inspiration this past Wednesday.  You see, I did have a two-part blog entry plan in mind as early as last weekend, but aside from the Friday Foolishness entry, the July 4th idea remained nebulous.  Oh, I toyed with trying to create a top 5 patriotic hero list, but I wasn't up to that level of research for the week.  (Aside from feeling mopey about my professional searches, I also managed to catch a brief summer cold.)  And... to be fair, a patriotic super hero list would be fairly predictable.  I mean, we ALL basically know who would've ranked number one.  I'll give you a hint: he was in a major motion picture as of this past April...

But an idea came to me, when I decided to take a bit of the mick out of DC for my initial entry.  And a certain team came into connection with the holiday... A group of goofs that would make for a star-spangled gimme for the Fourth of July.  It also didn't hurt that in their very first appearance, they tangled with another group of characters that were... questionable in their quality, as well.  Ladies and gentlemen, light your short-fused sparklers in honor of DC's Force of July.

Jobber Role Call!

• Major Victory: Our blonde beefcake, who possesses a super suit, granting him enhanced strength, flight, and energy projectiles.
• Lady Liberty: Monument cosplayer that can project energy blasts from her torch... and yes, she can fly, too.
• Mayflower: Soon to be sued by Poison Ivy for copyright infringement for her ability to control plant life.  (But who looks kind of hot in a pilgrim costume...  Just saying...)
• Silent Majority: Also soon to be sued by Multiple Man for his powers of multiplying his body.  May also be served with a lawsuit by the members of Devo for costume design theft.
• Sparkler: AKA the Mati of the group, who can shoot off "sparkler" blasts.  (Okay, so he came before Jubilee and Boom-Boom... but you get the drift.)  Oh, and huge surprise... HE CAN FLY!

This team first saw creative life in the first annual of a certain questionable group, namely "Batman and the Outsiders Annual #1".

To this day, I still wonder to myself; the Batman quit the Justice League around this time period to form THIS team?!?  But grievances about the Outsiders will come at a latter entry.  How the Force of July came into conflict with the Outsiders... and I should highlight the Outsiders aspect of this annual, since Batman really doesn't figure into the story, realizing this was far below his best interests... is the Force of July was manipulated by the government to battle the Outsiders.  It did involve some rather clandestine plots by corrupt government officials... proving little changes in politics in 30 years... and I do remember at the end of the annual, the Force of July and the Outsiders put their differences aside to tackle the REAL threat.  (I get the impression it involved some sort of mind control device.  Sorry, folks, but it's been a LONG time since I've read this particular annual.)  And according to the wisdom of Wikipedia, the team did put in another appearance in the pages of "Suicide Squad"... and, SPOILER ALERT, manages to get themselves killed off completely.  I'm sure at least one comic fan was shedding tears over that loss of such a "stellar" concept.

But was that the end of their DC interactions?  Nope!  Three universal reboots afterwards, following the events of "Infinite Crisis", Force of July did kind of reappear in the pages of "The Battle for Bludhaven" mini-series under the new brand name of Freedom's Ring.

Only Lady Liberty, Major Victory, and Silent Majority made the return trip from universal restructuring, and the interesting thing about Freedom's Ring is it essentially transformed into the new version of "Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters".  So, the spirit of liberty rings true for a bunch of no-namers that decide to unite for a "greater cause" in the pages of our comic books!