Excalibur #22 annotation
As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCALIBUR vol 4 #22
“Treasures of Britain”
by Tini Howard, Marcus To & Erick Arciniega
COVER / PAGE 1. Excalibur as prisoners of Merlyn.
PAGES 2-5. Excalibur and the Beast visit Blightspoke.
Blightspoke. This is one of the various Otherworld realms that we saw during the “X of Swords” crossover. Generally, it’s been depicted as a sort of dumping ground for things from failed realities, with plenty of useful stuff there if you can get at it safely. The suggestion that the land is actively poisonous comes from a data page in Cable #5, though this is the first time it’s really come up.
The Beast is taking scientific measurements of samples from Blightspoke, which in itself seems like a perfectly innocuous thing to do. But over in X-Force, the Beast is mainly being written these days as a dangerously overconfident amoral schemer, so god only knows what he wants with this stuff, but it can’t be good.
“Logan says this place can be unwelcoming in more ways than one.” Wolverine fought Summoner in Blightspoke in Wolverine #7.
Gia Whitechapel. The Sheriff of Blightspoke has turned up in a few stories before, but this is the first time that she and her posse have actually done anything. Since Blightspoke has no settlements, it’s been a little unclear what she actually does. Her main concern here is to stop Excalibur removing anything. But we know from “X of Swords” that there are some sort of mining and recovery operations in Blightspoke, so presumably Whitechapel’s role is to stop unauthorised removal of stuff. Captain Britain does try to pull diplomatic rank, but she never claims to be acting with Saturnyne’s authority, and Whitechapel quite rightly doesn’t assume that Saturnyne has signed off on this.
“And they don’t give warnings.” Whitechapel seems to be saying that, despite appearances, she expected Gambit to deflect her bullet – or maybe she’s bluffing.
“The whole recent mess.” X of Swords.
PAGES 6-7. Pete Wisdom is resurrected.
Pete was sacrificed by Coven Akkaba last issue. Coven Akkaba did indeed claim that this was a ritual to free Morgan le Fey, but it’s not obvious how Meggan knows that.
Resurrection normally involves the revived mutant’s mind being downloaded into their body after they hatch from the egg. This version skips over that. Maybe Professor X has got better at doing it before they hatch. Professor X does participate in the resurrection scene at the end of the issue, and in that case they also seem to emerge with minds intact.
Meggan twice calls Pete “darling”, which is a bit odd. I’m not sure if Howard just thinks it’s a Britishism, but Meggan’s coming across here more like a partner than a friend.
“We cannot go there any more.” It’s not clear whether Meggan means simply that they physically can’t go back to the UK, or that it’s not safe to go back to the UK, or that it’s not legal for mutants to go back to the UK (which would presumably imply that they’ve been deprived on British citizenship on the argument that they’re all citizens of Krakoa now).
As I said last issue, there’s still no particularly good explanation of why any UK government, right or left, would have the slightest interest in indulging the whims of Coven Akkaba.
PAGE 8. Recap and credits.
PAGES 9-10. The meeting at the Starlight Citadel.
The aide with the fin standing behind Saturnyne is called Ryl; she’s appeared several times before in this same role.
Page 9 panel 3 shows the representatives of eight Otherworld realms, from left to right:
- Two indistinct figures who are probably meant to be Furies from the Everforge.
- Two vampires from Sevalith.
- Two unnamed representatives of Hothive, whose inhabitants are a hivemind anyway.
- Jamie Braddock and Captain Avalon, representing Avalon.
- Famine and Pestilence, representing Dryador (as a province of Arakko, annexed in “X of Swords”).
- Roma, representing her own Floating Kingdom.
- Merlyn, representing the Holy Republic of Fae.
- Gina Whitechapel, representing Blightspoke in the absence of anyone else.
Two worlds are missing: Mercator (which never shows up to these meetings) and Jim Jaspers’ Crooked Market (for no clear reason).
Merlyn. As he says, he used to be an ally of Captain Britain, and served as the Omniversal guardian in Captain Britain solo stories. The question of how he came to be subordinate to Saturnyne has never previously been addressed, and it previously seemed very much like something that was going to be glossed over – the change of regime must have been apparent to Betsy, but she’s only just started asking questions about this fairly obvious plot point. At any rate, it’s a story point now. His radical personality change has also gone unexplained until now.
PAGES 11-12. Saturnyne and Captain Britain.
This is the closest we’ve seen so far to Saturnyne trying to work sensibly with Captain Britain, giving her reasonable instructions, and asking for her input. She doesn’t keep it up for very long, but she does seem to be moving int he right direction.
PAGE 13. Pete Wisdom on Braddock Isle.
Braddock Isle was separated from the mainland by Rictor last issue. Basically, this is a montage of Pete being sad about being excluded from his homeland.
The significance of the tree isn’t clear. The tags seem to have the faces of dead mutants who are awaiting resurrection, but we’re told later on that the mutants he has resurrected weren’t previously recognised as mutants.
PAGE 14. Data page. This is basically just recapping relevant material from New Mutants #16-17.
“Dani especially had some wild stuff with her powers.” She was able to conjure up Karma’s brother as a white rabbit.
“We should probably have listened to Rictor.” In New Mutants #16, he offered to have one of Excalibur go with Dani and Xi’an as a guide, but didn’t exactly push them hard on it.
PAGE 15. Excalibur free Merlyn’s prisoners.
The pig guy is presumably the same guy who’s been seen in the background as Merlyn’s aide before – he’s standing behind Merlyn’s throne in New Mutants #16, page 21. If so, he must have done something to annoy Merlyn, though that doesn’t seem like it would be hard.
PAGES 16-17. Excalibur break in.
We’ve seen that some people’s powers work differently in Otherworld. The suggestion here seems to be that Gambit can draw on other people’s powers by using the appropriate tarot card. Here, it’s a “Wheel of Fortune” tarot card with the image of Longshot on it, apparently giving Gambit access to luck powers. Quite how Gambit knows that this will work…
PAGES 18-20. Excalibur and Merlyn.
The Waters of All Reality are new. Apparently some faces can be seen reflected in it, but we can’t tell from the art. Merlyn seems to assume that everyone will know what this is, and seems surprised that Excalibur don’t. He hints that Saturnyne is keeping something from Excalibur, but it’s not at all clear that she would have had any reason to brief them on this. There must be any number of vaguely noteworthy things in the Republic, after all.
I’m going to assume we’re claiming that Gambit can do things like power steam trains in Otherworld, rather than just generally, but honestly, what makes him think this is going to work? His established powers are to charge things with energy so that they explode, not to recharge your mobile phone.
PAGES 21-23. Pete Wisdom revives four S.T.R.I.K.E. agents (and a data page about who they are).
S.T.R.I.K.E. was basically a British equivalent of S.H.I.E.L.D. from the 1970s Captain Britain run. The name stands for Special Tactical Reserve for International Key Emergencies. As the page says, later stories replaced it with first the RCX, and later Black Air.
Betsy was indeed a member of its psi unit. The four characters revived here all come from the Alan Moore / Alan Davis run in the early 1980s.
- Tom Lennox was, in fact, Betsy’s boyfriend for a while. He died heroically fighting Jim Jaspers in the “Jaspers Warp” arc.
- Alison Double survived the Jaspers Warp arc and spent time recovering with Betsy afterwards, which is why she’s billed here as being particularly close to Betsy. She hasn’t been seen since New Mutants Annual #2 and wasn’t previously known to have died.
- Kevin Mulhearn was a minor character who was killed off as part of a storyline in which Slaymaster was killing Psi agents on behalf of Vixen. He was Alison’s boyfriend, and his death was a major trauma and motivation for her. “Doctor Destiny” is a name that he used as a stage mentalist as part of a cover.
- Vicki Reppion is another minor character, who was murdered by Slaymaster as part of the same arc. She was in Forbidden Planet at the time.
The codenames given for the four are new, as are the four colours ascribed to them. In terms of the humours, the colours will be denoting black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm (which is presumably being generously classed as “white”). However, in this context the reference seems to be to the magnum opus of alchemy, which supposedly has four phases – nigredo, albedo, citrinitas and rubedo (blackening, whitening, yellowing and reddening). Two of those words crop up here as codenames. “Ghast” and “Xanth” don’t obviously refer to anything, though Xanth was the setting of a series of novels by Piers Anthony set in a world where everyone had (in effect) a unique magical superpower.
PAGE 24. Merlyn and his prisoner.
King Arthur has been missing from Avalon since before issue #1, and nobody really seems to have been that motivated to look for him. Apparently he’s been a prisoner of Merlyn all this time.
PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: DOOM.
Oh Lord, I hope the reference to Xanth isn’t deliberate. They’re a dreadfully laboured and witless parade of puns pretending to be humour. And when I’M decrying the use of puns, you know it’s a bad business.
There is a race of beings known as the Ghast from Lovecraft’s fiction.
It’s most likely just a coincidence though.
Equally likely to be a reference to the Gormenghast if we’re going by fantasy classics. Is it a classic? I only know the name.
Anyway, I enjoyed it more than usual. The logic’s as opaque as ever, but there’s a lot of forward momentum and just generally… Stuff happening. I like that if Wisdom has to be on Krakoa he’ll do it his way with ‘his people’. And Excalibur seemed to finally get their shit together and came off as a group of people who know what they are supposed to be doing. Or at least as people who worked together before.
Not great, nowhere near my favourite titles, but better than before. Progres!
Dredging up the old STRIKE psychics is a real deep cut. But reclassifying them as mutants long after the fact is clearly a matter of convenience. (But then again, both SHIELD and STRIKE had a lot of random psychics on the payroll… so were they all supposed to be non-mutant humane variants? It’s been unclear how to classify human psychics when those powers are common in mutants as well.)
Also very convenient that one of them died offscreen just so she could be resurrected here.
Also, Gambit’s altered powers, in doing things he’s never really been able to do before, is also a little too convenient. Howard really wants to tell a certain story, no matter how she has to bend pieces until they fit.
Xanth is apparently a term which means “yellow” on some circumstances, so it relates to his assigned humor.
Given that all of the code names and humors are new to the characters, this is again Howard trying to shoehorn characters into her story no matter what. It’s all nonsense if you ask me.
Ghast’s just an old word for ghost. Or similar spooky frighteners.
No idea bout Xanth.
This book’s idea about British identity remains weird but I guess I do enjoy the uniqueness of it in the line. I like that most of the X-books are (mostly) divergent in specific subject matter nowadays.
I don’t think that is true about “ghast”.
Ghastly is a word that comes from the old English word “gast”, which means “to terrify”. So, not exactly the same word.
Our English word “ghost” is a derivation from the old English.
There is Geist, from the German, which translates as “ghost”.
I’ve never come across “ghast” as its own word outside of Lovecraft.
Ceran-Yes, I’d classify Gormenghast by Mervyn Peale as a modern classic of fantasy, beyond a doubt.
I wish more people read it.
I would definitely recommend the series, if you are a fan of fantasy fiction.
I enjoyed the final novel, Titus Alone, the most.
(There was going to be one more novel, but Peake died before it was finished).
Agree bringing back Tom Lennox and Alison Double is a crazy deep cut… but I loved it. It uses Betsy’s pre-ninja history which has been all but ignored for years. It was so unexpected!
And I wonder if Hickman will pick up on Alison’s weird monochrome look, as per some of his pet favourites
Complaints (as ever.. it’s a Howard book)
– still no apparent long term plotting for Gambit or Jubilee.
– Crisp art but it’s just not weird enough for the magical plot! And Saturyne’s hair remains incorrectly coloured. Should be platinum silver, not yellow blonde.
– all the gates to the UK are destroyed… But not the lighthouse island… As it’s not in the UK now? Or just the exception?
Sometimes I wonder if Howard would benefit from narration boxes to explain the on-panel activity. But then again, she’s not one for deft turns off phrase, so maybe not much to be gained.
Has King Arthur himself ever actually featured in the x-verse..?
I don’t believe he’s ever appeared directly in a X-title.
He’s made quite a number of appearances in different Marvel stories though.
Definitely an improvement over this book’s usual standard, but still some glitches. I really don’t understand what Gambit’s meant to be doing with his powers on the train or when he deflects the bullet. I’m interested in the Merlyn/Arthur story, but as Paul notes, it’s weird that it hasn’t come up previously. And the UK government’s motivations are decidedly unclear.
Haven’t had the chance to read this yet, but…
Now that Rogue’s out of the book they gave Gambit Rogue powers? Is this is just when he’s in Otherworld? Wouldn’t it have made more sense that his altered powers were revealed the first time he went to Otherworld? Or the second?
Thrilled to hear about the return of Betsy’s STRIKE supporting cast. 🙂
Ghasts are also D&D monsters, a variant of ghouls.
Has anyone been reading the current Black Knight mini-series, written by Si Spurrier? It has a few major reveals about Camelot/Otherworld, which makes me wonder if Spurrier is set to take over Excalibur in the near future? Maybe with Nightcrawler re-joining his old team so that the Way of X threads can be folded in.
“As I said last issue, there’s still no particularly good explanation of why any UK government, right or left, would have the slightest interest in indulging the whims of Coven Akkaba.”
Is Howard trying to do a story or allegory based on the UK’s current hostile immigration policies? Hard to tell. The execution is just very clumsy if she is.
“Howard really wants to tell a certain story, no matter how she has to bend pieces until they fit.”
Which has been her MO since #1.
“Braddock Isle was separated from the mainland by Rictor last issue.”
Wouldn’t it still technically be part of the UK? I mean, it’s not like the UK doesn’t have other islands as part of it’s territory…
Yes, this issue is something of an improvement, but still not great. The action and plots seem to be moving along.
@Evilgus
Alison’s codename (which seems to be new) is “Albedo”, so I would think that it is a safe bet.
The story seems to want us to accept that Rictor separating Braddock…Point or whatever it was called into Braddock Isle means it’s now a Krakoan territory.
One would imagine this would be a point of serious contention, it’s just taking land from another country, but the sliding-over-implications things Howard does means it’s just kind of floating there and once again you’re left to decide if it’s a plot point with consequences or just something that’s happened oh well, let’s move on.
I think it’s more clear that this is a Brexit allegory. Jordan White said that the UK has left the trade deal with Krakoa and it won’t work out well for them.
Well actually he said England left the deal but one assumes he meant Britain.
The confusing grasp of national and personal identity in Excalibur places a question mark over that kind of thing as intentional or not. There’s a level of erasure of anything not from a Braddock/Wisdom viewpoint in the story that’s been making me slightly uncomfortable for a while, and this implied metaphor makes it worse.
@YLu ive been following the Black Knight book just because it’s Spurrier, it’s fine, but god I hope you’re right about him taking over this book. Besides the necessity of putting a Brit on the title, it’d be a convenient follow up to Way of X and a means to recenter the book on a classic Excalibur character. As much as I like Gambit, Ric and Jubes, they really don’t bring much to the book. Gambit’s unexplained facility with magic thinking for instance just feels like plot convenience. Maybe Sourrier could carry over Legion and Pixie and others with some ties to the UK.
Weren’t those tarot cards something Gambit picked up (stole) way back when they invaded Saturnyne’s citadel? So the card attack at least wasn’t Otherworld-changed powers, but straight out him using a magical artifact.
This continues to to be the only current X title I don’t enjoy. But I really appreciate the annotations here.
Gambit’s various random powers are so weird. But I guess they can always just explain it by saying they work differently when he’s not on Earth. I still don’t think he fits in with Excalibur. But I also can’t think of anywhere else he’d fit in currently
Moreso when Storm was still in the main cast, I thought Gambit would fit better in Marauders. Professional thief doing a stint as a pirate seemed like it would work fine. And he seems to fit Duggan’s tone more than Howard’s.
Gambit ought to be in a caper book. I’d set him up with other thief characters and do a sort of “Ocean’s Eleven-meets-X-Men” with Gambit in the Clooney role.
“Gambit’s various random powers are so weird. But I guess they can always just explain it by saying they work differently when he’s not on Earth. I still don’t think he fits in with Excalibur. But I also can’t think of anywhere else he’d fit in currently”
With Rogue gone, maybe they can just swap out Gambit for Longshot? He’s more of a mystical/cross-dimensional character anyway, similar power set, better dresser… really nothing but upsides.
Granted he’s not a mutant, but neither is Shogo, and sometimes Meggan isn’t either.
If Xanth is a Piers Anthony reference (and I can’t think of what else it could be) it’s an interesting choice. He’s considered more than a little problematic these days.
He’s always been problematic…in the sense that he was always a pretty terrible writer.
That will always be his greatest sin to me.
If the “Ghast” is a Lovecraft reference, he’s even more of a problematic writer today.
Although that hasn’t stopped names like Alan Moore or Grant Morrison (and others) working to make him more acceptable.
They should make a League of Problematic Fantasy References team.
As Jon R says, this isn’t a random new power, the cards are something he stole from the Citadel (from the same closet as Candra’a gem, just before XoS). His dialogue indicates he’s got an idea of how they’d work, and he’s trying one out.
That said, Gambit stopping the bullet is mystifying, as is him managing to power a train.
As for Braddock Isle, one of the data pages says its status as a part of Krakoa is contested. I think that actually makes sense- it’s a tiny sliver of land that’s already owned by the Braddocks, now covered in Krakoan shit. The mutants are so prominent on the world stage and in conflict with Britain, I think it makes sense that Krakoa would claim it and Britain would disagree.
Overall, this book’s problems are pretty glaring- stuff just happens and often doesn’t make sense, and Howard’s got real issues with clarity as a storyteller overall. But I still enjoy this book- I enjoy it more than X-force, which is more consistent but less fun.
The lead-ins to XoS were really good. The XoS tie-in issues were the worst parts of the crossover (and they were some of the most crucial, so it didn’t help they they were hard to follow), but everything since then has been fun. Betsy and Kwannon making amends, the Malice issue, etc. Definitely not a favorite, but I do enjoy it.
I wonder if we’re gonna see any major changes with the loss of Apocalypse and Rogue. I suppose that might be what Wisom, Meggan, and the STRIKE crew are for.
Xanth is more likely derived from Greek ξανθός meaning yellow than from Piers Anthony.
I think the powering of the train is just Howard using Gambit’s power more literally than, well, any writer ever. He charges things with kinetic energy. Kinetic makes things go. It’s comics, so he actually makes things go boom, but I suppose in this instance he was able to control that because of…
a) off-screen development of his powers
b) Otherworld changing the effect of his powers
c) just because.
How did Krakoa know that Wisdom was dead, let alone that Coven Akkaba did it?
How was Wisdom, who didn’t want anything to do with Krakoa, able to get four mutants who weren’t even recognized as such put to the front of the queue? Will Howard be able to accurately portray the culture shock they’ll be undergoing?
So now Gambit has super-speed, the ability to impart kinetic energy to things and make them move, and a magical tarot deck. What else is Howard going to give him?
Yeah. The fact that they somehow know that Wisdom was sacrificed by Coven Akkaba in service of rescuing Morgan Le Fay makes no sense.