As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

KNIGHTS OF X #1
“Hated and Feared”
Writer: Tini Howard
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colourist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher

KNIGHTS OF X. This is the relaunch of Excalibur vol 4; to all intents and purposes, this issue is Excalibur #27. Naturally, it’s meant to be a jumping on point, and this issue puts a lot of effort into catching new readers up on the plot.

COVER / PAGE 1. The eight core members of Captain Britain’s questing party – running clockwise from the Captain herself, the others are Rictor, Shatterstar, Gambit, Shogo, Prestige, Meggan and Bei. The book in front of Betsy is the one that Roma gives her on pages 12-13.

PAGES 2-3. Furies attack the village of Jackdaw’s Nest.

The narrator is dutifully recapping the plot of Excalibur, where Merlyn had seized control of Otherworld and was trying to root out mutants. Note that while we’re in Otherworld, the narrator now has a different font and mock-parchment captions, distancing the book from the look of other X-titles. Page 20 seems to indicate that the narrator is telling the story set out the X-marked book that Roma gives to Betsy later on.

Jackdaw’s Nest. We saw this village previously in Excalibur #19, when Betsy and Kwannon passed through it. It seems to be the home town of Jackdaw, the sidekick from early 80s Captain Britain comics, but nothing really turns on that.

Furies. The Fury was originally a “cybiote” – apparently some sort of cybernetic thing – created by Jim Jaspers to hunt superheroes in Marvel Super Heroes #387. In Otherworld, a group of Furies inhabit a province called Infuri the Everforge, and are currently allied with Merlyn. The Furies are not normally portrayed as the giants seen here – no reason is given for their size, but Captain Bretland remarks on it later, so it’s clearly not an error. At this scale, they become reminiscent of the mutant-hunting Sentinels from the X-Men’s world, and of course they’re serving the same role. It’s not far removed from what they were created for in their earliest appearance. The Furies are conspicuously out of place in the generally quasi-Arthurian, or at least fantasy-based, mythos of Otherworld.

“Back home, death is less of a problem.” We established during the “X of Swords” crossover that mutants who die in Otherworld can be resurrected on Krakoa, but come back as blank slates with altered personalities.

Joshua Englehard is a mutant teenager from Krakoa who ran away to Otherworld in New Mutants #16-17.

PAGES 4-6. Captain Bretland rescues Joshua.

Captain Bretland. One of the many Betsy-templated Captain Britains from alternate earths who were created during “X of Swords”. This is the first time we’ve seen her as anything more than a face in the crowd, but she was among the new Captains listed on a data page in X of Swords: Destruction. That issue said she was from Earth-904, but that was probably a number selected at random without checking whether it had been used before in official Marvel materials. If you take the number literally – and I wouldn’t recommend it – then she’s the Betsy Braddock from the world of What If…? vol 2 #12 (“What if the X-Men had Stayed in Asgard?”) “Bretland” was an Old English name for part of the country, which is probably a better idea of what her world is meant to be like. Either that or she’s from an Icelandic Britain.

She’s here mainly to recap the plot to Josh, and he is here mainly to listen to it. Fair enough! It’s issue #1!

Merlyn’s allies. Page 5 panel 3 shows an assortment of characters meeting in the Starlight Citadel. From left to right:

• The mostly black thing with the green highlights is a Vescora, the scouring invader species from “X of Swords”.
• The insectoid woman is Vesperidae, the Colony Queen of Hothive.
• The two vampiric figures are Sevalith, from the vampire province.
• A Fury.
• King Arthur, flanked by a couple of knights.
• Roma, strangely – the only province ruler hostile to Merlyn to appear here.
• Jim Jaspers, currently running the Crooked Market province.
• Merlyn himself.
• Ryl, the former aide to Saturnyne who remained by Merlyn’s side after he seized control.

Mordred died in last year’s Black Knight: Curse of the Ebony Blade miniseries.

Roma. Captain Bretland explains that Roma “has been a friend to mutants before”. Principally, she brought the X-Men back to life after they died in the “Fall of the Mutants” crossover.

PAGE 7. Recap and credits. The title, “Hated and Feared”, is just a reversal of the old X-Men tagline “feared and hated by a world they are sworn to protect”.

PAGE 8. Arriving at the Lavender Keep.

Elspeth Braddock. We’ve seen this version of Captain Britain several times before. Again, “Earth-13059” might well have been reused in error, but it happens to fit quite neatly; it’s the world of X-Treme X-Men vol 2 #9, basically a Tolkein world. She’s using one of the scrying pools that we saw several times in Excalibur.

The Krakoans trying to make contact with Betsy are standing around the summoning circle which was used to access Otherworld during the “X of Swords” crossover. Only Rachel (Prestige) and Bei are clearly recognisable, since everyone else is hooded. The one in white with the bandaged arms could be Rictor, either miscoloured or wearing different robes.

PAGES 9-10. Captain Britain and Saturnyne argue.

Saturnyne has never been happy about having Betsy as her Captain Britain, though they were getting on a bit better at the tail end of Excalibur. Basically, she wants Betsy to focus on reclaiming the throne, and thinks Betsy keeps getting distracted by hunting down “every last mutant who gets chased by the Furies”. A couple of points there. First, on the face of it Saturnyne has a point that removing Merlyn should be a higher priority because it would get rid of the Furies altogether – but it’s fair to say that that doesn’t really seem to be the concern at the front of her mind.

Second, what mutants? Excalibur’s central remit was to guard the portal to Otherworld so that no mutants went through, due to it being so dangerous. So how are there enough mutants around Otherworld for this to be an issue? Did they come from other alternate worlds? Betsy does tell us later on that “there are plenty more inside Otherworld” – is the idea simply that the human-type races of Otherworld include mutants?

“You did it for the tournament…” Referencing “X of Swords”. Saturnyne basically says that the power levels she had in that story were tied to her being Omniversal Majestrix at the time, and she’s been deposed by Merlyn. Betsy’s argument is, shall we say, a bit confused: she’s suggesting that Saturnyne should inveigle her way back onto the throne so that she can get the power to bring reinforcements to Otherworld in order to, er, recover the throne. Let’s assume she’s being facetious.

“Ambitious little Courtney.” Saturnyne is an alternate reality counterpart of Courtney Ross, who was Brian Braddock’s girlfriend in early Captain Britain stories. The details of how she made it to Otherworld and worked her way up to a position of power have never really been covered. She comes from Earth-9, but we don’t really know much about that place either.

PAGES 11-12. Betsy visits Roma.

This is fairly self-explanatory. Roma essentially says that she can’t use her magic to simply conjure up an army from Earth because Otherworld magic – or at least her fairy magic – is story-based and therefore cannot be used as a deus ex machina. What she can do is set up a quest to get a useful item, because that’s a story. It’s all a bit meta – in the logic of Otherworld, things literally happen because the plot demands that they do.

PAGES 13-15. Betsy reads the book and gathers her quest party.

Note that we’re not actually shown or told at this stage what Betsy sees in the book, but compare page 20.

The characters who react to Betsy on Krakoa were all fighting alongside her in the closing issues of Excalibur, which explains what an otherwise random choice like Bei was doing there.

• Rictor and Shatterstar are evidently a couple again, after a slightly rocky reunion during the Hellfire Gala.
• Bei is leaving behind her sleeping husband Cypher.
• Gambit is on his own, with a note from his wife Rogue saying that she’s working late. Rogue is in the cast of X-Men, and we’ll see later on that Gambit is partly here to prove that he’s doing something useful with his time too (and by extension to stop feeling sidelined by his wife’s success).
• Rachel Summers is accompanied by her pet Warwolf Amazing Baby. Both here and on the recap page, she’s identified as “Rachel”, so apparently we’re quietly forgetting the Prestige codename. What a shame.

Since we’re on Krakoa, these characters all get Krakoan-font captions to introduce them. Having the “Krakoa” caption midway through the scene is a little confusing, but basically they’re being drawn to the circle we saw earlier.

Two other characters also show up who weren’t on the previous page, which might be for reasons of space, or might have significance. Meggan… well, the art makes it look like she shows up with Gambit, but maybe they’re just arriving from the same direction. Jubilee has the sleeping Shogo in her arms, and we’ll come back to that.

PAGE 16. Data page (because we’re on Krakoa at the moment – compare the Otherworld version later in the issue). Rictor emailsl Cypher and asks him to translate the grimoire that Apocalypse left behind. In Excalibur, Rictor was obsessed with continuing Apocalypse’s work after he left in “X of Swords”; extracts from the grimoire itself appeared on numerous data pages in the first year or so of Excalibur.

PAGES 17-18. Mordred vanishes upon resurrection.

The basic idea here is that Mordred is being resurrected following his death in Black Knight: Curse of the Ebony Blade, but because of his Otherworld connection, he’s going to come back in a blank slate new identity. Quite why he vanishes instantly is unclear, but no doubt we’ll get to that.

“Jacks”. Jacks Chopra, who becomes co-holder of the Black Knight title in the aforementioned Curse miniseries.

The Five. Hope notes in passing that they aren’t calling in Xavier to do the resurrection, and she’s evidently doing the telepathic aspect (restoring the memories) herself. We’ve increasingly seen the Five reject the instructions they’re given by the Quiet Council and acting on their own initiative – though this is presumably after Immortal X-Men #1, in which case Hope herself is now a Quiet Council member. The first time they resurrected a mutant who died in Otherworld, it was a chaotic disaster and the system was offline for days, but apparently Gorgon’s resurrection went more smoothly (in that sense, at least) so Hope can be reasonably confident that they aren’t jeopardising the whole system. Still, it’s doubtful that the rest of the Quiet Council would be thrilled about anything of this sort going on.

The waters of Otherworld were given to Betsy by Dr Doom in Excalibur #23, in thanks for helping him with his own trip to Otherworld. He said that he had retrieved them from Morgan le Fey’s scrying pool. In his accompanying note, he said: “The waters of Otherworld are of little use to me, but I understand they contain many mysteries for those who can read them. The answers you seek regarding Arthur and Mordred, as to what separates them, I believe is within. It seems to be a well-guarded secret.” It’s a bit of a leap to the waters being “the only surviving record of Mordred’s mutant spirit”, but okay, Doom did say that they contained information about Mordred.

PAGE 19. Jubilee asks to go with Shogo.

Jubilee tells us that Shogo is asleep “all the time”, and Betsy telepathically verifies that he is dreaming of Otherworld. In Excalibur, he turned into a dragon while in Otherworld, and evidently he’s tied to Otherworld now. Betsy told Roma earlier in the issue that she’d been fighting Merlyn’s forces for months, so if Shogo’s literally been asleep all that time, you’d have thought he’d be… well, dead from starvation, or at least on a drip somewhere. Or at least it would be so obviously a magical sleep that Magik would have pointed her in the direction of some appropriate help by now. Maybe time runs differently in Otherworld, or maybe Jubilee doesn’t mean literally all the time.

PAGES 20-21. The Knights of X read the book and are transported to Otherworld.

Shogo is now a dragon again, and awake. Note that the Otherworld narrator picks up again as soon as they start reading the book.

The bit about Mordred’s seat being empty and waiting for him is important, but I’ll come to that. Note also that the art shows both the Knights of X and Merlyn’s forces as their opposite numbers; there’s some ambiguity as to which table Mordred’s seat is being left open at.

Jubilee can’t come through the portal because it’s not her story; given the narrative logic, Betsy is surely right to say that Roma either can’t or won’t send her back to Krakoa again. Also, although Betsy says on page 14 that “I can take ten”, apparently she counts as one of the ten on page 32 – if Jubilee had come, there would be a total of 11. It’s not clear whether the goalposts are being moved for some reason, or whether Betsy has misunderstood the book and simply assumed that it was ten other people.

PAGES 22-25. The Knights of X recruit Kylun.

Kylun (Colin Mckay) was a member of the original Excalibur team during the Alan Davis run. He first appears in Excalibur vol 1 #2 as a small child who stumbles through a portal to another dimension, and returns as an adult swordsman in issue #42. The idea is that mutant power is the relatively useless ability to perfectly replicate sounds, but he’s become a warrior for completely unrelated reasons after growing up on a sword-and-sorcery world (Ee’rath, specifically). He’s barely appeared outside cameos since the Davis run ended, although he was in the “Age of X-Man” event as Nightcrawler’s personal trainer. His last appearance seems to be X-Force vol 6 #12, where he’s a face in the crowd on Krakoa. Presumably, he chose to move to Otherworld after “X of Swords”, since it was closer to his adoptive homeworld.

PAGES 26-31. Mordred arrives.

This is pretty straightforward, though the staging is a bit confused, as Mordred shows up and starts fighting in the middle of Betsy and Shogo’s stunt. Which loses a bit of the impact. Still, Mordred is indeed a blank slate, and since Arthur’s forces are treating him as an enemy, he says he’s siding with Betsy to claim asylum from them. Presumably this relates to something that happened to him before he arrived at this battle, since he doesn’t have time to form an opinion of Arthur’s forces here.

PAGE 32. The object of the quest is revealed.

Mordred’s arrival completes the “ten fated warriors” (counting Betsy herself) and leads to the reveal of the object of the quest: the Siege Perilous.

The object shown in the art is a magical artefact given to the X-Men by Roma after resurrecting them, as seen in Uncanny X-Men #229. It’s a little jewel thing, but it grows into a portal through which you can pass and be resurrected. As best as I can tell, it was last seen in Wolverine and the X-Men #35, at which point it was thrown into the ocean in an explosion.

In Arthurian legend, the Siege Perilous was a seat at the Round Table reserved for the knight who was going to find the Holy Grail; anyone else who sat in the seat in the meantime would supposedly die. The relevant of the name to the Marvel version has always been a little obscure. But note the emphasis in this story on Mordred being the missing one who takes the final seat.

PAGE 33. Arthur’s round table watch.

Note, by the way, that some of the non-speaking background characters around Arthur have been consistent throughout this issue; maybe we’ll get to know more about them as we go on.

Merlyn seems to be telling Arthur that if he steals the Siege Perilous after the Knights of X have found it, then he can use it to reincarnate Mordred; he suggests, but doesn’t outright say, that this will somehow stop him being a mutant. Of course, various mutants have gone through the Siege in the past and emerged with powers intact; and conversely, Mordred has just been resurrected in a transformed state. So on the face of it Merlyn is talking nonsense, but Arthur doesn’t necessarily know that. Mind you, what does Arthur make of being told that he’s not one of the pure?

PAGE 34. Data page… but Otherworld style. This hand-drawn version of the familiar map of Otherworld tells us that there are now only three provinces free of Merlyn’s control: Roma’s Floating Kingdom, Jaspers’ Crooked Market, and the ever-mysterious Mercator.

PAGE 35. Trailers.