{"id":5855,"date":"2020-11-12T20:45:48","date_gmt":"2020-11-12T20:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5855"},"modified":"2020-11-12T20:45:48","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T20:45:48","slug":"excalibur-14-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5855","title":{"rendered":"Excalibur #14 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As always this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

EXCALIBUR vol 4 #14<\/strong>
“X of Swords, chapter 15”<\/strong>
by Tini Howard & Phil Noto<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Apocalypse, Captain Britain and Magik offer moral support to a terrified Cypher. This bears no resemblance to anything in the story, but Cypher does at least appear prominently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong> Epigraph from Apocalypse. Obviously he’s referring to his relationship with Genesis, but the parallel here is the unlikely pairing of Cypher and Bei from later in the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 3.<\/strong> Betsy psychically checks in with Jubilee.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We last saw Jubilee and Shogo in issue #11; they’re staying with the Priestesses of the Green while Shogo recovers from the injury he suffered in issue #9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

PAGE 4. <\/strong>Isca talks to Betsy before the fight.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nine of Swords.<\/strong> This is the card that Betsy received from Saturnyne in X of Swords: Stasis<\/em>. It’s curious that Isca, from Arakko, seems to know something about tarot iconography (which didn’t emerge until the 15th century), but hey, magic. Recall that although the card Betsy received claimed to be a nine of swords, its image was the one traditionally associated with the ten of swords, i.e. a body with swords impaled in it. The nine of swords is more about having things hanging over you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 5.<\/strong> Credits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 6.<\/strong> Recap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 7-11.<\/strong> Captain Britain battles Isca.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we’ll see, each of these contests – and I use that term loosely – is being held in a different realm of Otherworld. This one starts out in the most conventional form. Betsy’s shattering at the end – and her reference to “breaking” – seems to be a callback to issue #10, where it was associated with Jamie splintering realities in order to artificially create more Captain Britains. Obviously, this one falls under the category of “if you don’t see a proper body, they’re not dead”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saturnyne seems to be deliberately trying to wind everyone up, though as usual, it’s unclear what he gets from that. Wolverine reminds us that he already tried fighting Saturnyne directly in Marauders<\/em> #14-15, and it was a waste of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apocalypse seems a lot less fazed by any of this weirdness than the others, but maybe he’s just better at maintaining the front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 12.<\/strong> Data page. Jim Jaspers’ newspaper reports the fight we just saw. Jamie bet against Betsy, we’re told, on the logic that if she died, at least he’d get some money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 13-14.<\/strong> Cypher and Bei are dragged off for their forced marriage.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 15.<\/strong> Data page on Bei. Basically, she has Black Bolt’s powers, but most people can understand her through telepathy. Some quirk makes Cypher an exception to that, making her the one person he can’t<\/em> understand when everyone else can. (Presumably she could just write things down, but then that was always the problem with Black Bolt.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 16-26.<\/strong> Cypher and Bei’s wedding; Jubilee and Shogo gatecrash.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where the book spirals off into Alice in Wonderland territory. Broadly, the idea seems to be that Saturnyne has presented Cypher and Bei with a challenge that she expected them both to fail (though it makes no difference to the outcome if they both succeed), and Cypher at least is playing along through a mixture of relief that it isn’t a sword fight, and fascination at someone he can’t understand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ve seen relatively little of Bei so far – she appears briefly in Stasis<\/em>, where Summoner addressed her as “Great Bei, slayer of serpents of both sea and air, speaker of the hidden words, destroyer of hope and the all-consum[ing]” something or other, before getting cut off. She didn’t seem to care what the contest was about, and she signed up on the basis that it was “combat of some kind” and she had “men to kill”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it’s not flagged up here, Bei’s sword is called Seducer, and her prophecy verse in Stasis<\/em> read: “From silence beckons blade’s sweet hiss \/ Quiet temptress says nothing and still gets her wish.” None of which should be particularly encouraging for Cypher, although she does seem to be trying to protect him once the dragon shows up. Also, remember that Cypher has a much more obvious counterpart among the Arakkii, in the form of Redroot, the interpreter for Arakko.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presumably Bei can understand Cypher, and she notices the heavily caveated nature of his improvised “vows”. He specifically treats this as a sham marriage for the duration of the contest: “I swear to uphold my vow to you for the duration of this challenge.” Though he’s clearly fascinated by her, he says nothing whatsoever about any feelings towards her. Bei, on the other hand, responds with a melodramatic spiel about the power of love and her devotion to protecting him – not directly threatening by any means, but hardly something that suggests that she’s on the same page as him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond that, it’s more or less self-explanatory (which is fine), but it’s all wildly far removed from any sort of normal human behaviour and rather difficult to get invested in unless your quirkiness threshold is set considerably higher than mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 27.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: FOR YOUR LIFE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. EXCALIBUR vol 4 #14“X of Swords, chapter 15”by Tini Howard & Phil Noto COVER \/ PAGE 1: Apocalypse, Captain Britain and Magik offer moral support to a terrified Cypher. This bears no resemblance to anything in the story, but Cypher does […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5855"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5863,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5855\/revisions\/5863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}