{"id":5940,"date":"2020-11-26T20:53:52","date_gmt":"2020-11-26T20:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5940"},"modified":"2020-11-26T20:53:52","modified_gmt":"2020-11-26T20:53:52","slug":"excalibur-15-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5940","title":{"rendered":"Excalibur #15 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 #15<\/strong>
“X of Swords, Chapter 21”<\/strong>
by Tini Howard, Mahmud Asrar, Stefano Caselli, Sunny Gho & Rachelle Rosenberg<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER<\/strong> \/ PAGE 1: <\/strong>Shards showing the various contest participants; in the centre of the frame, Apocalypse’s shard is held by Saturnyne. (Honestly, you can tell it’s her from the shape of the sleeve, though it’s largely obscured by the logo.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong> Epigraph by Saturnyne. The claim here is that magic can be directed with willpower; therefore, magic will respond more readily to true desperation, but not so much to things that you merely desire. This ties to the advice to spellcasters on the data page about love spells later on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

As we’ve seen throughout this storyline, Saturnyne is very, very keen to have Brian Braddock restored as Captain Britain. She’s been trying to exploit this crisis to bring that about, and while she either can’t or won’t ultimately interfere with the outcome of the trial, she was <\/em>willing and able to rig the contest to make it appear that the Krakoans would lose, plus get Betsy out of circulation, all in the hope of getting Brian into the role again through a mixture of magic and pressure. As seen in this issue, that didn’t work, and magic doesn’t ultimately give her Brian back. But it does give her a new Captain Britain Corps to face the invaders – all of them Betsies. So she doesn’t get what she desired, but she does get what she needed to defeat the Arakkii invasion and restore balance or whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 3-4.<\/strong> Credits and recap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 5.<\/strong> Ryl brings the shards of Captain Britain to Saturnyne’s chamber.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ryl is the fish-woman who appears repeatedly as an aide to Saturnyne. The women running in the first panel are Priestesses of the White, basically Saturnyne cultists. Betsy was shattered into shards in the previous issue. The creatures outside the window are monsters from Amenth, some of which have heads vaguely resembling the Annihilation mask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 6-8.<\/strong> Genesis and Apocalypse continue to fight while the Arakkii army attack.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Genesis\/Annihilation is raving in traditional lunatic fashion, until Storm shuts her up with a lightning bolt. Apocalypse is evidently quite upset by being reunited with Genesis after so long, only to find her in this condition. Understandably, Cypher’s attempt to lighten the mood by mentioning his random marriage to Bei in the previous issue goes down badly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 9-10.<\/strong> The White Sword and Bei both break ranks.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The White Sword<\/strong> never liked the Arakkii forces in the first place, and only signed up when he was promised “anything” (if his side won). Even that seemed to be of interest to him more as a symbolic concession. He’s done what he signed up for, and he shrugs his shoulders and heads home with his men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bei <\/strong>clearly takes her marriage to Cypher from the previous issue a lot more seriously than he does, and sets out to retrieve her man. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They are down to what, a half dozen?”<\/strong> Krakoa has lost Captain Britain (shattered), Gorgon (dead) and Cable (injured and off the battlefield, as we see in X of Swords: Destruction<\/em>). In fact, with the loss of Summoner, White Sword, Death and Bei, the Arakkii swordbearers are also down to six – but they’ve got an army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 11-12.<\/strong> Saturnyne and Shogo start on the Captain Britain mosaic.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Moonward escadrille.” <\/strong>An escadrille is just a squad or squadron. The priestesses here are armed with shields but, being devoted cultists, seem to regard them mainly as convenient devices to keep the rain off Saturnyne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 13-15.<\/strong> Bei retrieves Cypher.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-explanatory, really. She’s not swapping sides (yet), she’s just taking her new man back home with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 16.<\/strong> More of the mosaic.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dragonfire.<\/strong> Previous issues of Excalibur<\/em> have established at some length that Shogo’s dragon fire damages the reality of Otherworld. The suggestion seems to be that once the mosaic is reassembled, Shogo’s dragonfire and Saturnyne’s magic will restore Captain Britain to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 17.<\/strong> Magik decides to get Cypher back.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understandably, Storm isn’t too keen on being down yet one more person. The Krakoan dialogue is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

STORM: Hold fast!
APOCALYPSE: Never surrender!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 18-19.<\/strong> Jubilee and the Priestesses of the Green arrive to help.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We saw Jubilee with these Priestesses in the previous issue; as established in earlier issues of this series, the Priestesses of the Green are a less dogmatic group of Saturnyne followers. They regard themselves as serving what she really <\/em>wants on their interpretation, even if it’s not what she thinks <\/em>she wants – a relevant point here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 20-22.<\/strong> Cypher persuades Bei to switch sides.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problems here are pretty obvious. Cypher clearly doesn’t perceive this as a real relationship, but he’s appealing to her sense that it is one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imbolc. <\/strong>Imbolc is a traditional Gaelic festival marking the beginning of spring, on 1 February. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 23-25.<\/strong> The Captain Britain Corps is reconstituted.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the closing data page clarifies, Saturnyne was trying to cast a love spell to “restore the heart’s true protector”, which she evidently expected to be Brian. She needed a “pure heart shattered in time of greatest need” as an ingredient for that spell, and evidently she was hoping to kill Betsy as that source material. Instead, her spell – possibly coupled with Shogo’s reality-melting effect, which was mentioned earlier, but which we never actually see – has restored an entire Captain Britain Corps templated on the Betsy Braddock version of Captain Britain. And that’s something that only serves to reinforce the fact that Betsy isn’t coming back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Confusing matters even further, the blacksmith Betsy who appears on page 23 and again in the closing panel looks an awful lot like “our” Betsy – but apparently isn’t <\/em>our Betsy, since X of Swords: Destruction <\/em>has a data page that states outright that our Betsy, “Captain Britain Prime”, is still missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bluntly, this sequence is so obscure on a first reading that the intended impact doesn’t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The outcome of Saturnyne’s spell seems to imply that Betsy is the “true protector” of Saturnyne’s heart, not something that seems remotely supported by any of their interactions to date. Of course, taken literally, a “heart’s true protector” is not necessarily a love interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 26.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: THE END.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. EXCALIBUR vol 4 #15“X of Swords, Chapter 21”by Tini Howard, Mahmud Asrar, Stefano Caselli, Sunny Gho & Rachelle Rosenberg COVER \/ PAGE 1: Shards showing the various contest participants; in the centre of the frame, Apocalypse’s shard is held by Saturnyne. […]<\/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-5940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5940","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=5940"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5945,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5940\/revisions\/5945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}