EXCALIBUR #91 – November 1995

“Baby I Love You”
Credits: Warren Ellis (writer), David Williams, Mike Wieringo, Jeff Moy, & Mike Miller (pencilers), Mike Miller, M. Christian, & Philip Moy (inkers), Ariane Lenshoek & Malibu Hues (colors), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (lettering)

Summary

Peter Wisdom and Kitty Pryde convince the other members of Excalibur to go out for a drink. Moira suggests they go to a bar her father used to own. Wolfsbane is reluctant to go, but is reassured by Moira and Nightcrawler. At the bar, Kitty offers her nectarine juice. Moira asks Kitty and Wisdom what’s going on between them, and they reply that they like each other and want Wisdom to join Excalibur. Later, in the men’s room, Britanic and Nightcrawler tell Wisdom that he can join the team, but they threaten to kill him if he hurts Kitty. Later, Douglock asks Britanic why he drinks, and he responds that he’s drinking non-alcoholic beer because of his past abuse. After Moira gets extremely drunk, the team returns home. As Kitty and Wisdom kiss outside, Colossus approaches.

Commercial Break

There’s an ad from American Entertainment for a limited edition All New Exiles vs. X-Men #0 comic book. The normal version costs $7.50 (plus $4.95 US shipping and $9.95 for international) if you meet the deadline, and $10.00 if you order later. The “limited super-premium edition” costs $29.95 before the order deadline and $39.95 after the deadline. I would love to meet the person who paid over forty dollars for this comic book. I was still enough of a completist to consider the “regular” edition (which would still add up to over twelve dollars), but wisely opted against it. It almost seems as if Marvel was actively encouraging kids to just run away from comics at this point. I imagine that naïve speculators and hardcore completists would be the only people interested in this, and judging by the fact that it features Rogue (who left the X-Men by the time Juggernaut joined the Exiles) it doesn’t seem like it even fits into the continuity that completists try so hard to maintain.

Review

It’s a “quiet” issue, so there’s not a lot to say about it. All of the character interactions are fine, but it really doesn’t feel as if there’s enough here to justify an entire issue (the first ten pages just consist of the team flying to the bar after Kitty and Wisdom individually ask the others if they want to go out). It has a few humorous moments, such as Moira getting wasted and Douglock scientifically listing all of the reasons not to drink, and it does do a decent job of making the title feel more like a team book after three issues of “The Pryde & Wisdom Show”. Ellis also gets points for remembering that Wolfsbane and Brian Braddock don’t drink and using that continuity as actual story points (what exactly Kitty is drinking isn’t made clear, maybe because Marvel wasn’t sure of how old she was supposed to be at this point). The art is covered by four different pencilers for some reason (this book really has a hard time getting consistent artists during this period), but it looks surprisingly consistent for most of the issue.

EXCALIBUR #88 – August 1995

Dream Nails

Credits: Warren Ellis (writer), Larry Stroman w/Darrick Gross, Ken Lashley, & Jeff Moy (pencilers), Cam Smith w/Darrick Gross, Tom Wegrzyn, Phil Moy, Don Hudson, & Jimmy Palmiotti (inkers), Joe Rosas and Digital Chameleon (colors), Comicraft (lettering)

Summary

Peter Wisdom receives a request for help from his friend, a fellow Black Air operative named Cully. Shadowcat volunteers to take Wisdom to London in the team’s Midnight Runner plane, mainly to keep an eye on him. They arrive in London and investigate one of Cully’s hideouts. He’s missing, but the words “I’m losing my body” are written on the wall. His apartment is littered with papers with odd designs drawn all over them. On Muir Island, Moira discusses with Professor Xavier how a hacker could’ve broken into Muir Island’s database and leaked information about her Legacy Virus infection. She then explains to the rest of Excalibur how the Legacy Virus mutated and infected her. Meanwhile, Britanic devises a laser pen that will be used to house the mutant killer Spoor during his sessions with Rory Campbell. At a spy hangout, Wisdom learns that Cully has died. They soon view his body at the morgue, where the coroner reveals that he died of a mysterious disease. The coroner tells Wisdom that Scicluna, his boss at Black Air, is trying to cover up the death. As Wisdom and Shadowcat leave the morgue, they’re attacked by two armed men. After they’re subdued, Wisdom pulls Black Air IDs out of their wallets.

Review

This is the start of a three-part storyline, which serves to flesh out Peter Wisdom as a character and introduce his romance with Kitty Pryde. This issue is mainly setting up the mystery of what happened to Cully while giving Wisdom and Shadowcat some room to play off of each other. Ellis is good at giving the characters personality, so even if the plot moves pretty leisurely, the story isn’t dull. The rest of the issue is dedicated to acknowledging some of the ongoing storylines that involve Muir Island. Ellis spends quite a bit of time justifying how Muir Island was hacked and how Moira was infected, leading me to believe that someone somewhere thought that these storylines were actually going somewhere. Some obscure continuity is dredged up, as Ellis revives the idea that Muir Island was created as a rehabilitation center for rogue mutants, an idea that I think had been ignored after its first appearance. This leads into a storyline involving Spoor, one of the multitude of Acolytes who hadn’t been developed yet. I like the way Ellis is using what already exists in the X-universe while adding some new elements, so it doesn’t feel as if the book is totally divorced from its roots. Larry Stroman draws the majority of the issue, although the pages are randomly divided amongst three other artists, so you end up with a three-page fight scene with two pencilers. None of the styles blend at all, which is distracting (although it’s hard to think of any artist that can fit in easily with Stroman’s unique look). I think this was Stroman’s return to Marvel after his attempts at a creator-owned series didn’t go very far. His art is even more exaggerated than his X-Factor run, which leaves many of the characters virtually unrecognizable. It’s still an interesting style, but he’s starting to border on self-parody on a few pages.