What’s Covered?
Excalibur Vol 1 # 115 - 125, X-Men Unlimited # 119
Roster Watch
Synopsis
Excalibur # 115: Containment
Writer - Ben Raab
Pencils - Mel Rubi
Banshee flying to Muir Island
Moira in quarantine, determined to find the cure
Pete Wisdom looking for Nightcrawler
Rahne enters the containment room with Moira at the last minute.
I don't know if I fully understand why Moira needed to lock herself away while she looked for a cure, but the moment at the end with Rahne was beautiful. As much as Excalibur isn't a perfect series, it does the best job of the X series' in my opinion when it comes to showing family relationships.
Excalibur # 116 - 117: Sidri
Writer - Ben Raab
Pencils - Mel Rubi
NC captured by the Sidri
Kurt and Kitty mutated them all the way back in the first brood arc
Colossus fights for his friend
Rahne is gonna stay in containment with Moira
Whole team fights. When the Sidri connect with DL, they are able to revert back to their original form and go home.
The plot here is pretty weak, but once again the family component is great. Colossus has been burned by a lot of people, but Kurt is his buddy and he'll be damned if he lets him get hurt.
Excalibur # 118: Bamfs!
Writer - Ben Raab
Pencils - Mel Rubi
Bamf dolls come to life
After Lockheed. Mad at him for stealing Kitty’s affection
Rigs the danger room to attack Kurt and Kitty
Tries to roll a boulder on PW
From the nexus of all things (NC miniseries)
Bamfs are really fucking creepy about Kitty.
Kitty still thinking about Rigby. He made her feel young. Questioning PW.
Kitty in pirate hat...
Megg questioning Piotr about his feelings for her. Exposes her own feelings?
Nightmare appears. He’s the boss
Ha, well I love Bamfs. I really don't understand why Marvel doesn't sell them officially. I considered buying on on Etsy, but I feel weird shopping on Etsy so I didn't. Anyway, I guess it's fun to see a silly issue with Bamfs coming to life and being evil. They are really fucking creepy with Kitty, almost like the reverse Kurt was in Limbo during the Magik mini-series. This is now the 4th alternate version of Kurt who has been a pervert (Bamfs, Limbo, Nazi world, AoA), so what does that tell us about who Kurt really is!?
I'm conflicted about Kitty and Pete. I love Kitty, so it's been fun to see her happy. But Pete never seemed right for her (too old), so to have Raab write in that she fell for someone her own age and that created a wedge behind them...that just feels right to me.
Excalibur # 119: Nightmare
Writer - Ben Raab
Pencils - Jim Calafiore
Nightmares
Kurt is prof x and watches NC be murdered by Bastion
Piotr is a famous artist and he is attacked by his Zombie family
DL is re-assimilated
Meg marries Brian but in her original ugly form
Pete is so tortured he breaks free, shows how great everyone is, and they break out
Excalibur # 120: Filler
Writer - Ben Raab
Pencils - Jim Calafiore
Douglock discovers that he has information regarding the Legacy Virus stored in his mind from Zero.
When DL he manages to open the door, expecting a gushing Wolfsbane to thank him, he is met instead with a resentful Rahne, who tells Douglock to get over his stupid crush on her
Wisdom packs his bags, which pleases Lockheed, but Kitty tries to get him to talk to her. Wisdom knows that he should, and knows what he should say, but all he can bring himself to say is “I thought you loved me”
Sabra warns that Legion is attacking in Israel
The drama here between DL and Rahne is pretty good. It seems pretty real that he would be naive and expecting Rahne to be happy to see him, but instead she's like "my mom is dying, that's way more important, you're stupid crush means nothing to me." Kind of harsh, yet appropriate.
Excalibur # 121: Legion
Writer - Ben Raab
Pencils - Trevor Scott
Moira is giving up on trying to find a cure for the legacy virus and living her life
Legion is in 3 separate physical bodies
Sabra fights with Excalibur
Meggan sends them (Legion's 3 selves) on to the afterlife
I didn't really understand why Moira needed to lock herself away, and now she's just like "oh well, that was a stupid idea anyway. Let's go pick some flowers." This would make more sense if we had a writer change, but I won't gripe too hard on it.
X-Men Unlimited # 19: Szardos Drama
Writer - Ben Raab
Pencils - Jim Calafiore
NC heads to Limbo to save Margali from Belasco
Margali exposed as body swapped with Amanda
Margali defeats Sym
NC saves Amanda, they banish Belasco, claim the soulsword
Amanda will stay in Limbo
This would have been a bigger shock to me if I would have read this at the correct time as opposed to finding out separately that Amanda was really her mom. Kind of sad that she couldn't just hang on for a few more issues to finish out the series with the team.
I usually get pretty excited when Belasco shows up because I love Magik, but this story was very meh.
Excalibur # 122: Mimic
Writer - Ben Raab
Pencils - Dale Eaglesham
Megan sits on the shore watching. Disappointed.
Colossus seems out of character “ I understand his feelings. Charles Xavier’s is like a father to us all without him we would not be who we are today I would be happier, simple Siberian farm boy instead of the mutant outlaw colossus.”
Kurt leads the team into an installation trying to find Charles Xavier, but instead they find prime sentinels. Turned good.
The Professor isn’t there but Mimic is
Brian comes back
As mentioned above, Colossus does not seem in character praising Professor X. I know he's "good" again, but I think he's still pretty annoyed with Xavier. It will be interesting to see how he treats him when he returns to the X-Men (assuming Xavier comes back at some point).
Brian has pretty much consistently been a douche since Excalibur # 1, especially with how he treats Meggan. Him totally ditching her isn't doing this relationship any favors. Am I really supposed to be excited for the build up to this wedding?
Excalibur # 123-124: Pre-Wedding
Writer - Ben Raab
Pencils - Trevor Scott (123), Dale Eaglesham (124)
Exc Vs Mimic
Brian and Meggan to be married next week
NC is doubting himself. Kitty making him feel better. Kitty asks if he’s starting to question the purpose of Excalibur and reminds him that once an X-Man, always an X man. (meta!)
Meggan decides she needs to tell Brian about her crush on Colossus
Everyone, including Megan, is fretting about telling Brian about Megan‘s crush on Peter
Megs shower
Alternate Cap Britain is a feminist
Brian’s bachelor party
DL passes out drunk
Becomes comic relief
Mimic is there
Col admits that he loved Meggan
He tells Kurt later that it was a lie
Crazy gang back and plotting revenge
Ferron is their leader
He was mad about being ignored after he shared Megan’s catatonic state
He’s back with the whimsy.
Even though I wasn't a fan of the whimsy, I LOVE that all these old characters are coming back to finish out the series. Sure, I'm interested to see what's up with Feron. That dude fizzled out fast. Crazy Gang, why not!?
I feel like this whole Meggan/Colossus thing was mishandled. I was thinking it was pretty cool that a guy and a girl could just be friends without developing feelings...and that's exactly how it was portrayed, until afterwards where now apparently she liked him. Also, this isn't a good look for the narrative that Meggan is an adult and not a naive kid being taken advantage of by an older man (Brian.) I think Warren Ellis's version of Meggan will go down as my favorite.
Excalibur # 125: The Wedding
Writer - Ben Raab
Pencils - Dale Eaglesham
Douglock is woken up in a drunken stupor and with memory loss by Widget!
Rahne apologizes to DL
The wedding is on Otherworld
Other cap versions
Crazy Gang
Technet
Roma is officiant
Allistaire and Rory
Kylun, cerise, micromax
Betsy is moh, Kurt is best man
Archangel
In a flashback we see that Bryan knew Peter lied and was covering for Megan but luckily he forgives Megan
A fight for the bouquet leaves the flowers in Kitty’s arms
Piotr gets the lace. Clearly trying to rekindle things here.
Cerise calls out nightcrawler for not looking for her
Kylun has been living with his parents
Saturnyne trying to bang Brian
Oh God, I love all these classic characters coming back! It's so much fun! Widget's back and fucking with Douglock, how fun! Technet putzing around? Sure! Rom as the officiant? Why not!? Kylun's been living with his parents? Ok, sure! Hey, it's Cerise! Ha and she wants to make out with Kurt again. How great is that? Oh, Micromax is there too. Betsy is the Maid of Honor, that's cute. Saturnyne trying to bang Brian on his wedding day? Classic!
Clearly Raab has been trying to ship Kitty and Colossus back together, but will that be picked up when they get back to X-Men? I can't wait to find out!
I'm fine with Pete Wisdom only showing up in a single panel. That's who he is, a brooder. It's on point.
My Connections
And with that, Excalibur is over. I'm not going to go too much into detail here because I plan on doing a whole separate blog with an Excalibur Retrospective, but I've had quite the journey with Excalibur. Prior to starting the series, I was SO excited to dive in. I was getting a little sick of New Mutants and X-Factor did not start out strong. Plus, I was a Kitty fanatic. Unfortunately I didn't love the Claremont stuff so I started off in a bad spot. Then I loved Alan Davis. Then it got boring again. Then I liked Warren Ellis. So I've really been going back and forth.
As for this ending, I think Ben Raab did a great job. We haven't really gotten the whimsy since Claremont left, so I wasn't expecting Crazy Gang, alternate reality Caps, Technet, etc. to show up. Even though I didn't like the whimsy stuff, I found myself happy to see them like old friends come back home where they belong.
Creators
Look what I found on Wikipedia the other day:
Ouch. Looks like Wikipedia is declaring Raab's tenure as a failure. At first I really didn't mind where Raab was taking things, but then each issue was incredibly low stakes and I agree with the decision that it was probably time to just let the series lie. While I'll miss it, I welcome thinning out my reading by one series and seeing how Kitty (and NC/Col) interact with the X-Men after so much time away.
Will Kitty be lovably pretentious again? Will Kurt compete with Storm and Cyclops for a leadership role? (I sincerely doubt it and really hope they don't neuter his career arc like they did with Cannonball. I'll be really pissed if they do). Will Colossus continue his passive aggressive tendencies towards the X-Men and Professor X or will that be forgotten? I think it would be really dumb not to lean into that as it would be super interesting to see how awkward it is that he ditched them and went villain for a few years.
Character Beats
Captain Britain
I know quite a few X-Men enthusiasts who love Captain Britain, but it never happened for me. He was a huge buffoon and treated Meggan like shit. Alan Moore tried to correct this by explaining his buffoonery as part of cosmic interference, but then he left the comic and came back as the terribly terrible Brittanic. Warren Ellis did the best with him, by simply having him stop being a hero and working as a mechanic. It's like when my friend who is terrible at basketball asks me how he can help the team by scoring more points and I tell him the best thing he can do is to stop shooting and just go set some picks and box out.
Meggan
Fricken love Meggan. I wish she would have dated Nightcrawler at the beginning, but we can't win every battle. I like how Warren Ellis made her more independent and reformed her powers to make her more of an elemental powerhouse. I wish she had more agency in total throughout the series though.
Nightcrawler
Really cool to see him grow. I had never read Excalibur and thought Captain Britain was always the team leader. It was fun to watch it slowly become apparent that Cap wasn't a natural born leader and see Kurt slowly step up more and more. I wonder if this was one of those things where the story took you in a different place than an outline may have intended a year earlier. His brush with leadership in X-Men didn't work out, but he clearly gained the confidence he needed and was very good at it.
It was also fun seeing various artists leaning into his swashbuckling nature and adding a sword as part of his regular costume (which changed too often). His relationships were always awesome as the flirting with Meggan, making out with Cerise, banging chicks in other dimensions without discretion, and connecting with his soul mate, Amanda.
Kitty
My beloved Kitty. I still love her, but she lost all her spark when she joined this team. No one seemed to want to make her a priority, which is sad. While I liked Pete Wisdom, her relationship with him never fully worked for me. She lost her leadership chops and she went way too fast from 13.5 naive charm to 18+ and dating 30 year olds.
Colossus
He came on late and ended up finishing stronger than I was expecting. Ben Raab clearly wanted to pay him more attention than Warren Ellis did (who was probably forced to add him). They did a pretty smooth job of re-integrating him back into the team. Nightcrawler and Kitty were basically like "We know who he truly is, trust me"...and I did trust them.
Wolfsbane
Another character who was probably pigeon holed into this team, but when they started exploring her relationship with Douglock and leaning into Moira being her mom, everything went better.
Moira
I wonder if she'll ever actually die.
Pete Wisdom
Pretty cool character. I like him. He was perfect with Warren Ellis's X-Files vibe. I didn't like him with Kitty though. I'm too protective.
Douglock
Sorry, but he was a pretty pointless character. Raab probably did the best with him, but he really served no narrative purpose and I doubt we'll be seeing him again anytime soon.