Reign of X Mini-Reviews: New Mutants / Excalibur / Hellions

New Mutants 14-18
Written by Vita Ayala
Art by Rod Reis

Vita Ayala was a good choice to replace Ed Brisson on New Mutants – they have a very natural affinity for writing young characters, and immediately gave the series a focus and mission that was lacking in Brisson’s issues. Ayala has tightened up the core cast to a group of classic New Mutants characters – Mirage, Karma, Wolfsbane, Magik, Warlock, Warpath – and have put them in charge of an outreach program to help give structure and a sense of purpose to Krakoa’s youth, not all of whom know who or what they want to be in this new society. There’s enough action and adventure moments for it to work as a superhero series, but Ayala is writing a story about young mutants trying to find themselves and seeking out paths that don’t involve becoming a proper superhero and attempting to solve problems with violence. 

Ayala’s strength as a writer lies in their empathy, and the plot of this run of issues is largely driven by characters’ pain and emotional needs, and how this makes some characters lash out and others become confused by conflicting feelings. The main story is about the Amahl Farouk – the sinister telepath who is the host of the demonic psychic creature the Shadow King – also deciding to become a mentor to young mutants, and manipulating some particularly vulnerable kids who’ve been traumatized by their mutations to seek ways to change their circumstances. 

Ayala carries over the Brisson creation Cosmia for this plot – she’s a teenager who hideously warped her body and just wants to be reset in her original form so she can feel like a normal person again. This is a very understandable angst, and it’s hard not to side against the book’s own protagonists when they – mutants, but normal looking humans – try to tell her that her mutation is who she is and thus beautiful in its own way. Ayala is very good at puncturing the sort of well-meaning but patronizing things we say to people in pain, and doing it in a way that doesn’t totally undermine a character like Mirage’s wisdom and generosity. 

Rod Reis’ loosely gestural and very colorful art remains a major highlight of this series, and his skill for conveying nuanced emotion in facial expressions and body language adds a lot of depth to what Ayala is trying to achieve in their character writing. Reis is also terrific with atmosphere and nails the pages where Ayala asks for psychedelic horror or storybook grandeur. Ayala is aiming high, but Reis is elevating the material on every page. 

Excalibur 16-20
Written by Tini Howard
Art by Marcus To
Color art by Erick Arciniega

Given that X of Swords spent a lot of time establishing the terrain of Otherworld and gesturing towards the many story opportunities offered among its realms it has been very disappointing that in the immediate wake of that story Excalibur – the X-Men series focused on Otherworld adventures – brushed all that aside for five consecutive issues telling the convoluted story of Betsy Braddock coming back after seemingly dying in the crossover. 

There is some narrative value in this plot as it provided an opportunity for Tini Howard to get around to exploring the complicated relationship of Betsy and Kwannon, but I don’t think we get anything very deep here. Ultimately Kwannon forgives Betsy for inhabiting her body for many years and moves along in the role of Psylocke, but it feels more she’s making a legal statement after a court settlement than anything that feels emotionally natural. 

Howard’s writing is still frustrating. She has good ideas and a strong notion of who Betsy Braddock is, and I’m intrigued by her exploring the character by putting her through a series of failures. But the best elements of Excalibur are mostly conceptual, and I think she stumbles through plotting on an issue-to-issue level and in making use of her full ensemble cast. At this stage it’s pretty clear that Excalibur is ultimately a Betsy Braddock solo series with a large supporting cast, and not a proper team book as it’s sold. Rogue, one of the best and most beloved X-Men characters, has spent 20 issues of this series essentially playing the role of “Betsy’s friend” without any real story of her own. Gambit fares even worse, mainly playing the role of “Rogue’s husband.” Jubilee and Rictor get a little more to do, but their stories are presented as minor relative to things directly pertaining to Betsy. 

Unlike the second arc of Marauders in which Gerry Duggan took Kate Pryde off the board and used it as a way of exploring the other characters in the series, Howard took Betsy Braddock out of Excalibur so the other characters could mostly just talk about missing her and trying to bring her back. I like Betsy Braddock a lot, she’s one of my favorite X-Men characters, and don’t mind this sort of focus on her but it’s time for this series to be more honest about what it is. Rogue getting reassigned to Duggan’s new X-Men series is a good sign, both for the good of that character, and for Excalibur moving away from wasting major characters in the orbit of Braddock. 

Howard has clearly made some effort to tell a complete plot in any given issue, at least in terms of setting an obstacle and overcoming it, but for the most part these seem weirdly inconsequential. Maybe part of the problem is how abstract the conflicts tend to be, particularly in a set of issues like these where everything’s so psychic and mystical and not rooted in physicality or social dynamics. Even when this storyline gets a proper antagonist in the form of Malice, the story ends up defeating the concept of the character – a disembodied psychic creature that hijacks bodies – by fleshing out her backstory and giving her a body in the end. Howard aims for pathos in telling Malice’s story, but it mostly just comes across as corny and as a clumsy parallel to Betsy’s own history. 

Marcus To’s art continues to be pleasantly average in scenes that are mostly talking and hanging out, and egregiously bland and flat whenever he’s asked to draw anything particularly fantastical, which is quite often in a series largely focused on fantasy genre scenes and psychic abstractions. Given that Howard’s writing has come off much better when paired with heavyweights Pepe Larraz, R.B. Silva, Phil Noto, and Mahmud Asrar on X of Swords, it’s very likely that these issues would have come across much better if To was not the artist. 

Hellions 7-12
Written by Zeb Wells
Art by Stephen Segovia
Color art by David Curiel

Hellions remains a highlight of the line as Zeb Wells explores some of the most warped X-Men characters with equal measures of dark wit and empathetic nuance. Wells is very good at making sure his eight characters get a roughly even amount of spotlight in any given story but in this run of issues we get a little deeper into the three weirdest cast members – Nanny, Orphan Maker, and Wild Child. The sorta contrived narrative reason for this is that after being resurrected from having died in Arakko the three have come back as “sharpened” versions of themselves, i.e., like even more themselves than they were before. In effect this means that Orphan Maker is even more petulant and childish, Nanny is more vindictive and monomaniacal, and Wild Child struggles with his profound primal urge to be an alpha while consistently finding himself in situations where he most definitely is not. Wells gets a particularly good scene out of this subplot in the Hellfire Gala issue in which Wild Child runs into his ex-girlfriend Aurora and finds that not only is she embarrassed by her past association with him, but she’s also with Daken, a bigger and more obviously alpha version of Wild Child. Wells manages to take the character’s plight - rooted in toxic masculinity and powerful incel vibes - and make it weirdly poignant without making him come across any less creepy and psychotic. 

Wells’ plotting is strong, particularly in the run of issues in which the cast is held captive by Arcade and Mastermind, but the pleasure of this series is in the genuinely funny dialogue and the way Wells gradually deepens the relationships between these demented and/or broken weirdos. Greycrow in particular has benefited from this as he demonstrated a fraternal warmth towards Wild Child, a respectful comradery with Havok, and a slow-simmering romantic chemistry with Psylocke. The broader question of the series is “can these people change and be rehabilitated?” and the ongoing story of Greycrow suggest that he can be if he continues to forge real connections rather than maintain an icy loner lifestyle that allowed him to see other people’s lives as useless and disposable.

Havok’s role in the series is to essentially be the “straight man” among the lunatics, but Wells does a good job of making it clear that he’s just as broken as the rest. In the Gala issue we are reminded that any status Havok has is due to him being Cyclops’ brother, and that authority figures like Xavier and Magneto seem to view him as a pathetic figure they must be superficially kind to as a favor to Cyclops. This feeds into the character’s delusion that he doesn’t belong amongst the Hellions, but also fuels the years of sudden volcanic anger and bad choices sparked by rampant insecurity that’s put him in this position.

For Your Life

“X of Swords: Chapter 14”
Marauders #15
Written by Gerry Duggan and Benjamin Percy
Art by Stefano Caselli
Color art by Edgar Delgado

“X of Swords: Chapter 15”
Excalibur #14
Written by Tini Howard 
Art by Phil Noto

“X of Swords: Chapter 16”
Wolverine #7
Written by Benjamin Percy and Gerry Duggan
Art by Joshua Cassara
Color art by Guru-eFX

And now the story gets a little weird! But of course, “weird” is a human word…

• Marauders picks up on last week’s cliffhanger in the most jarring way possible, zooming ahead to the aftermath of Wolverine murdering Saturnyne – the inevitable conquest of Krakoa and the rest of Earth by the forces of Arakko and Amenth. But of course Saturnyne is seemingly omnipotent in her realm, and so she’s only just messing with Wolverine and showing him the actual stakes of the situation. This all supports the notion that it’s in Saturnyne’s interest to defeat the Arakkii and flush the influence of Amenth out of Otherworld lest they inevitably conquer the rest of her domain, but Saturnyne’s actions over the course of three issues complicate matters further by capriciously rigging the contests against the Krakoan swordbearers in increasingly absurd ways. She’s playing a game, but it’s hard to tell exactly what it is. 

• Marauders #15 continues on from last week’s issue in further developing the characters from Arakko at the banquet before the contest. The White Sword’s tension with the family of Apocalypse and Genesis is highlighted by his utter disgust for War attempting to poison her opponents at the parley, while Redroot and Death ponder the ways living in a far less horrific world has made the X-Men “weak and soft.” It’s remarkable how familiar these characters and their milieu have become over the past few weeks – it’s all so rich that it would be a shame to see some of them go at the end of this story. 

• We get our first glimpse of Death’s mutant power as he murders a servant with a glare at the banquet. This scene is handled very well by Stefano Caselli, who paces it very nicely and conveys how effortless and meaningless this gesture is for Death. It’s interesting that this power is only a minor variation on that of Gorgon, who also hides his eyes to hold back his own version of a death gaze. (And of course this carries over to Cyclops, though he’s not in this story.) 

• Isca the Unbeaten is further developed in both Marauders and Excalibur, in both cases suggesting that she’s a decent person who feels inclined to spare her opponents the inevitability of her victory. It’s increasingly obvious Isca is going to be hanging around the X-Men for a while after this, and I welcome it. She has so much potential, and the concept and design of her is so strong.

• Excalibur #14 begins the contest phase of the storyline and immediately upends all expectations by giving us an abrupt anticlimax in the duel of Betsy Braddock and Isca and then a forced marriage rather than a battle. Betsy’s apparent death in her fight with Isca is strange and abstract, and also unrelated to any power we know Isca to possess besides that she wins any battle she’s in, so it seems very likely whatever happened to her is the intervention of Saturnyne’s magic or perhaps her brother Jamie’s reality-warping power. 

• The forced marriage of Cypher and Bei the Blood Moon is a wild curveball, but makes sense if Saturnyne’s true goal is to weed out the Amenthi influence on the Arakkii and get the Krakoans and Arrakkii on the same page – i.e., purging Amenth from Otherworld. This sequence is a lot of fun, and I love that Bei is able to “speak” in a way that is intuitively comprehensible to everyone else but is by technicality indecipherable to him as a result of his power. So of course he’s fascinated by Bei, and though Bei’s thoughts on the matter are opaque she seems pretty enthusiastic about marrying – and violently protecting – this cute little golden-hearted dork. But still, as amusing as it is for this tall warrior woman to embrace the notion of marrying him, it’s hard to grasp why given the limited information we have about her life. 

• The Wolverine issue pushes the absurdity of Saturnyne’s competition to another level, first by making Magik’s battle against the monstrous Pogg Ur-Pogg an arm wrestling match she cannot possibly win, and then by having Wolverine kill Summoner in the surreal realm of Blightspoke and having the point go to Arakko because they were told it was a fight to the death and Summoner was the one to die. Then Wolverine is roped into another duel as a result of the agreement he made with Solem off-panel earlier in the story, and when Wolverine defeats War in battle, the point also goes to Arakko. Saturnyne is plainly rigging the contest against Krakoa… but why exactly? It makes sense for her to want to mess with Wolverine and Betsy specifically, but what is she actually up to? I suppose we’ll get that reveal next week. 

History

“X of Swords: Chapter 9” 
Excalibur #13
Written by Tini Howard
Art by R.B. Silva
Color art by Nolan Woodard

“X of Swords: Chapter 10”
X-Men #13
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Mahmud Asrar
Color art by Sunny Gho

• This issue of Excalibur features guest art by R.B. Silva, who turns in his last X-Men interior pages for the foreseeable future as he moves on to become the regular artist on Fantastic Four. His work here is typically excellent and brings the grandeur, atmosphere, melodrama, and romanticism that’s in Tini Howard’s stories but missing from usual artist Marcus To’s pages. Howard’s plot moves along the macro story of X of Swords but plays out like a self-contained fairytale in which Saturnyne pits Betsy and Brian Braddock against one another in a ploy to strip Betsy of the mantle of Captain Britain and return it to her beloved Brian, but it all backfires on her in the end. By the end of the issue Betsy is affirmed as the one true Captain Britain and wields Saturnyne’s Starlight Sword, and Brian becomes Captain Avalon, retains his Sword of Might, and is given a new role as the protector of his brother Jamie’s realm in Otherworld. It’s a happy ending, at least for now. Howard’s narration at the end doesn’t bode well for the Braddocks. 

• X-Men #13 is more of a fable. The story is mainly focused on a flashback to Apocalypse’s life on Okkara that fills us in on what his wife Genesis was like, and shows us what actually happened as she and their children took off with Arrako into Amenth. The story we’ve seen before, which presented Apocalypse as a more decisive and heroic figure, is inverted – he was left behind by Genesis, who deemed him not strong enough to join them. His mission over all these years was given to him, to make the world strong enough to stand against the hordes of Amenth. Suddenly everything about Apocalypse makes sense, and the power-hungry despot is now a tragic romantic figure. 

• This issue establishes that the mask of Annihilation effectively is Annihilation – or, more accurately, the Golden Helm of Amenth. The wearer of the helm controls the hordes of Amenth, but the helm controls the wearer, which must be fit enough to be worthy of it. Apocalypse must face the avatar of his own cruel survival-of-the-fittest ethos, and likely rescue his beloved wife from its influence. It’s hard to imagine he’ll make it through this; it would feel like a cheat for this to not end in tragedy for the newly sympathetic archvillain. 

• Mahmud Asrar shifts his art style a bit for this issue – his linework is a bit thicker with chunkier blacks and more negative space, occasionally somewhat resembling the style of Mike Mignola. This is very effective in his depiction of the Golden Helm of Amenth and his evocative renderings of Okkara and war with the creatures of the dark world. Asrar is particularly good at conveying Apocalypse’s deep, centuries-old sorrow. His enormous bulk, once so intimidating, now looks like a manifestation of his overcompensation, and of the incredible weight of the loneliness and grief he carries with him. The first panel of the penultimate page, in which we see him looking down at his reflection in a pool of water before gathering the parts of his sword The Scarab, is a moment where we see him in a fully honest moment. There’s no one to observe him, no audience for his shows of strength, and so you see him without the clarity of purpose that was driving him for ages. In that panel he’s a sad old man who has been betrayed by his lost children, and must face the possibility that he’s wasted his long life. 

Creation

“Creation”
X of Swords: Creation
Written by Jonathan Hickman and Tini Howard
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia

I’m shifting format slightly for this one, this is all going to be in “some notes” format.

• Pepe Larraz’s return to X-Men a little over a year after the end of House of X is as auspicious as it ought to be – the triple-sized opening chapter of a major crossover, as befitting an artist who has emerged as a defining – and more importantly redefining – artist on this franchise. Larraz’s pages here are top quality and play to his strengths in world-building and his raw talent for drawing evocative environments, nuanced body language, thoughtful page layouts, and perfectly paced and composed dramatic moments. It feels like a gift to read pages as well illustrated as this – the level of craft is above and beyond, particularly in a thing like the opening panel of the issue in which he effectively depicts a vast army with incredible elegance and economy of line. 

• The issue re-uses, recontextualizes, and in some cases alters the pages previously seen in the Free Comic Book Day special promoting this event. The tarot reading sequence feels right as the proper beginning of the story rather than merely a trailer for it, and I appreciate them using the obscure mutant Tarot’s interpretation of the cards drawn as a text page. It’s a clever bit of hand-holding for those of us who are either only dimly aware of tarot or totally ignorant. It’s interesting to note that the figures on The Hanged Man card have been changed somewhat – Banshee to Siryn, Glob to Rockslide, Trinary to Summoner – but I suppose that’s simply a result of plot revision. 

• Archangel was mostly played as a joke in his Angel persona in Empyre: X-Men, so it’s nice to see him depicted more seriously in this story, where his extremely fraught relationship with Apocalypse is foregrounded to highlight that while he’s essentially the protagonist of this crossover the X-Men have a very bad history of being traumatized by him. 

• It’s also nice to see Monet once again at the forefront of a story, as she drives much of the action plot in the second half of the issue in which the X-Men confront Saturnyne. Between this, House of X, Empyre X-Men, and Giant Size X-Men: Storm, Monet has been positioned as a major X-Men character and this makes a lot of sense – she’s a character with a big personality and a diverse list of extraordinary powers, making her an obvious person to place on the front lines of any battle. I like the way the typically haughty Monet is set up as a foil to the even haughtier Saturnyne here, and her casual mention that she’d be interested in taking Saturnyne’s job at some point. Maybe that’s just a funny line, or maybe it’s foreshadowing – we’ll just have to wait and see. 

• In the lead-up to X of Swords we were led to believe that Apocalypse was the one pulling all the strings, but as we see in this issue he’s been manipulated just as much as he’s been manipulating the mutants of Krakoa. His Caesar-esque betrayal by Summoner and his the Horsemen is hardly a surprise but still hits with some emotional resonance and we’re fully aware of what a crushing disappointment this is for Apocalypse after centuries of waiting to be reunited with his lost family. And of course, at the end of this issue we see that Saturnyne has been playing everyone all along, and has set up a conflict for her amusement or potential gain in which he’s only just a pawn. It looks like a big part of this story will be Apocalypse being forced into true humility. 

• At least a third of this story is rooted in the Captain Britain mythos developed by Alan Davis, Alan Moore, and Chris Claremont in the 1980s – most obviously the presence of two Captains Britain in Betsy and Brian Braddock, but also Saturnyne, the Starlight Citadel, and Otherworld. The map of Otherworld is intriguing, with references to expected characters like Jamie Braddock, Roma, and Merlyn, but also a few somewhat unexpected characters from this mythos like Mad Jim Jaspers and The Fury. The most surprising thing here is the suggestion that the missing all-powerful omega mutant Absolon “Mister M” Mercator is most likely the “unknown” regent of a realm called Mercator.

• The biggest curveball in this opening chapter by far is the revelation at the end of the issue that somehow S.W.O.R.D., the intergalactic intelligence agency created by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday in Astonishing X-Men, is somehow part of Saturnyne’s scheme. I can barely even speculate on how that fits into all this with Arrako and Amenth and Otherworld, but I like the feeling of having no idea where this plot is going. 

• As the issue ends we learn that the macguffin driving the plot of this crossover will be some kind of tournament between the swordbearers of Arrako and Krakoa, and we’re given the name of ten swords that will be wielded by X-Men who’ve been indicated on either the Ten of Swords card in the reading early in the issue or the covers of forthcoming issues.

Some of the swords are obvious – Magik possesses the Soul Sword, Cable recently acquired The Light of Galador in his solo series, Cypher is bonded with Warlock. The Sword of Might would be Brian Braddock and the Starlight Sword would be Betsy Braddock. Skybreaker would be for Storm and The Scarab would be for Apocalypse given their respective themes as characters. Gorgon has a history with Grasscutter and Godkiller in previous Hickman comics, and I would assume Magneto would take the latter if just for the pompous name. Muramasa, a blade infused with Wolverine’s soul, is obviously meant for him, which is troubling as that one also appears as the 11th sword of Arrako. Hmmm.

A Crooked World

“The Unspeakable and the Uneatable I and II,” “Schools of Magic,”
“A Crooked World,” “Blood of the Changeling,” “The Beginning”
Excalibur #7-12
Written by Tini Howard
Art by Marcus To (8-12) and Ed Santos (7, 8)
Color art by Erick Arciniega

The break in publishing as a result of the pandemic was rough on all of the series in the Dawn of X line, but I think it had the worst impact on Excalibur as it was entering a run of issues introducing Saturnyne and Otherworld that demanded a more immediate memory of a fairly tangled narrative web involving multiple realities. I think Howard’s story is relatively straightforward in its plot beats, but the plain aesthetics of Marcus To and Erick Arciniega’s art get in her way by doing pretty much nothing at all to give the reader visual cues that we are looking at different realities, which makes the story more difficult to follow as a casual reader than it ought to be. Arciniega could have done a lot to get this across, but no – the colors are basic and utterly devoid of vibes. To’s art is fine with fundamentals and quite good when it comes to rendering faces, but he seems entirely incapable of drawing compelling backgrounds or conveying atmosphere, which is a big problem on a fantasy series. He’d be fine on most mainline Marvel books or even on another current X-Men series like New Mutants or X-Factor, but he continues to hobble Howard’s ambitious ideas. 

The good news is that in Excalibur #12 Howard pays off on the majority of the narrative threads she’d been seeding through the first 11 issues of the series. The issue centers on Apocalypse as he and Rictor enact a ritual creating a gateway to the long-lost Arrako, with Gambit unknowingly completing the spell by dispatching the disembodied form of his old enemy Candra. The plot is satisfying enough, particularly as lead-in to X of Swords, but the best thing here is Howard’s thoughtful characterization of Apocalypse. 

Her Apocalypse is blithe in his monomaniacal pursuit of reaching Arrako, expertly exploiting everyone – his old friends the Externals, his new coven in Excalibur, Saturnyne of Otherworld – to get what he needs. The reader is encouraged to side with Apocalypse in terms of his goals but to also reckon with the degree to which he is a sociopath. In this issue we see exactly what becomes of people when they stop being of use to him, and it opens up the question of what will happen when Excalibur – or the Quiet Council of Krakoa – is no longer of value to his quest. She and Hickman are very much on the same page with Apocalypse, and I think it’s clear that this nuanced redefinition of the character will end up being part of the legacy of this run of comics that makes it into Marvel’s movie universe down the line.

The Reading

X-Men: Free Comic Book Day 2020
Written by Jonathan Hickman and Tini Howard
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia

Every year Marvel issues a special Free Comic Book Day comic designed to hype up whatever major event is coming along, and the headlining story in this year’s edition is basically a trailer teasing the first X-Men crossover of the Hickman era, X of Swords. Even aside from hyping up the next big arc, this issue is exciting if just because it reunites Hickman with Pepe Larraz, the artist of House of X. The two have a remarkable creative chemistry, and Larraz has asserted himself as the definitive artist of this X-era. The pages, which rely heavily on his gift for character design and evocative environments, feel like home. 

The familiarity of Larraz’s line is helpful in grounding the issue, which otherwise pushes the reader off the deep end into unfamiliar territory. The opening pages introduce Apocalypse’s original Horsemen, who he lost when Okkara was split into Krakoa and Arakko centuries ago. I’m not certain exactly what happens in these pages, but it establishes them as powerful and brutal characters who seek Opal Luna Saturnyne, the Omniversal Majestrix of Otherworld. There’s certainly some missing threads here, but the Horsemen and the lost island of Arakko being connected to Otherworld makes more sense of Apocalypse’s machinations through Tini Howard’s Excalibur series. It’s all starting to click together. 

The remainder of the issue teases out the rest of the story as Saturnyne does a tarot reading to get a sense of what may be coming to her. Hickman, Howard, and Larraz provide a feast for speculation, particularly in the final three cards. I’m not going to indulge in that for now, but I will say I’m quite pleased that Archangel, Banshee, and Penance are being positioned as prominent characters in this story after being largely absent from the first wave of Dawn of X books, and that Storm seems to have a major plotline in this arc. This, along with Giant Size X-Men making Storm central to the ongoing Children of the Vault thread, gives me hope that after many years of being sidelined we may be entering a phase when Storm is restored to her proper place as a crucial character in this franchise. 

The Accolade of Betsy Braddock

“The Accolade of Betsy Braddock” / “A Tower of Flowers” / “Three Covenants” / “Fall Back and Think of England!” / “Panic on the Streets of London” / “Watch the Throne” 
Excalibur #1-6
Written by Tini Howard
Art by Marcus To
Color art by Erick Arciniega

Serial stories don’t always click right away, but you can usually tell when an ongoing story has the potential to grow into something better as it goes along. Tini Howard’s Excalibur series seems like one of those to me. Howard is relatively new to writing for comics, and while she hardly comes off as green, it’s clear enough that she’s still in the process of learning on the job and finding her voice. In working on this series she’s essentially being mentored by Jonathan Hickman, and as she is now she reminds me a lot of Hickman when he himself was being mentored by Brian Michael Bendis in the early days of his career at Marvel. You can sense intelligence, passion, and ambition in the writing, but it’s muffled somewhat. Howard is good with dialogue and clever with her concepts, but there’s something missing or buried in the mix at the moment. My theory is that in playing “by the book” in pacing her plot in these issues, she’s denying a more peculiar personal narrative rhythm that would be more enticing. But you need to master the rules to break them well, so maybe that’s just what this arc is for her. 

Excalibur is the series in the new X-Men line that is exploring the concept of “mutant magic,” and is expanding on ideas set in motion by Jonathan Hickman that reimagine Apocalypse as a mutant mystic with ancient scores to settle. These elements of the plot are very interesting and entertaining, and I particularly enjoy the way Howard portrays Apocalypse as a man with an elaborate agenda that involves constantly manipulating the Excalibur crew to his own advantage, but also as a figure who is generally benevolent to the other leads despite having been their archenemy up until recently. 

The series is also about Betsy Braddock taking on her twin brother Brian’s role as Captain Britain in the wake of her ceding her identity as Psylocke to her former host body Kwannon following them splitting off into two separate people. Betsy has been one of my favorite X-Men characters for a long time, but I’m pretty cold on this version of the character – largely because I’ve never found the Captain Britain mythos at all interesting, but also because a lot of the body horror and complex identity issues that went along with the baggage of her living in another woman’s body was very intriguing to me. The version of Betsy in this story feels like someone different from the character I had some investment in. She’s more of an ordinary superhero now.

But as much as I’m personally bored by the Captain Britain-ness of it all, Howard hits those marks with full commitment. I appreciate how fully she’s leaping into the fantasy elements of this series, but feel that her efforts are undermined by Marcus To’s art. To is a strong draftsman who is particularly good at drawing body language and facial expressions, but his work lacks style and flair. His pages are highly functional but sort of drab and ordinary, and do a poor job of conveying the exotic beauty of Krakoa or the more spectacular fairytale imagery he’s called upon to illustrate when the story goes full-on fantasy. There’s no poetry in his linework. He’d probably do well with a more traditional comic series that focused more on comedy or soap opera, but he’s all wrong for a book like this which needs you to buy into high drama and wild imagery. 

This problem reminds me of the early phase of Chris Claremont’s work on the original New Mutants series, where he was paired with industry legend Sal Buscema for about a year before Bill Sienkiewicz took over and radically redefined the style and tone of the book. Buscema, like To, was an incredibly talented draftsman with a clean and old-fashioned style. But his dependable style was at odds with the aims of the series – it was stodgy instead of youthful. Sienkiewicz’s offbeat and highly distinctive style brought out the tensions in the series, and opened Claremont up to exploring elements of horror and abstraction that added a new dimension to a comic about mutant teenagers. Howard’s Excalibur needs this sort of aesthetic shift. The mysticism needs to be emphasized with atmosphere and style. It should feel more surreal, more fantastic. To is far from a bad artist, but he’s not serving the material well and gets in the way of the reader fully believing in Howard’s magic.