I rarely, if ever, buy any Marvel Comics in the X-Men vein. People talk about how screwed up DC’s continuity is, or how crazy the multiverse is, but I prefer that to the constantly rotating cast and years-long story lines of the Marvel X-books. I tried jumping into the X-Men back when Jean Grey was brought back to life (I think it was in X-Factor) years back. I tried again when Joss Whedon started writing his X-Men book (I forget the modifier on that one: Astonishing? Uncanny? Gah.). I rarely last very long.

However, there was one sorta X-book I liked. And the reason I liked it was because it was mostly divorced from the baggage of the other X-books. In fact, it wasn’t really an X-book at all, to me. I loved Excalibur. I liked the art, I liked the writing, I liked that it didn’t crossover with the other X-books (at first). Plus, it had characters that seemed more like friends: Captain Britain, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde), a version of Phoenix, and others. You can read more about Excalibur over at Wikipedia.

It didn’t hurt that Chris Claremont was writing, with the great Alan Davis on the art. It was a good match: Claremont hadn’t yet totally burned out and Davis is always a good choice for any comic, in my opinion (I loved his Batman and Robin run in Detective Comics, which was perhaps the last time Batman was somewhat well adjusted, and you should really read his two DC Elseworld books: Justice League of America: The Nail and Justice League of America : Another Nail). Together, Claremont and Davis made Excalibur a must buy for this DC Comics guy.

The Excalibur heroes had a lot of Marvel multiverse adventures and was fairly lighthearted in tone, much like the Keith Giffen Justice League series. But, eventually, Davis left the series, followed about a year later by Claremont, and the series floundered. Davis returned briefly to both write and draw the series, and it returned to being fun, but after his left the second time, I lost all interest.

Now we have New Excalibur #1 with Claremont writing, but no Davis. Instead Michael Ryan handles the art. And while I really really really wanted to like this comic, I just can’t: it doesn’t seem like it’s Excalibur at all. It’s just another X-Men book. Plus, it stars the lamest superhero since Vibe: Dazzler. Whereas Vibe is a goofy-talking, break-dancing, earth-vibrating himbo, Dazzler is a disco-loving, pink-haired, light-producing bimbo. Those two should have a baby.

Anyhow, there’s only one person I know on this whole team: Captain Britain. We do get cameos from former members Nightcrawler (who drops off a alternate Earth version of his daughter, Nocturne), Shadowcat (whatever Kitty is calling herself these days), Lockheed the dragon, Rachel Summers (one of the various Phoenixes), and some John Constantine ripoff who appeared in the latter days of one of the Excalibur series, Pete Wisdom. We also get some evil versions of the X-Men running around. They kill Dazzler, but she gets better. And in the end we get introduced to Lex Luthor! Okay, maybe not. He’s really just an evil version of Professor X.

I guess I should have mentioned that this whole series seems to be a spinoff of the House of M event, which I had no desire to read. It also appears to be part of something called Decimation, which, if we are lucky, will mean that this series will last only 10 issues.

Truthfully, I think I would have liked this comic had it been called something else. It reads more like and issue of X-Men than Excalibur. One issue in and I already feel my brain being squeezed from all the pretentiousness and seriousness of the comic. I was hoping for something a little lighter and funnier, but this is all violence and darkness.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 11th, 2005 at 9:01 pm and is filed under Marvel Comics, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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