Excalibur #23 - Review with Spoilers

[Rzerox21xx]

Why do you and others do yourselves that wickedness? If the book is trash, it's not as if it will improve by leaps and bounds in just one issue.
While the recent plots have been interesting and To's art (which I've always loved) is on point...Tini's Tics are still very much present if not as prevalent.

I say cut your losses and save yourselves the misery and money.

Yeah you probably right, I been buying too many books and need to cut back. i would have heavy weaks make me feel overwhelmed

[Rnap22]

This book’s pacing is so off. As always, there are a lot of elements I like, but pacing issues and plot points are always off to me. Even an issue that I think is good is still majorly painful.

Doom repeating over and over that they are there to serve him and are there for his task was just odd. I hope it was a Doom Bot. And Betsy shouldn’t be his alternative after Storm showed him the door. Haha

[RealEyesRealizeRealLies77]

Decided to dip my toe back in on this issue and the waters still feeling tepid but warming up.The highlights were definitely the banter between Doom,CB & Mad Jim.I liked the assertiveness from Betsy and that she wouldn't back down from Doom,even though I wanted her to slip in a dig on the marriage. Enjoyed seeing assassins from Sevalith as I'm interested in seeing more of the other kingdoms.Interested in Mordred possibly being a mutant but really hope that the story's more nuanced than just being an evil mutant.Slight improvement since I dropped it but pacing issues continue.I was excited when Gambit was going to be up to his usual shenanigans but trying to slip that Saturnyne card in the game when it obviously doesn't match,the silliness of it doused my excitement completely.He is too skilled & masterful to do something that foolish,ugh.How the hell does every member of Generation X have better control & understanding of their powers than Jubilee?She's still shooting piffs & paffs like when she debuted.At least she didn't have Shogo attached to the hip this time & kinda did something....with faeries,even though Meggan is one herself.A Redroot appearance would have given it an extra notch though & the crack on Rictor crushing on Big Bads had me rolling!

[Iron Maiden]

Best issue of the series so far by far. As i said in the Doom thread it was like X-men meets final fantasy meets black clover. Doom was missing some of his subtly and felt like a doombot turned on high but it still worked. I have to say this was like reading the rpg i never know i needed. Very very fun issue. Gambit was very entertaining as well and the art was on point given once again how many locations were shown. Very very fun read. And apparently Rictor can speak to grass now.

Yeah, Doom was way too cranky here. Even though he was hitting on Betsy I think Morgan is still a better fit for the character. i loved their interaction in Christopher Cantwell's Doctor Doom series





I was disappointed that Tini Howard didn't have Meggan acknowledge that Doom rescued her from Hell in the Captain Britain and the MI 13 annual

[pkingdom]

Mordred showed up very recently in the Black Knight mini, the same mini that ended with foreshadowing to that X-men/Black Knight one-shot that got announced a few days ago. The one about Black Knight trying to prevent demons from possessing the X-men.

Mordred being a mutant would be so weird. There's just a lot to unpack and places it could go, and Tini has consistently disappointed and accidentally made her protagonists act like the villains in Excalibur and X-corp. But it would go a step further to explain why so much of Otherworld doesn't like mutants. Between Mordred and Arrako, mutants have really messed with Otherworld, apparently.

Just in general, I'm not a fan of retconing characters into being mutants, especially in this recent era. If Mordred is another evil ancient mutants, then that's another example of all of the early, 'first' and ancient mutants being evil monsters, which has been pretty messy with all the persecution history. This isn't the place to really get into that talk again, but its bad when all the oldest mutants in the world are mass murderers, would-be conquerors and monsters.

[Thundershot]

So…. Merlin and Merlyn are two different characters, right?

[JB]

Yeah, Doom was way too cranky here. Even though he was hitting on Betsy I think Morgan is still a better fit for the character. i loved their interaction in Christopher Cantwell's Doctor Doom series

That's a really nice scene, thanks for sharing it.

I thought it was cute how they kept making fun of Doom getting his things from his ex's place.

So…. Merlin and Merlyn are two different characters, right?

I've always been a little confused by that. From Marvel wiki:
"The name Merlin refers to many beings across the Omniverse. It primarily refers to Merlyn of Otherworld, a gestalt entity made up of each reality's Merlin. His powers of illusion and his deceitful nature make it difficult to separate his actions as an omniversal chess player from those of his less manipulative seeming counterparts who each aided a King Arthur and empowered a member of the Captain Britain Corps."

[WallStreeter]

So…. Merlin and Merlyn are two different characters, right?

Same character!

[Wolverine12]

Solid issue today. It was fun seeing Doom stomp around with the Excalibur squad.

[Psyknight]

It was average, which is an improvement. Betsy’s interactions with Doom were decent. Her costume looked nice. The overall plot is dull. The rest of team is just there as usual.

[Knightmare]

Its Spurrier’s mini so it’s probably come up in whatever passes for writer conferences

That said, even for someone as purposely uninterested in british mythology as myself, the story in the mini is rather iffy (eg, Thor is somehow leading Norse raiders on Camelot, instead of that other Thor-worshipping crowd)

It's not the first time!

Thor: Heaven & Earth #4

Yeah, Doom was way too cranky here. Even though he was hitting on Betsy I think Morgan is still a better fit for the character. i loved their interaction in Christopher Cantwell's Doctor Doom series I was disappointed that Tini Howard didn't have Meggan acknowledge that Doom rescued her from Hell in the Captain Britain and the MI 13 annual

Yeah Tini has selective memory when it comes to continuity. Before Meggan was just mutant, now she's a mutant fairy! Don't ask how, since both her parents were human/mutant. Also Mad Jim Jaspers is no longer mad, and is now alive for some reason, along with the Fury which is taking orders now and is also alive somehow. The icing on the cake, Merlin is back to being full evil for some reason. Don't ask for any explanations, you won't get any.!

I've given up figuring out how many retcons this series has introduced and am just going with the flow now.

[Thundershot]

I thought Meggan was something different… From the Alan Davis Excalibur, I thought she was connected to the… can’t remember the name of the creatures. They were also in Wolverine Bloodlust. I always thought she wasn’t a mutant. Was that confirmed later?

[Knightmare]

I thought Meggan was something different… From the Alan Davis Excalibur, I thought she was connected to the… can’t remember the name of the creatures. They were also in Wolverine Bloodlust. I always thought she wasn’t a mutant. Was that confirmed later?

Do you mean this dude, the Neuri? She's not related to them, but they do share some of the same abilities. Meggan didn't start out as a mutant, but was later retconned into one along with her father. Because it was really early in her history, before the character made it to US shores, she been one longer than she hasn't so it's not really a problem.

[ermac]

Yeah Tini has selective memory when it comes to continuity. Before Meggan was just mutant, now she's a mutant fairy! Don't ask how, since both her parents were human/mutant. Also Mad Jim Jaspers is no longer mad, and is now alive for some reason, along with the Fury which is taking orders now and is also alive somehow. The icing on the cake, Merlin is back to being full evil for some reason. Don't ask for any explanations, you won't get any.!

I've given up figuring out how many retcons this series has introduced and am just going with the flow now.

I've felt this way since X of Swords started to show us more of Otherworld. It had a lot of differences from what we knew but nobody cares to explain what happened.

[king of hybrids]

It's not the first time!

Thor: Heaven & Earth #4

There’s is probably something fascinating to be said about the cultural blind spot even in the more deconstructive takes on Arthurian tales about where the Anglo-Saxons/English fit into things in a mythos originating with the Welsh and Bretons

I’m going to be honest, since Howard seems to be the writer who has most unironically treated having an X-gene as a moral blank cheque; I’m really not enthused about Mordred becoming a mutant

And I’m suddenly very nervous that the Black Knight/X-Men team-up by Spurrier is going to put Faiza on Howard’s radar