Excalibur [20] : Review and Spoilers

[ZephyrSurf]

This whole serie has agreat ideas, but execution is always awful

It's just so ridiculously tone deaf.

[Kingdom X]

They never address why Alice is suicidal. They never even really hint at it.

This was seriously off (and low-key offensive to me). Tini was basically like let’s throw in something dark like a suicide plot without any sort of real depth or exploration. Betsy has enough history with mental illness that they could have just explored that between her and Kwannon without randomly adding this backstory in.

[ZephyrSurf]

This was seriously off (and low-key offensive to me). Tini was basically like let’s throw in something dark like a suicide plot without any sort of real depth or exploration. Betsy has enough history with mental illness that they could have just explored that between her and Kwannon without randomly adding this backstory in.

I wouldn't mind them going at it from a third party perspective. But they never spend any time actually addressing Malice's issues. She's just suicidal and nobody even bothers to ask her how she's feeling, much less why she feels the way she does.

[Rang10]

It's just so ridiculously tone deaf.

A complete disservice for mental illness and suicide.

[Basilisk]

Didn’t view Malice as suicidal in this issue. She was a teenager who like many of us was revolting against her parents and her life. Her mutant power split her from her body and unaware of how to control her power and in the heat of the moment thought it was easier on her mom if she just was believed to be dead. She then traveled the world possessing others but always being a parasite that was ultimately evicted. That would warp anyone’s perspective. After her possession often White Queen it was clear what Xavier had planned for her and truthfully who would blame her what she chose. If the option was death or life in the “pit” I think I would choose death as well. Who would choose to be incarcerated with no chance for parole.

[jwatson]

Didn’t view Malice as suicidal in this issue. She was a teenager who like many of us was revolting against her parents and her life. Her mutant power split her from her body and unaware of how to control her power and in the heat of the moment thought it was easier on her mom if she just was believed to be dead. She then traveled the world possessing others but always being a parasite that was ultimately evicted. That would warp anyone’s perspective. After her possession often White Queen it was clear what Xavier had planned for her and truthfully who would blame her what she chose. If the option was death or life in the “pit” I think I would choose death as well. Who would choose to be incarcerated with no chance for parole.

I enjoy the issue but when someone says they want to die several times. And the activation of her powers was when she screamed she wanted to die She may have a problem with actually wanting to die. Her mother seems nice, this wasn't a new emotion, whatever the problem is it's definitely internal. At the very least we know she always felt unwanted despite obviously being wanted.

[Uncanny X-Man]

Didn’t view Malice as suicidal in this issue.

Considering they shared the number of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at the end of the issue, I'd say that's exactly what Howard was going for here.

[Saturius]

I liked this but didn't like the Malice origin story. Too basic.

[Hulkout42]

A complete disservice for mental illness and suicide.

I was thinking the same tbh, it made me feel like they didn't have a good handle on such a topic and just shoe horned it in to elevate Braddock and Psylocke.

[ZephyrSurf]

Didn’t view Malice as suicidal in this issue. She was a teenager who like many of us was revolting against her parents and her life. Her mutant power split her from her body and unaware of how to control her power and in the heat of the moment thought it was easier on her mom if she just was believed to be dead. She then traveled the world possessing others but always being a parasite that was ultimately evicted. That would warp anyone’s perspective. After her possession often White Queen it was clear what Xavier had planned for her and truthfully who would blame her what she chose. If the option was death or life in the “pit” I think I would choose death as well. Who would choose to be incarcerated with no chance for parole.

She didn't even try to dissuade them from throwing her in the pit. She was like "All for it, so long as the feelings stop."

Her power activated when she was screaming about wanting to die and turned her actual body into a corpse

The issue ends with the suicide hotline

She's super obviously suicidal

[Havok83]

She didn't even try to dissuade them from throwing her in the pit. She was like "All for it, so long as the feelings stop."

Her power activated when she was screaming about wanting to die and turned her actual body into a corpse

The issue ends with the suicide hotline

She's super obviously suicidal

Yeah they couldnt have been more obvious

[pkingdom]

This wasn't a bad story, just kind of confusing on every level. Was anyone asking for a Malice origin story? Why is this happening in Excalibur, with Betsy and Kwannon being so gung ho about saving Malice? Its like a weird filler episode stuffed into the middle of Excalibur. Wouldn't this entire plot make more sense in X-Factor? Polaris also has more of a history with being possessed by Malice multiple times, so if it had been her dedicated to saving Malice it would have had more weight. And again, Malice is threatened with the pit when she wasn't even the most evil person in the room. Just so random.

I completely missed the suicide implications and now that I've seen you all mention it, biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig yikes.

[Basilisk]

As I get all the X-men titles that is the one page that I completely ignore and don’t read. Think that should have been on one of the data pages as it would have stood out more

[Rnap22]

I always figured Claremont intended for Malice to be much more long-lived and experienced than Howard is presenting now. Certainly it's hard to picture this issue's Malice leading the Marauders like she did.

Not sure what you mean by Malice and Lorna having the same frequency... paraphrasing from Sinister at the time, he said Lorna had a lot more "malice" in her than she herself suspected. I always took it to mean that either Lorna had a strong potential for evil (and it's certainly something we've seen after that) or that there was indeed a connection between her and Malice to explain why the latter couldn't unbind herself from Lorna.



To be fair Leah Williams was the first to introduce this in her Age of X mini. I think it's a decent enough topic to possibly explore and doesn't necessarily contradict anything we know about Betts. I think you can dislike your body but also not want to get rid of it completely the first chance you get to recreate it out of psyonic energy but rather remake it with whatever cosmetic changes you'd want to make (thinner waist? Bigger boobs? More muscle mass?)

Sinister says that her energy matrix (malice) and lorna’s magnetic powers created a bond that was supposed to be permanent.

If I could recreated my body out of psionic energy, I’d get rid of my little belly I’ve been trying to get rid. I would figure Betsy would do the same with whatever her body issues were/are.

[Kingdom X]

Sinister says that her energy matrix (malice) and lorna’s magnetic powers created a bond that was supposed to be permanent.

If I could recreated my body out of psionic energy, I’d get rid of my little belly I’ve been trying to get rid. I would figure Betsy would do the same with whatever her body issues were/are.

That wouldn’t apply if Betsy has body dysmorphia though. She could look perfect, but her perception of herself would still be skewed.