EXCALIBUR: THE SWORD IS DRAWN

Nightcrawler, Shadowcat and others join forces to take up Xavier's dream!

By Chris Claremont, Alan Davis, Paul Neary, Mark Farmer and Tom Orzechowski, Edited by Ann Nocenti

Originally Published April 1988

(This post was originally featured on the Uncanny X-Cerpts Patreon and may be subject to formatting issues)

Following the deaths of the X-Men in Dallas, Kitty Pryde remains at Muir Island. Understandably, she's been a little distressed and is finding it hard to get a good night's sleep. This is made all the worse when an otherworldly makeup department accosts her to ready her for her time on camera!

Unceremoniously, Kitty is shoved through the door and onto the set of... the X-Men movie!

Kitty notices things are off as the supposed X-Men are acting like surly, jaded actors instead of the dysfunctional-yet-loving found family they normally are, but before she can scratch the surface of this scenario, she is visited by a most unexpected guest star:

That's right! After literally waltzing away from the X-Men sometime ago, Rachel is back, at least in Kitty's trippy Mojoworld nightmare. Director X takes x-ception to her presence and tries to have her bound in chains, but she escapes.

That turns the X-Cast's attention to Kitty, and if seeing horrifying doppelgangers of your dead friends wasn't bad enough they all reveal themselves to be hideous creatures called Warwolves!

(Tharwolves.)

Kitty awakens just in time to escape the dream, only to find herself in the cold, perhaps even more unbearable reality where the X-Men are dead, Professor X is Lost in Space and she can't revert to her solid state without a taxing amount of concentration.

Life is not good for young Kitty. Nor for Brian Braddock, aka Captain Britain, who has been wallowing in grief upon hearing of the death of his twin sister Betsy, along with the X-Men. After all, what good is the power of Captain Britain if you can't save your loved ones?

Unfortunately, he proclaims this to his other loved one, the mutant shape-changer named Meggan, in decidedly unhealthy tones.

(Men would literally rather take up the mantle of Captain Britain than go to therapy)

Despondent, Meggan goes to the only place where she thinks she may be able to find Brian some help, leaving a helpful note in case he wonders where she's gone.

That place? Muir Island's fabulous Mutant Research Facility, where Kurt Wagner, aka the mutant known as Nightcrawler, has recently been revived from his months-long coma following the fight with the Marauders and is in the midst of a vigorous workout.

True to form, Kurt is living his best Errol Flynntasy, looking for a little escape from the horrors he has awakened to. Also, he may have something of a death wish as he has turned all the safety controls off of this makeshift Danger Room. Only Kitty phasing through the control panel saves him from a grisly robot-stabbing death.

They take a walk and, after Kurt reflects on the sadness of waking from his coma only to find that all his loved ones are dead, they realize they've both had the same scarifying dream about Rachel. It seems downright likely that Rachel -- the telepath with phenomenal cosmic powers -- may actually be trying to reach them. But before they can come to grips with the implications of this, they receive a strange and unexpected visitor.

This Buff Mama is Gatecrasher, and she explains to Kurt and Kitty -- and Meggan, who has arrived in the middle of the conversation -- that she has been charged with taking one Rachel Summers into captivity. This, on the orders of Opal Luna Saturnyne, the Omniversal Majestrix in charge of this sector of reality. Seems she regards Rachel as something of a threat to existence, and it's hard to dispute that given that not too, too long ago she literally tried to destroy all of it just to prove a point.

Regardless, Rachel is still a friend of Kurt and Kitty's, so they stand their ground, which is all well and good until Gatecrasher brings out her homies, the group known as Technet:

Me, I would look at this mötley crüe and maybe have second thoughts, but that's why I'm just a writer and not an X-Man. Our heroes do their best, but their best ends up getting Kitty and Meggan captured.

(Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew.)

Only Kurt, by dint of his teleportation powers, gets away.

Elsewhere Rachel, who has been freefalling through reality, lands at a kooky, twisted costume party. It seems again she is going to be taken captive, and also the Warwolves are back.

She escapes, expecting to find yet another artificial soundstage, but in actuality she's arrived...

In Jolly ole' London Town! Pip pip and all that!

She gives the Warwolves the slip on the tube -- get your mind out of the gutter, I mean she escapes on the subway. But Gatecrasher is seen nearby.

Elsewhere, at the Lighthouse home of Brian Braddock, Kurt has arrived, reckoning the Captain might have some interest in rescuing his special lady. He uses some very subtle techniques to awaken the blackout-drunk hero.

Revived, Brian wants to know what's oll this then, and Kurt explains he needs some help to do the hero thing. Brian is down on himself, lamenting that he and other so-called heroes never seem truly able to make any real change -- which is as much down to the need to maintain an in-universe status quo as it is any kind of comment on his efficacy as a superhero.

Kurt retorts that he, too, lost his loved ones, but he's alive, and he aims to do something with that life.

Kurt leaves Brian to wallow.

Down in foggy London town, Rachel passes by a bookstore display of Arthurian Legends, wondering what to do next. After all, she ran out on the X-Men, would she even be welcomed back? (She doesn't yet know that it's a moot point, as all her friends are dead. Again.) But she's interrupted from her angsting by some faces familiar to us...

(Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew!)

The Technet are pleased with their successful mission when they are attacked by the Warwolves -- those servants of Mojo who also had their eye on the prize that is Rachel.

Kurt also joins the fray (having made it from the lighthouse on the Celtic Sea to London in damn near record time) intent on rescuing his friends.

Gatecrasher takes exception to this, but luckily there's another surprise arrival!

And surely the Technet will cower before his might!

Oh.

The as-yet-unnamed loose association of heroic characters are unable to mount much of an offense as the Technet unleashes their whimsical and bizarre powers on them.

But when they find their teamwork groove, they turn the tide.

When Gatecrasher falls afoul of one of her wacky teammates' shrinky powers, she becomes prey for a classic Kitty Pryde left hook.

Both the Technet and Warwolves decide discretion is the better part of valor and vamoose.

The whole lot of them retire to the countryside and sit around a bonfire, laughing about old times. Rachel, unfortunately, doesn't have much in the way of old times to reminisce about -- wherever she's been, her memories have been scrambled and she doesn't seem able to separate what was really her from what was fake. But she does still have her emotional connections to Nightcrawler and Kitty, and that's all that really matters.

The five are left with a general sense of "What now?" Captain Britain asserts that he is going to be going after the Warwolves, and the rest of them can just go live their lives, but Rachel points out that as mutants in an increasingly hostile world, there's not much life to live. The X-Men's death has left a void in that respect.

She then pivots to a pretty speech about King Arthur and his dream that the might possessed Knights of the Round Table would serve right, not subjugate it, and that when he died, he left his sword Excalibur as a symbol of his legend.

I do not know when or where Rachel became an Arthurian scholar, but it sure does tie everything in this comic together nicely, and hey, Excalibur has an "X" in it, which is cool. Ultimately, they all decide they do have a mission and a reason to stay together.

The... beginning!

Further Thoughts:

This was a really strong pilot. It served to draw five characters together, bringing Captain Britain and Meggan into the circle with the now-former X-Men, and return Rachel to our world. It pits them against some very distinctive and interesting foes that we know we haven't seen the last of and gives the heroes a mission statement. It was a great showcase particularly for Alan Davis' ability to draw whimsical and weird effects and characters. From reading this, it's easy to get a very clear reading on whether this new Excalibur title is right for you.

It handles all of the characters really well, as most of them have been touched by trauma lately but while they are given space to feel those feelings the book isn't weighed down by them at all. It remains very lighthearted yet grounded, a tough balancing act to pull off, especially given how grim the X-Men's main book had been in the past years.

Me personally, I'm not as into Excalibur as some others are, but that doesn't mean I don't think that this book is off to a great start. As an X-Men fan in 1988 it would be easy to simply be grateful that Kitty and Kurt were back in action, and something of a refresh to Rachel's character which had become rather bogged down in her last appearances. There remains the question of what happened to her in Mojoworld and where she's at right now, which can be explored fruitfully in this book. I would also hope to be brought more into the "Captain Britain/Technet/Opal Luna" world because as someone who would have been drawn in by my favourite X-People, I would have absolutely no fluency in that. But there's definitely something to be said for being intrigued.