On to the first of this week's new titles, Excalibur.  This is one of two Chris Claremont books in the Reload line. 

If you're wondering why it's called Excalibur... well, so am I.  It's got nothing to do with the previous book at all - it's actually about Professor X's efforts to rebuild Genosha.  Supposedly the reason for the title is something to do with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, but it doesn't really make any sense.  Still, it's renewed the trademark, so that's something.

This issue picks up immediately after the two-part funeral story from Uncanny X-Men.  In fact, even the layout of the props matches where Austen left off, which tends to suggest that he was given a pretty detailed outline of what to write.

In this pulse-pounding first issue, Professor X drags a coffin up a hill for twenty pages.  And... yeah, that's pretty much it.  Some people turn up along the way, but basically, he's dragging a coffin up a hill for twenty pages.  He meets a couple of potential students, he fends off some minor villains, but at the end of the day, he drags a coffin up a hill for twenty pages.

Apparently technology no longer works in Genosha, and while even the cockroaches are dead, an assortment of minor mutants are still alive.  The Claremont character factory isn't exactly at its finest here.  We're introduced to a boy called Freakshow (who turns into monsters) and a girl called... oh god... Wicked.

Despite living in a post-apocalyptic wilderness, Wicked still finds time to get dressed up in leather and fishnets before going for a stroll in the ruins.  It's at this point that I start to lose the will to live.  Genosha has been obliterated, but the local goth clothes emporium apparently made it through intact.  And having created a goth chick with powers over ghosts... they name her "Wicked"?  I've heard of being bombed back to the Stone Age, but never being bombed back to 1983.

What else?  Well, Xavier has a lengthy conversation with a hallucinatory Moira MacTaggert, even though there's no reason whatsoever for him to be hallucinating.  And for some reason, Xavier has started talking like a Claremont valley girl.  "That so totally hurts!"  "I chose a major coffin."  Chris: middle aged, middle class white guys don't use the word "major" to mean "big."  Come on now.

Oh, and Magneto turns up at the end.  They can fuck right off with that one.  Theoretically, the explanation for Magneto's appearance might not be crap.  Or he might be another hallucination.  But I'm not holding my breath.  Why should I?  Look at the quality of the rest of the issue!

Awful.  Believe me, I went into this book prepared to like it.  I think the central premise of rebuilding Genosha is quite interesting.  I like Aaron Lopresti's art, on the whole (this issue is fairly bland, but good when you consider the rushed circumstances).  I thought Claremont's first issue of Uncanny was okay.

But god, this book does everything conceivable to rub me the wrong way.  I absolutely hated it.

Rating: D+

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