Excalibur #13 is officially our first House of M crossover, a status which it claims by virtue of three whole pages nailed onto the end of a completely unrelated story.  Strictly speaking this isn't a red skies crossover, since at least something happens that's related to the crossover plot, but it's getting awfully close.  I can't for the life of me understand what qualifies this as a House of M crossover any more than the previous two issues.

Given the plot of House of M, I suspect most of the crossovers are going to be rather less tenuous than this.  It seems to be a "world transformed" story, so pretty much anything set in the transformed world is going to justify the crossover claim even if it never goes anywhere near the main plot.  Nonetheless, launching the House of M crossover with a book as remotely linked as this one is a remarkably foolish move. 

Readers aren't stupid, and they certainly have long enough memories to recall the ridiculous "Avengers Disassembled" tie-ins - such as a four-issue Fantastic Four arc which qualified for crossover status solely because the Avengers' dissolution was mentioned in passing in part one, and a Spectacular Spider-Man storyline whose claim to tie-in status seemed to rest on the fact that it starred Spider-Man, who would be joining the Avengers in six month's time in a completely different story.  This is at least a marginal improvement in that the issue contains three pages of subplot which bear on House of M, but it will do nothing to change the perception that Marvel's standards of honesty in such matters leave something to be desired.  The promotion of this issue, while not exactly false, was certainly misleading.  Is this really the best way for readers to get their first exposure to the crossover?

Of course, none of this reflects on the quality of the issue itself - or on the creators, who seem to be assuming that the crossover doesn't start until next issue.  It's fairly obvious what Claremont is doing here.  Although this is billed as part 3 of a four-part story, the "invasion of Zanzibar" story is completely resolved here, while the subplot prepares us for an entirely separate story next issue which from the look of it will genuinely merit the House of M tag.  Quite why this is being billed as a four-parter rather than as a three-parter followed by a crossover issue is a mystery for the ages.

So if you've been enjoying the Zanzibar story - and god, somebody must be - you'll be very happy to find that this issue actually features the B-list supporting characters running around the streets of Zanzibar fighting bad guys and, for some bizarre reason, Scimitar (a long-forgotten Claremont villain whose main claim to fame is that he fought Iron Fist in 1976).  There's a mildly interesting idea in here about third-world supervillainy being focussed on the sort of slave rackets and human rights abuses that we read about in the papers, but nothing that really raises the story beyond a rather banal fight scene.  Readers are also invited to speculate on when Warren gained superhuman strength enabling him to hold up a building singlehandedly, and how and why Professor X's astral form manages to knock on a door.

Oh, and Courtney Ross's plan hinges on her trying to take over Genosha because it's, uh, very important.  Which reminds me that, a year into this book, we still haven't established why Genosha is very important, or why anyone would bother to attack it.  Xavier's presence on the island has been justified to us on the grounds that Genosha has symbolic force for his dream, which is just about tenable.  But why would anyone else bother trying to conquer it?

A mediocre but ultimately inoffensive issue, unfortunately tied to a thoroughly objectionable promotional stunt.

Rating: C

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