Well, so much for Excalibur. 

Issue #14 is the final issue of the series, although we're being promised a relaunch in November as - brace yourself, they've spent hours thinking this up - New Excalibur.  Those of us who don't work in publishing will always struggle to understand the mighty clash of creative forces that result in innovative marketing strategies such as that.

In fact, just to confuse matters further, it appears that New Excalibur may well be a significantly different comic from Excalibur.  (God, I hope so.  Excalibur sucked.)  Asked about the title at Newsarama, Joe Quesada claimed that the current volume "would no longer be relevant after House of M", which tends to support rumours that the whole storyline is going to be rendered nugatory by continuity revisions.  In fact, some rumours suggest that New Excalibur may actually have more in common with the original Excalibur series than this one ever did, which would make this perhaps the least accurate use of the word "New" in some years.

In the same interview, Quesada defends the hilarious overuse of the word "New" as "just a branding tool that we're currently using."  Of course, in order to be effective branding, it would actually have to signify something, rather than just being indiscriminately applied to any relaunched book that comes down the pipe.  "I often find it bizarre that folks get so hostile over stuff like this," he adds.

Joe, Joe, Joe.  No.  You misunderstand.  The reaction isn't hostility.  It's derision and mockery.  The combined marketing power of a professional publishing company, and the best they can do is "Stick New in front of it"?  That's truly pathetic.  Seriously, it's just sad.  It's amateur hour.  Of course people are making fun of it.  If you do it once or twice, it works.  If you do it on every bloody book, it becomes a joke.  If Marvel's marketing people can't even understand why that is, god help them.

Anyhow.  Excalibur.

As I say, it looks suspiciously likely that the whole storyline is going to be swept aside by House of M, or at least just ignored afterwards.  So basically, we've spent a year or so watching some extremely minor characters potter around some rubble and not achieve anything.  Well, that was a waste of all our time, wasn't it?

It's not as if a compelling storyline is being broken off in mid-stream, though.  There's been no sense of actual progress in rebuilding Genosha.  There's been no sense of Genosha as a true community.  There's been no plausible explanation of how any of these people survived in the first place, or why they want to stay.  We've been given no good reason to care whether Genosha is rebuilt or not.  Everyone seems to fight over the place, but we've been given no good reason why.  To say that this was a 14-issue false start would be to imply that it had actually started to go anywhere.  It didn't.

Excalibur peters out, not by trying to resolve any of its outstanding stories, but with an issue devoted to the Xavier/Magneto/Scarlet Witch subplot.  Yes, this time it really does merit the House of M crossover tag. 

Although it's structured as a dream-like pseudo-flashback, I'm going to assume that we're not meant to take any of this stuff literally.  The story seems to be a riff on Apocalypse Now, as Xavier goes on a "mission" to kill Magneto, and has various surreal experiences and conversations before... well, before nothing much happens at the end.  Magneto angsts a bit, asks Xavier to kill him (which rather comes out of left field in the context of this series), vague hints are dropped that Magneto's desperation may lead him to do something unwise.  Quite what this has to do with all the Xavier scenes that preceded it, I'm entirely unclear.

There's a contingent of Claremont fans who seem to think this issue is fantastic, and frankly, I'm not seeing it at all.  It's a half-formed mush of ideas, few of which have any discernible relevance to the supposed point - helping Wanda and Magneto.  Is this really the place for a digression into the links between Mr Sinister and the High Evolutionary?  Why, for god's sake?

Frankly, the overall impression that one gets here is that Claremont has been told to do a lead-in for House of M but, at the same time, has been told that nothing can actually happen.  At the end of the issue, we're exactly where we were at the start.  The story, such as it is, is based on the somewhat questionable premise that, in order to successfully treat Wanda, Xavier has to sort out his own demons first.  If this issue is about anything, it's about Xavier, not Wanda or Magneto.  It seems, at the very least, an odd choice of subject for the House of M lead-in - isn't this the time to be digging into Magneto's psyche instead?

In some ways, perhaps, this is an entirely representative final issue of Excalibur.  Like so many issues before it, Claremont seems to have some idea or other in mind, but I'm just left wondering "What on earth was the point of that?"

Rating: C+

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