New Excalibur has already finished its first arc with issue #3, which makes a nice change. 

It seems that the absurd insistence on writing everything in six-issue arcs has finally fallen by the wayside in favour of simply ensuring that there's an appropriate break point for trade paperback collections.  This is, of course, entirely to be welcomed, and should have been the policy right from the start of the "collect everything" era.

Anyway, so much for the good news.  Continuing this week's theme: What the hell was the point of that, then?

After three issues of this title, and four issues of prologue in Uncanny X-Men, I still have absolutely no idea what the premise is supposed to be.  The original Excalibur was a light comedy superhero book, which made perfect sense.  This clearly isn't a light comedy, but doesn't seem to have any other idea in mind.  It's just a bunch of random heroes, in England.

I have a dreadful, sinking feeling that "a bunch of random heroes, in England" may in fact be the premise.  I am going to charitably hang on until the team is up and running before reaching a final view on that point.  But I am not encouraged.

And, oh yes, the team doesn't exist yet.  We've spent three issues with the future members fighting a bunch of evil X-Men from an alternate world, and defeating them.  Then they don't form a team.  The next arc seems to be Pete Wisdom persuading them to form a team after all, although quite why he wants them to form a team is less than clear.  As for the evil X-Men... it's not really apparent why they're here either.  They're just here.  And it's not obvious what they're doing.  Except "evil things", because they're evil.  Which is about as deep as their characterisation gets.

Now, no doubt Claremont's fanbase would argue that these are all revelations that are being saved for future stories, and perhaps they are.  But without any of that information revealed at this stage, we are left with a story that boils down to three issues of "A bunch of random heroes fight a bunch of random villains for no obvious reason.  In England!"  At the very least, this is hardly calculated to enthrall.

We are three issues into this book, and if you count the Uncanny X-Men prologue - whose relevance is mystifying - we are two arcs down.  And I don't have a clue what this book is about.  Competent artwork scrapes the book into the C-ratings, but really, this book needs to demonstrate some sense of purpose urgently.  Even if they want to put off forming the team, by this stage we should at least have some clue what the book is about.  And the fact that we don't makes me wonder whether they don't either.

Rating: C-

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