Credits: Written by Warren Ellis, pencils by Ken Lashley, inks by Tom Wegrzyn with Philip Moy and edited by Suzanne Gaffney.
Cast: Earth 295 versions of Kurt ‘Nightcrawler’ Darkholme, Raven ‘Mystique’ Darkholme, Switchback, Damask, Irene ‘Destiny’ Adler, Doug Ramsey and Amahl Farouk, the Shadow King.
Plot: Avalon, the heart of the Savage Land and following the death of Dead Man Wade, the members of X-Calibre (sigh, yes I know) regroup, giving Damask the chance to get a feel of Nightcrawler who is velvety as she imaged, proof of the fact that Nightcrawler is sexy in whatever universe he is in) and they had back to the main encampment. The fires set by Wade are still burning, Doug is trying to help as best he can, beyond his natural ability to translate everyone’s languages to each other. In the centre of town, one of the resident mutants starts using their power to kill anyone around them and Damask recognises that it’s the work of the Shadow King.
To prevent more loss of life, Mystique kills the mutant that the Shadow King was using and it just moves on. He then posses Marcus, a mutant with not unexpectedly ill defined abilities. To save Destiny, Damask uses her power of psychic skinning (I know, but let’s keep going anyway) and effectively lobotomises Marcus. Doug is horrified, but Nightcrawler points out by living in Avalon, safe from the horrors he has run away. As this conversation goes on, the Shadow King jumps into Mystique, this time Nightcrawler sees how he does it and convinces Switchback and Damask to teleport with him, so Switchback can slow time and Damask can Skin the Shadow King between seconds saving Mystique.
Still messed up from his own possession, Marcus uses what motor function he has to zap Mystique, but Doug jumps in front of the blast sacrificing himself, spurring Destiny to decide to go with X-Calibre.
Notes: When reading this, I was reminded of the Netflix Daredevil TV show. It told a coherent and interesting story over 13 episodes and for the most part was really well paced. It couldn’t be shorter without cutting good stuff out and longer would have been a mistake, but it was for the most part perfect. That was the problem. Then all of the Marvel-Netflix shows had to be 13 episodes a season and they didn’t deserve to be. There, I said it.. Luke Cage was a bit too long as was Punisher and the second season of Jessica Jones and I’m assuming that season two of Iron Fist was too as I found episode 2 to be my breaking point. My meaning is, some of these stories need 4 issues, some don’t. This doesn’t. This isn’t my least favourite of these stories (Gambit & the X-Ternals has that) but it is the weakest in terms of story. The characters are hollow and/or uninteresting which destroys all of the drama. People died, but I didn’t care. Doug died and it made no impact at all. The issue comes to a bit of a damp squib ending, with a last minute change of mind by Destiny and we are then told that the story carries on into X-Men Omega, so we don’t even get an actual ending to what we’re reading.
Verdict: Writing 2 out of 5 – Warren Elliis’ problem with pacing rears it’s head and it’s all getting a bit boring in the end. Whilst his run on Excalibur had many high points, this four issue replacement was certainly not one of them.
Art: 3 out of 5 – Ken Lashley does well with what he has to do, but it’s too generic and too uninteresting and nothing really memorable is happening here.
Overall: – 5 out of 10 – Another of these is done and it’s sort of for the best.
Next Time : Back to the Clone Saga
My Marvel Life 