Recommended Listening for 3/4: The Matt Signal Podcast Picks

So, I'll be up front with you: I've had a really busy week, and thus haven't been able to settle down and do the extensive reading and/or research required for a recommended reading this week. But I want to put up a post every Friday this year, so I went and sat back and tried to think of something to write about or recommend. And then it hit me: Podcasts! I spend much of my day listening to podcasts, and while I don't listen to a lot of directly comics related podcasts, I listen to a lot of great ones that I think you, the reader, might enjoy, and so I'm going to write about a few of them, and since most aren't directly comics related, I'll toss in a comic that shares something with each podcast, so if you're already a fan of that show, you might check out the comic.


The Thrilling Adventure Hour- The Thrilling Adventure Hour (TAH for short) is the show that got me into podcasts aside from listening to NPR that way. I've written about it before, both the recommended reading that is linked there and reviews of the tie-in comics, but if you haven't read those, TAH is, "a new style podcast done in the style of old time radio." A live show, recorded in front of an audience, most episodes are one short segment, featuring a comedic mash-up of classic radio drama tropes. The two regular features were, "Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars," a cowboy in space yarn, and the other, my personal favorite, was "Beyond Belief," featuring Frank and Sadie Doyle, a pair of drunken high society mediums, sort of The Thin Man meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Various other segments recurred throughout the show's run, and they were all witty, hilarious, and clever. The show also featured a wildly talented cast of regulars, and amazing guest stars. Read the recommended reading for way for detail. Thrilling Adventure Hour stopped regularly releasing episodes over the summer, but there are over 200 available in the shows archives. If you like TAH, you can check out the TAH graphic novel, the Sparks Nevada and Beyond Belief series from Image, and the upcoming Deadpool Vs. Gambit mini-series from TAH creators Ben Acker and Ben Blacker.

Welcome to Night Vale- I was introduced to Welcome to Night Vale through a crossover with TAH, and while it shares a tongue in cheek sense of humor with TAH at times, it is a completely different animal. Welcome to Night Vale, created and written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, is a community radio show from the odd little desert town of Night Vale, a town that has everything you'd expect from a small town: a bowling alley, an old lady, a store, a five-headed dragon, a faceless old woman who lives in your house. You know, the usual. OK, so Night Vale isn't a normal town. One description I read of the show described it as "Garrison Keillor's News from Lake Wobegon by way of Stephen King," and that's a decent, if a bit narrow, elevator pitch for the show. Each episode is narrated by local radio host Cecil Palmer (played by Cecil Baldwin), and while many episodes feature guests, the series really is Cecil's story, about his relationship with his boyfriend Carlos, the scientist, his brother-in-law Steve Carlsberg (don't get him started on Steve), his friend Dana, and all the other people on Night Vale. Cecil's a good guy, and the show develops a deep emotional life for him. But aside from the funny and weird townsfolk and Cecil's day to day life, Night Vale can be honestly very scary, and the horror is used sparingly and to good effect. Welcome to Night Vale is released biweekly on Mondays. If you enjoy Night Vale, check out the Welcome to Night Vale novel, and while I can't think of any comic with the same mix of horror, small town life, and humor, if you want a great small town horror, check out Dark Horse's Harrow County.

You Must Remember This- I love the movies, and I love knowing more about the people who make them. You Must Remember This is the story of, "the secret and forgotten history of Hollywood's first century." Loving researched, written, and narrated by Karina Longworth,You Must Remember This features themed seasons, some of which include stories of stars at war in World War II, Charles Manson's relationship with Hollywood, and the current season, long anticipated by me, about the Hollywood Communist Black List, which has certain terrifying echoes of America as it is now. The history is fascinating, and Longworth's writing and narration are sharp, crisp, and a pleasure to listen to. There are certain episodes that have very direct ties to comic books and Hollywood, such as episodes about Bruce and Brandon Lee, both of whom played comics and pulp characters, Warren Beatty and Madonna's relationship while making the (in my opinion anyway) under-rated comic strip adaptation, Dick Tracy, and Eddie Mannix, MGM's "fixer" who may or may not have been involved in the death of TV's Superman, George Reeves. New You Must Remember This episodes are released weekly on Mondays. One of my favorite comics of the past year has been Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips's The Fade Out, a Hollywood noir set in the late '40s, and if you enjoyed that, you should definitely check out the current season of You Must Remember This, and vice versa.

Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men- This is the only purely comic podcast on this list, and there's a reason for that. Jay Rachel Edidin and Miles Stokes are lifelong comics fans, specifically X-Fans, and their whole goal with their podcast is to untie the seemingly impossible knot of X-Men continuity. They have a great rapport, great authorial voice to their writing, and know their stuff. They clearly do a lot of research to keep up with the X-Titles. They started at the beginning, with the early Stan Lee stuff, but quickly moved froward into the Claremont era, and are now cycling between three titles, Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, and New Mutants, in the run up to the mid-80s X-crossover "Inferno." Their excitement about the material is so contagious, listening has gotten me to go out and purchase a complete run of New Mutants (up to the Liefeld stuff. I already have all that in trade) and I plan to start reading it soon. New episodes come out weekly on Sunday. Important note if you're about to start listening: as of this Sunday's new episode, the series name will change to Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men, but all existing links should probably redirect. It's harder to pick a particular comic to say to read to get into this show, but a fourth comic is about to enter the rotation, the original run of Excalibur, and both Jay and Miles seem pretty excited about it, so you might want to track that down.

Talkin' Toons with Rob Paulsen- You might not know the name Rob Paulsen, but if you're a fan of animation, you know his voice. Rob Paulsen is one of those great voice actors who has a tremendous catalog of work, from Pinky in Pinky and the Brain, Yakko Warner in Animaniacs, and specifically comics related Raphael in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, and Donatello in the current one. And because he's been in the voice actor for the better part of thirty years, he has a lot of friends who do the same work. So, what Rob likes to do is sit down with his friends (some at their home, some in front of a live audience) and talk about their experience as voice actors, their process, and their favorite voices. Some of my favorite episodes include one with the creators of Rick and Morty, one with the cast of Adventure Time, and ones with various members of the classic DC animated universe cast members, including Clancy Brown (Lex Luthor), Jeffrey Combs (The Question), and Mark Hamill (The Joker). Talkin' Toons has had a less regular release schedule recently, but there are plenty of episodes on the archive and new episodes appear when Rob can fit them into his busy schedule.  If you love cartoons of any kind, Talkin' Toons is a must listen, and many of the guests have comics that tie into their work, so just check out that list and pick a comic.


These are just five of the numerous podcasts I listen to regularly, and it's an amazing time where there's such a variety of different options to listen to. So I ask you readers: Do you have a favorite podcast? I'd love some new recommendations. Comment here, on Facebook, or Twitter, where I'm @mattlaz1013.

The Matt Signal Advent Calendar 2014 Day 8: Excalibur #86

Excalibur #86, December 1994

He’s rude, he smokes, he’ll martyr himself for his friends and he’s British. He’s Pete bloody Wisdom, and you better recognize.

Excalibur #86 marks the first appearance of Warren Ellis’ spy game-weary spy, who is attached to the British superhuman team via his employer, Black Air. After one issue of the new character, the book got hijacked for four months by the "Age of Apocalypse," but once it came back, Ellis quickly set about the task of making Wisdom my favorite character in any book I was reading at the time.

I loved his back-and-forth (both verbal and, soon enough, physical) with a maturing Kitty Pryde. I loved the way he came off like a boorish, boozing a-hole, only to find out he’d pulled all his spy friends’ fat out of the fire at one time or another because “Job needs doing.” And I loved how he had no reverence for the admittedly pretentious Xavier or his Scottish counterpart, Dr. Moira MacTaggert. (There’s a great panel in which Wisdom dons a shower cap, sits in a chair and presciently mocks the professor’s resemblance to Patrick Stewart).

Sadly, for whatever reason, not many writers have been able to nail Wisdom’s voice. Excalibur foundered after Ellis left with issue #103, and it wasn’t until Paul Cornell’s MAX series and, later, Captain Britain and MI13 that the character as I knew and loved him returned to the page. When a writer has one of your all-time favorite characters match strategic wits with Dracula and win, that’s a bingo. 

Extra credit: Read Matt’s original pieces on Ellis’ Excalibur run and the MI13 series.

The Matt Signal Presents The X-Men Present Thanksgiving: Uncanny X-Men #308, Nov. 1993

Thanksgiving is a hard holiday to shoehorn into a superhero story. It’s mostly cooking, eating and burping, which makes it better suited for sitcoms.

Unless, that is, you’ve just come off back-to-back crossovers and you need a breather issue. Which is why Uncanny X-Men #308 is a lesson in perfect timing.

The issue follows an especially rough few months for the X-Men. Illyana Rasputin dies of the Legacy Virus in #303. Magneto crashes her funeral in #304 and invites all comers to live with him and the Acolytes on his new space base, Avalon. Colossus, who’d also recently lost his brother, takes him up on the offer. Then, in X-Men (Vol. 2) #25, the X-Men storm Avalon, and Magneto rips the adamantium out of Wolverine’s skeleton. Wolverine then runs off to lick his wounds in issue 75 of his own book. Finally, the X-Men and the Avengers team up when Magneto’s new lieutenant, Exodus, goes rogue and turns the capitol of Genosha into CBS’ Under the Dome. Also somewhere in there the Phalanx made their first appearance, but meh.

Thanksgiving gave the X-Men the chance to finally get back to what they do best: hang out around the mansion, play sports and have sweet character moments.

Seriously, if you want action, don’t read this issue. The X-Men rake leaves, build a scarecrow, explain football to Bishop and his glorious mullet and eat dinner at the table from The Last Supper. There’s only one Claremont-style interlude foreshadowing the next big villain storyline, and it’s about the Phalanx.

Which isn’t to say that nothing happened. In fact, a very important something happened, as #308 is the issue in which Jean Grey orders Scott Summers to “Marry me.” And because Cyclops is so good at following orders, they were married literally two months later, in X-Men (Vol. 2) #30.

Other things to note:

My original copy has a non-house ad showing Scott and Jean at the altar a full 10 pages before the proposal. Considering the Internet was in its infancy and not everybody had a subscription to Wizard or Previews, that’s one hell of a spoiler.

There are two empty word balloons in the issue, at least in my copy, on opposing pages. There’s one on Page 20, as Xavier is about to be tackled as a result of a wayward football (note: This was not one of those periods when Xavier had the use of his legs). And on Page 21, after Jean says “Marry me,” Scott asks “What did you say,” and she says a white roundish void.

The dinner table includes some notable guests, including Kitty Pryde’s old dance teacher, Stevie Hunter; Trish Tilby, Beast’s news anchor girlfriend from the X-Factor days; and Iceman’s parents, which is shocking because Bobby’s dad is an unabashed mutant-hater, which is a major plot point later in Scott Lobdell’s run.

Check out the Psylocke twins sitting across from each other at the table. Betsy as we’ve known her since 1989 is smiling, while Revanche, who believes herself to be and looks far more like the original Betsy, is not, clearly miffed that the alleged imposter (actually the real deal) has gotten to spend all this time fighting and eating giant turkeys alongside friends and family. Revanche contracts the Legacy Virus but ultimately dies by the sword of Japanese crime lord Matsu’o Tsurayaba. The important thing is she’s dead.

Jubilee appears to have formed a bond with Beast in this issue, jumping into leaf piles together and generally goofing off. It was only a couple months before that Jubes had to say goodbye to her friend and original X-mentor, Wolverine, who had set off on a journey that would see him revisit his roster of villains sans adamantium.

There’s something comforting about John Romita Jr.’s art, all those squared shoulders and jawlines and hatchmarks. Maybe it’s the fact that he was one of the first artists whose work I remember encountering when I got into comics, maybe it’s the fact that he’s the scion of one of the original Marvel pencilers, maybe it’s the fact that he’d been drawing mutants since the ’80s, but whenever I see his art, be it in X-Men or Eternals or Captain America or now Superman, it feels like a warm, fuzzy blanket.

For some of the X-Men’s other great post-event cool-downs, check out:

Uncanny X-Men #138 (1980): Claremont did it first. After the nearly half-a-decade-long Phoenix arc, the X-Men mourn Jean Grey, a grieving Cyclops leaves the team (to find new women to love on), Angel decides to stick around for a while (before leaving for more questionable teams) and a young, wide-eyed Kitty Pryde arrives at the X-mansion to begin her training.

Uncanny X-Men #273 (1990): A too-many-mutants issue. After the X-tinction Agenda, the X-Men, X-Factor and New Mutants all find themselves fighting for the bathroom in the basement of the destroyed X-Mansion. The mutants mingle and argue philosophies with Cable, the guy who showed up out of nowhere and turned the New Mutants into his own personal paramilitary unit. At the end, Lila Cheney shows up and teleports whatever random X-Men she can find off to space to save Professor X.

X-Factor #70 (1991): The beginning of a beautiful friendship between Peter David and Marvel’s second-tier mutants. After the Muir Island Saga, which brought together the X-Men, X-Factor and a bunch of strays, Professor X ponders what to do with them all. (Beast’s response: “Eh, bag ’em.”) Notable for a scene in which Wolverine eats a cigar stub.

Uncanny X-Men #297 (1992): The best of Scott Lobdell’s breather issues. In the wake of the X-Cutioner’s Song, Professor X, who ever-so-briefly can walk again after being nearly assassinated by Stryfe, goes roller-blading with Jubilee. When Xavier’s legs finally give out, the reader’s heart breaks as much as Jubilee’s in that moment. Also: Beast and Archangel rebuild their old teenage haunt.

Uncanny X-Men #318 (1994): The X-Men ship Jubilee off to the Massachusetts Academy with a bunch of other mutants they picked up during the Phalanx Covenant so Lobdell could launch Generation X, aka the Newer Mutants. And Beast drives around new recruit Skin, who proves to be as much of a sad sack on the inside as he is on the outside.

Excalibur #91 (1995): The U.K. X-team heads to the mainland for a pub night following Warren Ellis’ Dream Nails storyline, in which Kitty Pryde and Pete Wisdom uncover government cover-ups and an alien race that killed its own god. Pete and Kitty admit they’re schtupping to the rest of the team, Brian Braddock and Nightcrawler politely but firmly threaten Wisdom, and then Colossus shows up after months in space and beats the crap out of him the next issue.

Dan Grote has been a Matt Signal contributor since 2014 and friends with Matt since there were four Supermen and two Psylockes. His two novels, My Evil Twin and I and Of Robots, God and Government, are available on Amazon.

Oh Warren, You and Your Ideas

Writer Warren Ellis launches a new volume of Moon Knight for Marvel this week, with art by Declan Shalvey. In many ways, Ellis is the perfect writer for this character, whom he previously worked with in a six-issue run on Secret Avengers in 2011. Ellis is a man who loves throwing high-concept, futuristic, pseudoscientific ideas at the wall to see if they stick, and Moon Knight is the vessel of vengeance for an Egyptian moon god or something. In a recent CBR interview, Ellis said of writing MK, “You can get really weird. Also, you can provide, as an entire plotline, the sentence ‘punching ghosts,’ and nobody bats an eyelid.” Stop. You had me at hello, I’m Warren Ellis.

As we look to Moon Knight’s future, let us also look to the past, to but a small sampling of Ellis’ most outré ideas:

The alien race that killed its own god (Excalibur): In 1994, Marvel gave Ellis the then-third-tier X-book Excalibur to infuse with his dark, distinctly British sensibility. Among his first acts was creating the snarky but haunted spook Pete Wisdom and teaming him up with not-a-girl, not-yet-a-woman Kitty Pryde. Together they discovered Wisdom's employer, Black Air, was experimenting on an alien race called the Uncreated, self-named because they killed their own deity as a means to conquer their inferiority complex. After doing so, the race traveled the stars looking to exterminate any lifeforms that did not embrace their atheism. Ellis next used the Uncreated in 1995's Starjammers miniseries, in which the titular space pirates defeated the nasties by projecting an image of their god, leading the Uncreated to commit seppuku. (For more on Ellis’ Excalibur run, read Matt’s Recommended Reading column from last May.)

The most obvious visual representation of Darwinism ever? (Storm 1-4): Ellis and Terry Dodson did a four-issue Storm mini in early 1996 that picked up a few dangling Morlock/Gene Nation plot threads from earlier in the ’90s. Storm is shunted into an alternate dimension run by Colossus’ brother Mikhail Rasputin, last seen flooding the Morlock tunnels and disappearing with the undercity dwellers. In Rasputin’s pocket world, where time moves in erratic patterns, the Morlocks were trained to become Gene Nation terrorists by climbing The Hill. Literally, every denizen of this world had to scale and survive a giant hill to prove their fitness and worth to Rasputin.

The bowel disrupter (Transmetropolitan): “Now, what setting? Watery, loose … prolapse.” One of Ellis’ greatest triumphs and crazy-idea farms is this 60-issue Vertigo series starring Spider Jerusalem, a futuristic Hunter S. Thompson whose work for The Word uncovers the dirty deeds of one president after another and puts a big old target on his back. It’s a near-future world in which people fight for the right to change species and there’s a children’s show called “Sex Puppets.” There’s also a gun that makes people poop themselves, which Jerusalem uses to threaten stripper turned “filthy assistant” Channon Yarrow and actually uses on the president known as The Beast in issue #4 in 1997.

Superman and Batman as a gay power couple (The Authority): Ellis ported Superman analogue Apollo and Batman analogue Midnighter from Stormwatch to The Authority. In their new book, the two were revealed to be a gay couple. Back in 1999, this didn't happen all that often, and so the book received a GLAAD award. Arguably these two paved the way for other gay couples in comics such as Northstar and Kyle Jinadu, Batwoman and Maggie Sawyer, and Wiccan and Hulkling.

Right-tool-for-the-job expert-dispatch service (Global Frequency): This 2002-04 Wildstorm book may be the best example of what happens when Ellis favors concepts over characters. Global Frequency was a 1,001-member organization (about on par with Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers cast) of the world’s foremost experts in their field, who are called in as crises warrant based on field of expertise and proximity. In a way it was like a super-serious version of G.I. Joe, with a mix of military, intelligence, scientists, ex-cons and the like all working to save the world, except the characters didn’t stick around long enough for anyone to decipher who the Shipwreck and Roadblock analogues were. Even the artists changed from issue to issue. Also it was almost a TV show.

The guy who buggers cars (Two-Step): In 2003-04, Ellis wrote a quickie three-issue miniseries for Wildstorm with Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti about a bored, cheeky London camgirl named Rosi and a zen gun-for-hire named Tony who run afoul of a gang whose trademark is having artificially large wedding tackle. Among their number is a Baby Huey of a man named Ron who enjoys having sex with cars to the point where they explode. According to TLC’s My Strange Addiction, this is a real thing.

Having Iron Man inside you (Iron Man: Extremis): In 2005-06, Ellis got to tinker with Iron Man's origin, tying the creation of the first Iron Man suit to the war in Afghanistan as part of a six-issue arc that introduces the concept of Extremis, a nanotech virus that allows fir the constant healing and enhancing of the body in the latest attempt to re-create the Super Soldier Serum that transformed Steve Rogers into Captain America. Tony infects himself with Extremis and in so doing becomes one with Iron Man, allowing parts of it into his bones and give his brain a complete upgrade. Elements of the Extremis story were used in the Iron Man movies, including the updated origin story.

Supervillain marketing (Thunderbolts 110-121): Ellis took over Thunderbolts after Civil War in 2007-08. During that period, the ’Bolts were Colorado’s Initiative superteam and were run by a Tommy Lee Jones-looking Norman Osborn. Osborn used his business acumen (when he wasn’t using his crazy acumen) to market the team through Saturday morning cartoon commercials, brainwashing kids into rooting for psychotic killers like Bullseye, Venom and the Strucker twin who was in love with his dead sister.

Honorable mention: Warren’s novel ideas (Crooked Little Vein, 2007; Gun Machine, 2013): Ellis’ two published novels are every bit as idea-rich as his comics. Without going too deep into either, it should be noted that in Crooked Little Vein, the two main characters inject saline into their genitals to artificially swell them and then have sex, and in Gun Machine, a Wall Street financier explains that the key to the future of financial-market real estate is pingback, the time it takes information to transmit from a given location, to ensure the fastest, most competitive buying and selling.

Recommended Reading for 5/31: Excalibur by Warren Ellis

Nostalgia is a big part of pretty much any fandom, and I think many comic fans are very guilty of it, me included. Things we once loved, we look at with ruby quartz colored glasses. I've gone back and reread some runs that I loved when I was in high school and even college and wondered what I was thinking. But some of those runs really do hold up. I am glad to say Warren Ellis's run on Excalibur is one of the runs that holds up pretty darn well.

When Excalibur first came out, it was a very tangential X-Men comic, about a team of European mutants and superheroes working together in Great Britain. Sure, Nightcrawler and Shadowcat, two mainstays of the X-titles, and Phoenix, a newer addition but with quite a heavy link to the franchise, were in the comic, but it was removed from the main events of the Marvel Universe and the X-Men titles by oceans, and never took part in the annual X-events. It was also a light and somewhat goofy title, with all sorts of crazy villains and reality hopping exploits. Writer Scott Lobdell, writer of Uncanny X-Men and a sort of pinch hitter for the X-line in the 90s, came in and started tying it more into the main books with a tie-in to the "Fatal Attractions"crossover in issue #71 and wrote a few more issues before a relative newcomer to American comics took over with issue #83: Warren Ellis.

This is really written by a proto-Ellis. The character accents are a bit thick, and the British slang is heavily used; I don't think six pages go by without someone being called a git, or toerag, or scab. It's the most traditional superhero book that exists among his canon, tying into events going on in the X-Men universe and tying up and continuing a lot of plot threads left dangling by previous creators. But there's glimpses of the "real" Ellis in here: his snarky, clever wit, his crazy ideas, and above all, the Ellis anti-hero. In this case, that character is one of my favorites in all the Marvel Universe, and one of Ellis's great creations, the mutant spy Pete Wisdom.

I talked a lot about Wisdom in my recommendation for Captain Britain and MI13, but I'm going to talk about him some more here. Wisdom is the prototypical Ellis anti-hero: hard smoking, hard drinking, with a caustic sense of humor, and a past that haunts him. He's not necessarily a hero, and he has done some bad things, but underneath it all, he is a good man. His mantra is, "It needs doing," a way to justify to himself and his own cynicism the good he does for others. There are bits of Spider Jerusalem, Jenny Sparks, Elijah Snow, and all the other trenchcoat wearing Ellis protagonists in Wisdom, who is their forebear (it can be argued as well that they all draw from John Constantine, especially is you look at Ellis's own Planetary #7, but Ellis wrote Wisdom before he got to write Constantine, so I see him as Ellis's first attempt to properly hit that character type).

What makes Wisdom different from so many late 80s and early 90s anti-heroes is his genuine reluctance to kill any longer. When readers first meet Wisdom, he is in a field of dead terrorists, all of whom he has massacred. And Wisdom has collapsed in tears. He truly wants to find a better way, and he finds it by joining Excalibur. He isn't an unrepentant killer like Punisher, and the things he did in his shady past he can't chalk up to mind control like Wolverine. He did everything he did as an agent of British intelligence for queen and country, and he wants to put that behind him now. I think that is part of what drew me to him; I'm a sucker for a character in search of redemption.

Wisdom found his redemption in Kitty Pryde, the X-Woman known as Shadowcat. Kitty was the junior X-Man when she was in the States, joining the team at thirteen, and being everyone's little sister. But she had come into her own somewhat over the course of Excalibur, and Ellis took this to the next step. He played Kitty as smart, confident, with a nasty temper she did her best to keep in check, and with a sense of humor to match Pete Wisdom's brittle one. And he had the two of them fall in love. It wasn't always an easy relationship, with the two starting out adversarially and even after they got together, Wisdom being at times reserved in how he let his feelings show, but they worked brilliantly as a couple. They were the heart and soul of Excalibur, and worked so well, they got their own spinoff mini-series, but more on that later.

Being that this is an X-title, Ellis clearly had more characters to write than just Pryde and Wisdom. Excalibur founding members Nightcrawler, Megann, and Captain Britain were still there, but each had changed since the founding of the book. Nightcrawler had become the team leader, and Ellis showed him to really trying to do his best to lead the team in the right direction. Over the course of the run, he, along with Carlos Pacheco, one of numerous artist's along the way, gave Nightcrawler the first major makeover the character had in his nearly fifteen year history. Captain Britain, Brian Braddock, had recently returned from being lost in the timestream, and had taken the new name Britannic. Brian seemed to be following a similar path of change as Wisdom, as he wanted out of the superhero game, and was trying to get back to being a scientist. This, of course, doesn't work exactly as he planned, but it shows a different side to a character who had often been played as headstrong and cocky before. Megann was often a cipher who was there as a supporting character for her boyfriend, then fiancee, Captain Britain. But Ellis expanded her power set, focusing on her elemental abilities, making her one of the most powerful members of the team, and spending time talking about how the previously illiterate Megann was learning to read. It's a small subplot, and is never used as a club, but Ellis does use it to show Megann's joy in learning and generally about the importance of the written word.

Along with these characters, Ellis inherited a couple of recent additions to the team. Excalibur had come to operate off of Muir Island, a fictional island that housed the research facility of Moira MacTaggert, geneticist and ally to the X-Men. At the time of the series, Moira was hunting for the cure to the Legacy Virus, a disease that had been designed to kill mutants and had recently been contracted by its first human victim: Moira herself. Moira had often been a character who was shown as haunted, having lost her mutant son to his own powers, and made some questionable decisions, but now she was in a fight for her life. Moira was shown as strong, and fierce, but still sad in her way. Along with Moira came Dr. Rory Campbell, a psychologist who had been working with Moira on some of the problem mutants in the island, and who was being haunted by a vision of the future where he became the mutant hating villain Ahab. Rory is working with a mutant called Spoor, a villain who affects emotions, and things do not go in Rory's favor. Watching Rory agonize over the possible dark fate is one of the best subplots, and one that never was paid off after Ellis's deaprture other than a few vague references. There was also Douglock, a techno-organic being with a past so convoluted it had to be from an X-Men comic, and who was now a Pinocchio type figure, the little metal boy who wanted to be real. And finally, Daytripper, Nightcrawler's girlfriend and sorceress.

And if that wasn't enough, two more characters were added to the mix during Ellis's run. Wolfsbane had been a member of other X-teams X-Factor and the New Mutants, but came back to Muir Island when she learned her guardian, Moira, was ill. She became an innocent amongst the team, often set against Wisdom's cynicism, but she also had a very sweet relationship with Douglock, whose physical appearance was based on Doug Ramsey, a dead mutant she had been friends with. And another classic X-Man joined some of his fellows: Colossus. Having recently abandoned the X-Men to join Magneto's Acolytes, Colossus came to Muir to rekindle his relationship with Shadowcat, only to find her with Wisdom. A fight ensued, and neither exactly came out better for it. But over the course of the next year's worth of issues, Ellis worked to redeem Colossus, having him work through some of the issues that lead to his defection, and to his erratic behavior over the past few years worth of stories.

One of the best parts of this run is the amount of time spent character building. There are a few issues where very little "action" takes place, or where there are no supervillains, and the conflict is character based. The highlight of these issues is #91. After the action packed "Dream Nails Trilogy," Pete Wisdom and Kitty Pryde, now just becoming a couple, want to go out to a pub. The entire team winds up going with them, and the issue is really a story about these people getting to know each other. We see just how much the Legacy Virus research is haunting Moira. We see Rahne, who was raised by a frightening reverend before being taken in by Moira, get her first visit to a pub and learn its not all about drunken debauchery. The demonic looking Nightcrawler is surprised and pleased to be accepted by the locals, showing that not everyone judges books by their covers. And we see Kitty and Pete reveal to the team that they are a couple, and see when Nightcrawler and Captain Britain corner Wisdom and give him a talking to about what will happen if he hurts her. The issue introduces the Chalk and Cheese, a pub that will become Excalibur's answer to Harry's Hideaway, the bar the X-Men hang out in, and it's proprietors, Jack Crossan and his daughter, Annie, old friends of the MacTaggert family. It's a sweet, smart issue, with some very funny bits and great dialogue.

Two issues later, Ellis spent time doing an issue that dealt with the tried and true theme of all X-Men related comics: racial intolerance. Wolfsbane, Megann, and Shadowcat spot a fire from Muir Island and upon reaching the mainland, find that it's being caused by a young girl with pyrokinetic abilities. They learn quickly that the girl was discovered to be a mutant and is being shunned by the people of her town, something that strikes a chord with Wolfsbane, who was chased from her village by people with pitchforks and torches, lead by her guardian the Reverend Craig, calling her the spawn of Satan. Rahne learns that this girl was also found out and exposed by Craig, and goes to confront the reverend. A powerful scene follows, where Rahne enters the church and stands up to the man who has haunted her for her entire life, and reveals something she has learned: Craig is her biological father, having hidden his indiscretion with her mother. Rahne is able to walk away from Craig with her head held high, and the hypocritical man of God broken. It's a beautifully crafted scene, and takes the usual mutant/human confrontation to a more deeply personal level than it usually is.

While these single issues are excellent, Ellis also built a big plot that stretched from his first issue all the way into issue 100. The hints were there at the beginning, and were revealed bit by bit. It involved Black Air, the British agency that investigated the paranormal (Pete Wisdom's employer when we first met him), the London Hellfire Club, and the sorceress Margali Szardos, Nightcrawler's adoptive mother. Issue #94 was a flashforward to 2013 (yup, this very year, ladies and gents), provided by Captain Britain's returning memories of his time lost in the timestream, and it began the endgame. Issues 96-100 were a big five issue story that tied up all these threads, connecting them into a story of demons and chaos. There's plenty of Ellis touches, with mythic hidden demons below London, an entirely new Hellfire Club, conspiracies, and certain revelations about Kitty's pet Dragon Lockheed. I don't want to give any of it away, but if you're an Ellis fan, you won't be disappointed.

The story that most reads like something fans would recognize as a Warren Ellis story was his three issue spin off mini-series, Pryde and Wisdom. A call from Mr. Jardine, a friend of Pete's in criminal intelligence, has Pete and Kitty arriving in London to try to find a mutant serial killer before Jardine's daughter, a journalist, gets herself killed hunting him. Ellis uses Jardine, a character introduced in Excalibur, as well as introduces a host of unusual supporting characters for Wisdom, including his paranoid ex-policeman father and hippy-sorceress sister and Department F.66, Scotland Yard's Department of Unusual Death. F.66 is populated by wackos and washouts to investigate murders that have a paranormal leaning, and they all make Fox Mulder look like the model of sanity and restraint. The murders wind up having a strange religious significance, and the plot eventually introduces an alchemist who could have been England's Charles Xavier is she wished, or so she claims. the conglomeration of weird and wild ideas, many just touched on to move the screwball plot forward is Ellis in his purest form. Toss in the crackling dialogue between the series two leads, and their undeniable Nick and Nora Charles chemistry, and this is one of the great under appreciated gems of the mid-90s.

The art over the course of this run is somewhat more problematic to discuss. Over the course of twenty one issues (not counting Pryde and Wisdom) , there are no fewer than twelve artists, with some issue shaving as many as four pencilers. This wasn't a case of chapter one by one artist, chapter two by another; scenes would sometimes be split between artists, with a fight scene starting out with the classic superhero stylings of early Ken Lashley and finished in the highly stylized work of Larry Stroman (as a side note, I find it funny that something that nowadays gets huge commentary on-line wasn't really blinked at in the pre-widespread comics internet days of the early 90s). Still, there are some very notable artists involved. Ken Lashley, who still does work for DC today, was the regular penciler at the beginning of Ellis's run. Terry Dodson did a few pages here and there, and was one of the principal artists on Pryde and Wisdom. Carlos Pacheco was regular artists from issue #95 until 103, Ellis's final issue, but only worked on about half of those issues; still, his work was stunning. The artist who did the most pages throughout the run was Casey Jones, who did outstanding work. His Pete Wisdom is the one I always picture when I think about the character, and while I think it was Pacheco who designed the London Hellfire Club members, Jones drew the hell out of them. He has since left comics to do design work for Disney, and I miss his work.

Excalibur was a different book than most of its contemporaries during the mid-90s. It didn't get bogged down and lost in its continuity and crossovers, but served as a character spotlight for writer Warren Ellis and an eclectic group of mutants and their allies. It mixed action with drama and comedy to create an enjoyable and memorable series. While Ellis has gone one to work on bigger projects, most of which I have loved, Excalibur holds a special place in my heart.

The majority of Ellis's Excalibur run has been collected in three volumes of Excalibur Visionsaries: Warren Ellis. These trades not only have all 21 issues written by Ellis, but Pryde and Wisdom and Starjammers, a mini-series featuring the X-Men's space pirate allies tied into Excalibur by a common antagonist, an alien race created by Ellis called The Uncreated.These trades are out of print, but can still be found at many comic shops. Uncollected in these trades was X-Calibre, the "Age of Apocalypse" title that replaced Excalibur for the four months all X-titles were shifted into an alternate universe. If interested, those issues would be collected amongst the four volumes of Marvel's Complete Age of Apocalypse trade series.