Issue(s): Excalibur #36
Cover Date: Apr 91
Title: "Xs and Os"
Credits:
Scott Lobdell - Writer
David Ross - Penciler
Al Milgrom - Inker
Kelly Corvese - Assistant Editor
Terry Kavanagh - Editor

Review/plot:
In his earliest appearances, Captain Britain was an assistant at the Darkmoor nuclear center while he attended college. By 1991, nuclear power had become a hot topic of debate, so Scott Lobdell uses Captain Britain's past to set him up as a foil for the anti-nuke position, with Shadowcat taking on that role.

But don't worry. This isn't really a political issue and we are going to get into a very straightforward super-fight very soon. Silver Sable and the "Outlaws" show up at the Darkmoor facility because one of Brian's old supervisors, a Professor Walshe has stolen technology from the Symkarian government.

So that's the first part of the issue, a fight between the two teams.

And then Walshe turns out to be Arnim Zola! No wait! Just a faulty clone of Arnim Zola!

He's been using the stolen Symkarian tech to try to create a better energy source for the world, but it's failing, threatening to melt down and also creating silly monsters.

And, well, that's it, except for some budding romantic interest between Paladin and Rachel.

Stay away from him, Rachel. He is a player!

It's nice to see the "Outlaws" but it's not a particularly meaningful use of them.

If i cleared my mind of everything i know about Scott Lobdell and just focused on what i've seen from him in my project so far, which is mostly jokey stories in Marvel Comics Presents, my fear for this book would be that he would take the goofy elements and amplify them even further. Instead what we're getting are very generic super-hero stories. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I don't think there's any reason why Excalibur shouldn't be a real super-hero book and not a comedy book. Of course the stories should actually be good, and that's not quite the case here, but Lobdell is arguably just holding down the fort until Alan Davis returns with issue #42.

Statement of Ownership Total Paid Circulation: Average of Past 12 months = 264,991. Single issue closest to filing date = 197,000.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: A footnote confirms that this story takes place before Sandman joins the Avengers in Avengers #329.

References:

• We saw that Brian Braddock worked at Darkmoor in Captain Britain #1-2 (no footnote, and not really a reference, exactly, but i figured i'd include it). It's said to have been five years since a flashback showing Brian working at Darkmoor.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Note that Kitty and the Prowler discuss the possibIlity of using pneumatics to cure Kitty's phasing problems. This is interesting since Kitty's phasing problems disappear without explanation when Davis's run starts in issue 42. Maybe Kitty passed the idea along to Moira and Xavier after they were rescued and they cured her.

Wasn't Kitty cured of any problems during the Limbo adventure that teamed Excalibur up with the West Coast Avengers? I know Nightcrawler was accidentally cured by Doom. I thought Shadowcat was too; sort of a "reset" of dangling plot lines prior to Alan Davis returning to the title.

@Michael, i thought that was a joke!

OK, I found this on the old rec.arts.comics.xbooks group by a posted named Gary McElhaton dated 5/6/93:
"Originally, Alan Davis and Paul Neary were going to take over
EXCALIBUR with #35. Davis on pencils, Neary on inks, and they'd
co-plot the book.

Then, they asked to start with #37, because work on WOLVERINE:
BLOODLUST (which they worked on together) was going slower than
they thought.

Then, the dollar/pound rate dropped, and Paul Neary dropped out
of the project, because it just wouldn't be worth it to him.
Alan Davis agreed to take over full writing chores and have
Mark Farmer ink his pencils (what a GREAT move, incidentally),
but since he'd now have to start at square one in terms of plot,
he asked that someone else write #37-41 (#35-36 had already been
scheduled as standard fill-ins) and that they please do the
following:

1) Heal Nightcrawler
2) Get rid of the soulsword
3) Fix Kitty's phasing (this one slipped through the cracks, but
according to Davis, she WAS healed. We'll
see what happens under the new regime)
4) Write out the Warwolves

So, Scott Lobdell was signed on for #37-41 and told to do all
of that. The reason why Davis asked is that he wanted to get a
lot of the excess baggage out of the way, but he also didn't want
to have to drag it out a long period of time."

Thanks for that, Michael. Cool info.

Ditto, Michael. I love that sort of behind-the-scenes stuff.

At least with Kitty, my impression is that she was slowly healing anyway after "FF vs. X-Men" so she just got better and nobody made a big deal of her return to normal whenever it happened.