Issue(s): Excalibur #51
Cover Date: Jun 92
Title: "Don't drink the water"
Credits:
Alan Davis - Writer
Doug Braithwaite - Penciler
Jeffrey Albrecht, Jose Marzan, Mark McKenna, and Jimmy Palmiotti - Inker
Mark Powers - Assistant Editor
Terry Kavanagh - Editor

Review/plot:
Alan Davis is still writing this book, but after the big storyline that concluded last issue, he's taking a little break from pencils until issue #54.

Excalibur themselves are taking a break this issue. They sleep through most of this story. Instead, the focus is on an alternate dimension version of Excalibur. The dimension in question is the home dimension of the dinosaur tourists from Excalibur #9. We start by checking in with the human tourists, who have been kidnapped by dinosaur world's version of the High Evolutionary. The dinosaur Excalibur go to rescue them, fighting a brainwashed dinosaur Fantastic Five.

Then the dinosaur tourists on our Earth turn into real dinosaurs. The dino Excalibur and FF teams come to our Earth to return the human tourists, and stay to capture them and bring the dinosaurs.

They also give us an environmental lecture.

The real Excalibur wake up at the end and find out what's been going on via news reports and a series of messages left on the answering machine by Dai Thomas.

This is a silly story, but i like that Alan Davis has returned to these dinosaur characters. Davis helped make a lot of sense of various happenings in Excalibur with the Necrom epic, but he's not done yet. This is another little loop that he's closing. When we saw the tourists in issue #9, it was cute but it added to the sense that this book was just random and zany, and eventually that sort of thing got out of hand. By coming back and giving closure to that thread, it makes me feel a lot better about it, like Alan Davis (and Chris Claremont?) had a big plan in place all along (whether or not that is actually true).

We also check in with Gatecrasher and Yap. Dai is aware that the other members of Technet have left Earth, but Gatecrasher and Yap are still staying at the place on the pier given to them by the Brighton town council.

Hard Boiled Henwy's appearance in the scene above looks like a delusion of Gatecrasher's, but the MCP do list it as an actual appearance.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: In a message that Dai Thomas leaves for Excalibur, he says that he knows they are home because "I only left you last night". That doesn't necessarily mean that the events of issue #50 happened last issue; Dai could have come back to visit since then, but for other reasons (see the Considerations on Excalibur #54) i am keeping a number of Excalibur issues pulled back in publication time. At the end of this issue, Excalibur get a message from Jean Grey saying that she and Professor X will be arriving at 10 am tomorrow (UK time) to help with the problem of Rachel still being in a coma. Next issue begins with Professor X having been in mental contact with Rachel for 10 hours, and he didn't necessarily jump into that the minute he arrived at Excalibur's place, so we can let a little time pass before next issue, but no appearances by Jean Grey and Professor X should appear between this issue and next. I'm tagging them as Characters Appearing to help me keep track of that; they are technically "behind the scenes" in the sense that we know that they are getting ready for their trip and/or traveling.

References:

• The tourists got swapped between our world and the dinosaur world in Excalibur #9.
  
• The town council gave Technet a space on the pier in Excalibur #13.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A