Issue(s): Excalibur #83, Excalibur #84, Excalibur #85
Cover Date: Nov 94 - Jan 95
Title: Soul Sword Trilogy: "Bend sinister" / "Dark adapted eye" / "Edge of night"
Credits:
Warren Ellis & Scott Lobdell - Writer
Terry Dodson / Daerick Gross / Ken Lashley - Penciler
W.C. Carani / Bill Anderson / Tom Wegrzy - Inker
Suzanne Gaffney - Editor

Review/plot:
When you think of who was writing at Marvel in the mid 90s, it is almost all former editors, in many cases editors who had been around since the 80s. After a lot of Marvel's writers were driven away, culminating with Chris Claremont's exit, there weren't a lot of people to replace them. You would think that Marvel UK would have been a way to address that. Marvel did get a small influx of new writers from that imprint - Simon Furman and Abnett & Lanning - but not as many as you'd think (and they didn't work out all that well, at least for now). But one new writer who will go on to levels of acclaim comparable to 80s writers like Claremont and Roger Stern is Warren Ellis, who began at Marvel with Hellstorm. Hellstorm was a niche book to begin with and by the time Ellis began there, it was already doomed. But Ellis' run got critical acclaim, and so it makes sense that Ellis would get to move up the ladder a bit to a second tier X-book (the fact that he's English might have helped ensure that it was Excalibur).

One thing that Ellis had to contend with on this series is that, while Daimon Hellstrom is a relatively obscure character, X-books fans were trained to be continuity nerds. And, of course, Marvel was more protective of these properties. So while Ellis could get away with a lot in Hellstorm (and there were still complaints), he would have been more constrained working with the likes of Nightcrawler and Shadowcat. Ellis has publicly said that he doesn't like working on superheroes, and i'm sure most of that is just a genre preference, but i wonder if part of it is due to his experiences working on an X-title under heavy editorial and fan scrutiny. This first storyline, which is about Magik's Soulsword, is exactly the sort of thing where you'd need to be very careful to avoid pissing off longstanding Illyana Rasputin fans, for example.

Along those lines, this arc is co-plotted, or at least "based on an idea" by Scott Lobdell. Lobdell has been sort-of guiding this series ever since Alan Davis left, and the "based on an idea" credit is softer than the full (co-)plotting credits Lobdell had been getting with other writers. I don't know if that's because Ellis was thought to be more capable or if it's just a coincidence, but it's still the case that Lobdell had a hand in this. And that may absolve Ellis from any infractions that come from the overall plot. The story is actually pretty good. As a longstanding Illyana fan myself, i didn't find too much to be angry about. It does introduce a character with a connection with the Soulsword who i don't like very much (Shrill), and she seems to have come from Lobdell's "idea". There are also revelations about the sword itself that are definitely problematic; i think those are more Ellis' fault.

Also, even though there isn't a regular artist, this arc kind of lucked out with the art. Terry Dodson is on issue #83. It seems to be Dodson's first work at Marvel (he'd previously done Mantra for Malibu and Teen Titans for DC, among other things). He's only on issue #83, though. He does a few other scattered things for Marvel around this time. But the art here is nice looking (more subdued than what he and his wife Rachel will later do). Daerick Gross's art on #84 is also looking nice, and with #85 Ken Lashley does an amazing Alan Davis impression.

So this arc had a lot going for it. It's coming off of Phalanx Covenant. It's got a great new writer and good art. It focuses on a topic of longtime interest to X-fans. And just to top things off, Wolverine is on the cover of #85 (although he only appears in flashback). You couldn't ask for a better start to a new direction for the series.

One deliberate move post-Davis was to make Excalibur more of an auxiliary X-Men book rather than the kind of quirky thing that it was under Claremont and Davis. To that end, this story starts with Bishop delivering some equipment (although he wonders why the X-Men couldn't have just Fed Ex-ed it). That includes equipment for Legacy Virus research, but also some clothes that Jubilee sent to Kitty.

Meanwhile, Amanda Sefton, who is still working as a flight attendant, takes a break between flights while she's in Egypt, and is contacted by her mother, Margali Szardos.

Continuing with the kind of occult trivia that Ellis dropped in Hellstorm, Margali explains that she's currently engaged in the "winding way", a kind of path for magicians which currently has her in a powerless state.

And then Kitty begins acting weird, stealing clothes out of Moira's dead husband's closet and generally acting horribly.

Kitty then draws the Soulsword from her body.

Nightcrawer hears the scuffle and tries to teleport to the scene, but he's attacked by Gravemoss in the dimension that he briefly goes to while teleporting.

Meanwhile we learn that another magician, Shrill, is hit with debilitating pain whenever the Soulsword is active. She spent much of her life, "when the holder drew the blade often", in a comatose state. And now she's starting to feel the pain again.

She decides to do something about it.

Here's the opening splash from #84. I wanted to show Daerick Gross' art, but also take note of the narration.

The idea that it was the Soulsword that drove Illyana "mad" is, at best, an extremely inaccurate way of describing things.

And that's doubled-down on with Moira's dialogue.

I don't know for sure if this is a deliberate retcon stemming from Scott Lobdell's "idea" or if it's just Warren Ellis not being familiar enough with X-Men lore and making bad assumptions based on Lobdell's outline. In the latter case, editor Suzanne Gaffney also deserves some of the blame. But whether deliberate or mistake, the idea that Illyana was corrupted because she found a cursed magic sword is just dead wrong, and misses so much about Illyana's character arcs.

Captain Britain shows up in time to knock Kitty out before she hurts Moira further. Technically Captain Britain is "Britanic" at the moment but Ellis seems ready to discard that.

Nightcrawler is possessed by Gravemoss and schemes to grab the Soulsword, but it flies back into Kitty when Nightcrawler tries to take it.

It's unclear if it's related (and the characters don't make the connection), but, coinciding with the manifestation of the Soulsword, Meggan has been having fits.

Shrill's condition is definitely related to the Soulsword though, and she gets ready to go from London to Muir Island. And Ellis has some fun at the expense of Scotland.

Amanda Sefton also returns to Muir Island, but she's met by the possessed Nightcrawler...

...and is sucker punched.

Professor X, meanwhile, is called in to examine Kitty, and he learns that the magic of the Soulsword was somehow transferred to Kitty when Illyana died.

Possessed Nightcrawler then lures away the rest of Excalibur and Xavier, knocking them all out. Kitty wakes up alone in the lab, and she's confronted by Shrill. And here's where it seems clear that Lobdell probably deserves a full co-plotting credit.

So, almost 50 issues prior to this, in Excalibur #37-39, Scott Lobdell wrote a story where Excalibur (and Dr. Doom and the West Coast Avengers!) went to Limbo and met the "demon", Darkoth. That story ended with Darkoth in possession of the Soulsword. It seems that, since then, Shrill tried to take the sword from Darkoth, but failed. What's not explained is how the sword wound up inside the body of baby Illyana so that it could be transferred to Kitty. In any event, it's clear that Shrill was part of Lobdell's "idea", and the use of her and the (vague) reference to the previous Darkoth story says to me that Lobdell's contribution may have been less an "idea" and more a "Marvel method" plot. Also, maybe if Lobdell stayed involved, he would have gone into more detail about the transfer of the sword and/or maybe he planned to write a future story for Marvel Comics Presents or something showing the encounter between Shrill and Darkoth.

I also think that with these vague kind of references, a casual reader might assume that Darkoth was some ancient demon who held the sword before Illyana, or might otherwise just be confused.

Regardless, Shrill is trying to kill Kitty, and Gravemoss-as-Nightcrawler is trying to convince Kitty to hand over the sword so he can protect her (and we are now into Lashley's Davis-esque art).

But "Nightcrawler" is clearly acting suspiciously, and Kitty uses Moira's security cam to learn that the rest of Excalibur has been taken out. So she realizes that she's dealing with a possessed Nightcrawler. Kitty realizes she's going to have to stop Nightcrawler without killing him, and this is what triggers our gratuitous Wolverine flashback.

I never knew that Kitty considered Israel her "home". Pretty sure she grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.

Anyway, Wolverine teaches her the secret martial arts used by the Mossad.

Kitty uses it on Nightcrawler.

But he quickly recovers (i did say the flashback was gratuitous). Instead, Kitty defeats Gravemoss when she finally remembers that the main thing the Soulsword did was break enchantments and possessions.

Kitty is convinced the give the sword to Amanda Sefton, who proceeds to seemingly murder Gravemoss...

...and then very dumbly hand the sword over to her mother.

That's quite an ending. And whatever is going on with Meggan isn't resolved either. Both of these things will be addressed in Ellis' run, but since these three issues were billed as the "Soul Sword Trilogy", you might have expected a little more immediate closure.

Just looking at these issues alone, though, i have to wonder about the intention. The story seems designed to say that the Soulsword was just a generic magic item instead of something unique to Illyana (and/or transferred to her best friend Kitty). That seems like exactly what you wouldn't want to do from a Narrative 101 perspective (unless the Soulsword was an active point of concern that you wanted to get rid of, but if anything the opposite was true).

If not for the continuity/character concerns, this is a well crafted story, with good dialogue and nice art. And i guess we can hold off judgement on the Soulsword developments until we see Margali Szardos' later appearances.

"Good but plays loose with continuity" is the sort of thing i'd expect from a Warren Ellis superhero story written in later years, but it's somewhat surprising that Ellis wasn't kept more on rails when working off a Lobdell plot and while the X-office was playing a heavy handed role on the main X-books. I guess it's a good signal for what's to come, though.

Quality Rating: B-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: The MCP list Jubilee and Angel as behind-the-scenes in issue #83 because Angel ("Feathers the Zillionaire") took Jubilee shopping for the clothes that were sent to Kitty. But we don't know how long Jubilee wrote the note saying that, so i'm not counting them as Characters Appearing.

References:

• In describing Illyana, it's said that she "had a sword that drove her mad". Her friends "rescued her", which i guess is a reference to the resolution in Inferno (New Mutants #72-73) but she "died anyway, from another cause" (Uncanny X-Men #303).

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

My guess is that Shrill tried to take on Darkoth and succeed, but accidentally broke the Soulsword into pieces in the process with part of it being embedded in her eye and the majority of it returning back to Illyana and laying dormant. As to its corruption/corrupting nature, I have no doubts that others see it as a remnant of Darkchylde, but I suspect that rather than it corrupting Illyana, it was born corrupt thanks to the nature of Belasco's "education" in Limbo and that other people are afraid that it might warp whoever holds it and turn him/her into another Darkchylde.

It's weird that Moira still has her dead husband's clothes, since they separated 20 years ago. Her dead son's clothes would work much better.
The winding way was first explained to grant Margali power at some points and weakness at others in Excalibur 76-77, which Lobdell helped write. So it's not clear how much of Margali's involvement was Lobdell's idea.

Wouldn't Moira's dead son's clothes have fallen apart by the time he grew to Kitty's size?

It looks to me like Lobdell was trying to set up another long-running Limbo storyline, or at least something for Illyana, the Soulsword and bringing in Amanda and Margali. I'm guessing the Darkoth plot never went anywhere.

Ken(neth) Lashley was already EXCALIBUR's regular artist at this point in time - he came aboard with issue #70. Granted, like far too many artists of this era, he was frequently spelled by fill-in and guest artists (which is why he only draws one out of this story's three issues), but he drew part or all of eight EXCALIBUR issues prior to this story, and will only draw four more after issue #85 (plus the four "Age of Apocalypse" X-CALIBRE issues).

It was Marvel policy at the time that characters sold comics by themselves. there was no need of hiring top creators.
Therefore, they put untalented editors on the scripting helm, because they were cheaper, and hired whoever was able to hold a pencil.
As we say in Spain " from that dirt, this mud"...

Thanks for the correction on Lashley, Austin. Looking at the credits, i think it's better to say that there just wasn't a regular penciler post-Davis.

"Ellis has publicly said that he doesn't like working on superheroes, and i'm sure most of that is just a genre preference"

I don't know if he ever said that out loud, per se, but it's a reasonable assumption since he's spoken against the idea that comics as a medium should be dominated by superheroes, "The notion that these things dominate an entire genre is absurd. It’s like every bookstore in the planet having ninety percent of its shelves filled by nurse novels."

(warning: language)
https://www.cbr.com/issue-18-10/

And yeah, glancing at his bibliography on wikipedia, while he has a decent list of mainstream superhero work, he definitely tries to practice what he preaches.

While this is a bit of a "Meh" start to Warren Ellis' run on Excalibur, it's still better than nearly anything else that appeared in this title since Alan Davis departed from the series over a year earlier. These issues also do, in hindsight, set up some of the subplots that later pay of towards the end of Ellis' run, which turned out to be quite good. Certainly by the time Ellis left the book I was sad to see him go.

I don't know if he ever said that out loud, per se, but it's a reasonable assumption since he's spoken against the idea that comics as a medium should be dominated by superheroes, "The notion that these things dominate an entire genre is absurd. It’s like every bookstore in the planet having ninety percent of its shelves filled by nurse novels."

This is a bit of an odd comment, since Ellis, coming from Europe, should know that superheroes dominate the medium of comics only in the English-speaking countries. Everywhere else in the world, other genres are equally or more popular. Even in Ellis' native UK, anthology titles like 2000AD have done quite well when compared to superheroes, and Ellis himself began his career in such titles. The British regulars here may correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK humour anthologies like Beano and Viz have traditionally been way more popular than superhero comics in the UK?

If people enjoy nurse novels, and there is a high demand for nurse novels, there will be large amounts of nurse novels. Nuff said. ;-)

Tuomas is right. As a Brit, I can confirm that superheroes have never even challenged for the position of dominant genre in British comics.

In the 80s when I was growing up the biggest selling comics were the Beano and the Dandy (anthologies of one or two page comedy strips). Marvel UK's big-selling titles were Star Wars/The Empire Strikes Back/Return of the Jedi, Transformers, Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly/Magazine, Thundercats and The Real Ghostbusters. Superhero reprint comics were around, but they weren't hugely popular and it was very rare to see a superhero title with material that was actually written for the UK market (Captain Britain being pretty much the only example from that period, and he was a fairly obscure character).

Having said that, the UK comics industry of today has seriously declined from those days. Apart from 2000AD and the comic strip in Doctor Who Magazine, it's reduced to low-quality kids stuff and the enclosed "free gift" is now the main selling point. Comics for older readers are generally a combination of imports from the US (with that superhero dominance) and (translated) Japanese manga.

So yes, a British author like Ellis should be fully aware that the dominance of superhero titles is a peculiarly American thing. I can only explain his comments with a suggestion that he's "gone native".

I'll back up Tuomas comment here as well. While superhero comics won out in north America, other countries are not the same. The most comicbook crazy country I've lived in was Italy, and while superhero comics are popular they arent even a majority. You are just as likely to find horror, westerns, fumetti (sex-themed), historical, crime, anti-hero, mobster, spy, etc.