Issue(s): Excalibur annual #1
Cover Date: 1993
Title: "Black magic / Honey is money"
Credits:
Evan Skolnick / Joey Cavalieri - Writer
Chris Marrinan & Audwynn Jermaine Newman / David Boller - Penciler
Mark McKenna, Dan Bulanadi, & Keith Williams / Kevin Conrad - Inker
Mark Powers - Assistant Editor
Suzanne Gaffney - Editor

Review/plot:
One thing about these 1993 annuals is you get a sense for what Marvel thinks the themes of the series are, and i guess it kind of helps realign your expectations. For example, my idea of what a new Excalibur character should be is a mutant living in the UK. Because i basically want this book to be the X-Men in Britain. And my favorite Excalibur issues have been things like them going up against the Juggernaut, dealing with the Vixen and Captain Britain's brother, and the Warpies storyline. But the actual new character in this issue is an extra-dimensional dark elf with a wizard for a rival. And i have to admit that more Excalibur issues than not have featured swords & sorcery and dimension hopping, and it seems like this is what Marvel thinks the book should be predominately. I say "Marvel" because this annual is written by neither outgoing writer Alan Davis nor the (sort-of) incoming Scott Lobdell. The good news is that means that the new character won't ever appear again so i don't realy need to worry about it.

The story starts with Cerise having dreams about the elf....

...who is supposed to be an amalgam of Excalibur, although it's really a fucking stretch.

Nightcrawler has been known to use swords himself, so there's no need to bring Kylun into it, and you know who else can fly? Everyone.

Cerise doesn't entertain Kitty's half-baked theory.

I don't care either, for what it's worth.

Cerise leads Excalibur to the source of her pain, and they find a wizard named Ghath, who is from another dimension.

And then the elf, whose name is -- oh god don't make me say it -- "Khaos", shows up to attack Ghath.

Not knowing what is going on, Excalibur defend Ghath and Khaos is defeated and captured and left for Ghath to keep in a cell. But Cerise returns later to ask what the story is and blah blah blah evil wizard, resistance fighters, etc.. There's actually a fairly involved backstory here - i mean pages and pages of it - which i assume was cribbed from the NPC sheets in the back of any D&D module. I did perk up a bit at the mention of a teknomagical monkey statue, but after the triple punch of "Kamenda", "Quarto", and "Dungertheb" i was back to skimming.

Short of it is that Khaos and Ghath wound up on Earth and Khaos is really the good guy. Excalibur wind up going to Khaos' dimension and overthrowing Ghath or whatever. Khaos is meant to stay back in his home dimension, but the spell that returns Excalibur also accidentally brings him back too. Cerise, who is developing an attraction to Khaos (and note again the idea that he's his world's version of Excalibur)...

...invites him to join Excalibur, but Khaos says that he needs to try to return home, so he goes back to the castle that Gath was using on Earth. I assume he found a working portal in the castle, since we never hear from him again.

A back-up story shows Technet getting forced into a mission by an evil armored guy who needs to retrieve nectar for a princess.

The nectar is produced by giant bees...

...and of course shrinking them down to normal sized bees still kind of sucks.

But Technet get away with the nectar, which turns out to be an acne cure.

The whimsical back-up is much more fun than the main story.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Captain Britain and Phoenix are both here. There isn't really a great place in the main series for that to happen. Phoenix returns in Excalibur #61-65. Issue #66 starts immediately on Excalibur's return home from the Cloud Nine facility, and seemingly goes directly into the main story in Excalibur #66-67 (Phoenix urgently wants to return to her own timeline). Between #67-68, Captain Britain becomes lost in time and doesn't appear again until issue #75, at which point he comes back as Britanic. So the MCP place this during #66, after the team gets back from Cloud Nine but before they go into the future. I'm placing this directly before issue #66.

References: N/A

Crossover: 1993 Annuals

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Not far off on the d&d thing apparently. http://notblogx.blogspot.com/2012/06/excalibur-annual-1-august-1993.html?m=1

Bees. My God.

Another 1993 annual that's not by a regular creative team, dooming the new character from the start, and it's a Mary Sue Drizzt ripoff to boot!