Introduction
Alan Davis began alongside Chris Claremont as the penciler when the series opened, however it wasn't until his return with Issue #42 (and stayed through # 67) when he took over both writing and penciling. In Tom DeFalco's Comic Creator's on X-Men, Alan Davis had the following to say when asked why he returned to Excalibur with Issue #42:
"I had always wanted to write a comic and Terry Kavanaugh offered me Excalibur. I think it's safe to say that at the time he was the only editor who had any confidence that I could do the job - more than I had in myself, in fact"
Everyone knew his art was beautiful, but what we didn't know was how serious of a storyteller he was! He set out with a clear mission to make the series less silly and clean up long-running subplots. It's fair to say that he executed on that mission flawlessly.
“The problem is that the humor element is very difficult to use when you’re trying to keep credibility and respect for the characters. You can’t make fools out of them and have them doing pratfalls. So you have to face the group with absurd situations and characters who can supply the comedy. It would be bellylaugh type humor; it will arise from the absurdity and basic insanity of what is going on around the characters.”
I recall that I was personally getting to the point where the silly, whimsy stories were getting old and Davis's return was like a breath of fresh air!
Major Themes
Destiny and Mythology
Davis heavily leans into the Arthurian and mythological aspects of Excalibur, weaving in Otherworld, Avalon, and characters like Merlyn and Roma. He used the idea of destiny and mythology to not only explain why the Exclaibur team had gone through their trials to date (silly as they were), but also to explain why Captain Britain had come across a bit oafish.
We also get some deep dives into Phoenix (Rachel Summers) where she is central to the theme of destiny, as she struggles with the burden of her power and her role as a cosmic force.
Resolution of Long-Running Subplots
Davis cleared up dangling plot threads from the Claremont era, including Rachel’s time displacement, Meggan’s origins, Captain Britain’s fluctuating powers, and much, much more!
He provided a satisfying sense of closure while setting up the team for future developments.
The most impressive thing done by Davis was some MAJOR table clearing. I really feel like he probably read through the entire run and wrote out a list of all dangling plotlines, then set out to either wrap them up or make sense of them in a more refined context. In fact, he had the following to say about this point in a 1991 Marvel Age Interview:
“Editor Terry Kavanagh has asked me to wind up some of the loose ends and make resolutions to certain character developments.”
Davis goes big by explaining that Excalibur was purposely brought together as part of one large design by Merlyn to deal with the Necrom problem. While this is CLEARLY a retcon, I like it. The series had been meandering and was too whimsy, Davis is cleaning shit up and allowing this to serve as a real, normal comic book moving forward Davis expanded on his strategy more in the 1991 Marvel Age Interview:
“It won’t be a case of tying them up in knots and forgetting they ever happened. We’re developing the loose ends to show that Excalibur was brought together for a reason. We’ll explain why certain things have gone that seem to be incongruous, and for no apparent reason. There’ll be sound reasons for everything that’s happened to date.”
“Basically, they’ve been pulled together for this one mammoth confrontation with an evil force, and the nefarious things that have happened to them over the last couple of years have been deliberately manipulated to prepare them for this event. It’s been like a training period.”
“I’ve worked out 9 issues and it’s all very, very complex. I’ve got myself a flow chart of where everyone’s going to be at different points, in different dimensions.”
The best way that Davis shows us that things will be different is by introducing new characters and concepts. We get a new Widget design and new characters Kylun and Cerise are introduced. We also get the introduction to Necrom, who is clearly the biggest villain this comic has had to date.
Breaking Down the Arcs
Gatecrasher tries to kill/capture Phoenix, fails, and then Sat-Yr-9 reprimands her and forces the rest of Technet to stay on Earth. They will be allies to the X-Men for a while.
Technet has been popping up off and on, so Davis provides closure here by officially ending their animosity towards the team, and by keeping them with the roster, we're able to get to know the Technet team more intimiately.
Another dangling plot thread is the tension between Brian (Captain Britain) and Kurt (Nightcrawler). While Brian and Meggan are together, Kurt and Meggan have been awfully flirty. Brian has also been pretty irratible for most of the series. It all comes to a head here with Brian losing his temper, fighting with Kurt, and breaking his leg. Nightcrawler comes out and says that he is not going after Meggan (I found this surprising at the time, but I was glad to have an end to the love triangle.) After that's resolved, Brian is whisked away by the Captain Britain corps to resolve another dangling plot thread.
With Brian having discredting himself and leaving, Nightcrawler is free to officially take over as team leader, something that Davis makes feel earned although I was never sure it was heading that way.
With Brian gone, Meggan and Rachel on a field trip, and Kurt in a cast, Kurt decides to turn the remaining Technet members into his "N-Men." This was my first ever purchased Excalibur issue as a kid (an interesting one to be sure,) so it holds a special place in my heart.
After an anti-clamactic trial, Sat-Yr-9 declares that Roma wants Brian to go free. The real impetus for this arc comes out of Brian's conversation with Merlyn, who is pretending to be an old man. Merlyn divulves that Excalibur was put together on purpose by Roma and that any time Brian tried to take steps without a team, a "blunder factor" took him over. The team was put through trials to prepare them for an upcoming battle of unlimited consequences, the war with Necrom!
This was clearly a retcon, but I loved it. It tried to give a canonical explanation for Captain Britain being the worst, which is heavy handed, but I'm here for it. He also tried to make sense of all the silly things that happened and used the theme of destiny to set up the Necrom arc, which I still consider one of my favorites (even though it didn't crack my most recent Top Ten).
After weeks of adventuring, Rachel helps Meggan discover who she really is. She meets a member of the Neuri race who helps her see the spirit world and discover he true form.
Davis puts a check next to "Meggan's mysterious origin."
We're introduced to Kylun, who was originally taken from our earth as a boy by Widget. He grew up as a mutant in another earth where he fell in love with another version of Saturnyne (Courtney Ross) and fought an evil sorcerer named Necrom. Another new character, Cerise, shows up, who is a Shi'ar warrior sent to help. Finally, a boy named Feron joins the team as he has spent his entire life preparing to host the Phoenix Force and is pissed that Rachel already did.
With Brian back from Otherworld, Nightcrawler out of his cast, Meggan found her true purpose, Rachel accepting her power, and Kitty remaining awesome, they set out with their new allies to battle Necrom who came to this world when Kylun did. Everthing comes together and they beat Necrom, which also went to Merlyn's plan to save the world and bring him back to power. Pretty impressive story!
This is one of those goofy issues with very little larger importance. Remember how we've seen these random dinosaur people tourists pop up through past issues? Well for some reason, Alan Davis decided to give us an entire issue showing us what is happening in that dimension. There's a dinosaur people Excalibur, Fantastic Five (Instead of Fantastic Four) and more.
The biggest things going on in our dimension is that Rachel is in a coma and believed to be dying. Feron is sitting around hoping she dies (dude's a prick) so that he can take on the Phoenix Force. Kylun also leaves this issue for an extended time to find his parents and explore his roots (Remember, only a year has passed in our time while he is now an adult)
While Rachel is in her coma, Professor X and Jean show up to help out. This helps set the sage for the Phoenix's story. We learn that the Phoenix force was looking for Feron (and his line), but ended up discovering Jean Grey. When she died, it became aware and started to have emotion. It found Rachel, in her timeline, since Rachel was very similar to Jean (being her daughter).
In a shocking update, it turns out that Rachel never had the power to travel in time, she could only send her consciousness back in time. Prior to future Kate Pryde dying, Kate asked the Phoenix Force to bring Rachel back to the past and give her a body. This is how Rachel came back to the past and explains how/why Rachel had the Phoenix power. This sets up a long running story where Alan Davis continues to explore a character arc for the Phoenix Force itself.
This is essentially a one issue fill in with Captain Britain recalling an adventure he had when he was younger while he roomed with Spider-Man.
The team is brought in to a small village where all the inhabitants are gone. After searching around, they discover that the townspeople are living happily in a simulation of Alice in Wonderland. It appears as though the Crazy Gang are good now or something and everyone laughs at the end at this misunderstanding.
As the team is trying to enjoy a nice time at a party, Sat-Yr-9 and Jamie Braddock show up. Within minutes, Alysande Stuart is killed! Man, Sat-Yr-9 has a tendency to show up and just murderize secondary characters that you think will play a big part in the series (She killed Courtney Ross in my first blog coverage). I looked it up and it appears like she really stays dead. Wow.
We get a little bit of Sat-Yr-9's backstory and everyone learns that she's from a Nazi-like dimension and has been impersonating Courtney for quite some time. No one is more thrown off by this than Kitty, who spent a very odd bunch of issues living with her (and having weird, potentially sexual but certainly awkward experiences, as covered in 66: Excalibur # 18-34 (End of Cross Time Caper))
Kitty is the only one who manages to get free and Meggan learns she is able to resist Jamie's reality warping powers. Together they are able to free the team and beat this fearsome duo.
Before the party was crashed, Cerise and Nightcrawler had a long makeout session, kicking off a romantic relationship between the two of them. I know this is trying to distract us from thinking about Nightcrawler and Meggan, but I'm down.
It took 57 fricken issues, but Excalibur finally met up with the X-Men! About damn time. These issues are not great as Tom Jones, the mutant transmuter, and the stock trading trolls show up again (first seen in X-Factor as covered in 59: X- Factor 40 - 50 (The Judgment War)). This isn't a great story so I'll just tell you that the two team's fight together and win. That's about all you need to know.
The first part of this story catches us up with Rachel in space. Rachel gets in a battle with Gallactus, as the two of them have always had a bit of a connection. There is a cool fight scene between these two that is done entirely with images, which I appreciate since that was hard to find in the 90's. This is where the first bombshell is dropped, with Rachel learning that it's hypocritical for her to challenge his planet eating because the Phoenix Force gets it's energy from feasting on unborn life.
Rachel wallows for a while and eventually comes face to face with Death. This prompts her life to flash before her eyes, which I loved seeing. At this point, we learn that the Phoenix Force had become completely aware and Rachel was technically hibernating. Eventually the Phoenix makes the choice to give up it's sentience, but before doing so cures Rachel of all her ailments. This means that not only is she alive (she was believed to be dead at one point), but her memories are fully restored after being tampered with by time travel, Mojo, spiral, etc. She re-joins the team at the end of this story arc in a more pure form, sporting the Dark Phoenix outfit as her new typical outfit.
The main story (which is not a very strong one) ropes the rest of the team into it's story. Over time, Micromax (who is displayed as a hot radio DJ), Brian and Meggan, Allister, Kylun (who's kidnapped right before talking to his parents), Kitty, Kurt, and Cerise are all kidnapped by Nigel Orpington-Smythe and his band of Warpies and taken to Cloud Nine. Warpies are basically highly deformed metahumans (specifically not mutants, however they remind me of Morlocks) which were first seen in the solo Captain Britain comic. To make a long story short (too long, really), the team is going back and forth about whether they should trust Smythe, and ultimately they shouldn't. A lot of time is spent with them, but it culminates with half of the Warpies fighting with the team against the other half. In the end it's over and the heroes win (of course). We learn that the Warpies had been dying because they get their powers from the Mystical Matrix, which is disappearing as Otherworld loses its connective power as well.
Nightcrawler and Cerise confessed their love for each other. Roma steps in to fix Cap after the Warpies had beaten him to a pulp. Nightcrawler gets a new costume. Kitty and Feron spend a lot of time arguing. He seems like a stuck up prick, so it's great to see classic Kitty put him in his place, but I'm really worried these two will end up seeing each other in a different light and become romantically involved. Please, please don't go this route.
Throughout the last story arc, Widget kept showing up and mumbling about Rachel, setting up this story. Rachel and the full team go into the future (Days of Future Past environment) to put things to rest for good, however I doubt this is the last we'll see of this timeline.
If you recall, we had previously learned that future Kate Pryde spoke to the Phoenix Force and asked it to send Rachel's body into the past. We learn here that immediately after this moment, future Kate was captured by the Sentinels and tortured to find Rachel. It turns out that this future technology sent future Kate's consciousness into the past, which took on the shape of Widget! This seems like a thin retcon and a pretty big bombshell, but there you have it. Widget has been Kitty all along. Not sure how I feel about that. This means that Widget is also written out of the series, which I don't like. I remember being mesmerized by the Widget super hero card when I was younger so I had been excited to see more of him as a character, but we never really got that.
Characters
Nightcrawler
Alan Davis himself tells us the biggest thing that happens with Nightcrawler:
“Nightcrawler’s development will come from his realization that he is the person that should be leading Excalibur. It begins with the fact that he has to lead Technet.”
Nighcrawler grows in significant ways during the Davis arc as he officially becomes leader of the team, settled the feud with Brian, gives up on Meggan, and finds a new love in Cerise, be it short lived.
Captain Britain
Davis found a way to redeem Brian in a respectable way. We learn that most of his dumb decisions were based on a hex put on him by Roma. He's finally cleared of any wrongdoing with the Captain Britain core and he buries his demons and proposed to Meggan.
Meggan
Davis was pretty excited to focus more on Meggan (and Brian):
"There’s more mileage with Captain Britain and Meggan, because there hasn’t been a lot done with them in the past. They’re still virtually new characters as far as the Marvel Universe is concerned."
In this arc Meggan stops her flirting with Kurt, finds her true form and backstory, and gets engaged as a more serious character to Brian.
Rachel
Rachel also got some groundbreaking development as we learned the true nature of her controlling the Phoenix Force and how she got from the future to our time.
Kitty Pryde
Davis has the following to say about Kitty, who I wish got more focus in this arc:
“Kitty’s a bit of a wildcard. She’s still fluctuating between being responsible and very irresponsible and childish."
Kylun
I'm still pissed that Kylun got written off as quickly as he did after Davis left, but for a time we got this badass cat warrior!
Cerise
Also pissed that we lost Cerise shortly after Davis left, but her fondness for tongue massaging with Kurt will never be forgotten!
Feron
Not mad at all that this guy disappeared!