Excalibur 14 - Acts of Vengeance

It's surprising just how many parodies "Acts of Vengeance" generated during its run. Over the course of these reviews I'll be looking at each one of them. Curiously this one appeared even before the crossover itself began.

Excalibur #14

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Alan Davis
Inker: Paul Neary
Letterer: Agustin Mas
Colourist: Glynis Oliver
Editor: Terry Kavanagh
Chief Correspondent: Tom DeFalco

Created by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis, Excalibur combined elements from both the Uncanny X-Men and Captain Britain. Based in the United Kingdom the team had a variety of unique adventures. Excalibur is otherwise one of the few mainstream universe Marvel series from this era to have escaped from "Acts of Vengeance". Maybe this is because the crossover fell right in the middle of the "Cross-Time Caper" storyline that meant the characters simply weren't available for an event on Earth (although as we'll see, this did not prevent other series from being caught up in the storyline). Perhaps it was a sign of creator autonomy, with Claremont being largely able to keep the title away from much of the Marvel universe and particularly from a rival's storyline.

This is the third chapter in the "Cross-Time Caper" which ran and ran (and ran and ran...) over a whole year, taking the team on a tour through many alternate realities. The first chunk of the issue is taken up with the conclusion of an adventure in a world where Arthurian magic has continued to the present day and where Prince William is about to marry Katherine. (I wonder if the real Prince William ever read this issue and got a hint...)

Later the team are taken to another strange Earth with a strong dose of parody of the regular Marvel universe. All the heroes and villains are fighting each other as part of "Acts of Vengeance" and each is a distorted version of their true selves. Meggan and Nightcrawler are shown a key source of the problems - two men each trying to outdo the other to generate "the latest cataclysmic cosmic cross-continuity caper". The men are drawn as Chris Claremont and John Byrne. The issue climaxes with the arrival of Galactus and an appearance by the Impossible Man.

Read in isolation this is quite a mixed issue. Interim chapters of structured sagas from this era are often somewhat impenetrable and it's a pity a full issue wasn't given over to the second reality. It's full of jokes from the Hulk with the mind of a baby to Goliath having grown so tall he reaches the edge of the atmosphere to Rick Jones being made into the ultimate fan sidekick. The digs at "Acts of Vengeance" and Byrne are fairly subtle, perhaps reflecting the limited amount that had been revealed about the crossover at that stage, though the point that each kept trying to outdo the other has something to it with the ever-growing size of these events - "Inferno" had about forty-five separate issues, "Acts of Vengeance" close to seventy with the banner alone. And the concept of heroes fighting each other’s villains isn't really delved into, although Phoenix encountering Galactus could be said to be in the spirit of the thing. All in all, this isn't really an essential issue for the event.

Excalibur #14 has been reprinted in:

• Excalibur Classic Volume 3 - Cross-Time Caper Book 1 (2007)
• Excalibur Epic Collection: The Cross-Time Caper (2018)