30 days of comics I love #3: What could be more just?

Excalibur #23
By Chris Claremont, Alan Davis and Paul Neary

Almost all of the second year of Excalibur was spent stuck on the Cross-Time Caper, and it was definitely getting old by the end. They were skipping across time, but not really progressing anywhere.

So everybody - both characters and readers - was fairly grateful when it finally came to an end, with Alan Davis returning to wrap things up.

(Davis wasn't the official artist on Excalibur by that stage, and after these two issues, wouldn't do any more until he came back for full writer/artist duties a couple of years down the line. The only real Excalibur is Davis Excalibur, but I still fee a little bad for Chris Wozniak, a genuinely interesting artist who was announced as the regular penciller, but didn't really fit, and only lasted a handful of issues before moving onto a career of claiming that Batman movies were ripping him off.)

The Excalibur crew had been rocketing through a checklist of different comic genres during their wild travels, and in this penultimate part, crash into a world very similar to Judge Dredd (right own to the logo.) It's a grim place full with high technology, massive overpopulation and gross pollution. 

A new version of Kitty Pryde is a crime boss in this world, but as typical for a Dredd story, the villain doesn't survive for many pages once the story gets going. Meanwhile, Meggan, the team's empathic spirit, literally chokes on the foul air before metamorphing into a huge armoured creature, brutal enough to withstand this brutal world.

The Cross-Time Caper didn't really work because the team would smash into the local narratives, and then bugger off again just as things were getting interesting, and this final jaunt was no exception, after a bunch of arrests and fights and demonic forces, everyone just gets back into their train and disappears, and the Dredd analogue lets them go, as she prepares for a long career of silent cameos when they get all the Captain Britains together.

 

It's still prime Davis and Neary, just before the penciller moved on to the even smoother lines of Mark Farmer as his inker. Alan and Paul were always a good mix, and have a fitting finale on their regular collaborations with this slice of brilliance..