This week – Luke and Devin finish up their coverage of Exiles Vol 1 and the New Excalibur crossover – X-MEN: DIE BY THE SWORD! Who will join The New Exiles? Also I guess, other stuff!

Coverage:

• Exiles Vol 1 #99-100, X-men: Die By The Sword #1-5

Check out the gallery and show notes after the jump!

Show Notes:

Last time on Exiled – there was an evil Victor Von Doom who was doing something evil on the planet, Reed Richards the Mole Man decided to blow it up and the current main Exiles got scattered.

They are

Sabretooth, Blink, Morph, Spider-man 2099, and Longshot. Also now on the base is Psylocke, Thunderbird (back from the dead, Cat Pryde, and a mysterious old couple.

Exiles 99

Chris Claremont – writer, Clayton Henry – pencils, Norman Lee – inks, Wil Quintana – colors, Simon Bowland – letters

 

Sabretooth wakes up on Earth-797 and sees soldiers advancing on someone in a cemetery. Sabretooth saves the person who turns out to be Raphael-Raven Darkholm – ostensibly a male version of Mystique – which raises some questions since there was some stuff Claremont never got to do with Mystique being father to Nightcrawler and mother to Rogue because Mystique could assume a functionally male form.

Back at the Crystal Palace, Kitty has angst as she fixes the computers. They are able to fix the system. Miguel wakes up on an island – and apparently it’s his home universe with a version of Mary Jane – but honestly they fucked with Miguel and they write him off here until Spider-verse so let’s just skip it.

In Earth-1009 – the Royal Avengers appear to try and stop Rogue. Morph comes in to help her and they escape.

Blink ends up with the weird couple who are actually supposed to be Dave and Paty Cockrum and she sees a possible vision of the future where she has a family until she is brought back to the Panoptichron. They collect the rest of the team bringing Rogue and Raphael along but decide to leave Miguel behind – but like – the entire world is supposed to be a trash hole sort of – anyway he has a restaurant now. They still don’t know where Longshot is though – but it turns out he was just taking a lil nap in the base.

 

X-men Die By The Sword 1-5

Writer – Chris Claremont, Pencils – Juan Santacruz, CAFU Inks – Raul Fernandez, Andrew Pepoy, Norberto Fernandez, Colors – Rob Ro, Wil Quintana Letters – Simon Bowland

 

New Excalibur formed and fought an evil Xavier and original five X-men. The team consisted of Captain Britain, Juggernaut, Nocturne from the Exiles, Dazzler, Sage and Pete Wisdom was their handler. Turned out evil Xavier was controlled by the Shadow King, Psylocke tried to kill him and was sent to the Exiles. Eventually Dane Whitman the Black Knight joins after they went back in time and fought Makulans. Juggernaut deals with Gem problems, Black Knight leaves, Nocturne gets into a coma because Claremont wanted to write about recovery.

Albion, an evil version of Brian Braddock (Bran Bardic) who chose the sword and then got Merlin and Roma (organizers of the Captain Britain Corps) to fuck off teams up with Lionheart who chose the sword in this world, is a forgotten Avengers member, Black Air (the evil British secret service) and the Shadow X-men. Albion gets a bunch more evil Albion troops.

The Dark X-men decide to fight Albion, Sage goes undercover as a new Lionheart but then loses her original personality, turns evil. Albion uses a magic rock to turn off all the power in England, one by one the Dark X-men die, but eventually they break the stone, Sage gets back to normal though the government doesn’t trust her anymore, and Albion is stopped. Juggernaut also decides to go home and get involved with World War Hulk.

 

New Excalibur is currently Captain Britain aka Brian Braddock – leader of the Captain Britain Corp – a group of Multiversal Defenders. He can fly and he is tough. Pete Wisdom an agent of MI-13 who can make hot knives with his mind. Sage, who is the walking Retcon who has a bunch of identities in her head, Dazzler who has light projection powers and also had a child with Longshot (Shatterstar), and TJ Wagner aka Nocturne – aka one of the original Exiles.

There’s a big party going on since England was saved from Albion. Brian is mingling and checking in when Psylocke, his sister from another- well his sister whose mind was swapped into an assassin’s body – shows up and she brought goofy ass looking Thunderbird. Nocturne sees her boyfriend and they embrace.

And then outside of space and time, Mad Jim Jaspers has woken up. For those of you unfamiliar with Excalibur – Jaspers was a super powered mutant who ended up getting merged with the Fury to kill all of the superheroes. It’s a weird overpowered murder bot that came out in a time where everyone was much less powered. Anyway Captain Britain and Roma, stopped him. Merlyn who is Roma’s father and is evil now because of the House of M. A few members of the Captain Britain Corps show up and they are defeated and turned into copies of the Fury.

Meanwhile back at the Starlight Citadel, base of the CBC, Roma is chilling with Saturnyne who is also hella complicated and they sense the end of all things.

Back at the party, Dazzler decides to hook up with Pete Wisdom, TJ shared about her stroke but thunderbird still loves her, Psylocke let’s Brian know that Longshot is alive but lost his memory and apparently at this time in comics, Mojo is in jail. Brian being Brian also gets offended that there is another team out there, defending the multiverse because he’s a petty ass. He hears another knock at the door, gets shot and Rouge-Mort which looks like a female fetish version of the Shocker shows up with her Janissaries (read generic soldiers).

Psylocke starts fighting Rouge-Mort and gets her ass kicked, Sage and the others jump in – with Nocturne working on Evacuation. Dazzler and Pete run back in after shagging and meanwhile on the Citadel we see Brian Braddock is dead – possibly – and Saturnyne is ready to fuck shit up at this crossroad.

The Exiles flicker out back to the Panoptichron and move Brian to the med bay, Morph gets to see Nocturne again, the other Exiles are also back and we get a lot of meetups – Dazzler finds out Longshot doesn’t remember her so Raphael talks to her. The others are able to stabilize Brian, and Psylocke goes to alert the Corps – but she’s stopped by Pete so they reconnect and talk about the oncoming war and who Brian is supposed to be – and Dave Cockrum stabilizes Brian and meanwhile the Captain Britain Corps is flying to attack Jim Jaspers.

Saturnyne noticed that Roma is out of it since Brian got knocked out so she takes over and just has them attack which is costly as they take out one. Captain UK who previously took out one is caught by Jaspers but is saved by 2 other members who are then turned into Furys themselves.

Meanwhile Roma finally gets ready to get involved by Saturnyne tells her to let her keep leading the battle.

Back at the Panoptichron the Cockrums debate helping and Cat Pryde finds Earth-2532 where the X-men – or at least Storm, Nightcrawler and Colossus are doctors to help Brian. Meanwhile Psylocke wants to free Albion, the evil? Captain Britain.

Back in the battle, Saturnyne shows up with a big ass gun and murder blasts Jim Jaspers and we see he and the Fury are one. She keeps blasting the Furys but Jaspers returns and destroys the gun. He moves to transform her but the Exiles come in and try to kill him and it looks like they are winning – unfortunately that’s why Rouge Mort shows up to capture Roma for Merlyn – but then Dazzler shows up with a sword.

Jaspers recovers from the attack so Morph moves in to fight him and there’s supposed to be some bullshit about Morph using Proteus’ fighting style but that’s some bullroar.

Back in England, Albion gets the offer and accepts because it’s the right thing to do.

Dazzler distracted Rouge Mort long enough for Longshot to save Roma and take her away. As he fights though, Longshots memories are returning. Sage steps in to help so Longshot leaves Roma with Sage – and we find out that Roma got stabbed. Back on the battlefield, Jaspers turns Morph into a Fury but he reverts back and Albion comes in and starts beating the shit out of Jaspers with his sword and as he does so Jaspers starts turning into the Fury.

Dazzler dies (again) as Longshot returns – and he gets knocked out as well. Merlyn appears and makes a fake Roma but we see he is bleeding now which isn’t supposed to happen.

Albion continues beating the hell out of Jaspers turning him into the Fury more and more until he fully transforms back to Fury-Prime – and that’s when Captain Britain returns to kick it’s ass before it can fully manifest.

The have a big old punch fight. Meanwhile the Starlight Citadel breaks and falls to the ground. Sage meanwhile looks out at the battle and starts having memory problems and Roma works to help her – I think. Except that was the fake Roma. Merlyn finds the real one and steals her mind – luckily Psylocke shows up and beats the heck out of him, knocking him out.

Albion joins Britain fighting the Fury and because it is still waking up – Blink throws all of her teleportation darts at it and it blows up.

Everyone gathers around Merlyn who prepares to run with a bit of the fury latching onto him and he bolts. Meanwhile Longshot and Dazzler share a kiss, Roma is dead, Saturnyne choses Albion to lead the Captain Britain Corp who gets a pardon, Sage is having issues with reality so she wants to stay with the Exiles – as does Psylocke, and Longshot and Dazzler will go back to Excalibur. As all things come to an end, the Cockrums say goodbye to Psylocke and the last page is dedicated to them.

Exiles #100

Writer – Chris Claremont, Pencils – Tom Grummett, Inks – Scott Hanna, Colors – Wil Quintana, Letters – Simon Bowland

We get some reflections from Blink about the members of the team until Nocturne and Thunderbird show up to fight on the beach until her stroke acts up again. Meanwhile Sabretooth and Psylocke surf together, Morph lost a bet to Mystiq so he has to serve food dressed as a woman, and they all have lunch together and the look out into space where they see all of the other universes. Sage, Cat and Rogue aren’t there so they decide to look for them. Cat is trying to bungee jump into the reality well as Rogue watches on and she starts to blink through reality so Rogue saves her by flying down and picking her up. Meanwhile Sage is having visions of Monsters including Jim Jaspers attacking her because she is seeing visions of the people whose memories she has absorbed. She fights and it turns out she is attacking the Exiles until Blink knocks her out.

They can’t really help her since none of them are psychic, Nocturne meanwhile  wants to leave the team with Thunderbird for a while to Heather’s dimension and Blink is fine with that and even decides to go as well. They say their goodbyes and we are left with our new team going into New Exiles – Morph – the only original member, Sabretooth from the Age of Apocalypse, Psylocke and Sage from Earth 616, and then Cat, Rogue and Mystiq.

 

Earth-2532 – Doctor X-men