Excalibur Special Edition #1 pg 11 (Davis art, Neary inks, Claremont story) - 1st Excalibur book - Meggan discovers death of Psylocke

From the pages of the first appearance of the Excalibur team comes this page featuring Meggan flying in and discovering that Brian Braddock’s twin sister, Betsy (Psylocke) has been killed along with the other X-Men in a battle taken place in Texas.

The X-Men’s death is the inciting incident that eventually births this new team of mutants, known as EXCALIBUR. Without the X-Men to carry out Xavier’s dream there needs to be a new team to take up the mantle, bringing together Captain Britain (Brian Braddock), Meggan (Meggan Puceanu), Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner), Phoenix II (Rachel Summers), and Shadowcat (Katherine Pryde); the latter three being the lone survivors of the X-Men as they were unable to join the team in Texas.

A huge milestone in my collection to get this beautiful page from the first Excalibur book. The regular monthly series EXCALIBUR (1988 - 1998, for 125 issues) spun out of this SPECIAL EDITION (1988 one shot), with the same creative team later in the same year.

Chris Claremont, in this era had just finished a long run on NEW MUTANTS and was handling UNCANNY X-MEN beautifully, on top of doing some work on MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS and starting up the WOLVERINE series. With all of those series in play, he was also able to develop and launch EXCALIBUR. Claremont was in his prime with all the series stories he was spinning, each with their own very unique tone. UNCANNY X-MEN leading the charge with heavy serious character driven dynamic storylines that would weave in and out of other books, NEW MUTANTS being the smaller stories featuring characters learning to live under the huge shadow of their originators, WOLVERINE focusing on an individual character outside the major team’s dynamics, and EXCALIBUR being a team that wishes it could be the X-MEN (in their apparent absence) and generally falling short.

Alan Davis, one of the X-MEN’s prime visual storytellers, having done NEW MUTANTS (Annuals), UNCANNY X-MEN and the CAPTAIN BRITAIN books led beautifully for him to team up with Claremont and take on this new EXCALIBUR series. Having both Mark Farmer and Paul Neary inking his beautifully detailed line work taking his work to the next level.

The top right panel featuring Meggan landing in such a dynamic pose, is absolutely gorgeous with her hair flaming up as she lands. This is secondary to the extremely emotive lower right panel as she makes her discovery for the passing of her beloved’s twin sister Betsy. But my favorite panel is the mid page splash featuring a quick history look of what makes up Betsy Braddock via images and pictures. Here we get to see her loving connection to her twin brother Brain in an early childhood beach image and her support for him from his University graduation. Then sprinkled around and underneath are magazine covers for when Betsy was a fashion model and last but certainly not least is an X-MEN team shot when Betsy (Psylocke) joins the team in UNCANNY X-MEN #213 (featuring what ultimately becomes the Silvestri X team/my favorite teamup - Wolverine, Dazzler, Longshot, Psylocke, Storm, Havok and Rogue).

A lot for me to check off the X list with this historic piece and couldn’t ask for a better piece to represent my EXCALIBUR collection.