Excalibur 103 page 9 half splash by Carlos Pacheco & Bob Wiacek

A great (half ?) splash from Excalibur by Carlos Pacheco.

Excalibur 103 was a weird issue written by Warren Ellis, a sort of homage to the Prisoner tv show with Colossus, Shadowcat and Nightcrawler imprisoned in a sort of systemic closed circle village with various iterations of themselves.

The main incentive of this page is obviously the violent splash of Colossus facing one of his doubles. I’ve always loved scenes with characters being smashed into/trough walls, probably due to my anime/manga tastes. This one is particularly well done with debris flying all over to enhance the impact of the blow into the ground.

The goatee on Nightcrawler never convinced me since it was previously established he has fur all over his body. But it’s associated with his redesign of the Ellis/Pacheco run so in the end, it’s a nice touch. So is his swashbuckling stance in the first panel.

Other Pacheco goodness consistent with his style and work of that period in his career, are the clenched fingers in panel one and three.

Koblish and Wiacek are credited with inking the issue. I choose to believe Wiacek inked this page as I’m not sure I recognize any of those inking styles on the page :)