Excalibur 103 page 20 splash by Carlos Pacheco & Bob Wiacek

Another great (half ?) splash from Excalibur 103 by Carlos Pacheco.

Excalibur 103 was a weird but GREAT 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.

To enhance the sense of disorientation and weirdness, Pacheco played with angles and verticality a lot in this issue and this page is a great example of it.

Here we have Hellbo…, hum, Belasco sitting on his limbo throne, having fun at being revealed as the bad guy behind the story. His fun also comes from torturing Margali (who’s supposed to be green but I guess nobody told the colorist or the editor of the book. Unless she is a skrull-Margali, trading green for pink in her transforming ^^) AND possessing the soul sword.

Like I said, great sense of verticality. Not really sure why Carlos chose to use a first thin panel but the wider white gutter gives more impact to the third panel.

In that second panel, I find that Belasco’s face could pass for an early version of Hellboy by a young Carlos Pacheco (wait! Could this be the very first appearance in history of Hellboy in a Marvel comic ?!?! GASP! I must be rich!).

That last panel is fantastic because the angle and layout Carlos chose really gives a (literal) sense of depth to the scene, with Margali being tortured in the foreground. Fun use of slightly warped perspective here. Her clear discomfort is also quite creepy with her screaming, the blisters and the way her limbs are distorted in the obviously too small cage.

First appearance lovers may also be disappointed to note that this is not the first appearance of genitalia in a Marvel comic as Carlos expectedly hid the naughty bits areas with crossing legs and clothes (because no, I don’t picture Mr Belasco as a boxers or thong guy under that toga).

(the anatomy in Belasco’ legs seems off with some weird lines but I still like that early Pacheco art for its fault as his work was already super dynamic and solid).

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. It basically looks like it could have been inked by Merino in places :)