EXCALIBUR BY TINI HOWARD VOL. 1

Nice gift

Really love this volume to read the next one soon we love the storyline really love the characters great way to kick off of the stories, this line of characters and stories

I greatly enjoyed the beginning volume of Marvel's new Excalibur mutant team. We get to watch old characters return from obscurity, characters switch dynamics and other characters stay in places that we love them at. I also thought it was cool to see familiar characters being placed into a fantasy setting (which I didn't initially know anything about but was able to quickly pick up on) that you wouldn't normally think mutants would be placed in.(Spoilers)PRO: Betsy's new struggle with her new position is really interesting to see and incredibly fresh for her character because she's been sort of whittled down to Asian assassin over the years.CON: The character dynamics can get kind of frustrating because , in simple terms, everyone has their own goals and no one really cares about the goals of the other members of the team.

The artwork is engaging, and the story is all kinds of fun. There is a feeling that Apocalypse has a master plan in place.

I thought I would really dig this series but I don't. If you don't have a good background understanding of the whole "Otherworld" thing going on it's just kind of noise and makes no sense. On issue #4 so if 5 and 6 don't pick it up I'll drop this line.

I was really anticipating reading this collection even though I had read through the first issue and not really enjoyed it. I have a friend who counts Excalibur as his favorite of the Dawn of X titles and he assured me that this thing just took off after that first issue. He's usually right but... nope, this was not my cuppa tea.There is a lot about this book that is great. In theory. The cast is all good. You get Betsy Braddock who is still trying to get her feet underneath her after living in the wrong body for about thirty years our time. She brings along a good portion of the X-Men Blue Team cast from the nineties (Gambit, Rogue, and Jubilee) as well as Rictor from... well, he's been in quite a few books over the years. Apocalypse also features strongly even though he's chosen to go by a name we can't pronounce or type so I'm already annoyed by it. And this is Excalibur! That was a fairly decent book back in the day. Betsy taking on the role of Captain Britain is pretty awesome even though I have mixed feelings about sidelining her twin brother.Where this thing falls apart for me is in its story execution. Because the story telling is about as messy as you can get in a mainline mutant book. The panels don't flow well. The story jumps ahead without warning. It is basically hard to follow what is going on.And this is NOT helped by the lack of explanation on any of the concepts populating this book. These are things like "What is Otherworld?" and "Who is this character?" or "What is literally going on here?" Nothing is explained. You need a PHD in your obscure comic history to piece this all together and even though I have read comics featuring most of these concepts before, they aren't things that come to the top of my mind and I even I could use a refresher on the who's and whats. Basically, a comic writer should always write as though the comic is someone's first issue, especially when dealing with things that haven't been used in other stories in quite a while. If I need to pull out a Google search to figure out what something is, the comic writer has failed in their job. This is even more annoying because the Dawn of X books have so many text and chart pages that pull you right out of the story to explain some bit of obscurity or another and these hardly even attempt to just fill in some basic world information. I'm not saying I need my hand held to enjoy a comic because part of the fun is figuring out what everything is with just some basic, general information given. This ignores the basic, general details and pushes you in the deep end of the pool.So this is the highbrow book for someone who has the desire to look up all the details and unclog the poor story telling. It's not a good book and I'm probably being generous with that two stars. I just like the cast and the EXcalibur "brand" and I WANT it to be good. I've already made the decision to keep on picking up all the Dawn of X titles but if you haven't... this one is the one to avoid.

This book is the weakest of the Dawn of X titles and overall mediocre at best. The main title X-Men is much better.Psylocke is no more and Betsy Braddock has become Captain Britain, even though she doesn't live in Britain. Marvel is beyond tone deaf in making Captain Britain someone that lives on Krakoa. What's next, Captain America lives on the Moon? Psylocke was a much cooler character and a straight badass but she has been made much more generic in this book. The fact that Captain was historically not a mutant has also been tossed aside for reasons. The book never makes clear why the Queen of England would accept a Cpt Britain of a different species that lives in a different country. Probably because it makes no sense.Gambit is another character where it feels like the author never read any previous work with the character. Mr Swamp Cool is now gone and has been replaced with a hot headed weakling. Example: Gambit starts attacking a group of humans and throwing large chunks of concrete because one of them threw a bottle. Previously he would have just been able to shut everyone up with saying a few sentences. He has been made soft and whiny, just like Betsy Braddock.

Not a fan of separate but equal story lines.

Great book. Worth the price. I’m going to add it to an Excalibur volume I’ve had cooking for a while. So thanks because now it’s done and can be sent to be bound.

Betsy Braddock/Psylocke hasn't had the best of luck, so I was happy to see her getting her flowers and becoming the leader of Excalibur, and what a start she has! We get to see the X-Men diving into the more mystical side of things, and I'm excited to see where Howard takes this group.

Fantastic start to the series. Every issue is packed with story, character and some stunning artwork. A book I will re-read for years to come.

It’s good just not my favourite team

I am not impressed if anything a bit disappointed. I got this as it had two of my favourite X-Men/People in it, Gambit and Psylocke. Gambit did not really get a chance to do much in this book, and Psylocke is actually Betsy Braddock half since the split. At first I was quite annoyed by Betsy lack of fighting skills but that actually make perfect sense, since her assassin's half is not here. Though book and action was so confusing I would not have noticed this unless I was looking for it. Yes I was.The book takes place between London (does not look much like where I live), Krakoa (mutant/hippy paradise), and Otherworld (Camelot). I do find it interesting that Krakoa is bringing back mutants depending on the power level not their allegiance. I an see a civil war coming.I can see this series feeding into the main X-MEN storylines but even having my favourite characters in it I am not inclined to pick up the next volume. The art work is ok a but too cartoonish for me. The story was overly complicated for what it was. Also things seemed to happen for no reason at all. There is cover gallery at end with full page spreads and 1/4 thumbnails of the super rare varient covers.