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Excalibur Visionaries #4

Excalibur Visionaries: Warren Ellis, Vol. 1

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Born in whimsy though it was, the British mutant team had its share of dark days - never moreso than under the horrific hands of Warren Ellis Excalibur enters the Genoshan war zone with Peter Wisdom, smoking sardonic spy extraordinaire, as their guide Plus: Nightcrawler's magic girlfriend Daytripper joins the cast when a sorcerous struggle centers on Shadowcat's Soulsword Mutant terrorism, extraterrestrial espionage, and more Guest-starring Wolverine Collects Excalibur (1988) #83-90, as well as pages from X-Men Prime.

216 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 2010

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About the author

Warren Ellis

1,972 books5,772 followers
Warren Ellis is the award-winning writer of graphic novels like TRANSMETROPOLITAN, FELL, MINISTRY OF SPACE and PLANETARY, and the author of the NYT-bestselling GUN MACHINE and the “underground classic” novel CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, as well as the digital short-story single DEAD PIG COLLECTOR. His newest book is the novella NORMAL, from FSG Originals, listed as one of Amazon’s Best 100 Books Of 2016.

The movie RED is based on his graphic novel of the same name, its sequel having been released in summer 2013. IRON MAN 3 is based on his Marvel Comics graphic novel IRON MAN: EXTREMIS. He is currently developing his graphic novel sequence with Jason Howard, TREES, for television, in concert with HardySonBaker and NBCU, and continues to work as a screenwriter and producer in film and television, represented by Angela Cheng Caplan and Cheng Caplan Company. He is the creator, writer and co-producer of the Netflix series CASTLEVANIA, recently renewed for its third season, and of the recently-announced Netflix series HEAVEN’S FOREST.

He’s written extensively for VICE, WIRED UK and Reuters on technological and cultural matters, and given keynote speeches and lectures at events like dConstruct, ThingsCon, Improving Reality, SxSW, How The Light Gets In, Haunted Machines and Cognitive Cities.

Warren Ellis has recently developed and curated the revival of the Wildstorm creative library for DC Entertainment with the series THE WILD STORM, and is currently working on the serialising of new graphic novel works TREES: THREE FATES and INJECTION at Image Comics, and the serialised graphic novel THE BATMAN’S GRAVE for DC Comics, while working as a Consulting Producer on another television series.

A documentary about his work, CAPTURED GHOSTS, was released in 2012.

Recognitions include the NUIG Literary and Debating Society’s President’s Medal for service to freedom of speech, the EAGLE AWARDS Roll Of Honour for lifetime achievement in the field of comics & graphic novels, the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire 2010, the Sidewise Award for Alternate History and the International Horror Guild Award for illustrated narrative. He is a Patron of Humanists UK. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex.

Warren Ellis lives outside London, on the south-east coast of England, in case he needs to make a quick getaway.

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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
Profile Image for Ray.
Author 19 books433 followers
May 27, 2023
Although Warren Ellis has had recent controversies, he is regarded as one of the great modern comic book writers for good reason. Among his early work at Marvel was Excalibur, and he definitely improved things at the time.

Excalibur had just not been very good since Alan Davis departed, and was the weakest of all the spinoffs. The only issues worth reading were part of crossovers, frankly. Immediately after the Phalanx came and Douglock joined, Ellis came and added a dark tone.

It was also appropriate to have a British writer in charge of the U.K.-based team. Really, mutants should be more international and not just focused on America.

The current status quo was that they were living on Muir Island. There was the Soul Sword trilogy, an update on Kitty Pryde’s old friendship with the now deceased sorceress Illyana. It wasn’t the strongest start, but magical-themed stories do tend to work better for Excalibur.

One can tell Ellis put his spin on it when government agent Pete Wisdom showed up. This kind of character was something of a cliché, the grim curmudgeon in a trenchcoat chain smoking and complaining ala Alan Moore’s Constantine, but it’s a cliché for a reason. And so very British. What a bold move for him to become Kitty’s new love interest.

The stories got progressively darker, with an update on miserable Genosha and some creepy aliens. Eventually, Ellis also improved on Captain Britain and brought the iconic hero more back to his roots (that role as ‘Britannic’ was not working). Bringing Colossus back later was also a good idea.

Warren Ellis would grow considerably as an author, however flawed, but he wasn’t quite there yet at this point. Still worth reading, and it was a positive that this particular X-title got a new chance.
Profile Image for David.
2,565 reviews88 followers
November 26, 2016
Pretty crap if you ask me. Give Ellis Excalibur and he basically ditches the characters and inserts his own new lead to pair with Kitty. Where's Nightcrawler's storyline? Captain Britain's? What's up with him becoming Britanic? Neuter the central character? And put him in a horrible tights and make him half crazy? Perhaps I should have stopped at the end of Alan Davis' run.
Profile Image for Angela.
2,594 reviews71 followers
April 24, 2012
This is basically 3 stories, people want the soul sword, the team go to Genosha, and Pete Wisdom is introduced in an adventure with Kitty. It definately picks up with the introduction of Wisdom. Kitty finally has someone new to bounce off. A decent read.
Profile Image for Mike.
1,586 reviews149 followers
April 15, 2016

Man, reading old comics and watching old movies, they all scream their fashion sense from across the galaxy and assault the eyes with their questionable taste.

Mullets. Oh so many mullets. I can imagine Captain Britain sporting one, with his barrel chest and inestimable ego, of *course* the small-dicked wonder would emblazon his visage with the party-in-the-back blond tresses.

What's more offensive is seeing some asshole artist slap one on Kurt Wagner, a man who wouldn't be caught dead wearing something that attracted the Bad Taste cops (unless we're talking about one of those billowy pirate costumes, in which case all matters of taste are moot).

(oh. my. god. Calling Tom and Lorenzo for some eye bleach!)

Unfortunately for this book, Warren Ellis hadn't quite found his sharp, incisive voice in his dialogue, nor really outlandish or weird plotting to make up for his serviceable contribution. Perhaps it's a matter of the plot he had to carry forward - some nonsense about sorceresses and magicians, and a pitched battle over Iyana's Soulsword. Kinda boring (maybe I need to have been invested in the previous 80-odd issues of Excalibur to give a shit about this storyline).

And what the hell was Excalibur even about - why did this book even exist? From what I've read, there were some X-men in the mix, plus other new characters that were *not* invited to Xavier's little club of underaged, vulnerable parentless and terrified teens (say, what the hell is the subtext of an unmarried man with limitless telepathic powers inviting all these scared kids into his isolated compound of constant attack from people trying to kill/save them? Oh right, we don't talk about the megalomaniacal pedophile...).
Profile Image for Lisa Feld.
Author 1 book26 followers
October 1, 2014
Warren Ellis takes over Excalibur and makes it his own, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. I was not wild about the Scott Lobdell issues, and the comic suffered a run of crossovers and random character shakeups, so it's great to see the comic run by a steady hand again. And as a huge Kitty Pryde fan, it's great to see her taking center stage (and getting to date for the first time since Colossus dumped her in the 1980s). Ellis inserts a lead character, Pete Wisdom, who is a kind of prototype for Transmetropolitan's Spider Jerusalem: a foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, burned-out iconoclast, driven to show people the flaws in the system they serve and break them out of their conformity.

Except that Excalibur never really needed to be broken out of their conformity: They're neither establishment or anti-establishment. Half of them had never trained under Professor X, and they were never really focused on the whole "mutants versus humanity" spiel that occupied the rest of the X-teams. They've spent very little time either obeying or defying authority; for most of the comic's run, they've been out of town in other realities, commenting on societies as outsiders.

Ellis is making this comic his own, but not really seeing or using what's already there. But I do love the Pryde and Wisdom "opposites attract" dynamic, which just keeps getting better in later issues.
Profile Image for Andrew.
780 reviews13 followers
November 26, 2016
I'm a big fan of Alan Davis' work on Excalibur, and also a big fan of Warren Ellis, so I thought I'd like this. And I did, but not as much as I'd hoped. This is early Warren Ellis, and constrained to fit within 90s X-Men continuity, and within the Comics Code (which was still a thing back then, though not much of a thing). So it's not anything like Transmetropolitan or FreakAngels or any of his other work. But it's certainly readable, and you can see the germs of some ideas and themes that crop up in later Ellis works.

Ellis makes more use of Kitty Pryde than any other member of the team, which is mostly OK with me, though I'd have liked to see more of Brian Braddock, Meggan, and Nightcrawler. And the lightness of Alan Davis' run isn't here at all. There's a little humor, but not much.

The artwork in this volume is all over the place. Quite a few different artists worked on these issues, so there's really no stylistic consistency. A few good artists worked on the book, but apparently only for three or four pages at a time, from what I can tell. The overall look of the artwork, to the extent that it has any particular look, is very "90s X-Men" -- lots of exaggerated poses, big hair, unlikely musculature, stuff like that. It's kind of charming, in a weird way.

Overall, I had fun reading it, and that's what counts.

Author 6 books9 followers
October 22, 2011
Warren Ellis takes on the Scotland-based arm of the X-Men in one of the earlier assignments of his career. His run isn't as bad as the Scott Lobdell issues that drove me away from the title years ago, but it doesn't really start out all that well either. (It does not help that the first plot is apparently a hangover from the Lobdell era.) The GRIM and GRITTY tone of the mid-nineties X-books is in full swing, and I'm less than taken with Kitty Pryde's new love interest, a recovering sociopath and superspy with the rather dodgy name of "Peter Wisdom." Meanwhile, the harder-to-write characters like Meggan are shoved into the background, popping up for a line or two in any given issue.

The issues are readable, there's just a lot of room for improvement.
101 reviews3 followers
May 26, 2016
A friend lent me Excalibur: Visionaries because I love Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein and Transmetropolitan. I'm not a superhero comic reader, but enjoyed this volume. The cast of characters was easy to care about and I particularly liked the odd couple dynamic between Wisdom and Kitty Pryce. Moira's concerns over the Legacy Virus were heart warming, and there were sufficient secret government organisations, action scenes, and aliens to keep me amused.
Profile Image for Shannon Appelcline.
Author 30 books169 followers
April 25, 2013
Ellis' writing is a little wobbly in the initial Soulsword arc [6/10]. The Genosha arc is better, but harmed by the diversion through the Age of Apocalypse [7/10]. It's the Dream Nails arc where Ellis really shows his strengths, with the focus on Wisdom and Pryde [8/10].
Profile Image for Jim.
218 reviews7 followers
January 3, 2016
The only complaint I have is the inconsistent art.
Profile Image for Baal Of.
1,243 reviews81 followers
November 12, 2018
I'm glad I didn't buy any of the subsequent volumes, because this collection was quite disappointing. I liked the original Excalibur because it hit the right balance of weird, while making me like the characters. The enemies of Excalibur were frequently strange in an Alice In Wonderland kind of way, and I enjoyed that admixture into the superhero world. In this volume, I found none of the villains compelling, and the whole Dream Nails run seemed particularly mundane even when pulling in aliens. Even worse, Captain Britain has been turned into a douche bag in both appearance and personality, and Kitty Pride is made to get romantically involved with a psychopathic asshole with the horribly stupid name of Peter Wisdom. Piling on even more crap, Ellis pulls the rug out from under the reader by having Wisdom justified as actually good because he just "Does what needs to be done", which is a cheap and tired trope used to justify the behavior of a complete shit bubble who is also being presented as a hero.
The artwork in this collection is all over the place in quality, much of it infected with that horrible Rob Liefield style shitwork (Google "40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings"), with lots of weirdly distorted faces, a Nightcrawler that looks like he has tumors for muscles, plus a fucking mullet, and the aforementioned Captain Britain, excuse me Britanic, who looks differently awful in just about every panel he is in. One of my favorite artists, Bill Sienkiewicz, is listed at the beginning of the book, but I couldn't find him listed in any of the actual issues, so I think he just did some work on one of the covers.
Stepping back a bit, this makes me wonder if I just don't like superhero comics as much as I used to in general, or if it is just more difficult to find ones that suit my tastes.
Profile Image for Tim B.
259 reviews1 follower
July 12, 2019
I actually though this was a great volume. It is very different from the storylines leading up to it. I love Captain Britain and Meggan, and they don’t play a big role (the saving grace being the Brian is now Britanic and is not as good of a character). Megan and Brian, prior to this volume, were slightly overpowered. The book starts and ends with a trilogy. The first is about Illyana’s soul sword, I really enjoyed it. Again, it taps in to the heart of the feature characters. The last focuses on introducing Pete Wisdom as part of the team and developing his and Kitty’s relationship. It did very well in portraying a Kitty growing into adulthood and an angsty Wisdom. Even though the book kind of forgets about everyone other than Nightcrawler, Amanda Sefton, Kitty, and Wisdom, it is a change of pace for the series and shows growth. I look forward to the return of the goofiness, but this is a good break.
Profile Image for Nadia.
288 reviews16 followers
August 8, 2022
I read Scott Lobdell's Excalibur before starting on this and literally everything looks good compared to that. That was completely unbearable, which still does not make what follows great comics.

I don't find anything to enjoy about Pete Wisdom even if he wasn't in an inappropriate relationship. If he was in any comic other than this one he might be okay if annoying but in Excalibur he just feels wildly out of place.

This would just be an ok comic if Ellis hadn't made me read a full page of Wolverine praising the M*ssad so for that reason I knocked off a couple of stars.
Profile Image for Surly Gliffs.
475 reviews
August 27, 2023
After this trade was Officially Withdrawn from the library, it popped up at my Uncle Hugo's for five of your American dollars. I was never a regular Marvel reader but was very pleasantly surprised at Ellis' run with this iteration of the X-Men. (What do you call it? X-Men Brit? X-Men Europe? Kurt Vagner and the Bad 'Tants?)

It's typical but well-written Marvel melodrama, the plotting is slow with lots of action (something about the Genosha Wars). The star is Kitty Pryde, our tangibly intangible leveled-up badass, who gets both a romantic interest in Pete Wisdom and a krav maga lesson from Wolverine. This is awesome! Too bad the art doesn't quite meet the quality of the writing: ten pencilers over seven issues, running the gamut from superb to kinda shitty. With that warning, warmly recommended for True Believers!
Profile Image for Kris Shaw.
1,421 reviews
July 4, 2024
Warren Ellis' writing is solid and holds up for the most part, while the artwork ranges from passable to laughably bad. The '90s had some of the ugliest artwork, ever. The then-revolutionary Malibu digital color enhancements look dated, but that is forgivable. I just appreciate modern coloring techniques even more now, and it's truly amazing to think how far technology has come in such a short period of time. This is a nice collection and a good read.
Profile Image for Anika.
227 reviews8 followers
November 30, 2025
“If you spend your entire life just watching you’ll never develop the stuff to live it.”

This volume’s a bit all over the place since it’s really several separate stories, but there’s still lots of good mutant fun to be found. There are some characters I wasn’t familiar with and look forward to seeing more of, namely Amanda Sefton, Pete Wisdom, and Shrill. Fun stuff - looking forward to more of Excalibur.
Profile Image for Artur Coelho.
2,598 reviews74 followers
January 9, 2019
É um pouco estranho ver a voz pouco convencional de Warren Ellis em argumentos de comics mainstream. O seu estilo frio e capacidade de criar personagens com obsessões muito vincadas é algo dissonante no panorama estilístico dos comics. Neste volume, que colige parte da sua temporada como argumentista de Excalibur, leva-nos em aventuras muito ao seu estilo. Explora obsessões, mergulha em mundos de magia e conspirações, e de certa forma humaniza estes personagens. Nem pelo divertido que é ter uma running joke ao longo das histórias sobre o mau café que se bebe na ilha de Muir.
Profile Image for Gaël Sauvajon.
95 reviews
June 6, 2021
Past memories

A new writer brought some more up to date stories.
Some good, some less so.
Very good for me to relive these stories.
61 reviews
January 4, 2020
I'm really caught between a four and a five on this one. I've always loved the tale, but perhaps I've finally read it a few too many times. It didn't captivate me as fully as it has in the past, but I still enjoyed it thoroughly. It's a great read for Kitty Pryde fans, Pete Wisdom fans, or merely for those who are willing to read a comic book to get to a tale of a troubled man who's willing to do what's right no matter the cost to himself. Pete Wisdom's like many of us: He thinks he has to be alone. He thinks, because of his past, what he's lost, and what he's caused, that he has no other choice for to be involved with others, friendship or otherwise, is to be risk being hurt. But we don't and neither does he, as he learns when he gets with Excalibur and finds a much needed partner in the strong-willed, kickbutt Kitty Pryde, who has been leading the X-Men at various times and in various missions since she was merely fourteen. She's stronger, a better fighter, more determined, and admittedly more strong-willed than ever before. This collection also includes what finally happened with Illyana's Soul Sword and has some cute Douglock moments. All in all, it remains a favorite and, I believe, always will.
Profile Image for Adam Stone.
2,034 reviews33 followers
November 4, 2024
Warren Ellis's tenure on Excalibur is not a great introduction to either the team or to Ellis's writing. The book seems tonally unfocused, as there are bits that seem like they're trying to be Hellblazer, and some that are typical X-Men angles, and they don't mesh well together.

While I'm not a fan of Captain Britain or Meggan, the sudden focus on Pete Wisdom is also pretty jarring, especially as .

Weirdly, the fact that this volume starts before Age Of Apocalypse and then picks up afterwards as if nothing has changed, works just fine. Sugar Man suddenly existing and being part of Genosha's history is a fun ripple and feels less out of left field than Pete Wisdon's arrival.

If you enjoyed Excalibur under Claremont or Lobdell, I'm not sure you will continue to enjoy the series new direction. If you're a Warren Ellis fan, I'm not sure you'll think this is some of his best work. It's not terrible, it just feels out of place in the Marvel Universe but in a different way than Claremont's Excalibur run felt out of place.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews

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