This two-issue tale begins with the Crazy Gang, who team up with Arcade (yay!) to kidnap a person who appears to be an old friend of Captain Britain from the UK-only Marvel comic days. I may need to go back and read the UK-only Captain Britain comics, because they seem to inform these Excalibur stories quite a bit. I was never sure they were canon (and frankly I’m still not sure).
Arcade is the perfect silly villain for this silly comic. And I don’t mean “silly” as an insult, but let’s face it: This book is full of ridiculous and weird characters. Like the way Arcade announces that he’s the villain by slipping his own currency into an ATM used by Excalibur members.
So, the team heads off the latest Arcade house of death traps. Not that he needs them. The Crazy Gang’s Tweedledope has made a machine that enables the Gang to switch bodies with the Excalibur members, so there’s a lot of fun there as they make their way through Arcade’s gauntlet to rescue Captain Britain’s old girlfriend and foil the villains.
When it’s all over, Arcade is hauled off to jail by Dai Thomas.
And Saturnyne kills Captain Britain’s non-powered girlfriend, Courtney Ross. It’s jarring to have a death happen in a book that’s so silly–a book that seems to demand NOT to be taken seriously.
And because no Chris Claremont joint is complete without plot threads being planted for the future, we see Callisto and Moira kidnapped as a train they are in goes through a tunnel that is apparently turned into a portal by the robot-head called Widget, whose allegiances and mission is still terrible unclear.
There’s also more references to Rachel Summers having the Phoenix power now. Including this funny one:
We know that won’t end well.
And what has been implied before, is now confirmed: Nightcrawler and Meggan got a thiiiiiiiiiinnnnngggg goin’ on. And Captain Britain doesn’t know yet.