Excalibur #84
“Dark Adapted Eye”
Writers: Warren Ellis & Scott Lobdell
Pencils: Daerick Gross
Inks: Bill Anderson
Colours: Joe Rosas
Letters: Jon Babcock
Editors: Suzanne Gaffney & Bob Harras
Original publication date: December 1994
We’re still adapting to this brand-new era in which Excalibur sucks less. But supernatural transformations are better with great company, and we’ve got that in spades talking demons, magic swords, and the girls who wear them best in Excalibur #84, “Dark Adapted Eye,” with returning guest Dr. Cait Coker! Plus Cait does Supernatural, Anna quotes Lucifer, and we contemplate hard-hitting questions like—why do so many demonic possession stories feature bad dancing and karaoke?
On artistry:
“Daerick Gross is having more fun drawing Nightcrawler than anyone since Dave Cockrum.” -Andrew
On demonic tropes:
“Demonic possession stories often remove a sense of responsibility from a character… once your soul has been replaced with a demon, you become pure ID.” -Cait
On hysterical gender stuff:
“I don’t like the discourses of female hysteria that attach to Meggan… How many times in the last year of comics have Meggan’s friends jammed a needle in her neck to knock her out? It just happened two issues in a row.” -Anna
On roommates:
“I don’t like some of the Soulsword retconning in this story… But I do really like the idea of Kitty talking to the sword as though it’s Illyana.” -Andrew
On demonic Nightcrawler:
“Demonic possession stories are risky with Nightcrawler because his whole thing was—he looks like a demon but isn’t. When people try to make his conflict about ‘am I a demon?’—that makes him boring.” -Anna
On code-switching:
“When Kurt is possessed by Gravemoss, it suggests the ways Kurt could look like more of a demon, depending on how he chooses to present himself.” -Anna
On unsexy demons:
“I was kinda irritated by possessed Nightcrawler because I assumed demonic possession would make him even sexier, but instead it was kinda dumb?” -Cait
On sympathic retconning:
“This is Ellis acknowledging that the Britannic storyline is stupid and he doesn’t want to talk about it.” -Mav
Want more Cait Coker?
Check out her award-winning edited collection The Global Vampire: Essays on the Undead in Popular Culture Around the World!
And here’s some Halloween Voxpopcast episodes about monsters (and vampires!) if you want to keep the conversation going!
e78: Monster Studies-201: Course Syllabus
e30. Monster Mash 2: Breaking Twilight
And as usual:
You can find Anna on Twitter (@peppard_anna) and at Sequential Scholars (@seqscholars).
You can find Andrew on Twitter (@ClaremontRun) and at Sequential Scholars.
You can find Mav on Twitter (@chrismaverick) and on his podcast, VoxPopcast (@VoxPopcast).
Enjoy!
-GGW Team