Excalibur #18

[lordultimus]

Comments

[arilou_skiff]

I note that Rogue calls him by the weird symbol thing while Rictor says "Apocalypse".

I don't know what that means.

[silicondream]

In my mind that's Rogue going "Aaaaa" in this cracked quavery voice while flapping her hands on either side of her head. Minus the eye-rolling, it's exactly what Poccy would have wanted! And requested. In a mass email entitled "How to Address when You're Addressing!!" that Mx. Sinister volunteered to send for him.

[zachbeacon]

Ric really drank the Kool-aid, huh?

[nyadnar17]

Yeah, he really did. Ordinarily I would not understand why he didn't suspect a long con or why he so readily believes humans have to sacrifice bits of their souls to cast magic, but being among "your own kind" does strange things to people.

People who have been othered are amazingly good at othering people. I guess it helps when you have been on both sides of it.

[beyondthefringe]

Rictor suffered a huge personality transplant for this series. Honestly, a lot of characters have, both here and for the Dawn of X all around. But Tini Howard -really- seems to have shoehorned certain characters into her storyline whether they fit or not.

I mean Apocalypse the sorcerer and his apprentice/protege, Rictor the Earth Druid? When they used to be Apocalypse the immortal conqueror and Rictor the earthquake guy?

I still say that Selene the immortal mutant sorceress and Amara, her very distant descendant and actual wielder of mutant elemental fire/magma powers, would have fit the story MUCH better and with much less hammering at the edges.

[luxshine]

I don't see this as Rictor. Dunno who the hell it is, but Rictor was never so... eager to throw away his own family and traditions for others. Which pains me so much since he is my favorite mutant after Doug. Can't wait for the next reboot when he gets his head set straight and goes back to Shatty.

[alliterator]

To be fair, a lot of human magic DOES involve "selling your soul" to demons/extradimensional entities/etc.

[coldfury]

The best part about magic in the Marvel Universe is that they try to give it new rules once every few years which leads to some really weird stories.

Dr. Strange: There's actually a cost to magic, and a bunch of monks have been paying mine all this time without my knowledge!

Scarlet Witch: Look, I'm actually decaying my life force every time I cast a hex!

Meanwhile Wiccan is like "I basically just wish really hard."

[bruinsfan]

Regarding that last... well, Mephisto tends to just point a finger and whatever he wants to happen happens, without need for a rhyming chant or spitting up black gunk or whatever other side effects happened in Jason Aaron's Dr. Strange run. It's always seemed quite natural to me that Wiccan's powers wouldn't work the same way human sorcery does.

[coldfury]

Are Tommy & Billy still tied to Mephisto at all? It hadn't occurred to me that they were still entangled with him.

[scorntx]

I think since their origin had them split off from Mephisto after he tried taking them back, he no longer has any connection to them.
Or at least, there hasn't been any major story that's brought it up.

Although given the last time he tried taking their souls back, he exploded, not hard to see why he's keeping his distance.

[themajesticmoose]

I'm not seeing how anything he said here is wrong

[deh_tommy]

Tell me again how this isn’t a cult?