This week, we’re focusing on the formal techniques of our new regular penciler, the artist formally known as Salvador Larroca, in Excalibur #107, “Focus”! To help us concentrate through the chaos, we’ve recruited venerable comics scholar Chris Galaver, author of the recent book The Comics Form, to help us, talking splashes, insets, pacing, excess, upside down transforming plane-cars, and why a crack in the pavement takes up most of one page. Plus! Mav spills secrets from the set of Zack and Miri make a Porno…?

Piotr Rasputin is a trouble starter, punkin’ instigator in the danger(ously) illustrated Excalibur #106, “A Portrait of the Artist.” And we’re drawing on the artistic insights of one Adam Reck, co-host of the Battle of the Atom podcast, to illuminate the inner beauty and random chaos of these creative choices. Will Adam succinctly explain the unique styles and discursive contexts of Abstract Expressionism? Will Mav measure the distance between Sibera and Ukraine? Will Anna say the word “moist”? Anything can happen when Andrew’s away and we’ve got too much space to play.

This week, Douglock’s sure he doesn’t love sausage but Kitty’s sure Doug Ramsey does in Excalibur #105, “Hard Truths”… in which Kitty (eventually) apologizes for being a jerk. We’re joined by returning guest, comics scholar and educator Dr. Nicholas E. Miller, to perform some reparative reading—or maybe queer vandalism?—on an issue that has lots of potentials it doesn’t always intend, but darned if we don’t make the most of it, talking trans, enby, and asexual metaphors and the power of comics to tell them.

It’s no secret that we sometimes had our issues with the Ellis era. We’re celebrating a fresh start by going grave robbing with famous jerk Kitty Pryde in Excalibur #104, “Buried Secret,” accompanied by the accomplished insights of artist, writer, and certified X-Pert + Eternals Enthusiast Karen Charm! Featuring early Bryan Hitch art and our innermost thoughts about it! Plus sympathy for Douglock as he's persecuted by the straights.

The Ellis era of Excalibur reaches an appropriately multiversal conclusion in Excalibur #103, “Bend Sinister—Reprise”! We’re joined by comics scholar Dr. Daniel Stein to pick up the pieces and talk about how they relate to serial storytelling and the emotionality of work-for-hire creation and who really owns these stories anyway—a writer? A company? A reader? Maybe a little of all three…? We liked this one right up until the final page, which we hated. But the last caption says the best is yet to come… Will it prove prophetic??

Is this VoxPopcast or Gosh Golly Wow? We think it’s probably the latter but it’s hard to tell when Mav is reunited with his VoxPop co-host—comics, pop culture, and fashion scholar Monica Geraffo—to talk a little bit about Excalibur #102, “After the Bomb,” while making a digression or two (or five) into the highs and lows of 90s fashion and what contemporary superhero costumes tell us about the state of our dread and denial amid ongoing climate catastrophes. Plus! Monica reacts to Nightcrawler’s new clothes and everyone makes a dick joke.

Our favourite mutant misfits might be having a quiet one but we’re getting loud about… our love for quiet issues? Our squad’s reunited with returning guest Laura Grafton in a new base with new boys but some of the same baselines in Excalibur #101, “Quiet,” an “Onslaught” event aftermath issue that’s really set amid “Onslaught” but you really wouldn’t know it because our mutants spend the event watching the news while our artist and writer wrangle some great character moments that make this non-event surprisingly eventful.

It’s not our hundredth episode (been there, done that), but it is the mega-sized hundredth episode of the comic book we decided to dedicate 126+ weeks of our lives to discussing, which warrants a mega-sized ep! That can only mean we’re talking Excalibur #100, “London’s Burning,” with returning guest Dr. Andrew Kunka, who comes bearing tales of Warren Ellis slamming Harold Bloom while hopped up on too many Red Bulls. Plus! An update on the saga of Mav’s garage and maybe a special secret sleepy guest star.

We’re coming in hot this week, joined by comics and pop culture scholar Dr. Anthony Michael D’Agostino to wield scorching takes about how everything that happens in the underwhelming Excalibur #99, “Fire with Fire,” is actually a narcissistic projection of the issue’s writer and maybe there’s value in that after all? Plus objections to Onslaught and reflections on which came first—being queer or reading X-Men?

Explosive change is in the air in Excalibur #98! Kurt Wagner definitely feels that (plus every tiny breeze) as he debuts a brand-new Carlos Pacheco-designed costume that our returning guest, writer, music critic, and Excalibur super-fan Quentin Harrison, describes as Eurotrash swashbuckler chic (*affectionate). In addition to full team coverage of Kurt’s flamboyant fashion, we’ve got more gushing about Pacheco and plenty of praise for an action-packed issue where everyone gets a chance to shine. Plus! The blessing of Papa Chris and Pete Wisdom’s pancake butt.