After eight volumes thoroughly devoted to telling the story of the original Excalibur squad, Excalibur Epic Collection: You Are Cordially Invited finally brings an end to the adventures of Britain’s greatest ’90s superhero team. At a whopping 512 pages, the book includes Excalibur #116-125, Volume 2 #1-4, X-Men: Unlimited #19, and all three issues of X-Men: True Friends.
In closing out the team’s journey, this book ties in countless themes that have remained important elements of the lore in the decades since the original releases. The legacy virus, Moira’s behind-the-scenes work, Captain Britain and Meggan’s relationship, and even the Phalanx all find a way to secure places in the book.
There are elements of the book that have not sustained relevance through the years, of course. Somewhat interestingly, they are also the parts of this collection that hardly seem to fit. X-Men: True Friends and Excalibur Vol. 2 are great books with much to offer, but neither of them truly fit into this book. They are simply included to pad pages, and they have little relevance to the actual collection itself.
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The Unlimited story does feel like a necessary addition, but it comes in the middle of an Excalibur arc and hardly seems to fit where it is left. If it came at the beginning of the collection, it might have been a smoother transition. Instead, it is a head-scratching inclusion that just feels arbitrarily thrown in because of real-world chronological releases.
If Marvel did need to include more in this book, Kitty Pryde: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. would have been a much more natural fit. After all, it is regularly mentioned, and its events directly tie into the first few issues collected in Excalibur Epic Collection: You Are Cordially Invited. Because True Friends tells a story that feels straight out of the Cross-Time Caper, it is much more fitting for an earlier volume. Here, it just feels tacked on for the sake of filling space and having somewhere to put the story.
Because this collection gathers stories that take place so late in the run, it has an expectation that readers will have collected previous issues. It starts in the middle of an arc with little preamble. Anyone who has not read Volume 8 of the Excalibur Epic Collection will be unbearably confused.
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The late start also gives the sense that the book is very rushed. Without the additional story provided by earlier issues, it feels like Excalibur is desperately pushing to fill every loose end in just 10 issues. In some ways, that is the case, but it does miss slow escalations, such as Lockheed’s increasing fear and Nightcrawler’s increasing confidence in his leadership skills.
Any potential problems aside, it is not hard to find this book enrapturing. It’s a trip right back to ‘90s style with over-the-top action, ridiculous stories like evil plushes, and alien menaces stopped by the power of friendship. It’s so bizarre that it really does work. What else can someone ask for?
As a final collection, it also works brilliantly. In the modern landscape of comic creation, it’s rare that a comic can actually go out on its own terms. Excalibur entirely bucks that notion. The main section of the book ends with a wedding and a bang, and even the extended epilogue of Vol. 2 offers a compelling angle to end the series, as Brian steps up to a powerful future.
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What also works is that aforementioned wedding. To risk referencing another book featuring Kitty Pryde and Colossus, X-Men Gold #30, this epic collection entirely avoids the typical trope of dancing away from a wedding. A wedding actually happens. Captain Britain and Meggan actually get married. The cover is not a lie. It’s such an uncommon situation that it is genuinely worth the praise. It really does happen!
Characters grow, change, and experience major life shifts. Some of the romance in this book may be admittedly melodramatic, but it’s in a very fascinating way that evokes the ever-simmering style of a soap opera. Even with hours passing by with every section, it’s hard not to keep turning the page to see the next development.
While not perfectly curated, the content of Excalibur Epic Collection: You Are Cordially Invited remains as relevant today as it was in the late ’90s and early 2000s. The stories all have endings that beg for more attention, and the overall narrative is given the rare opportunity to end on its own terms. There are no bait-and-switches with the wedding, leaving readers with the exact experience that they are looking for in a book subtitled You Are Cordially Invited. Anyone who enjoyed the original Excalibur team will have a ball — or a bamf — with this book.
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