Excalibur, aesthetics and an other Britain: from whimsical tradition to tabloid aesthetic

ABSTRACT

‘Britain’ has always been an odd entity in American superhero comics: not least in Marvel Comics’ Excalibur. At turns, innocently quirky and wryly cynical, Excalibur’s Britain has been a markedly different place in the hands of different writers (and artists). This article addresses three key runs of Excalibur – those of Chris Claremont, Alan Davis and Warren Ellis – with particular attention to the depiction of Britain not simply as a matter of discourse and representation, but also in terms of tone and theme. Drawing on the political aesthetics of Jacques Rancière, the article explores what it means to talk about a specifically ‘British’ take on superhero comics. Through a critical analysis of how the different eras of Excalibur present different takes on what is ostensibly a British style of representation, the article explores how the form of a comic book, as well as its content, might be though to express assumptions about particular national identities and political communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Excalibur
• aesthetics
• Britain
• nation
• Chris Claremont
• Alan Davis
• Warren Ellis

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Barbara Postema, who helped me re-orientate myself in the field of Comic Studies after a long time away.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In this analysis, I privilege the authorial and aesthetic contributions of writers over that of pencilers and other visual artists. This is a consequence of limited space, rather than any desire to minimise the role of visual storytelling in relation to the construction of a national aesthetic and I acknowledge that my account can only ever be partial as a result. An exploration of the national framing of visual elements would be a very productive complement to the current analysis.

2. Such specific aesthetic assessment is almost entirely absent in letters addressing the prior two writers, who are lauded as superb craftsman, but to whom no specific formal qualities or tonal tendencies are attributed.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicholas Holm

Nicholas Holm is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Massey University, New Zealand. He writes widely on vernacular critique and the politics of popular aesthetics, with a particular focus on humour and satire as cultural modes. He is the author ofHumor as Politics (Palgrave 2017) and Advertising and Consumer Society (Palgrave 2016). He contributed multiple articles on Marvel’s X-Men and related properties to the Comics Through Time reference Encyclopedia (2014).