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Why I Love... Exiles!

Welcome to another edition of the Why I Love column, where I, Eric Ratcliffe, pick something I've read, played, listened to or watched to discuss with you fair readers. I get to talk about possibly one of my favorite comics of all time. A comic I followed all the way to 100, even through its stage as "new" and now at its new #1 where the writer seems to have nailed exactly what the title was in the first place. That's right ladies and gentleman, I'm talking Exiles.

The Exiles were a team consisting of different versions of characters who were all from different worlds, tasked to fix the marvel multiverse and if they don't their universe is permanently broken. Examples being Nocturnes father, Nightcrawler dying.

The first 19 issues had some of the most powerful material on the title and quite possibly one of my favorite comic stories of all time. So let's break this down a little by writers, storylines and even the best artists on the series.

Best storylines:

A World Apart: issues 8 through 10. Our team enters a world where the Skrulls took over the earth while the industrial revolution was taking place. Anybody that becomes special gets brought into a gladiator like game for the Skrulls' amusement. Of course when Galactus comes the Skrulls flee and it's up to our heroes and those from this world to save the day one more time.

From Cal's (Mimic) poker face in the games to the science team that's formed to combat Galactus, this story really had it all and was probably the strongest of the whole series. There was plenty of focus on our team as well as we find out that Nocturne was pregnant via Thunderbird who becomes the 2nd member of the Exiles to meet a horrible fate in the series.

So Lame: issues 18 and 19 where the team comes face to face with Mojo who interrupts their usual world jumping. Morph and Nocturne are soon captured and the others have to enlist the help of the most famous Mojoverse inhabitant, Longshot. The thing that I really liked about this arc was seeing Morph take as much as he could in order to protect Nocturne who was being tortured in order for Morph to do his variety show which gained Mojo major ratings.

It was also cool to see a new status quo introduced for Longshot who had lost all his memories and didn't know the man he once was. Everyone was growing as well from things getting worse with Cal to Nocturne doing her best to keep the pain in.

Legacy: issues 20-22 followed our heroes on a world where the legacy virus morphed into something much worse when it combined with Warlock and turned people into creatures called Vi-locks. The mission was capturing Cypher in order to get a cure for the virus but the problem was that the virus had taken over some of the most powerful super powered people on the planet and our team soon found themselves in some major danger right off the bat. Oh and at the end of the story, we lose one of our founding members who apparently got to go "home".

King Hyperion: issues #38-40 had us changing our focus over to the Weapon X team who had changed a lot since the last time our team had run into them, Spider and the Vision being the only returning members of the squad. When Hyperion is introduced into the system, the Timebroker is quickly ignored and Weapon X gets turned upside down. Hyperion wants to rule the world they are thrown into and most of the team agrees with him.

This really was the first stepping stone to changing everything that we knew about Exiles and Hyperion become a major force in where the direction of the title would change. It was also one of the first major stories in the series where we would follow the villain who you really couldn't root for.

A Nocturne's Tale: issues 41 and 42 gave us the backstory to one of our strongest members of the Exiles. Talia Wagner aka Nocturne's past was hinted at a lot in the early issues of the series. People were curious about the world she came from and Jim Calafiore honestly didn't disappoint. Logan is paralyzed, Kurt is missing an eye and her world's Kitty Pryde goes missing and is replaced with a younger version. Oh and Scott Summers leads the Brotherhood.

It was great to really see an interesting X-Men elseworlds with TJ's world and showed that the worlds really could be anything you could imagine and seeing TJ as a punk kid just rebelling against her father was fun as well.

When Tony Bedard stepped onto the title it was a breath of fresh air and I think I honestly enjoyed everything he wrote. From discovering the base of operations to a done-in-one story about Morph saving the day to the entirety of world tour, Tony had an incredibly strong grasp of the book.

Another thing that Tony brought back to the book was the unpredictability. There were longtime characters that were killed off, new team members brought in like Miguel O'hara aka Spiderman 2099, and shocking story moments.

Best Characters:

Nocturne - The daughter of The Scarlet Witch and Nightcrawler. She comes from a universe where Wolverine is crippled, Xavier is dead and Scott Summers is one of the bad guys. She's one of my personal favorite members of the cast of the book due to all she went through. From the torture at the hands of Mojo to the miscarriage of her child, she came out a stronger character.

Age of Apocalypse Sabretooth and Blink - I group the two of them together because of all the stuff they went through together. This version of Sabretooth became a father figure and an actual leader of the X-Men in his world. He's not the psychopathic murderer from the main Marvel Universe. He would treat Blink as his little girl because she became that to him. Blink on the other hand was slightly awkward in her own skin most of the time; she constantly questioned herself until she finally stepped up to be team leader. Throughout the series I'd say she was the character to go through the most and hope that we can see her again one day.

Mimic - Just like the 616 version, he can copy the powers of up to 6 mutants at a time and he became the de facto leader of the team. He got angry for what felt like a majority of the series for reasons that I won't spoil and really started to become a darker and tortured character. When Blink was around he was lighthearted and likable and the second she was taken from him things got worse. He was a hero through and through though till the end.

Morph - He was an Avenger and an X-Man and even spent time in Mojoworld and was the heart of the team throughout the book. He's a smart aleck and can change into anything he wants to. He has super elasticity and made enough pop culture references to drive everyone crazy.

There are a lot of other characters to discover in the series from a female Sasquatch (married to the leader of Alpha Flight in her world aka Logan), Sunfire, Gambit (easily one of the best uses of the character ever, even if he was from an alternate reality) Through the 96 enjoyable issues of the series (totally including the one shot in there) Not to mention the best use of Beak from Grant Morrison's New X-Men!

Best Villains:

Proteus and Hyperion - This was the other thing Tony Bedard did for the book, he actually gave us fully fleshed out insane villains. Hyperion had been built up previously in the series but Tony gave us his final battle and pushed things with him to a twisted extreme that you couldn't help but bite your nails at. Proteus on the other hand was thanks to a little excursion to the House of M and soon found himself body jumping into main characters and forcing Blink and the others to question their stance on killing. He was a vital part of the book for a little over a year.

Low point for the series:

Chris Claremont - All you have to say is those 2 words and it makes me shudder thinking what he did to the book. Tony stayed on until issue #89 and then Chris stepped up. By stepped up I mean introduced Miguel to a Gwen Stacy because he's apparently Peter Parker, have Blink, Nocturne and Thunderbird all retire after pretty much coming back into the team full time and I could go on, but it just reeks of horrible storytelling.

But it got better; Marvel then cancelled the book at #100 and let Chris relaunch it with the title "New Exiles", which lasted 18 issues and an annual. It also had Morph, Sabretooth, our Psylock and a cast of characters that made absolutely no sense. It's the lowest point in the book and didn't really have anything to do with everything the original series had established.

A new hope:

About half a year after New Exiles was put out of its misery Jeff parker stepped up to the plate and wrote a 6 issue Exiles series which had many of the original series characters, themes and over all tones. It was a fan favorite but sadly only lasted 6 issues. There were several questions that were finally resolved but plenty of stuff to still be revisited one day in the future.

In closing, Exiles was a fun reality jumping series that was unpredictable and full of plenty of great characters. It was a small book that seemed to launch the careers of a few big writers and artists that work on some A list books now. For such a small series it lasted longer than you'd expect it to and definitely gained cult status among the fanbase. I recommend seeking out the Judd Winnick, Jeff Parker and Tony Bedard material as that has the books best stories.

Eric Ratcliffe is a young writer/pop culture journalist/interviewer currently working on pitching a project named the Hunter chronicles. When not reading his weekly stack Eric can be found watching DVDs, playing on his 360 (gamertag: Zack Hunter) or just surfing online trying to find a scoop or two. Brand new to the Comic Related family, Eric is a fun new voice. Eric shops at TJ's Collectibles. Visit them on the web at www.tjcollect.com!