Overview — Excalibur: Angels and Demons
The more I explored Betsy’s past in Agent of STRIKE, the more the story evolved from a solo narrative into a team dynamic. As an aspiring novelist, I found myself increasingly drawn to larger rosters and multi-faceted interactions.
Also, one limitation of writing a continuity-based prequel is that much of the characters’ established lore must remain untouched. Since Agent of STRIKE is tightly connected to late '70s and early '80s canon, I needed more narrative freedom. So I decided to start a new series set in the current publication timeline. This could be read as a “what if” what if Betsy recreated Excalibur instead of joining Forge’s X-Force?
The original pitch dates back to one of those classic “create-a-team” threads on the X-Forums. It centered around the three swordbearers, Magik, Betsy, and Kwannon, alongside Angel, for the mythological approach, and Kurt, as his polar opposite. Chamber and Pixie rounded out the roster, adding a “United Kingdom” touch.
The idea of a war between Otherworld and Limbo, two nexus realms, struck me as an untapped, high-stakes concept. A battle between light and darkness, order and chaos. Years later, I started fleshing it out more seriously. I teased it among the small community following Agent of STRIKE, and the idea resonated.
I had the big picture: a war between realms. But facing Limbo almost always means facing Belasco. And while he’s a classic villain, I wanted a twist, a different antagonist. That’s when I decided to bring Merlyn into the mix.
Last we saw Merlyn, Betsy had beheaded him. I needed to address that. I was inspired by two things: Shinnok’s severed, still-living head in Mortal Kombat, and Mimir, the talking head from God of War. My original idea was simple: Merlyn’s head would serve as Belasco’s reluctant counselor, a disembodied relic full of bitter wisdom, trapped in eternal defeat.
But another influence was the movie Skeleton Key, where voodoo spells are used to swap minds, imprisoning victims inside moribund bodies while their attackers walk free in stolen flesh. That sparked the idea of Merlyn using forbidden magic to switch bodies with Belasco, trapping the demon’s mind inside his severed head. While everyone believes Belasco is the one pulling the strings, the truth is far more disturbing: it’s Merlyn, hidden in Belasco’s body, orchestrating a grand plan to merge the realms. The reveal recontextualizes the entire story, and I knew it had to come only at the end.
Thematically, I loved when Tini Howard used “as above, so below” to explore mirrored realities. In my vision, Limbo is a dark inversion of the radiant Otherworld. That’s how I conceived the Fortress of Oblivion, an inverted Starlight Citadel that drains energy from its twin, sparking the crisis.
The first chapter had to be a classic recruitment story. Betsy’s investigation starts with a visit to Warren, not because of him, but because his Manhattan penthouse offered a perfect vantage point to spy on the Limbo embassy. When Madelyne Pryor refuses to help, Betsy turns to the next portal to Limbo, Illyana Rasputin. That gave me the perfect chance to bring in my second favorite character, Kwannon, who has been frequently paired with Magik in the comics lately.
I wanted the opening arc to evoke the spirit of the original Excalibur, hence Nightcrawler. But juggling the entire original lineup would be overwhelming. So I brought in Rachel and Kitty in a way that allowed me to write them off after the first arc.
Once the team was assembled, the real journey began. Madelyne plays a key role in Limbo, but her powers overlap too much with Betsy and Rachel. That gave me a perfect excuse to make her the secondary protagonist in a side story.
Her being transported to a magic-dead Earth came from an old pitch of mine. I wanted to explore the philosophical implications of a world without magic, dull, dry, and severed from Otherworld and all other realms. That becomes Maddie’s quest: to restore magic in that reality.
Meanwhile, I structured the main team’s arrival in Limbo by scattering them into groups to better manage character dynamics: Betsy, Kwannon, and Magik land on a battlefield; Kitty and Rachel arrive inside the Fortress of Oblivion; Kurt and Angel end up in Otherworld, affected by Limbo’s interference.
Betsy’s plan was to investigate quietly, but she was too late. Saturnyne and Otherworld were already waist-deep in a war against Limbo. The team had no choice but to join.
Kitty and Rachel weren’t there just for nostalgia. I wanted a proper X-Men-style soap opera, so the arc of corruption, mind rescue, love triangle, and eventual breakup was spread through the chapters. And since I’m a big Rachel/Kitty shipper...well, I finally got to put them together.
Although the book centers on Betsy, I worried she might lose panel time with so many subplots. That’s where Dr. Braddock came in: a version of Betsy from the magic-dead Earth. I write Betsy as a badass, and I hate when she’s portrayed as insecure or unsure...it erases the core of her character. But remembering where she came from matters. That’s what Dr. Braddock represents: the fragile girl who thought she wasn’t good enough to join a team of heroes… but who was, just like our Betsy, destined for greatness. And Maddie knew that.
Her transformation into Doctor Albion, that world’s Captain Britain, was essential to restoring the link with Otherworld and letting extra-dimensional magic flow back into her world. Only then was she ready to return and join the battle, becoming part of the Corps.
There was always a desire to give the story an epic weight. Two mystical realms, one evoking Heaven, the other Hell. In my mind, Limbo has heavily inspired the biblical Hell, just as Mephisto is often associated with the Devil. Even Belasco is said to have inspired Dante’s Inferno. That led me to imagine the apocalyptic signs from the Book of Revelation (from the Bible) not as prophecy, but as remnants of ancient enchantments, spells Merlyn accessed through Belasco’s memories. With that power, he set out to turn Otherworld into a new Elysium for the denizens of Limbo, and in doing so, began to merge the realms.
So that’s how the story came together. There were many threads to tie, many characters to balance, and still, it had to be about Betsy. That was the hardest part. Much harder than in Agent of STRIKE, where she believed British espionage was the ultimate challenge. But that was just the beginning. Beyond Krakoa, what awaited her wasn’t secrets or politics...it was prophecy, myth, and the burden of protecting all realities.
I’ve always been drawn to the loose threads, the leftovers buried in the most forgotten corners of X-continuity. The Celestial Nullifier was originally introduced by Chris Claremont in his House of M tie-in, where Saturnyne threatened to erase Earth-616 due to its destabilizing frequency of reality warps. I brought it back as a narrative bomb: a way to shift the tides against Limbo and to cement Saturnyne as the cold, pragmatic antihero of my story. The idea of a reality being erased entirely, with its remnants leaking into Otherworld’s Blightspoke, came from another unreleased story I had written. Originally created by Hickman and Tini, Blightspoke is the wasteland where broken timelines and fallen realities resurface in fragments. It felt like the perfect place to Limbo, to become a broken part of Otherworld.
The final pages of the arc set the tone for the team going forward. And on a more personal note, I’ve always felt that one issue with bisexual characters in monogamous relationships is that we often lose the chance to see the full spectrum of their identity represented. That’s why I chose to leave Betsy single for a while...not out of indecision, but to let her breathe, reconnect with herself, and leave space open for possibilities.
I originally pitched Excalibur as a self-contained mini, so I could eventually move on to another concept. But the response was so positive, I knew I had more to say. The two bonus pages teasing The Quest for the Crimson Dawn had been in my mind for years, and seeing the story resonate gave me the confidence to move forward. So it’s safe to assume: whatever comes next, it will sprout from there.
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