[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/300px-Excalibur_Vol_1_1_4926.jpg]]

A Creator/MarvelComics SuperTeam, where the ComicBook/{{X-Men}} franchise intersected with the Marvel U.K. imprint.

After the ''Mutant Massacre'' storyline left the X-Men broken, members Shadowcat and Nightcrawler were sent to Muir Island in Scotland to recuperate. As a result, they weren't with the X-Men when the team sacrificed their lives to defeat the adversary on national tv during ''The Fall of the Mutants'', and like the rest of the world, didn't know the X-Men [[ComicBookDeath got better]] afterwards. ChrisClaremont and artist Alan Davis decided to use this opportunity to put the characters into a new team that incorporated the British characters CaptainBritain and his MagicalGirlfriend Meggan, who had little U.S. exposure at that point but ties to the X-Men through Cap's sister Psylocke.

So Phoenix (Rachel Summers), who had previously been lured to a parallel dimension by X-Villain (and LargeHam) Mojo, escaped to Muir Island shortly after the X-Men's deaths with Mojo's [[QuirkyMinibossSquad Warwolves]] hot on her trail. It is also decided by ObstructiveBureaucrat Saturnine that Phoenix is a threat to all reality and a group of interdimensional bounty hunters known as the Technet are sent to capture her. Kitty and Nightcrawler as well as Cap and Meggan are soon brought into the fray, banding together for protection while reminiscing about the X-Men and deciding to keep Xavier's dream alive. Then the quirky metal creature and living portal known as Widget found them, and the team was thrown into a series of interdimensional Wacky Hijinks across TheMultiverse for a while. But no team with {{Mutants}} can ever stay light-hearted for long in the Franchise/MarvelUniverse, so after a while, they returned to their angsty X-Roots and eventually became just another mutant book.

Since then, the team has broken up and reformed a couple of times, with different membership each time. Currently defunct, and the SpiritualSuccessor ''Captain Britain and MI: 13'' (even featuring Excalibur the sword) was also cancelled after 15 issues. Has no relation to the short-lived ''Excalibur'' title that followed Professor Xavier's adventures on Genosha (aside from Marvel and/or ChrisClaremont wanting to keep the name in print).

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!!These comic series provide examples of:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:General Tropes]]
* BritishAccents
* BritainIsOnlyLondon (Averted)
* CaptainGeographic
* CloudCuckooLander: The Crazy Gang, and their creator, Mad Jim Jaspers.
* DeadpanSnarker: Pete Wisdom ''started off'' as a jaded, cynical DeadpanSnarker. During Tieri's short run on New Excalibur he became [[ButtMonkey the butt of the humour]]. In the ''Wisdom'' miniseries and ''Captain Britain and MI: 13'' he gets a few snappy lines but for the most part he seems to be playing StraightMan to the weirdness of the rest of the team.
* DeathIsCheap (Well... it is a comic book, after all.)
* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The Crazy Gang.
* FisherKing: The exact nature and extent of Captain Britain's ties to Britain varies with the writer. In one of Chuck Austen's comics, Captain Britain was beaten up and this caused earthquakes in Britain. This never happened before or since.
** When he's (temporarily) killed during SecretInvasion, it's said that everyone in Britain felt it.
* HeroicSacrifice: There have been many, over the years. Meggan's heroic sacrifice was especially sad, because it was in a tie-in book for the HouseOfM crossover where she saved the whole universe and nobody read it. [[spoiler: At least she's finally back now, after [[LikeABadassOutOfHell bringing some hope to Hell for good measure]].]]
* MyLocal: The team would often go there to celebrate after a win. Or commiserate after suffering a beating.
* OddBallInTheSeries: This series was not only LighterAndSofter than the other x-related titles, took place on a different continent altogether (Europe), and had many non-mutants on the roster (a rarity for "X-teams"), but it features somewhat obscure MarvelUK characters that had little to nothing to do with the X-Men, and the stories were mostly sci-fi and fantasy based when most X-titles focused on whatever mutant hysteria was going on at any given time.
* PoorCommunicationKills
* ProgressivelyPrettier: When Nightcrawler first appeared in ComicBook/{{X-Men}} he was short and creepy looking. When he was moved to Excalibur, Alan Davis purposefully drew him standing at six feet tall and modeled his facial features after ErrolFlynn. Sure, he was still a blue elf but he was noticeably more charming-looking than his earlier Dave Cockrum incarnation. Other artists have followed suit for the most part.
** When Rachel Summers first appeared she was a skinny tomboy with a crewcut. When she joined Excalibur she was given a ''very'' well-developed build and a skintight costume that didn't leave much to the imagination.
* WearingAFlagOnYourHead: Captain Britain (and the entire Captain Britain Corps).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Original Series]]
* AIIsACrapshoot: The MagicalComputer that used to live under Captain Britain's ancestral home.
* AlternateCompanyEquivalent: ''Excalibur'' was pretty much Marvel's answer to ''JusticeLeagueInternational'', another LighterAndSofter book that also placed a greater emphasis on humor.
* AnotherDimension: It almost seemed like the original Excalibur team were hopping into another dimension every other week. More cynical readers might speculate that this was because the book was usually written by Americans who didn't know the first thing about the UK, and this was the easiest way to hide that fact. (That said, TheMultiverse was already a well-established feature of Captain Britain stories; it was shown early on that Brian was only one of a dimension-crossing corps of near-infinite Captain Britains.)
* BountyHunter: The spectacularly incompetent Gatecrasher and her Technet.
* ChessMotifs: The Hellfire Club.
* EvilCostumeSwitch: Subverted. Rachel Summers eventually ditches her original spiked red bodysuit (which was based on her [[MadeASlave Hound]] costume) and settles for the blood-red ensemble of [[TheDarkPhoenixSaga Dark Phoenix]]. But she's not pulling a FaceHeelTurn; she just prefers these colors over "Light" Phoenix's costume. "[Dark Phoenix] might have been a threat to the universe... but she had '''great''' taste in clothes!"
* EvilSorcerer: Gravemoss. Also Necrom
* ExecutiveMeddling: Put an end to the Wisdom/Kitty Pryde relationship.
* {{Expy}}: Brigadier Alysande Stuart of W.H.O. (do you see what they did there?) was a {{Gender Flip}}ped version of Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stuart from ''Series/DoctorWho''. Her brother, Alistaire, was W.H.O.'s "scientific advisor"; the same role the Doctor had at U.N.I.T.
** Interestingly enough Alistaire [[http://brainstomping.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/doctores.jpg greatly resembles a later version of the Doctor.]]
* FiveManBand:
** TheHero: Captain Britain (does double duty as a second, more literal [[TheBigGuy Big Guy]] and occasionally swaps places with Nightcrawler)
** TheLancer: Nightcrawler
** TheChick: Meggan
** TheSmartGuy: Shadowcat/Kitty Pryde
** TheBigGuy: Phoenix/Rachel Summers
** TeamPet: Lockheed the dragon
* FunWithAcronyms: Most of the fictional government agencies had one of these. Sadly.
* GovernmentAgencyOfFiction: Plenty! There was the R.C.X., the Weird Happenings Organization, the Department of Unknown and Covert Knowledge (don't... uh, don't think too hard about that one.), S.T.R.I.K.E. and Black Air.
* GovernmentConspiracy: Black Air.
* HeelFaceTurn: Colossus, who previously had a FaceHeelTurn following his sister's death and joined Magneto.
* KillAndReplace: Poor, poor Courtney Ross. It does not pay to be the exact physical duplicate of a ruthless otherdimensional dictator.
** Also the Warwolves - extradimensional creatures who could suck out a person's ... let's say LifeForce, leaving just their empty skin, then put on the skin and pass as the person (despite being shaped like quadrupedal animals in their natural form). At one point they scour the globe to find exact lookalikes for the other X-Men so they can impersonate them.
* LighterAndSofter: This series was originally conceived as being more lighthearted than the [[ComicBook/{{X-Men}} various]] [[COmicBook/XForce X-books]] [[ComicBook/{{X-Factor}} that were being published]] [[{{Wolverine}} at the time]], [[NewMutants which were pretty dark]] and to prove it they took [[EnsembleDarkhorse the most "fun" members of the X-Men]] (Nightcrawler and Kitty Pryde) and basically wrote the team around them.
* LighthousePoint: Their base of operations, since it was the convergence of all realities.
* MsFanservice: When she disappeared in ''[[ComicBook/{{X-Men}} Uncanny X-Men]]'', Rachel was a stick-thin tomboy who usually wore gym clothes. When she reappeared in ''Excalibur'', she was built like a porn star (perhaps literally - she got her new body in the Mojoverse after all) and wore a skintight, stiletto-heeled, spike-studded, red leather catsuit when on duty, and as little as possible off duty.
** Lampshaded at one point when she and Kitty go shopping, dissatisfied with the conservative suit and pumps Kitty picks out for her she uses her powers to re-arrange Kitty's outfit to resemble something Rachel normally wears. Kitty immediately thinks that she looks like a hooker.
** Meggan had her moments too (frankly, most women drawn by Alan Davis do; though Davis actually drew Kitty to look like a young girl ... [[FetishFuel not that that stopped many people]]).
* PublicDomainCharacter: There are a lot of references to [[KingArthur Arthurian myth]].
* SuperpowerLottery: Phoenix outpowers everyone else (combined) by quite a bit, and for that matter outpowers most of the Franchise/MarvelUniverse, being the human host to a CosmicEntity; she gets psychologically damaged or written out to compensate.
* TheChessmaster: Merlyn. And Roma. But mostly Merlyn. Roma is a Chessmaster to most characters, but to Merlyn she's just another pawn.
* TookALevelInBadass: Nightcrawler went from the dorky and silly "fun" member of the X-Men to the leader of the European equivalent of Comicbook/TheAvengers. He even formed [[DefeatMeansFriendship former enemies]] The Technet into his own personal "N-Men" complete with X-Men-inspired uniforms.
* WeddingDay: Captain Britain and Meggan
* WestCoastTeam: When Excalibur found out the X-Men were still alive, they decided to remain together, having [[TrueCompanions bonded]] over time, and styled themselves as the X-Men's European branch.
** For all intents and purposes, they were also the British ''Avengers'', partly because there were no other super-teams who could play that part, and partly because mutants were less controversial in Britain than in the U.S. at the time (just like [[AlphaFlight Canada]], one suspects that the British took whatever superheroes they could get)
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Feron the sorcerer accidentally turned himself into a waterfall, and his disappearance went uncommented on until the book's penultimate issue, five years later.
** In more of a "What Happened To Our Dramatic Reveal?" vein, the moment when Excalibur found out the X-Men weren't dead went completely unrecorded, as it became more and more awkward to explain why the X-Men hadn't been in touch with them. Eventually the writers were forced to admit, in the LetterColumn, that Excalibur did in fact know, and they'd been in touch via phone.
*** The fact that the X-Men probably waited longer than they ''should'' have in letting their teammates know they were indeed alive was later explained as why Kurt, Kitty, and Rachel stuck with Excalibur as long as they did due to hurt feelings.
* WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway: Kylun, a huge sword-wielding badass raised in an alternate reality, has the mutant power of...perfectly reproducing any given sound. Fortunately, he doesn't really ''need'' a mutant power to kick ass.
* WhipItGood: the whip was the WeaponOfChoice of Miss Steed, the Black Queen of London's Hellfire Club.
* WholePlotReference: In the "Girls' School From Heck" three issue mini arc, Kitty finds herself enrolled at a boarding school where all the other students are troublemakers to such a degree that no other school will take them, an outcast at first she starts bonding with the students after a particularly violent field hockey match, and then goes on to band the various cliques together in an outrageous scheme to save the school when it's threatened to close because of financial complications. [[Film/StTrinians Why does that sound familiar?]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:New Excalibur]]
* HollywoodAtlas: Chris Claremont ''is'' English, but he hasn't been back here for about thirty years, so his portrayal of the UK is mostly based on the Hollywood version, or else painfully out of date. Whereas Frank Tieri tended to assume that the UK is exactly like America.
* KudzuPlot: See TheChrisCarterEffect above.
* InNameOnly: This team consisted of a few returning Excalibur characters, a whole bunch of Chris Claremont's personal favourites, and a few Excalibur villains (most of them were sad victims of VillainDecay and/or BadassDecay). And they made so little use of the setting that it could easily have been set in New York or California without changing any of the content.
* WrittenInInfirmity: Chris Claremont was seriously ill for several months while working on this title, so Frank Tieri took over during that time.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Captain Britain and MI: 13]]
* ArtisticLicenseBiology: So ... Black Knight's heart is made of stone now? How does he...? Uh, never mind. AWizardDidIt.
* BackFromTheDead: [[spoiler: Captain Britain.]]
* {{Badass}}: {{Blade}}, duh.
* BlackComedy
* TheChessmaster: Pete Wisdom successfully plays [[spoiler:Dracula]] like a fiddle, via making fine use of ChekhovsArmoury.
* ContinuityNod: Creator/PaulCornell is ''really'' good at these.
* ContinuityLockout: Averted- while it's fun to know what the {{Shout Out}}s and {{Continuity Nod}}s mean, you don't need to understand them in order to understand what's going on.
* CoversAlwaysLie
* CowboyBebopAtHisComputer: the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, makes an appearance in the first issue. Inevitably, when the newspapers commented on this they got everything wrong, calling him [[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1023597/Have-fear-Brown-help-save-world--new-comic-book-Captain-Britain.html SuperGordon]] and/or saying he "[[http://www.financialexpress.com/news/SuperGordon-to-help-save-world-in-Captain-Britain-fantasy/318214/ leads a counterattack]]" against the invading Skrulls. In the comic, although he proves himself to be a competent leader, Gordon Brown does not develop superpowers and start wading into the fight ([[RuleOfCool although that would be cool]]).
* DealWithTheDevil: Played with: [[spoiler: Pete Wisdom willingly releases a whole bunch of demons in order to get Merlin back so he can resurrect Captain Britain... which becomes a subversion of this trope when some of the demons decide that the rules of magic mandate that they ''offer him a reward'']].
** The irony, of course, is that Wisdom could easily have just said "No, I Don't Want Anything". The imbalance of input/output would then have exploded the demons, and all that Britain would have to do would be to mop up the remaining Skrulls.
** Also, the demonic Doctor Plokta is willing to give you what you want... anything you want... in return for your soul. What the characters do about this is up to them. Doctor Plokta dangles Captain Britain's (sorta) dead wife in front of him, offering to bring her back to life in return for his soul. He decides to TakeAThirdOption.
* DeathByOriginStory: Faiza Hussain gets zapped by a Skrull machine, which gives her superpowers instead of killing her off for real.
* DefectorFromDecadence: John the Skrull (Sorta. He was originally sent to infiltrate human society, and liked it much better than the warmongering Skrull society, so he decided to stay.)
* DepletedPhlebotinumShells: Blade's papier mache sword, made from the pages of magical books. "Good against demons. Not so good in the rain."
* DisproportionateRetribution: At one point the Black Knight half-jokes that he's tempted to slice through a group of mind-controlled civilians "because track suits as day wear..." Faiza chews him out over it.
* {{Expy}}: Captain Midlands is a joke version of Captain America.
* FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler:Captain Midlands will do anything to get his wife Nancy back again, even if it means turning his colleagues over to Plokta.]]
* FiveManBand (?)
** TheHero: Captain Britain
** TheLancer: Pete Wisdom
** TheBigGuy: Spitfire (er... well, she's one of the most powerful members of the team)
** TheSmartGuy: Black Knight (er... well, he's the one who can build [[MechanicalHorse robot horsies]])
** TheChick: Faiza Hussain
** SixthRanger: {{Blade}}
* FoeRomanceSubtext: [[spoiler:Blade and Spitfire]] start out this way, though it eventually turns into just plain old romance.
* GovernmentAgencyOfFiction: MI: 13, of course.
* HeroesRUs: MI:13 is a British Government agency.
* HumanityEnsues: John the Skrull
* IShallTauntYou: Horribly subverted: [[spoiler: John the Skrull is a cheeky, chirpy character who keeps up a constant stream of WittyBanter and taunts even when the situation seems hopeless. He'd be a DeadpanSnarker if he was, y'know, ''deadpan''. The Skrull invaders eventually get fed up and decide to [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim just shoot him]].]]
* LetsYouAndHimFight: [[spoiler:Turns out the reason Blade joined up is because he wanted to stake Spitfire. They eventually reach an understanding after beating each other up enough times.]]
* LotusEaterMachine: Doctor Plokta's dream corridors.
* LittleNo: Faiza gives one when the Skrulls offer to spare her if she surrenders and lets them take the Westminster Bridge.
* {{Magitek}}: The pentagram tesseract.
* MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate: The evil Doctor Plokta.
* MyGreatestFailure: Pete Wisdom is pretty cut up over the deaths of TemporaryLoveInterest Maureen Raven and [[spoiler: fellow team mate John the Skrull.]]
* OffModel: There was an annoying one in the ''Wisdom'' miniseries where Alistaire Stuart suddenly appeared to have aged several decades. This one stuck around for quite a while -- apparently the artist made an error, thinking that he was supposed to be an old man -- it was [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] a couple of times but ended up being explained and resolved in ''Captain Britain & MI:13'' as [[spoiler: Alistaire having been cursed with a variable appearance after an unfortunate dinner incident with Morgan le Fey]]. He was intentionally drawn slightly different every so often throughout the series because of that.
** There's also a single panel early in the "Hell Comes To Birmingham" story where Spitfire's burnt hand switches from right to left.
* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Dane Whitman AKA the ''Black Knight''.
* OurVampiresAreDifferent: Spitfire has it under control. Apparently. [[spoiler:At least until Dracula and his vampire army shows up...]]
** [[spoiler:And even then it's probably all a ploy by Wisdom to infiltrate Dracula's ranks. After all, why NOT use one of your vampires to get into the enemy camp?]]
* {{Prequel}}: Creator/PaulCornell laid out the groundwork for this series in his ''Wisdom'' miniseries.
* PublicDomainCharacter: Dracula
* RealAfterAll: [[spoiler: Captain Britain thinks Meggan is just an illusion created by Doctor Plokta's Dream Corridors when he realizes he's been trapped in one, and abandons her to escape. The audience eventually sees that no, it really was her, and the Dream Corridor really did form a link to where she ended up. Oops.]]
* RewardedAsATraitorDeserves: From the Skrull's perspective, at least: [[spoiler: John the Skrull]].
* SheIsNotMyGirlfriend: Faiza is Dane's ''steward''. Really. Even when Gambit is trying to hit on her. Amusingly Faiza seems to find that more romantic anyway.
* ShipTease: [[http://marvel.wikia.com/File:Captain_Britain_and_MI-13_Vol_1_7.jpg The cover of issue 7]].
* ShoutOut: Creator/PaulCornell does this a lot, too. Two of the biggest [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]] are John the Skrull (a Skrull pretending to be John Lennon) and [[PeterPan Tink]], the fairy princess, but there are loads more.
** [[HouseOfM "No more Skrulls."]]
** Faiza Hussain's surname is a ShoutOut to the former Captain of the England Cricket Team, Nasser Hussain.
* ShownTheirWork: Creator/PaulCornell asked a group of Muslim women for help with characterizing Faiza. They're listed in the credits.
* TakeANumber: An issue has Kitty Pryde getting 10^23 from the dispenser -- which is probably a reference to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro_constant Avogadro's Number]].
* TechnoBabble: "This is a pentagram tesseract, an intrusion of magical fields into another dimension."
* WeHardlyKnewYe: [[spoiler: John the Skrull]]
[[/folder]]
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