The Technet can make an ordinary fight look like somebody spilled three different comics onto the same page. Then somebody gets swallowed, somebody loses control of their body,…

The Technet can make an ordinary fight look like somebody spilled three different comics onto the same page. Then somebody gets swallowed, somebody loses control of their body, and the joke becomes a much bigger problem. The crew in The Sword Is Drawn is Gatecrasher's bounty-hunting outfit: Yap, Bodybag, China Doll, Ferro, Joyboy, Ringtoss, Scatterbrain, Thug and Waxworks. Saturnyne wants Rachel Summers brought in. Rachel has barely escaped one set of people claiming ownership of her before another arrives with a job to finish. That choice of enemy gives Excalibur's beginning a different flavor. The hunters have a business arrangement, a boss and a collection of very specialized ways to immobilize people. Being an experienced X-Man doesn't automatically prepare anybody for this. Even the way a person stands, thinks or occupies space can be taken away. Gatecrasher's people also come into the encounter with something the heroes are still working out: a functioning team. Kurt, Kitty and Rachel have history together, but bringing Captain Britain and Meggan into that connection takes more than putting everyone on the same street. The fight makes cooperation an immediate need. Alan Davis gives the hunters wildly different shapes without making the action unreadable. That is a lot of the appeal here. A character's silhouette can tell you who has entered the fight before a name appears, while the exact problem they present still comes as a surprise. The Technet give this new book room to be strange and funny without making Rachel's predicament trivial. She wants a life of her own. To the people chasing her, she is the assignment.