I like her monitors; like she's watching the Spirograph channel.

We mentioned this back when we looked at Quasar #11, but here we've got another Excalibur guest-spot. From 1992, Dark Angel #6, "Bad Blood" Written by Simon Furman, 'art starts' by Gary Frank, finishes by Andy Lanning.

This was a Marvel UK book, and not one I had read before this guest-spot; although I do think I read this at the time and before Dark Angel's guested in Excalibur #67. (That was Alan Davis's last issue on the book, and also features a surprisingly hopeful coda to the Days of Futures Past future, albeit after a lot of Marvel UK characters are brutally murdered...) Dark Angel (formerly Hell's Angel) was on a fetch-quest to recover the fragments of her father's soul, even though he was no innocent: he had been part of mysterious conspirary corporation MyS-Tech, plotting to weasel out of a pact with Mephisto and getting his soul blown apart for his trouble. I kind of dig her look, though; but of course I would, it's very 90's. Feel like the design could've used another pass or two though; it looks like it might be a pain to draw repeatedly. This month, "something's wandering the moors chewing up civilians," as Captain Britain somewhat insensitively puts it, and both Excalibur and Dark Angel are on the case.

As Dark Angel fights the monster, Nightcrawler leaps in to help, assuming "at great personal risk" the pretty woman was the good guy. (It feels like Kurt shouldn't make that assumption, but she was pretty...) Meggan has an empathic reaction, the monster seeming to have "a child's voice," and Dark Angel realizes the monster is her brother, somehow changed by her father! The scene then switches, somewhat abruptly, to where MyS-Tech's executive board is seemingly fighting through dead heroes (Guardian, Thunderbird, the Torpedo, and Miss America!) to get her dad's soul fragment, but one executive seemingly lets her get there first. (Said executive has a very British face: I suspect she's based on someone real, but couldn't say who!) Dark Angel is furious with her father, but won't pass judgment on him; freeing his soul but hoping he gets what's coming to him.

There wasn't really much reason for Excalibur to be here, but I guess there was little reason why not, either. Dark Angel would run until #16, which appears to have Death's Head II in a prominent role, since he was the closest thing to a breakout star Marvel UK had, but the whole Marvel UK subline was done by 1994. Guest-spots like this notwithstanding, Marvel's titles were somewhat 'siloed' at the time, with larger interactions limited: it might have made sense for Ghost Rider to crossover, with the Mephisto angle here. (Back in the 70's or 80's, if this had been cancelled, Dark Angel probably would've turned up inside of six months in Marvel Two-in-One or Team-Up.)

The back-up feature, "Power Unconfined!" perhaps explains the clunkier parts of Dark Angel's costume, as she executes a training program from her mysterious Guide: the black portion of her costume is the "fabric of the universe," granting immense cosmic power, while the armor serves as a limiter. Could she do more without it? Maybe, if she wanted to be overwhelmed by information and wreck the timeline. So, armor for a reason, lesson learned. (Story by Bernie Jaye and Paul Neary, pencils by Kev Hopgood, inks by Sean Hardy.)