Psylocke #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PSYLOCKE vol 2 #4
“A Deadly Display”
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artist: Moisés Hidalgo
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
PSYLOCKE:
Haniver’s hallucinogenic dust seems surprisingly effective on her; perhaps because it’s not a true psychic attack, she’s slow to realise what’s happening, and her insistence that “this isn’t real” seems more like denial than actual recognition. Her hallucinations include herself as Revanche, an apparently dead baby crying for its mother (obviously referencing the loss of her own child in Fallen Angels) and a Betsy Braddock wearing the 90s Psylocke costume.
This “Psylocke” accuses Kwannon of failing to trust anyone – it’s interesting that Greycrow doesn’t come up in this exchange – and also draws our attention to the fact that if Kwannon is driven by the loss of her identity when she was bodyswapped with Betsy, it’s at least odd that she’s chosen to deal with that by taking the name “Psylocke” and joining the X-Men. Effectively, after getting her body and identity back, she’s made a conscious choice to take Betsy’s role, perhaps because she doesn’t have any better ideas.
SUPPORTING CAST:
Devon di Angelo. Nervous and worried about Psylocke, though also curious to know how Haniver’s weird animal-machine hybrids work. They get a bit panicky on losing contact with Psylocke, far more so than she does.
John Greycrow. Hanging around with Devon, because Psylocke asked him to guard them last issue. He stands patiently in the background and gets to be level-headed. Despite his worries last issue that she might be prompted to kill, he now seems pretty comfortable that she can handle anything.
Mitsuki. We get another flashback to Kwannon’s childhood training alongside her friend Mitsuki, who seems remarkably smiley and happy for someone being raised by the Hand.
VILLAINS:
The Taxonomist (Ty Haniver). “Taxonomy” is the science of classification or categorisation, and he does seem interested in identifying new mutant species, and (perhaps) in analysing the point at which they become a different class. Maybe the word is being used correctly. When challenged over his interest in dead mutants, his answer is that he wants to know what he is, and suggests that he’s interested in the distinction between mutants and humans. He seems to regard himself as someone who pursued knowledge for its own sake, though that still doesn’t explain why he’s taken an interest in Psylocke in particular. He knows about her connection with Betsy, so perhaps that’s of interest to him for some reason.
According to Psylocke, his drones are a mixture of machine and “taxidermied animal parts”. That would normally imply that they’re just animal skin over a model, in which case the animal parts are just for show. Maybe she really means something closer to “preserved” or “mummified”.
His mansion is a literal museum, complete with display cases and labels, laid out as if it was designed for public visitors. It contains taxidermied examples of deliberately mutated animals from real-world species, and another gallery of what appear to be taxidermied human mutants (though Psylocke is hallucinating by that point, so she might be imagining it). There’s also an aquarium section with what seem to be living, natural mutants; according to Psylocke, these living animals seem to be well cared for.
He’s somehow able to block Psylocke’s long-distance connection with Devon, but since that connection involved a mixture of her psychic powers and Devon’s technology, it’s hard to tell which part he’s attacking (if indeed it’s consciously targetted at her at all, rather than just a general security feature).
Master Hayashi. Shows up in another training flashback. As before, he’s played more as a stern taskmaster than as someone who’s actively abusive to Kwannon or Mitsuki (or at least, any more abusive than is inherent in the whole task of training them to be killers for the Hand). Kwannon and Mitsuki seem happy to play in his presence, and he only tells them to stop because it’s time for a training exercise. He wears a hood here that keeps his face in shadow. For that matter, his face was off panel in issue #1, he doesn’t appear in the flashback in issue #2, and his face is kept somewhat in shadow in issue #3 – though we can see in that issue that he seems to be an older bald man with glasses and a white beard. Still, it does look as though we’re being denied a clear view of his face for a reason.
For what it’s worth, last issue he was telling Kwannon to practice working without sight, and this time it’s without sight or hearing. Sensory deprivation seems to be a big deal for him.
FOOTNOTES:
Page 4 panel 4: Shinobi Shaw expressed his views on Haniver in the previous issue.
Page 5 panel 2: Devon’s modified kunai first appeared in the previous issue.
Page 8 panel 5: Haniver left his note for Psylocke in issue #2.
Page 11 panel 2: The Latin names all mean exactly what Kwannon says they mean.
Page 14 panel 3: “[Revanche] was my name when I was trapped in Betsy Braddock’s body. Deceived into thinking I was her until I was painfully awoken to my true identity. Lost, until I died in agony.” This isn’t exactly what happened in the original stories in 1993-4, though they’re a bit of a mess and you can’t blame the book for simplifying. She did indeed use the name “Revanche” starting in X-Men #21, and hung around for ten issues before dying of the Legacy Virus. The original stories are rather inconsistent about what precisely she believed, or was led to believe, at the time – in X-Men #18, her crimelord employer Nyoirin calls her Kwannon, to her face, twice. Very broadly, she seems to believe that she and Psylocke have been blended rather than simply body-swapped, and that she’s the real Betsy Braddock with elements of Kwannon added, hence her newfound martial arts and Japanese language skills. However, the stories also ultimately indicate that Revanche/Kwannon is simply very confused at this point about who she is, until she gets a straight answer shortly before her death.
Page 20 panel 3: Psylocke was suspended from the X-Men in issue #1.
The print version has an ad for Venom War #5, a book that came out months ago.
I liked this issue, it reminded me of the Scarecrow parts of the Arkham games.
Wasn’t the original suggestion that this version of Kwannon had no memory of being Revanche – hell, in the Matthew Rosenberg run, she didn’t even speak English! – and instead was somehow left behind-but-suppressed during the bodyswap (and somehow stayed that way while Betsy was killed/resurrected/bodyswapped again)?
Did they fold in the memories when she was killed & resurrected in Hellions or what?
When Breevort was asked if the Taxonomist’s name was the result of a confusion between taxidermist and taxonomist. he replied “: I didn’t confuse anything … as I neither write nor directly edit PSYLOCKE. And neither, from what I can see, did Alyssa Moy or Darren Shan. The name of a new character can embody multiple things. ” Of course, as several people pointed out, the writer of Psylocke is Alyssa Wong. Alyssa Moy is an ex-girlfriend of Reed Richards introduced in Claremont’s Fantastic Four run. That didn’t exactly fill people with confidence in his response.
I don’t know, it sounds like he was making a joke.
Or, as discussed in the other thread, maybe he just had a brain fart. But there’s a section of the fanbase looking for any reason to castigate him.
I’m so glad we can get back to dwelling on just how deeply weird Kwannon/Psylocke is as a character.
She looks and acts just like the ninja!Betsy we had for decades, and carries the same codename, but she’s a different character with a mostly unexplored past. Meanwhile, the Betsy we’ve been following all these years has taken back her original body and a new codename.
I guess it’s like if Spider-Man discovered he was a clone and retired to lead a quiet life while the “original” Spider-Man stepped in to fill the role instead, only he got a new name and costume…
I’m just saying that trying to explain “Yes, Psylocke is still sexy Asian telepathic ninja but just not the same one” is what drives some people mad.
Nowadays, I let other people explain convoluted comics backstory so that I don’t develop a reputation for it.
Besides, is the average, say, Marvel Rivals player really looking for that whole explanation?
Giving Kwannon the Psylocke name never made sense in story as explained above about wanting to regain her identity, it was always a marketing issue. Betsy stayed for 30 years because cool and popular Psylocke was a ninja, so when they finally fixed the uncomfortable body swap story the Ninja lady needed be Psylocke for no other reason then that’s who Psylocke is.
Made even more confusing by then giving Besty someone else’s ID and power set rather then finding her a new role for her current power.
I think Bestsy is now stuck in the Monica Ramboau space a popular character whose identity is constantly changed so more marketable characters can use her name.
Also it’s off that she is partnered with Rachel who has struggled to find a role and name since she stopped being Pheonix.
@Alastair- Monica’s problems started when she was depowered during the Simonson run and when she came back. nobody could keep straight whether she had new powers or her old ones. That’s when her popularity took a hit.
Rachel’s problems started when Jean came back- she got written out of the X-Men and mostly stayed in England with Excalibur and rarely interacted with the X-Men, then got sent to the future.
“When challenged over his interest in dead mutants, his answer is that he wants to know what he is, and suggests that he’s interested in the distinction between mutants and humans.”
Something I’d love to see in the X-books is for someone to confront one of the leaders of those hate groups (Orchis, Friends of Humanity, etc.) with how their constant insistence that mutants aren’t human has changed how mutants think *about themselves*.
It used to be a frequent refrain for Cyclops or Storm or whoever to insist that mutants ARE human, just with a small genetic difference. They constantly emphasized their humanity. But that hasn’t been the case since at least the Utopia era — now Cyclops and nearly all other mutants comfortably refer to themselves as a separate species, in a way you only used to hear out of Magneto or Apocalypse. And that doesn’t seem to’ve gone away with the end of the Krakoa era.
It probably won’t happen, but I’d love to see a bigot villain confronted with that, with footage of old-school Cyclops emphasizing his humanity versus modern Cyke talking dismissively about humans, and being told, “YOU did this. The threat you always insisted mutants posed if they decided to war against humanity? YOU created that threat, buddy, because every time you insisted they weren’t real humans, they internalized it until they actually believed it. And now a large portion of them ACTUALLY don’t think they’re human and are ready to replace you. Smooth move.”
@Michael: Monica Rambeau also seemed to have few writers interested in using her post-Stern.
Dwayne McDuffie may have started changing her powers, but he was also the only person using her as a central character in stories.
I think pretty much everyone would agree that Monica’s nadir was that awful Avengers Unplugged story where she spends an issue being brainwashed and humiliated by the Controller, then cheerfully gives up her codename to Genis-Vell at the end.
(Say what you will about Nextwave, but it did manage to bring her back into regular circulation.)
@Drew: That’s a great idea! I’d love to see a villain who the X-Men can’t just fight because they’re not really *doing* anything, just waging a vicious media and online campaign and causing all sorts of stochastic terrorism against mutants.
There was a bit of that back in Marc Guggenheim’s X-Men: Gold, but, as Paul pointed out at the time, it wasn’t executed all that well and started with the villains orchestrating actual false flag attacks rather than just poisoning minds.
Orchis was playing off of the trope from the Grant Morrison run though, that more and more Homo Superior would be born until there were no more baseline humans. Orchis scientists realized this was true and that Homo Sapiens Sapiens were endangered.
Hickman did point you a few times that the difference between humans and mutants wasn’t accurate. Nimrod the Greater made a comment about (paraphrasing) “Homo Sapiens? So glad to be done with that.”, with the reveal being that Nimrod is referring to baseline humans and mutants both. There’s another instance during the Hickman-overseen Krakoa era where it’s shown that robots see little difference between Homo Sapiens and Superior.
It can also be conjectured that Xavier went along with the Krakoa agenda due to how many humans had treated mutants as a separate species. Hickman’s Krakoa was shown to be based around propaganda efforts, not necessarily speaking the truth.
Poor Monica went through a lot of failed tries at making her relevant again… I think Ewing using her on the Ultimates really helped to push her back up even if she’s still not top-tier (where she belongs, IMO) As Spectrum (she’s still Spectrum, right? RIGHT?) she’s found what seems to be a stable, defining role again after losing previous names to Genis-Vell and Carol…
I fear Betsy will always be seen as a second-rate Captain Britain compared to Brian, even if you allowed for multiple holders of the role at one time. Nothing against her–it’s a role just about anyone filling certain criteria can fill of course–but it’s just not what defines her.
And same with Rachel. She was Phoenix for a good long time as part of Excalibur, but her roles as Marvel Girl, Prestige, etc, have just not clicked or allowed her to stand out. Not when Jean Grey is around.
I’m not sure what the solution would be, but it’s sure not happening in X-Force. I’d say that reclaiming their most recognizable and defining names and identities would help, but well… since that’s not happening, *shrug*
If it was up to me, I’d redefine Betsy and Rachel as psychic secret agents, playing off of Betsy’s earliest role as a telepathic spy and Rachel’s own Hound training. Take them away from world-saving and dimension-hopping, and put them in the shadows. I would totally read about psychic lesbian secret agents moving through the strange, surreal telepathic landscape of the Marvel Universe, investigating mind control and possession, buried memories and split personalities…
Spectrum is a terrible name. Captain Marvel is still how I think of her, but I can understand the problem of too many people using the same name. Photon at least made sense and felt approptiate to me even if it skewed for other people as a DC villan. Steve Rogers is who people think of, making Sam Wilson uncomfortably ‘othered.’ Talon is a better name than X-23, but okay she can be Wolverine just like Miles can be Spider-man. “Marvel Girl” screams for Rachel needing therapy. Askani is the only acceptable alternative for her in my opinion.
The Other Michael-I’d rather read something like that too, but it does seem to position Betsy as Psi Judge Anderson.
@The Other Michael
As of her last miniseries, she’s Photon again.
Photon is Monica’s best codename because it suggests her power set and has some force behind it. Captain Marvel is not descriptive enough, and Spectrum sounds like an alternate take on Dazzler, which Monica is not.
Leah Williams tried to make Rachel distinct by foregrounding her chronoskimming, but didn’t get a chance to explore that enough before X-Factor was canceled. That power would be a great addition to the lesbian detective book, by the way, which I would love to read. It also suggests a possible direction for codenames that aren’t retro (Marvel Girl), taken (Phoenix), or awful (Prestige, Askani). A time-based name would also make sense since she is from the future twice over.
Spectrum sounds like an obgyn instrument. Leah Williams is missed, but I couln’t bring myseld to follow her to her new employer. Betsy and Rachel could work as noir detectives. The possibility of this direction was hinted at with the resurection of the psychic intelligence agent of… was it MI13?
“A time based name…” Like *poke* *poke* Askani? Is the objection that it is too close to Anansi or that it is sort of Liefield adjacent?
Ha! You got me. 🙂 I guess I don’t know what Askani means outside of being Rachel’s name from the future. It’s not descriptive at all, unless I’m missing something. Which I might be since I don’t know those stories very well.
Also, it kind of sounds like a non-English word for “grandma.”
@Thom H- It’s the name of the religious order that Rachel founded in Cable’s future. According to Rachel, the word Askani means “outsiders”.
Clearly, Rachel and Betsy need to be turned into blind precogs who offer vague predictions and join Spider-Man’s supporting cast in roles that bear no resemblance to their original personalities. After all, that’s what you do to characters who can no longer use their original code name, right?
Yeah, at least in the Avengers Assemble mini-series Steve Orlando was writing, which wrapped up last month (or maybe it’s becoming an Infinity Comics thing going forward), Monica was still Photon.
“Spectrum” is the name of a company that offers internet service around the area where I live, so I’m definitely not feeling that as a superhero codename.
The telepath secret agent thing for Betsy and Rachel does sound cool.
Okay, if Rachel becomes blind she will have to take the code name Destiny, and become a thrupple with Mystique. Betsy just isn’t precog material. She will instead be a blind telepath who is relegated to a wheelchair and takes the precog sounding code name Oracle. Gail Simone is already on the payroll and can partner will Alyssa Moy in the writing. We can read the annotations fie it here on Venom’s X-Axis since Paul already has, unbeknownst to himself, a history as Spider-Man’s former suit.
Gosh comics can become convoluted.
*slaps head* oh yeah! Betsy started out as a precog before her powers and personality were inconsistanly presented.
Marketing will insist that there has only been one Destiny all along in order to keep the toy line consistant.
Logan has always had Celestrial skin bonded to his bones…
At least no one will be named Prestige. What does that name even mean in context? It was so random.
The other (slight) issue with Spectrum as Monica’s codename is that it clashes (a bit) with the Squadron Supreme Green Lantern knock-off.
Perhaps they should just lean into it at this point and every time Monica appears she has the name of a different pre-existing Marvel character.
@thekelvingreen: Monica lost the “Photon” name because Fabian Nicieza did something very like that gag with Genis-Vell in New Thunderbolts by having him take Monica’s codename a second time, much to her displeasure.
That’s when she started going by “Pulsar,” IIRC, which was dropped for “Spectrum” later on.
@CalvinPitt Steve Orlando’s Avengers Assemble became an Infinity title on Marvel Unlimited, it’s up to 4 issues now, I think.