{"id":10786,"date":"2025-02-13T21:41:08","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T21:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10786"},"modified":"2025-02-13T21:41:08","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T21:41:08","slug":"psylocke-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10786","title":{"rendered":"Psylocke #4 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>PSYLOCKE vol 2 #4<\/strong>
\n“A Deadly Display”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Alyssa Wong<\/strong>
\nArtist: Mois\u00e9s Hidalgo<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Ariana Maher<\/strong>
\nEditor: Darren Shan<\/strong><\/p>\n

PSYLOCKE:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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<\/em>) and a Betsy Braddock wearing the 90s Psylocke costume.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

SUPPORTING CAST:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Devon di Angelo.<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

John Greycrow.<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

Mitsuki.<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

VILLAINS:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Taxonomist (Ty Haniver).<\/strong> “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.<\/p>\n

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”.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

Master Hayashi.<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

FOOTNOTES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Page 4 panel 4: Shinobi Shaw expressed his views on Haniver in the previous issue.<\/p>\n

Page 5 panel 2: Devon’s modified kunai first appeared in the previous issue.<\/p>\n

Page 8 panel 5: Haniver left his note for Psylocke in issue #2.<\/p>\n

Page 11 panel 2: The Latin names all mean exactly what Kwannon says they mean.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> #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\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #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.<\/p>\n

Page 20 panel 3: Psylocke was suspended from the X-Men in issue #1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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: Mois\u00e9s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10789,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10786\/revisions\/10789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}