X-MEN #21-22: The Puzzle Box / The Mask Behind the Facade

Who is... she???

Originally Published June-July 1993

When last we left off, Betsy Braddock, aka Psylocke, of late physically resembling a Japanese ninja babe, had been accosted by a lookalike of her own former Caucasian self, accusing her of not being who she says she is, but in fact being an operative of a heretofore unknown Japanese Crime Lord named Nyoirin.

For whatever reason nobody brings it up, but the X-Men would have good reason to be suspicious of anyone infiltrating and potentially betraying their group lately. 

Both women claim to be the authentic Elizabeth Braddock in mind, body, and purple hair.

As well as in rock hard pointy breasts

From all appearances, including Wolverine's normally-infallible nose and Xavier's surface-level non-invasive telepathic lookovers, both women have a claim to Psylockness. The newcomer agrees to a potentially invasive deeper probe, but the more established Betsy declines, having felt her body and mind be manipulated one or two too many times over the years. Yeah, sounds like something the faker would say. Unsurprisingly, they both want to resume their fight to establish true Betsiness.

Privately conferring with Charles, Wolverine notes that the new Betsy has some ninja moves of her own, ones she would not have possessed prior to going through the Siege Perilous. It's determined that the only way we're going to sort this out is with a wild road trip to the land of the rising sun.

Meanwhile, as Scott settles in for his family vacation in Alaska, Seattle's own emerald evildoer Mesmero gets what-for from the wacky badguy gang du jour, the Dark Riders.

Ah yes, that thing of new bad guys killing off established bad guys to show how much worse they are... always works.

They drop the seminal b-grade baddie off the side of a building, then turn on their own member Psynapse when he shows weakness with a little bit of coughing and wheezing.

That's one way to treat a cold

Over in Japan, Lord Nyoirin meets with Shinobi Shaw to strike a deal -- if Nyoirin will use his ace assassin Kwannon (whoever that is) to kill the X-Men, Shaw will sponsor Nyoirin's claim as leader of a reinstated Clan Yashida (becaues all of the X-Men's Japanese affairs must come back to this particular clan -- it would be too confusing otherwise.)

Not far away, X-Men Beast, Gambit, Psylocke and Psylocke break into Nyoirin's place, dispatching some ninjas for good measure.

But inside, they find a shocking sight...

That's right, Betsy is Kwannon! That is to say, Asian Betsy is Kwannon!

And she has a funny way of repose-ing, too.

And while Shinobi and Matsuo have a slapfight over Shinobi's intentions on killing Psylocke being blocked by a Gamesmaster ruling in favor of Matsuo (despite not officially being part of the Upstarts -- but Creed is??! What the--?!) the X-Men have their own problems in the form of -- oh, they're in Japan, they're dealing with the intended Lord of Clan Yashida, take a guess!

As Silver Samurai explains the stakes to his opponents, the Psylockes are able to make relatively short work of him.

But an errant dagger thrown at the beautiful portrait of Psylocke Kwannon reveals a secret...

Yes, I too hide all my important papers behind Homesense wall art!

Back in Tokyo, Shinobi, Matsuo, and Nyoirin, along with Lord Tatsu'o (you know, the guy with the Cyburai) have their meeting, and of course, a brawl breaks out over disrespect, but it's quickly put away.

Across the Bering Sea in Alaska, Cyclops informs his incredulous grandparents of the latest happenings with his family, namely the part about sending his child into the future to save him from a deadly techno-organic virus.

Sorry, can you back up and explain about Madelyne and these Limbo demons again?

Scott expresses some regret over the fact that it would seem that his neglect led to young Nathan growing up to be a total psychopath (and kind of a whiney brat) named Stryfe.

And then there's this other guy... Cable...

The story is interrupted, however, when the Summers' neighbor, Mike Milbury, arrives looking to borrow a chainsaw to cut a fallen tree on his property.

Milbury, now there's a man you can trust

Back at Nyorin's place, Psylocke -- that is, Anglo Psylocke -- reads from Nyorin's scroll, as between the two of them, she's the one who, mysteriously enough, reads kanji. Nyoirin writes that Kwannon did not return from a mission to Osaka, and seemingly was seen days later far away in Hong Kong. 

With a little bit of psychic probing, White Betsy reveals that when the body of Betsy Braddock came through the Siege Perilous, unconscious and tattered, Kwannon reached out and with tha ttouch, caused an explosion of psychic whateverness causing Kwannon's and Betsy's minds and bodies to be warped together.

Ninja Betsy ran off, to be discovered by Matsuo and reshaped into Lady Mandarin, while British Betsy was taken to an institution, later released into the custody of Nyoirin, and trained in hopes of using her to locate his prime assassin... and lover!!

Gasp! Shock! A sexually promiscuous ninja assassin... badguy??!

Unacceptable! 

Original Flavor Betsy further asserts that, at the time of Nyoirin's choosing, this Kwannon will betray the X-Men!

It's a good thing she was here to warn us. Someone call Bishop!

You've got to admit, it would be a pretty audacious plan -- "I know I don't look like Psylocke, but I am Psylocke, please trust me with your life while we superhero together for the next several months."

Elsewhere, Shinobi and Matsuo continue their slapfight over the right to be the one to kill Psylocke (the obvious answer being they should both be allowed to kill one) due to the Gamesmaster upholding his ruling on the grounds that he is also respectful of the games other people are playing -- like that time I hit my softball into a nearby peewee soccer game (just kidding, I never hit anything but grounders to shallow right.)

Psylocke and Kwannon(?) continue to fight for their right to Beeeeeeeeetsayyyyyy

But as Kwannon!Betsy insists once more that she is in fact the real McCoy (er, sorry, Braddock -- McCoy is himself... for now...) who should arrive but the guy whose house they're carelessly trashing, Lord Nyoirin -- with a rested and recuperated Silver Samurai -- to referee.

His answer? Neither is Betsy nor Kwannon... they're both both!

A twist on a twist!

And back in Alaska, Scott pays a visit to salt of the Earth regular neighbor Mr. Milbury, only to find -- and I hope you're sitting down for this one -- the man has a dark secret of his own!

A Sinister secret!

As in Mister!

He is Mr. Sinister!

Not Milbury at all!

To be continued!

Further Thoughts:

When Psylocke was first given her Japanese makeover, there was a somewhat confusing, and ambiguous explanation given: Psylocke was "turned Asian" by Mojo and Spiral at the Body Shoppe so that she could better be used as the lead assassin for the Hand under the Mandarin -- after all, it would be confusing for a white lady to be occupying said role, right? What Mojo and Spiral had to do with the Mandarin and Matsuo in the first place is never explained -- in fact, that issue is told in an elliptical, non-linear way that makes it tough to tell exactly what is going on. It was sort of a "read between the lines and interpret how you will, but we're just plowing forward with this story anyway" deal.

And in the interest of clarity, I need it said that I make no endorsement of any race-bending storylines done with or without the implicit purpose to remake a character into a fetishy cheesecake pinup model. I simply report that it did happen.

The re-envisioning of the backstory of this change is not a unique episode in recent X-Men history, in the sense that the X-books have been permeated -- even inundated -- with rewrites and additions to the canon. Colossus' brother, Wolverine's past, Charles'... everything. The foundations on which this franchise is built are being shifted. Upheaved even.

It's obviously a very clear trend, but I can only speculate why it happened this way. A league of writers -- beginning with plotter Jim Lee and new Wolverine scribe Larry Hama, and continuing with Lobdell and Nicieza -- are being given the keys to the kingdom that had long been held mostly by one man, Chris Claremont, and his ally Louise Simonson. Perhaps it is not enough to define what these character go through going forward, they also want to put their mark on where the characters have been. Maybe it's to thumb their noses at Claremont, or maybe it's because shocking twists sell comics, or maybe because, gosh darnit, they just think these are good ideas for stories that they want to do. I think the handover definitely plays a part in it -- if Claremont, the longtime scribe, didn't address something it seems likely he had no interest in it and was never going to, but that doesn't mean the new writers can't or shouldn't. A lot of it is just filling in gaps. But this is the first time -- at least the first major time -- we're seeing a major contradiction, expansion or downright revision (depending how you look at it) on what Claremont did write.

If this Psylocke-Kwannon snarl is confusing and complicated to you, I hope I can put you at ease: the complicated, confusing, and confounding nature of this and other X-Men stories is not a bug, but a feature. I would assert that this is why one reads 1990's X-Men comics, but I know I've got my work cut out for me, so bear with.

As time has gone by, the X-Men have increased their quotient of comic bookiness at a seemingly exponential rate -- that is, things that for what ever reason could only happen in a comic book. To me, it began when Rachel came back to the past even though she could never have been born, so this trend has pretty deep roots going back nearly a decade. That increased in manifold ways the potential for drama in these comics which had previously been limited to, you know, my dad is a secret space pirate, my girlfriend is secretly my witchy stepsister, etc etc. Then there were the continuity snarls of Jean not really being Phoenix, and Maddie being a clone of Jean. And then you have Cable and Stryfe, the time-travelling dyad of orphan clones here to save the future from the past or whatever. Suddenly, nothing's off the table and anything can happen, and to my mind, no franchise ever made this their signature any better than the X-Men in the 90's, which is about to become a complete radioactive tangle of madness.

In this case, an already complicated and controversial idea has been made that much moreso with the inclusion of identity-confusion, a whole other person being involved, and that person's suspicious motives and loyalties. They are taking a weird story to weirder places. 

And you look at it... you look at needlessly complicated stories like Cable's, or Psylocke's, or Bishop's, or whomever, and you might think, "This makes no sense and it hurts my brain to think about." This was a common complaint from pundits at the time. But reader, I became an X-Men fan in the 90's. I was born in the darkness, the Wizard staff merely adopted it. This is why I came here, what brought me to the table and where there is an Uncanny X-Cerpts blog. We are reaching critical mass where almost everything that happens in X-Men comics is so melodramatic and insane that it reaches a kind of ethereal beauty. It's comics taken to the utmost. And as they go further and further, the X-Men will continue to be the top comic of the era: excess becomes a formula for success.

And I'm not even addressing the fact that this comic also includes Mr. Sinister!

If you think about it too hard, it will hurt. And trust me, this blog would not exist if I were not up for thinking about things too hard, so you're going to get some of that, as my rational brain clashes with my lizard brain. But just so, there is a glory in some crazy fucked up nonsense idea flying at you every single month that makes you question just what in the sam hell you've been reading.

I'm not normally one to say "Turn off your brain!" I, in fact, like my brain, and I use it from time to time I like intelligent, challenging comics with sophisticated themes and grounded takes on interpersonal relationships. I also like loud garbage if it's pretty enough. Garish plot twists and shocking reveals, these are joys you get from reading comics -- being exposed to concepts and narratives that would not dare exist in other media in the name of sanity and clarity. Boldly going where no story has ever gone before.

I call it time out of mind, that peek into a multitude of crazy ideas that almost seems too far-out for this world. As comics readers, we kind of take those for granted, which is why we can criticize them, but to survive X-Men comics of the 90's, you have to embrace them and adapt their ways as their own and think about what a truly special mythos has been created for our benefit. 

After a few years, it will topple like a house of cards, but until then it's a wild, wild ride.

I hope you survive the experience.