X-MEN #32: Soul Possessions Part Two: The Leopards and the Cats

 

How I Revanched My Summer Va-Kwannon

Originally Published May 1994

When we left off, Spiral had dropped in on Psylocke and Archangel, promising to deliver some exposition next month. Next month is now, but Spiral is a bad guy, so Psylocke -- understandably miffed about how Spiral and her Mojoverse cronies have wrecked her life -- fights her.

She also reminds us, in case we didn't read X-Factor Annual #7, that Spiral is in fact Longshot's ex-girlfriend Ricochet Rita, corrupted in service of Mojo; because after all, who needs two distinct female characters hanging around?

The rest of the X-Men come to help out, and Spiral thinks better of mixing it up, so she leaves, basically saying "You know what, just hook those bionic eyes of yours up to the TV, I'm outie."

The other X-Men are like "Bionic eyes?" and she's like "Yeah, bionic eyes."

So they go home and hook the eyes up, and they get a replay from the perspective of Psylocke -- whose eyes are still recording everything but not transmitting to Mojoworld.

So we run back over the whole deal: Betsy's in a tube, and they talk about putting Kwannon's mind into Betsy's "empty shell" (because she's all whacked out on Siege Perilous) but they don't talk about what was, at the time, their stated objective, which was to make Psylocke into their Asian-appearing Assassin. The story gets more nonsensical and further from what actually happened every time they re-tell it. 

They mention the involvement of Spiral, and how Kwannon being a low-level empath means she is up for the job and other fine details that honestly nobody was craving. There's a lot of "That explains this, that explains that..." most of which doesn't actually explain anything or doesn't need explaining or wasn't even the case to begin with.

So we're just ticking off potential plotholes nobody cares about. Why, specifically, does Betsy sometimes feel like a Kwannon, and sometimes she don't? Why was everyone always so confused when Revanche was around? Oh what about Nyoirin, when does he come into the picture? After all that chaos, Spiral brings Betsy White to him and says "This English girl is your girlfriend, lol." And he's like "Really?" and she's like "Hey, fuck around and find out, right?"

Nyoirin, we are told, was going to consecrate this by getting his New White Kwannon to kill her Old Japanese Body, and cut all the loose ends, which -- fair, I would love to put this story out of its misery at this point too.

Anyway, that's the whole video which somehow manages to make things more confusing but we are told they now make sense. Psylocke is like, "Wellp I'm going to Japan," and Gambit is like "Some stuff happened in my miniseries that I need to vent about."

Psylocke arrives at Nyoirin's place and finds him dead at the hands of Matsuo. He says that Betsy and Kwannon are like Siamese twins, which -- no, that is absolutely not the right term for it. To underscore that Betsy and Kwannon will always be linked somehow, she inadvertently calls him by Kwannon's pet name for him. Matta explains further that Nyoirin was able to condition the mostly-amnesiac Kwannon-Betsy into being his lover in a way she actually never had been (hence the fake journal I guess?) Except when she came to us, she didn't know she had been with Nyoirin? Because she actually hadn't? 

I could keep poking at this but at this point it's really punching down at a story that has already given itself up to a merciful and long-overdue death: all you need to know is that this is a needlessly confusing yarn that I think the writer believes that if he keeps adding details will eventually make sense and feel clear and relevant. It never happens, but there's a kind of sunk cost fallacy at work here.

Matsuo is like "Well, now that Kwannon is dead, for real, and I've revealed everything I know about this whole fiasco, I'm going to kill myself. It's the only way." And Betsy is like "Hey, maybe... don't? For her."

They agree to put Kwannon to rest and move on with their lives. Hopefully this actually means we'll never hear from Matsuo again. Betsy ceremonially throws her cybernetic eyes into the lake, and Warren is like "You know what, we've both been through some incredibly messed-up stuff. Let's bond over it."

And I cry tears of joy that this whole affair is done with.

Further Thoughts:

Ah, Kwannon. Your time in the light was short. We hardly knew ye. And yet we also knew ye a bit too much. 

For the record, I don't think "Betsy is confronted by the woman whose body she inhabits" is a bad story. It's a lot like Rogue's deal with Carol Danvers, I suppose, which means it's not out of place in the X-Men's world. It's just that at every turn it stubbornly refused to be:

• Clear
• Linear
• Dramatically satisfying
• Relevant to the X-Men

Are the X-Men going to fight Japanese gangsters? Maybe they could. You could easily see this culminating with something, but it just never happens and over the course of a year or so something like a half-dozen issues are specifically devoted to Revanche and several scenes besides them, and the story never develops into something that the readers of X-Men comics could really latch onto. It's just a bunch of stuff that happens, and I don't know where it went awry. Was it all meant to fix a perceived ambiguity in the original transformation story? Was it intended as additive, an opportunity for a shocking twist, but never got off the ground? Or is this the story that was intended to be told and the creators thought this was really what would sell X-Men comics? (And maybe it did? So kudos to them??)

I do not know, but I, 29 years in the future, person who generally enjoys old X-Men comics, am glad to be through it. The end result is, we've got Asian Betsy on a permanent basis, and she's struck up a flirtmance with Warren. And we're finally, finally free of the Japanese underworld. I hope.

A Christmas miracle.