Case Study
Greetings, wonderful people. Today, I'm writing you a new entry that will focus on a topic which I'm very interested in. You see, I'm a huge X-Men fan. I love them beyond words. Among the many mutant characters though, Psylocke is far and above everyone else for me. The story of Psylocke is complicated; beginning with a character named Elizabeth "Betsy" Braddock, a psychic, she's the twin sister of the then-Captain Britain, Brian Braddock. She joined the X-Men in the mid '80s after her own tenure as Captain Britain had ended horribly wrong (got her eyes taken out by a supervillain!). She had a purple-dyed hair and she was also an ex-spy of S.T.R.I.K.E., basically the British version of S.H.I.E.L.D. Amazing repertoire on this lady. She then got the code name "Psylocke" from Mojo, an X-Men super villain hailed from a place called the Mojoworld, plus a pair of cybernetic eyes after she got abducted by him and his right hand sorceress assistant, Spiral. Although, curiously, if you actually read the New Mutants Annual #2 where the story was told, she seemed to have had the code name before. This was proved by the writer's narration before Mojo or Spiral even get to call her by that name.
Anyway, after being rescued by the New Mutants and taken to the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters in Westchester County, New York, she gradually integrated herself into the X-Men and became the team's primary telepath. Perhaps her best showcase could be read in the Uncanny X-Men #213, where Braddock fought tooth and nail against the villainous Marauder mutant called Sabretooth in the aftermath of the Mutant Massacre event. Psylocke continued her journey as an X-Man up until the end of the famed Outback era, which spanned for about 30 issues including the X-Men's appearance in the X-Factor book. Around issue 250, Psylocke got into a predicament that rendered her immobile and had her mind transported to a "dream time" in which Gateway, a native Australian mutant shaman who helped the X-Men throughout their Australian Outback period, gave Psylocke a vision of horrible things that would soon happen to the X-Men if they choose to stay in their base. This occurrence caused Psylocke to persuade the remaining members of the team consisting of Piotr Nikolaievitch Rasputin a.k.a. Colossus, Alison Blaire a.k.a. Dazzler, Alex Summers a.k.a. Havok and herself to step into a time-dimension portal called the Siege Perilous, which had previously been given to them by the then-omniversal guardian Roma, and to walk through it to get away from the Reavers, which were the bad guys of the story.
In the next couple of issues, things got weird. You see, the writer of the book at the time, Chris Claremont, had a penchant for turning characters into other characters either physically or mentally in order to give them some sort of a refresh, although never this severe. Psylocke got this treatment right on time as a series of crossover event called the Acts of Vengeance was taking place in Marvel Comics. What happened was, Psylocke got "rescued" by a man named Matsuo Tsurayaba, who was an employee of a Japanese criminal cult called the Hand, on an island at the South China Sea. She was then taken to a facility, got a seemingly permanent facial surgery plus a gradual mental conditioning courtesy of the Hand's own psychic. She became "Lady Mandarin," a super villain who worked for a Chinese super villain called the Mandarin. I know, apparently East Asian people could just work together like that in the comics despite their history (look it up!). Lady Mandarin a.k.a. Psylocke then botched her job as a Hand ninja assassin because of a psychic entanglement with Logan a.k.a. Wolverine. Together, Wolverine and the awoken Psylocke went away to safety after defeating the villains. Oh, and Jubilee was there too! These three would then go on to rejoin the X-Men and Psylocke, who in this moment looked very different than how she used to look (a white English woman), stayed as an "Asian" psychic ninja character complete with her favorite weapon: a psychic knife, the focus totality of her telepathic prowess! This is crazy. Psylocke, the X-Man who's now an Asian psychic ninja. Cool, right? Not really, especially considering that she's not even Asian. Not Chinese, not Japanese, not even Korean or Taiwanese. She's English and white. It's only her face that resembled a vaguely Asian visual. The rest of her DNA that made up her body was still white. Thus, her Asian identity was just a yellow face.
Things began to change though in the '90s. A new writer of the book, Fabian Nicieza, had begun writing on the adjective-less X-Men book. He, however, happened to commit a somewhat amusing mistake. He had missed the previous revelation of what had happened to Psylocke. Nicieza wasn't even aware of the issue until much later, but by then he was already in deep with a new plot for Psylocke which involved the return of Betsy Braddock. That's right, apparently Nicieza thought that Psylocke's character change must've been an unsolved mystery left by Claremont, so he sought to solve it himself. Braddock would reappear at the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters "in body and soul!" before all of the X-Men and, after defeating Psylocke in a sudden duel, referred to herself as "Revanche." She said that her mission was to kill the impostor Psylocke.
Desperate times then called for desperate measures. The X-Men went to Japan to meet a man named Nyoirin Henecha, who was the employer of Revanche, and confronted him about this problem. This new character apparently had a diary which held the answer for us. How very convenient! It was something like this: Betsy Braddock had been found unconscious at the South China Sea. Kwannon (the 'w' is silent and the 'a' is pronounced as in the word 'far'), who was a private assassin of Henecha, stumbled upon Braddock by accident and touched her by accident as well. Their minds got blended and mixed like a smoothie in a blender, then Kwannon ran away only to be found by Tsurayaba and thus transformed into Lady Mandarin. Canonically, this was wrong. However, it was the initial "solution" that we got from Nicieza regarding Psylocke, though it would soon change within next couple of issues. In a two-part story called Soul Possessions, the real story a.k.a. retcon (retroactive continuity) got served to us. Kwannon, who was the lover of Tsurayaba, got into a duel to the death against him as she tried to protect Henecha. She fell down a cliff, basically died, and then got brought to the Hand's HQ for recovery. Tsurayaba then contacted Spiral (how did he even get her contact?!) and she gave Psylocke to him. Tsurayaba wished to use Psylocke's psychic ability to revive Kwannon back to life. With Spiral's help, Tsurayaba got what he wished for: a revived and amnesiac Kwannon whom he then deceived to turn into Lady Mandarin. When Psylocke had no use for him after, Spiral threw her into Henecha's custody who, in his own twisted way, turned her into a new weapon. This explained how Braddock got the code name Revanche in the first place.
There's a huge error in this massive retcon. Readers who had actually read about what happened to Psylocke back in Uncanny X-Men #255 would remember that: a) Tsurayaba had found Psylocke a.k.a. Betsy Braddock on an island at the South China Sea, b) Psylocke looked like herself which was a white English lady, c) Tsurayaba constantly referred to her as "the mutant X-Man Psylocke" even during conversations with the Mandarin, and d) there was a whole section within the Lady Mandarin backstory where it was shown to us that it indeed was Braddock who got transformed by the Hand into Lady Mandarin. There was no Kwannon whatsoever back then. So, yeah, this was incorrect in so many ways. The character also faced a serious problem within real world reception. Sure, many fanboys might just ogle at her new blue swimsuit and cheer like maniacs, but there's a real issue of racism at play here. See, the entire Lady Mandarin plot, if analyzed sincerely, had a specific purpose. It was to turn Psylocke into Elektra, another Marvel character from the Daredevil book series, with an additional spice of a Claremontian race play. Except, once again, in the original story Betsy never became Asian because she never was. She just had a plastic surgery! Then, with the Nicieza retcon, it became a "body swap" story. A white English woman who got trapped in a Japanese woman's body while the actual Japanese woman died within the white English woman's body. Oh, have I not mentioned? Kwannon a.k.a. Revanche died in the Soul Possessions plot.
As you can see here, this posed a greater problem for the rather progressive X-Men comics. After all, mutation has always been compared metaphorically to real world issues, such as authentic minority people's struggles, oppression, suffering, etc. This retcon however had put not only the character but also the entire book into question. How was the death of a woman of color in service of keeping the white woman in any way authentic or progressive? There's also the fact that for more than 30 years Psylocke had stayed Asian in every X-Men related medium such as cartoons, games, and live action movies, before she finally got revived in her original white and English look only very recently. It's madness! Ever since her revival alongside Kwannon (thank God) in the pages of Hunt for Wolverine: Mystery in Madripoor, Braddock has taken up the mantle of Captain Britain once again while the Psylocke character became associated with Kwannon. Writers and editors have tried their best to remedy a long history of racism with this character to a varying degrees of success, however this hasn't yet reached the larger public who don't read the comics. Many people are still only aware of the Psylocke as a psychic ninja wearing a sexy blue, black or purple swimsuit.
I've seen online discourse that even suggested if Psylocke is ever to be adapted into live action movies, the Marvel Studios (who now fully owns the rights to the X-Men) should just keep her that way. It's quite disheartening to see such suggestions, especially since most of them want the character to still be associated with Braddock rather than Kwannon. Personally, I'd want it not to be the case. Separating the characters from each other from the jump seems to be the best way to adapt them. Braddock should just be Captain Britain while Kwannon should firmly be Psylocke. Of course, this solution would probably cause many OG Psylocke fans to recoil in horror considering that the bulk of the character's history was written as Braddock's, but at the same time she was wearing Kwannon's body while enjoying so much exposure in popular media. There's also been some suggestions to just cast a mixed-race actress to portray her, thus giving a way to adapt her into a different yet easier to digest character, but that'd still be tricky in my opinion. After all, you'd still need to decide whether she should be Braddock or Kwannon. If she's Braddock, will Kwannon never be introduced in the movies? On the contrary, if she's Kwannon, shall Betsy Braddock then cease to exist?
Love, Daud.
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