Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Andy Kubert
What Went Down: Professor X is in his war room watching a reenactment of the events of the last three issues. Jubilee is with him, and he asks how she feels about the deaths of Colossus’ parents. She gives a cynical response and flees to check on Illyana before Xavier can follow up. Xavier checks in with Colossus; at this point everybody thinks Illyana might have strep throat, but really she has been infected with the Legacy Virus. Jubilee once again leaves before her feelings can overwhelm her and bumps into Psylocke who is dressed seductively and looking for Cyclops.
As it happens, Cyclops is down in the garage working on the Blackbird. Psylocke surprises him, and he clumsily slips and stumbles into her, knocking them both to the ground. As he stammers an apology, Psylocke licks some motor oil off of Scott and then kisses him. Cyclops pushes her away just in time to avoid being seen by his girlfriend Jean Grey. Scott leaves in a hurry, making Jean even more suspicious of Betsy.
Outside, Jubilee finds Wolverine chopping up trees; he is thinking about all the losses that the X-Men have suffered in the past couple of months. His meditation is interrupted by a strange scent, but he brushes it off as just being Psylocke.
Jean watches Beast and Gambit in the Danger Room and wonders if Beast feels that he has outgrown being an X-Man. Jean then checks on Rogue, who is having her vision tested by Storm; Rogue is now able to see again, but she is sensitive to light.
Cyclops packs a suitcase and decides to visit his grandparents in Alaska to tell them about his former wife Madelyne and his son Nathan, both of whom are dead. Storm cautions Cyclops not to run away from his relationship problems like she did with Forge. Jean watches him leave, then asks the computer to detect Psylocke; the computer has two locations, but Jean ignores the second.
In the Danger Room, Jean asks Psylocke whether she is having an affair with Cyclops. Psylocke answers by stabbing Jean with her psychic knife. According to the narration, this act showed Jean the reason Betsy was behaving this way, and then made her forget it; as ridiculous as this sounds, this point does come back up in later issues.
The former body of Betsy Braddock, Revanche, confronts Psylocke; Psylocke thinks it is a Danger Room program at first, until it calls her Kwannon and attacks her. The rest of the X-Men burst in, and Revanche accuses Psylocke of being an imposter.
How It Was: Well finally we are getting to the bottom of a couple of these mysteries, and finally subplots that have been going on for far too long are being resolved. Rogue gets her sight back, which is welcome indeed, and the Psylocke trying to sleep with Cyclops thread is finally getting put to an end. Unfortunately, we are also getting to the period of X-continuity with Revanche in it, and there are a lot of reasons to be unhappy with that.
During Claremont’s run, Psylocke’s originally British body was switched with a Japanese one after she went through the Siege Perilous, an annoying plot device that randomly manipulates characters for the sake of new story directions; this isn’t the last time the Siege Perilous screws with Psylocke either, but that is another story. Anyways, this is the story that explains what happened to Psylocke, except that in about nine or so issues it gets revised and completely changed around. Psylocke herself is really not interesting from a character standpoint; from the perspective of the artist, she is a lot more interesting. Not only does she not have a fully developed personality like the other members of the group, her powers are redundant on a team that already has two really powerful telepaths. So for nine issues we get stuck with two Psylockes on the X-Men, but the second one, Revanche, doesn’t really have a lot of personality to her, either.
There are, however, quite a few nice character moments. Professor X and Jubilee build on their father/daughter relationship set up in Uncanny #297 as she tries to act mature and hide from her feelings. Jean also has some great moments of confusion and frustration as she finally confronts Psylocke. The stuff with Beast and Cyclops is slightly less compelling. It is also unfortunate that the deaths of Colossus’ parents have been glossed over.
Art is good; the opening flashback to the previous story arc is nice and somber, while the details on the computers are very intricate. Also Revanche’s armor looks really nice and the scenes in the Danger Room with ninjas and robots have a nice sense of motion and action to them. Still, there are those phantom dust clouds as Jubilee roller blades on the metal floor, as well as when Revanche confronts Psylocke in the Danger Room. Either the X-Men need to hire a housekeeper or 1990s Kubert needs to observe what actually happens when people walk in a room. This is a necessary issue, but I can’t really enjoy it knowing that it is the start of one of my least favorite stories.
C+
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