X-Men #32

X-Men #32
Writing: Fabian Nicieza
Art: Andy Kubert

What Went Down: Spiral tells Warren and Betsy that she wants to help Psylocke seek the truth. Because this is a comic book, and they’re enemies, of course they have to have a fight. Nothing Spiral says is particularly helpful, and then the rest of the blue team randomly shows up to finish her off. Spiral teleports away, and Betsy shows the torn out bionic eyes to the rest of the X-Men.

Hours later, Banshee and Beast are doing things to the eyes with tools. They are able to find recordings from right after Psylocke disappeared into the Siege Perilous. Basically the actual story goes that Matsuo and Mandarin wanted to just switch the two girls’ bodies, but because Spiral is twisted and bitter, she manipulated their minds so that they turned out mixed up. If you were wondering why Revanche thought she was the real Betsy, it turns out that she was not used to telepathic powers, and her emotions confused herself, Psylocke, and the rest of the X-Men, hence the initial story.

Outside Gambit asks Professor X to talk about the problems he’s been having with Rogue. Also, if you care, Beast has outlawed smoking in the mansion. As for Psylocke, she once again journeys to Nyorin’s estate in Japan, this time alone. However, Nyorin is dead, killed by Matsuo. Matsuo’s reasoning is that Nyorin created a fake diary to keep them apart because Nyorin was also in love with Kwannon.

Using a kiss, Matsuo gives Psylocke the stored memories Kwannon had of Betsy Braddock’s; he also removes all of Kwannon’s stored personality traits. Despite this, Betsy is still able to utilize her ninja skills. After this, Matsuo wants to kill himself, but Psylocke convinces him not to in order to preserve Kwannon’s memory. Both characters bury Kwannon, and when Betsy returns she throws the bionic eyes into the water. Archangel shows up, and the two comment about how they’ve both been manipulated by evil forces and come out stronger for it.

How It Was: Well just like this cover and the last one alluded to, Psylocke fights Spiral…for all of five pages. Then the X-Men show up and beat her soundly in another three. This makes for a rather unfulfilling action sequence, on top of the fact that Spiral doesn’t really explain her reasoning for messing with Psylocke and Revanche. The explanation seems to be “because I’m crazy” but I’m sure most people were hoping for a little more.

After that, the sequence with Matsuo and Psylocke turns out to be pretty good. Again, we’re talking about a relationship that Nicieza never built up, and basically jammed into the plot so the story would work. But all in all, the idea of Psylocke convincing Matsuo to overcome his grief to honor Kwannon’s memory is a pretty nice idea. Having Psylocke’s memories returned to her via a plot convenient power transfer kiss is not. And with that contrived kiss, all memory of Revanche is essentially wiped away from the X-Men titles.

Andy Kubert does a great job with the art. The snowy backgrounds look really nice and everyone has a nice sense of action and movement. Plus, Psylocke actually wears clothes in the winter weather, a nice departure from the adventures in X-Men #17-19. While not a very exciting story, Nicieza does manage to get a little dramatic and emotional mileage out of a concept that most thought was completely dead in the water.

C+