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+

X-Men #31

X-Men #31
Writing: Fabian Nicieza
Art: Andy Kubert

What Went Down: Ahh, the final Revanche story. It just rolls right off the tongue. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can be done talking about this horrible character. X-Men #31 opens on a flashback of Kwannon jumping around the rooftops of a flashy city, presumably Tokyo. Matsuo Tsuryaba catches her and we find out that the two were lovers and that his nickname for her was Butterfly. At the bottom of the flashback panels, we see the silhouette of Spiral commenting about them. She switches to a live feed of the eye cameras that were placed in the original Betsy Braddock to find that Revanche is standing over a sleeping Professor X with a sword. Then the feed cuts out.

When Professor X wakes up, he finds a note and Revanche’s sword, and gives them to Psylocke. Psylocke worries about how she will resolve her identity issues without Revanche. After Xavier leaves, Psylocke pulls out her parting gift from Revanche…the original Betsy Braddock’s bionic eyes.

Matsuo reflects on a flashback of Kwannon and himself; he took a picture of her and she became angry with him. We learn that Kwannon worked for Lord Nyorin and Matsuo worked for the Hand, and it looks like both sides were about to come into conflict. Matsuo (in the flashback) suggests they should kill each other, as opposed to being forced to fight each other later. Of course they can’t, because it wouldn’t be honorable. Spiral sneaks up on Matsuo in the present and eats an apple while they discuss how Spiral repaired Kwannon’s body.

At the mansion, Psylocke partakes in a lethal Danger Room sequence. Archangel programs a hologram of his Angel form to surprise her. Warren offers to go out to eat with her and discuss her problems. In the study, Xavier asks Beast to take over leadership of the blue team as well as the daily tasks of maintaining the institute. We also find out that Emma Frost has deeded her Massachusetts Academy to Xavier. Beast acquiesces. Gambit and Rogue’s relationship is showing tension since the Gambit mini-series. I’ve only read the first issue, but it appears that somehow Rogue absorbed the memories of Gambit’s wife Bella Donna, because she keeps saying things that Gambit remembers his ex-wife saying.

Next we get the flashback of Matsuo and Kwannon being forced to fight each other. Matsuo ends up throwing Kwannon off of a cliff, where she “dies.” After retrieving her body, Matsuo takes her to the Hand, but they can’t heal her because she suffered brain damage from being underwater. In the middle of the flashback, present day Revanche attacks Matsuo.

In Salem Center, Betsy shows Warren the eyes that Revanche pulled out of her own sockets. Back in Japan, Matsuo can’t help viewing Revanche as Kwannon with his “mind’s eye,” whatever that means. Matsuo admits his part in getting the Mandarin and Spiral to preserve her body, since Kwannon’s mind was gone. Revanche points out the irony because the body that was supposed to save her is now infected with the Legacy Virus.

Revanche asks Matsuo to kill her so she won’t have to die from the Legacy Virus. He does, and back in America Psylocke feels the shockwave, causing her to crash the car. The final page leaves us with Spiral popping in, saying that she wants to help Psylocke discover the answers to her questions about her identity.

How It Was: Surprisingly this story turned out more enjoyable than I thought it would. It’s far from perfect, but the sheer fact that it’s the conclusion to the go-nowhere Revanche storyline, and it keeps my interest, says a lot about it. As you can probably tell by my synopsis above, this book is dense with information. There is an incredible amount of exposition, which is needed to tie up the incredible amount of loose ends that span from Mojoworld to the Hand. Plus there is the problem that to make this story work, Nicieza has to retcon his previous story by saying that all of the information Nyorin gave them previously was a lie. While this somewhat negates the impact of the first story, it does leave Nicieza open to write a satisfactory, if melodramatic, tragic romance for Kwannon and Matsuo.

Since it is her death issue, Revanche gets the majority of the focus of this issue, and hence gets to do all of the interesting things. Between ripping out her own eyes and asking Matsuo to take her life, Revanche actually develops a pretty compelling personality. Of course it is all based around that wacky comics’ portrayal of honor, but it’s still a lot better than what came before. Psylocke surprisingly doesn’t do much of anything except for a generic Danger Room exercise and a continuing of her burgeoning relationship with Archangel, meaning her scenes are rather dull.

Really, the main problem is that you can almost hear the plot struggling to contain all of the various retcons. No, Kwannon wasn’t in love with Nyorin, it was Matsuo; really, all of the X-Men knew Betsy was the real Psylocke, it was just Revanche’s emotions affecting her powers, to the point where she fooled Professor X and Jean Grey; Kwannon’s brain was actually damaged, so not a lot of her made it into the pair. It all just reeks of plot convenience, but if you can overlook it all, there is a fairly decent resolution here to a rather awful ongoing sub plot.

C+

X-Men #23

Chronologically I have the Gambit mini-series after this.  So read this, then go here.

X-Men #23
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Andy Kubert

What Went Down: Cyclops starts off the issue by blasting a hole in Mr. Sinister’s midsection; however, Sinister is actually immune to Scott’s optic blasts, and his death after the Inferno Saga was just a ruse to allow him to lie low. But Sinister isn’t here to fight. He wants to tell Cyclops about the Legacy Virus that Stryfe created and Sinister accidentally unleashed at the end of the X-Cutioner’s Song. We also learn that Sinister’s head geneticist died of the virus. When asked why he is telling Cyclops this, Sinister slips that he wants to protect Cyclops and his “brothers,” before correcting himself, since at the time Cyclops only had one brother, Havok of X-Factor. Some people also speculate that Sinister himself was infected, but this is never confirmed. This is the beginning of the “third Summers brother” subplot that goes on and on until it is answered in a little over a decade in X-Men: Deadly Genesis. As they talk, the Dark Riders ambush the pair to test them.

At Nyorin’s residence, the X-Men have Nyorin and Silver Samurai restrained and are interrogating them. Nyorin reveals that both women are Betsy Braddock, in that they are both a mixture of Betsy and Kwannon’s attributes that somehow fused after they touched. Nyorin also tells the X-Men about the Upstarts and Shinobi Shaw.

Back in the states, Wolverine and Rogue are telling Xavier that they found evidence that Magneto is still alive in the Savage Land during Wolverine #70-71. Xavier doesn’t want to believe it. Wolverine gets angry—you can tell because he is drawn with his angry red eyes.

For the first, and only, time ever, Sinister and Cyclops team up to beat the Dark Riders. After they are beaten, Sinister tells them not to kill Scott Summers before teleporting away. The Dark Riders take this command literally by trying to cripple Cyclops instead.

Gambit and Beast surprise Shinobi Shaw while he is taking a bath with many beautiful women. They tell Shinobi that they know about the Upstarts and make a couple of jokes about his nudity. Outside, Matsuo attacks Psylocke and Revanche, but is soundly beaten within two pages.

Poor Cyclops has to take on the entire Dark Riders team by himself. After losing his glasses, Tusk hits him and then the team returns his glasses claiming that the test is complete. The Dark Rider Hardrive announces that Cyclops has passed and that he is worthy to face the coming storm. This is a lead into the Ascension of the High Lord—a battle between Apocalypse and Stryfe…that never happens and gets forgotten about after the next issue. The Dark Riders teleport away, leaving Cyclops all alone.

How It Was: My, this issue is more of a mixed bag than a bag of delicious Chex mix. Ouch, that was painful to read, but not as painful as the double Psylocke storyline. Nyorin fills in a couple of blanks that the readers have already guessed, Silver Samurai contributes absolutely nothing, and then Nicieza remembers that Matsuo has something to do with this story, so he has the villain appear in a weak two page attempt to kill the Psylocke twins. The part where Gambit and Beast barge in to intimidate Shinobi Shaw is pretty entertaining, but since the Upstarts story is about to completely disappear from the X-Men books, now it reads as completely worthless material.

On the other hand, the scenes with Sinister and Cyclops are really good. These scenes manage to maintain some tension since Sinister is obviously a threat, but Scott knows that if what he is saying is true about the Legacy Virus, all of mutantkind could be threatened. The Legacy Virus is a solid storyline that dragged on way too long for its own good before becoming an on again, off again focus of the X-books for the rest of the decade. The fight with the Dark Riders also works really well; those poor losers just can’t win one. However, once again these scenes just serve as set up for plot threads that get forgotten about. In fact, I think this may be the last time we see the Dark Riders anywhere in the X-Men titles. Oh well, at least the X-office did set up one storyline with this issue that actually gets resolved—the Magneto thread that obviously leads into the Fatal Attractions crossover—coming soon to Illegitimate Children of the Atom. So we have three plot lines that go somewhere and two that go nowhere, which is really not a great way to run a comic book.

B-