Psylocke Issues

[eyesofamaranthine]

“To Elizabeth. Long may she reign!” → Captain Britain (Vol. 2) #9

[eyesofamaranthine]

AU: Marvel gets it together and realizes “white woman in Asian body” is a dumb/offensive idea.

± Psylocke redesign: Her old 80s’ colors (pink, magenta, lavender, fuchsia) + elements from Alan Davis’ pink uniform + elements from Kris Anka’s Marvel Now suit (sash, leg patterns, etc.). Purple hair + blue eyes.

± Revanche redesign: All the blackness from her original ninja outfit + the metallic elements for arms/legs from her Revanche costume + deep blue patterns. Black hair + brown eyes.

[eyesofamaranthine]

40 Years of Psylocke (inspired by 75 Years of Wonder Woman)

** (not an exhaustive list) → First appearance: Captain Britain vol. 1 #8 (1976)

→ Writers: Chris Claremont (creator), Gary Friedrich, Alan Moore, Jamie Delano, Alan Davis, Fabian Nicieza, Scott Lobdell, Ben Raab, Joe Kelly, Matt Fraction, Chris Yost, Mike Carey, Rick Remender, Kieron Gillen, Victor Gischler, Sam Humphries, Brian Wood, Simon Spurrier, Marc Guggenheim, G. Willow Wilson, Cullen Bunn & more.

→ Artists: Herb Trimpe (creator), Alan Davis, Marc Silvestri, Rick Leonardi, Jim Lee, Andy Kubert, Roger Cruz, Joe Madureira, Chris Bachalo, Salvador Larroca, German Garcia, Leinil Francis Yu, Billy Tan, Paul Pelletier, Clayton Henry, Tom Grummet, Tim Seeley, Greg Land, Terry Dodson, Harvey Tolibao, Clay Mann, Jerome Opeña, Esad Ribic, Mark Brooks, Will Conrad, Greg Tocchini, Jorge Molina, Phil Noto, David Lopez, Ron Garney, Adrian Alphona, Olivier Coipel, Phil Briones, Kris Anka, Rock-He Kim, Daniel Acuña, Todd Nauck, Roland Boschi, Ken Lashley & more.

→ Costume designers: Alan Davis, Arthur Adams, Jim Lee, Leinil Francis Yu, Salvador Larroca, Tom Grummet, Jerome Opeña, Kris Anka, Rock-He Kim & Greg Land.

→ Live action/animated adaptations: Kay Tremblay (X-Men: The Animates Series), Mei Melançon (X-Men: The Last Stand), Grey DeLisle (Wolverine and the X-Men) & Olivia Munn (X-Men: Apocalypse).

→ Current books: Uncanny X-Men (vol. 4) by Cullen Bunn & Greg Land/Ken Lashley; Civil War II: X-Men by Cullen Bunn & Andrea Broccardo.

→ Key relationships: Angel, Captain Britain, Jamie Braddock, Meggan Puceanu, Tom Lennox, Slaymaster, Mojo, Spiral, Cypher, Storm, Wolverine, Dazzler, Rachel Grey, Nightcrawler, Matsu'o Tsurayaba, Revanche, Shadow King, Fantomex, Sabretooth, Magneto.

[comicsalliance]

“With Psylocke featured in the upcoming film X-Men: Apocalypse, we can expect some extra attention to fall on Marvel’s striking, purple-haired mutant who wields a telekinetic katana. And with that attention, the problem of racial identity in the character’s backstory is getting some new scrutiny. In her current iteration, Psylocke is a white British woman, Betsy Braddock, whose mind — by a series of outlandish plot developments — is in the body of Japanese ninja assassin named Kwannon.“

IS THE WORLD READY FOR A HAPA PSYLOCKE?

[psylockeissues]

Because every time Psylocke’s racial problem is brought up, you get tons of comments saying “Hey just make her magically Asian from birth, retcon everything!!!!!!!!!1111″ (the lazy solution) It bothers me a lot that people would just suggest to erasure Psylocke’s backstory this way without any regard to the character from before she was body-swapped. So here’s a break down why Psylocke SHOULD NOT be retconned into Asian.

1.       Sir James Braddock, an Otherworld citizen and agent of Merlyn, was sent to Earth-616 to take a carefully chosen mate (Ms. Elizabeth Braddock) and father a hero who would be far greater even than he. The couple’s first child, Jamie Braddock, failed to inherit his father’s Otherworld genes. The twins, Betsy and Brian, however, did so. Retconning Psylocke’s mother to be Asian so she could be Brian’s half-sister would contradict her origin and connection to Brian.

2.       As twins, Betsy and Brian share a psychic rapport as stated multiple times in the books throughout the years.

3.       There are 13 years worthy of stories depicting Psylocke as a white woman, flashbacks depicting her as Caucasian as a child and teenager, and 25 more years worthy of stories reminding readers that Psylocke used to be a white woman. Retconning Psylocke to be Asian from birth would contradict 39 years of stories. Who would that white woman in pink uniform in Mutant Massacre be? It would be extremely confusing and convoluted, not to mention a very lazy solution.

4.       Psylocke’s most interesting aspects and history as a character come from BEFORE she joined the X-Men in the pages of the Captain Britain series. She has a very rich background concerning her heritage/Otherworld/connection to Merlyn and Roma in which she was written and developed by none other than Alan Moore. Would that be worth sacrificing?

5.       Retconning Psylocke to be Asian from birth would essentially turn her into an all-new character as her origin would differ greatly. She would be virtually a new character and not the one we’ve been following for almost 40 years. This would be a slap in the face of her fans.

6.       I get that diversity/representation/and visibility matter, but changing a character’s entire history for the sake of it is extremely lazy. Putting Psylocke back into her own body and bringing back Revanche/Kwannon from the dead, reintroducing her to the X-Books as her own character (Kwannon’s original mutant power was empathy) would be the best solution.

[burritosong-old]

literally the only thing stopping me from getting BETSY BRADDOCK IS NOT A WOMAN OF COLOR tattooed on my forehead is bc my forehead is too small for it to be readable

[theironfist-deactivated20181011]

Betsy Braddock has been Asian for over 22 years so..???? I don’t know why you’re getting so…

[theironfist-deactivated20181011]

I get where you’re coming from but dude that whole arc was fucked up and I like to put it (and all its grossness out of my mind). Also Kwannon grew up and lived in Japan, her experiences would be completely separate from what a WoC living in a western country like the UK or America would be. She was also killed off for completely weird bullshit reasons only a handful of issues after she was introduced. With all the time Betsy has spent in that body it’s not outside the realm of possibilities that Betsy would, you know, actually be able to experience life as a WoC and come to understand the discrepancies between that experience and just being a white woman. I haven’t been able to get my hands on enough Betsy issues to know if that sort of thing has been covered (though it’s unlikely as most X-Men writers tend to shy away from the intersectionality of being a mutant and a PoC). But in my opinion clinging to her past whiteness does more harm than good, especially since a whole new generation of X-Men fans were brought up seeing Betsy as positive Asian representation. No she’s not perfect, but I could give you a laundry list of all the ways other character origins are fucked.

[burritosong-old]

Yes, Kwannon’s experiences as a Japanese woman living in Japan are entirely different from the experiences of a woc in the UK or America. Regardless, Betsy has neither the experiences of a Japanese woman living in Japan, nor the experiences of a Japanese woman living in the UK or America. And it’s because she lacks those experiences that she will approach any discrimination she faces with the mindset of a white woman. Even in Japan whiteness is glorified and Kwannon would have grown up with that. Betsy never would have had to even consider it.

Do people, now that she is in an Asian woman’s body, treat Betsy like an Asian woman? Yes, they absolutely do. But I have never seen the differences in her experiences as a white woman and her experiences in Kwannon’s body addressed. Which really leads me to believe that she has never questioned the privilege that she was born with, and that she continues to face the world each day with the mind of a white woman.

And the very fact that there is a whole new generation of fans being brought up with the idea that Betsy is Asian why I’m angry. Because when I was introduced to Betsy I thought she was like me. I thought I had an amazing Asian superhero role model to identify with. And then I found out that that this was actually a white woman prancing around in a body of a Japanese woman who I had never even known existed. And that was like a goddamn slap in the face. I felt like I had been tricked. And I was incredibly hurt that I had been cheated out of this great representation because people like me were only good enough to show up when we could make white people look good.

Claiming that Betsy is a woman of color is saying that there is nothing more to race than a costume to try on. And it erases an actual Japanese woman who could have been given her own story if only she had been treated as more than just a plot device.

And because of that Betsy Braddock will forever be a reminder that Asian women are nothing more than plot devices to forward the stories of heroic white characters.

[psylockeissues]

I think it's important to acknowledge that people's experiences are not interchangeable, especially when it comes to race and ethnicity. If you're going to drop a white character into an Asian body, I think it behooves you to explore how that character's life would change -- how she would be treated socially, how she would deal with microaggression, how this might alter her perceptions about the world. If you take a story in that direction, you've gotta do the work. Otherwise it's just tokenism. However, since I'm just here for four issues, I didn't feel I had the space or the prerogative to move things around significantly, so I didn't really touch on the Psylocke race issue. If I was the ongoing series writer, however, I would seriously consider making a change.

G. Willow Wilson

[marvelwomenofcolor]

Here's a question: is psylocke a woman of color? Yes, it would be easy to say she has a Japanese body so yes, but she is mentally White English from an Upper Class background. And it was of that background a privilege she grew up with and was informed by. I'm curious to what your thoughts on it are. Is she genuine representation, or a weird form of comic 'yellow face'?

Hi! Personaly I do not consider Psylocke a woman of color and I get really pissed then she is used to fill the PoC quota in the book. I always felt so weird about Psylocke - Revanche storyline. First we had white woman’s mind transfered to Japanese’s woman’s body and she somehow had all her memories, but also all Kwannon’s “ninja” skills, then Revanche appeared and one will assume that she will be Kwannon’s mind in Betsy’s body, but again all Betsy’s memories and Kwanon’s “ninja” skills( near the end of her life she did remembered that she in fact was  Kwannon but still it was tacky). And that is so sad that the only thing that writers ever cared about were Kwannon’s fighting skills. So, weird form of comic ‘yellow face’ mixed with cultural appropriation that is.

[psylockeissues]

I have no idea exactly why Betsy/Psylocke was changed. Her transformation into an oriental (No one at Marvel was ever able to give a definite ethnicity) Elektra clone removed any connection to her original incarnation so she may as well have been a totally new character. In Captain Britain, Betsy was established as the perhaps cliché British Lady heroine whose poise, frills and decorum hid a capable and dangerous ‘strong’ female— not unlike Purdey in the New Avengers TV series or Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds. Her costume and attitude in X-men was supposed to play to that conceit and to be a deliberately uncomfortable fit. Sadly, the idea of character diversity has been lost to homogenization and the notion all characters must be sexy or ‘kewl’.

Alan Davis

[iamdavidbrothers]

What is your first favorite personification of British Imperialism?

I’m glad you asked!

Betsy Braddock, alias Psylocke, is the ultimate personification of British Imperialism. She was a wealthy child, a British noble (I guess, her dad was a Sir so I assume she or her twin brother inherited that title), and had everything she ever wanted. She grew up with a view to kill, from what I’ve seen of those old Alan Davis comics. She eventually became a fashion model slash super hero. She saw the world, but the world was not enough.

In a story that still bugs the living daylights out of me, the Mandarin, a Chinese supremacist, engineered a situation in which Betsy, purple-haired British nobleperson, was converted from a white British woman into a Japanese woman using some process I don’t remember but was undoubtedly overexplained at the time. She was then dubbed Lady Mandarin because I guess Mandarin needed a wife/assassin/wifessassin and he wasn’t picky about his own racism because… I don’t know, Psylocke was super hot? I guess he wanted a quantum of solace and wasn’t too picky about where it came from. Anyway, Psylocke escaped from his control with the help of Wolverine and Jubilee and the Mandarin lived to die another day.

She kept the body, though, because yolo, right? (Though, in Psylocke’s case, it’s more like “YOLT”.) In her new body, she was somehow a master of martial arts and super sexy and still had purple hair, which is pretty weird honestly. I don’t think they ever specified which martial arts she was a master of, but she was doing a lot of strikes with the palm of her and jump kicks at the time, so I assume it was the much-loved Japanese style known as Musabetsu Kakutō Ryū. Did she train? Did she study under a master? Who knows! She’s just good, okay? She also became an “action junkie,” because I guess her fake body just couldn’t get enough of using her newfound talent for martial arts!

Mojo, the perverted and corrupt owner of a television company, received regular updates on her shenanigans, too, on a disc marked “for your eyes only.” Mojo was us, the fanboy, the leering teenager hoping for a butt shot or bit of torn costume over a boob.

Later, Kwannon, her evil (because she’s mad about her body being stolen) twin shows up. Psylocke, in true imperialist fashion, is all “nuh uh, you’re self-sufficient now and nothing I did in the past matters” when Kwannon is like “you owe me.”

However, Psylocke wasn’t complete, not yet. It turns out she was missing bits of herself, from her powers to her personality. Who had it? Kwannon. Who mysteriously died of a vicious disease and, in her last moments, proved loyal to her oppressor thanks to a wicked case of Stockholm Syndrome and made her whole again? Kwannon. The colonizer never lets the colonized live and let die. They want everything. Giving a people their freedom gives you a good feeling that goes away soon after you realize how much of an investment you just gave up on. But blood diamonds? Blood diamonds are forever. And psychic powers are the ultimate blood diamonds.

Anyway the UK invaded and colonized most of the world and then kept a lot of the stuff they stole and Psylocke’s arc is a weird and stupid parallel of the way they devastated the world.

Goldeneye.

[shobogan]

[psylockeissues]

sometimes i’m justreally sad about psylocke because i think on her own, betsy is a really fun, engaging, distinct character, and has been since her introduction. she has great relationships with...

[psylockeissues]

Why Psylocke Should Return to her Original Body

First and foremost, I’m a huge X-Men fan and this is why I’m writing you. Psylocke has been my favorite character ever since I started reading comics and she’s still my favorite character. However there's an aspect to her that I find quite problematic. The fact that she is a white woman "wearing" an Asian body.

It is perplexing that in this day and age, Marvel still publishes such a racially problematic character and passes her off as "minority", after all Betsy Braddock is a wealthy white woman through and through from an Upper Class background. To make matters worse, a few writers and artists usually depict Psylocke acting as a stereotypical Asian woman (the Dragon Lady). She is a woman born and raised in England and has zero affinity for the Asian culture.

Most readers don’t consider Psylocke a woman of color and it is frustrating when an author acknowledges her as such.  I remember Matt Fraction (who, to be fair, is normally not only a good comic book writer but one who is respectful of female and minority characters) actually described her as “another non-white face”, which is upsetting.

I beg you, give the idea to put Psylocke back in her original body a little thought. Think of how offensive and off putting the character may be to some people. Undoing this racially offensive body swap would parallel Marvel’s efforts to push representation in comics, which include the development and focus on actual minority characters such as Miles Morales, and the new Ms. Marvel, Thor and Captain America.

Moreover, Betsy doesn't need to be an Asian woman to be a ninja; there are plenty of Caucasian ninjas in the Marvel Universe such as Elektra and Iron Fist. Believe me, a purple-haired woman with psychic powers will always be recognized as Psylocke, regardless of race. If put back in her original body, she would still retain her ninja skills as seen in Uncanny X-Men 508-511 by Matt Fraction, in which she hold her own against Wolverine.

No one expect to have the 80s Psylocke back, she has outgrown that incarnation and has found herself as the muscle of the team, and she can be that as a white woman as well. It's not a matter of which Psylocke we like better. It's a matter of correcting a mistake and stop perpetuating Asian stereotypes in comic books. Her transformation was written into the X-narrative to fulfill the dual fetish of the Asian woman and the exotic ninja killer trope. She just looks Asian. She is literally an Anglo woman whose mind has been put in an Asian woman’s body with no connection to any form of Asian culture or family or community, except in the most facile way that being a “ninja” makes that the case.

It is worth mentioning that Psylocke was established as a bisexual woman in 2013’s Uncanny X-Force (vol. 2) by Sam Humphries; instead of keeping a faux racial minority character which is a disservice to an entire race, Marvel has in its hands a full-fledged LGBT character who could truly represent bisexual women. You could also let Revanche/Kwannon be her own character, an actual Asian woman. The racial problem would be solved, and everyone wins.

Betsy has been "wearing" an Asian body for the past 25 years. The whole situation reeks of ‘yellow face’ mixed with cultural appropriation. It's past time to undo this. I want you to see how problematic Psylocke is as she is now. This is coming from one of her biggest fans, but this is 2015. Racial topics are at all-time high; it’s the perfect time to think more about this situation and change the status quo for the better. I trust Marvel to do the right thing. Thank you for your time.

If you also feel this way, please reblog this post and contact the powers that be politely.

Axel Alonso's twitter.

Brian Michael Bendis' twitter and tumblr.

Mike Marts' twitter.

G. Willow Wilson's twitter and tumblr.

Tom Brevoort's twitter and tumblr.

[psylockeissues]

"Asian" Psylocke is problematic.

[uncannypsylocke]

This has been on my mind lately. Why is it so important she remain in Kwannon’s body?

Marvel’s logic behind the reason was they didn’t want to confuse casual fans that didn’t read comics because of her role in video games, merchandise etc,

But we all know since Marvel can’t seem to get the...