The Four Color Media Monitor

Newsarama's been telling about news from SDCC that there'll be another Psylocke series, this time starring Kwannon, the kunoichi (female ninja) with whom Captain Britain's sister Psylocke switched bodies around 1989, but they sure do seem to have gotten the history muddled along the way:

Psylocke has one of the most complicated histories of any of the X-Men (which is really saying something) but everyone's favorite psychic ninja will slash herself a new path in her own ongoing title launching later this year, as announced at Marvel's X-Men: From the Ashes panel at Comic-Con International: San Diego.

Written by Alyssa Wong with art by Vincenzo Carratù, the new Psylocke comic will take the ninja assassin Kwannon, who once shared a body with Betsy Braddock and is now her own woman again, into missions too deadly and dangerous for her fellow mutants in the current X-Men core ongoing title. [...]

As we said, Psylocke's history is somewhat convoluted. The original Psylocke was Betsy Braddock, who merged with the ninja assassin Kwannon. The pair were later separated into two people once again, with Kwannon taking on the Psylocke name as Betsy has become the current Captain Britain.

The only reason it's convoluted is because news writers who clearly aren't dedicated to research on the subject have made it that way. It's the same case with DC's Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Betsy Braddock and Kwannon's did not "share the same body", but rather, were mind-switched as a result of Spiral taking them hostage and subjecting them to a scientific experiment. As noted on Betsy Braddock's profile at UncannyXMenNet:

Matsu'o later commissioned Spiral to exchange Betsy's mind with the assassin Kwannon, and Psylocke gained a new Asian body with depleted power levels and the ability to generate a psychic knife in Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #256. After Kwannon died in X-Men (2nd series) #31, her full potential returned.

It also says, further through the character biography pages:

Matsu'o saw in Betsy the perfect chance to restore his lover, Kwannon. She had served Lord Nyoirin, a rival crimelord. When Kwannon and Matsu'o had battled each other, Kwannon took a fall off a cliff and nearly drowned, leaving her brain dead. He contacted Spiral at the Bodyshoppe for help. To please her employer, Mojo, Spiral twisted the two women further than she was asked. Besides switching their minds, she manipulated genetic coding between them. Both women now had traits of Kwannon and Psylocke and it was nearly impossible to tell them apart in mind or body. Apparently, though, most of Betsy’s soul was transferred into the Asian woman’s body. Further, she underwent some conditioning that resulted in her believing herself to be Lady Mandarin, the Hand’s prime assassin. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #255-256, X-Men (2nd series) #32]

No doubt, some of this is confusing, but, it's not hard to tell that this was more or less a case of 2 brains switched between 2 separate bodies. As a result, Newsarama's continued to prove themselves a very laughably unreliable mainstream news source. No wonder even the aforementioned Hawkman and Hawkgirl both Golden and Silver Ages, will never see justice done to repair their histories, that became a mess since 1989, around which time the Psylocke mind-switch originally took place. In any event, no chance this new Psylocke series will fare any better than previous efforts post-2000, based on the embarrassments who've since come to run Marvel.

Labels: conventions, history, msm propaganda, women of marvel, X-Men