Psylocke #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PSYLOCKE vol 2 #2
“Ladykiller”
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
PSYLOCKE.
The previous issue ended with her bloodily defeating the villains and feeling disturbed by her lack of emotion about it. This issue picks up from that by going into a flashback to her childhood training – possibly a direct continuation of the training flashback on page 15 of issue #1, or at least another training session in the same location. In that flashback, she’s killed some low-level Hand ninja and seems quite relaxed about the whole thing until her friend Mitsuki snaps her out of it. (“Sometimes you go so far away.”) More of Mitsuki below.
As usual, Psylocke feels very strongly about anything involving the brutalisation of children and thinks that everyone involved “deserves to die”. Naturally, she refuses to hurt the kids who have been forced to fight her. She also shrugs off the shock collar that the Cleaver Club try to use to control her.
Page 10 and some dialogue on page 23 strongly imply that Kwannon and Shinobi Shaw have a history together, which I don’t recall seeing on the page, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t have happened before she got bodyswapped with Psylocke (and by extension before Shinobi had even debuted). She treats him as a client here, ignores his advances, and sends him an invoice.
SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Mitsuki. Kwannon’s childhood friend in her training flashback. Presumably, this is the same girl we saw in flashback in the previous issue, where Master Hayashi took both of the remaining candidates for training. As far as I know, she’s a new character. She seems comparatively normal – concerned about Kwannon’s wellbeing and worried about her spacing out. Mind you, the pile of dead ninjas on the floor doesn’t seem to faze her.
The Beast is the only X-Man we see at the Factory, when Psylocke drops off the kids that she rescued from the Gila Hotel (none of whom get names). Presumably, the rest of the team are off on the mission that was mentioned last issue.
John Greycrow is Psylocke’s first port of call for the kids, which is curious, since you’d think the X-Men would be better placed to deal with them – not just in terms of personality, but in terms of the size of Greycrow’s hut. Maybe she’s just worried about the fact that she’s supposed to be benched for compulsory rest at the moment (per the previous issue). Anyway, Greycrow isn’t there, and Psylocke assumes that he’s on a mercenary job and out of contact. In fact, it looks like he’s been kidnapped, since that’s presumably meant to be his severed arm nailed to her door at the end of the issue, complete with butterflies? I’m not really sure what any of that is about.
Devon Di Angelo is annoyed at Psylocke cutting off contact with them during the Gila Hotel incident; Psylocke seems genuinely surprised that Devon worries about her safety. Devon considers themselves to be an “ordinary human college kid” who just happens to help out Psylocke on the side, while Psylocke evidently views them as an elite hacker who really belongs in her world.
Shinobi Shaw is, at the least, not a villain in this issue, so we’ll put him here. Psylocke considers him to be a “corporate demon” and “consummate hedonist”, but he turns out to be the source of the tip that sent Psylocke to the Gila Hotel to rescue mutant kids last issue. He doesn’t give a direct explanation of why he did that, and expressly disclaims altruism as a motive. That would imply some sort of self-interest, but no specific motive is identified. So perhaps he really did just disapprove of child trafficking enough to tip off Psylocke, even if he wasn’t going to do anything about it himself – that would be broadly consistent with the way he was written in Marauders.
Psylocke insists that Shinobi come along to help her rescue the other trafficked children; he’s not happy about this, but does ultimately play along. By all appearances Psylocke isn’t asking him to do anything more than use his connections to get her into places, and he evidently has some romantic interest in her anyway. Ultimately, once she’s in battle, Shinobi does help her out.
VILLAINS
Skullbuster is in the opening panel, which is just a direct repeat of the end of the previous issue.
The Hand are off panel in the flashback on page 4, responsible for Kwannon’s childhood training.
The Cleaver Club is the latest version of the “rich people betting on human pit-fighting” trope – in this case, captured children. Psylocke initially assumes that they’re mutants, but they turn out to have been given powers using the slow-release MGH patches that AIM were plugging last issue. Other than an anonymous MC, we only see some generic clubgoers and security guards.
It’s possible that Kwannon and Shinobi had a relationship before she started dating Matsuo- and therefore before Uncanny X-Men 256. The one interesting thing though is that in the original Kwannon story in 1993 in X-Men 21-22 Shinobi originally offers to help Lord Nyorin regain control of Kwannon in exchange for killing some of the X-Men. But then Matsuo convinces the Gamesmaster to let Matsuo kill Psylocke and Shinobi is so angry he nearly kills Matsuo. So it’s possible Wong is suggesting that Shinobi’s motivations in that story went beyond wanting the X-Men dead.
“Psylocke feels very strongly about anything involving the brutalisation of children and thinks that everyone involved “deserves to die”.”
Which makes her relationship with Greycrow, who muredered children on multiple occasions, ironic.
Note that Greycrow was said to be robbing banks with Amelia Voght in X-Men 5, so it’s possible that whatever happened to him had something to do with that. Or not.
Ah yes. John Greycrow. A man famous for protecting children. Definitely the sort of person I’d feel comfortable watching over a bunch of rescued, traumatized kids.
Yes, I know, long redemption arc and also he’s the latest in a long line of clones since his original introduction … where he bragged about murdering Annalee’s children before killing her and a ton of other Morlocks.
But that’s okay, he’s a better person now.
Meanwhile, I’m tapping Shinobi Shaw as yet another one of Wong’s trademark disasters gays/bisexuals/queers. Love her writing style, but she’s got a certain running theme when it comes to characters.
Michael> It’s possible that Kwannon and Shinobi had a relationship before she started dating Matsuo-
Wasn’t the original Kwannon story a Romeo and Juliet thing about how Kwannon was in the service of a rival to the Hand, and so she was very secretly dating Matsu’o against the wishes of both of their bosses?
[Which makes it annoying they’ve just retconned her into a Hand kid, but hey ho…]
Maybe it was Sebastian’s reaction to seeing him or Portacio’s style, but I have always thought of Shinobi Shaw as gay or bisexual since his first appearance on X-Factor
It seems strange to me that this is the first time this has been confirmed.
Oh, I’m not surprised in the least if Shinobi is bi, pan, or just ‘yeah whatever’ because I always assumed it. Which is why he’s perfect in what I somehow suspect to be a recurring supporting role in Psylocke’s book. He’s awful but not completely odious.
in Uncanny X-Men 281, we see Shinobi by the pool, in his swimsuit, surrounded by both men and women in swimsuits. And at that point there’s the following dialogue between Shinobi and Fitzroy:
Shinobi: A king must not allow his energy level to diminish.
Fitzroy: An odd statement, Shinobi, from one who has chosen such a — shall we sat– decadent lifestyle.
Shinobi: You would be the last to judge, I think, Fitzroy. Are not you Englishmen well known for your… quirks?
Unless I’ve misread, one of the child prisoners says that “only half of us” are human, which implies to me that the other half are actual mutants.
He also says “There were more before”. I take that to imply that human-kids-on-MGH started out as a majority of the prisoners, but that the pre-existing mutants were more likely to survive their bouts. Perhaps because at least some of them had half a clue as to how to use their powers.
Considering Sebastian’s described himself as a “devourer of both men and women”, the apple probably doesn’t fall far from the tree
Well, that turns it into a whole nature vs nurture thing. Or am I misremembering that ‘Marauders’ made it canon that Shinobi’s biological father is Harry Leland, not Sebastian?
Then the ‘nurture’ part is further complicated because I assume Sebastian locked Shinobi away in a villa with some nannies and didn’t speak to him until he made his first million or something heartwarming like that.
I seem to remember a line about Shinobi talking about how his mother suffered at the hands of his father (Sebastian), so maybe Wong has grabbed onto that and spun it out to make him more sympathetic than he’s been portrayed in the past? It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that he suffered as a child at Sebastian’s hands and that could make him sympathetic to child victims.
I also want to take this opportunity to declare Sebastian Shaw a giant weeaboo for naming his son “ninja”. I bet he has original animation cells for all sorts of 1970s anime carefully preserved in his safe.
@Sam- It’s canon that Shinobi was beaten by his father and coddled by his mother. It’s just not mentioned much nowadays because Dr. Octopus has a similar backstory.
“I totally know what sex is.” – Shinobi Shaw
as reported by Jay & Miles.
Before the line about needing to have supper first to maintain his energy, there’s a reference to the deleted “snails or oysters” scene in Spartacus, so Shinobi is pretty obviously bisexual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus_(film)#:~:text=Among%20the%20deleted%20footage%20was,of%20taste%20rather%20than%20morality.
In the recent Deep Cut miniseries, Claremopnt tried to retcon Scalphunter’s past by saying the Marauders in the Mutant Massacre were clones of the originals, the former killed by Wolverine and the latter escaped from Sinister’s facility.
“In the recent Deep Cut miniseries, Claremopnt tried to retcon Scalphunter’s past by saying the Marauders in the Mutant Massacre were clones of the originals, the former killed by Wolverine and the latter escaped from Sinister’s facility.“
If I had a nickel for every X-character named after a bird that’s defined by the atrocities committed by a perfect duplicate that believed itself to be the original…
[…] #2. (Annotations here.) So after I spent last week’s X-Axis going through variations on “this isn’t […]
@neutrino- But as we saw in Weapon X, in the 1940’s, Greycrow helped Sinister experiment on Jewish refugees from the Nazis, including children. That was presumably the original Greycrow.