Psylocke #1: What Was I Made For?

There aren’t a great deal of X-Characters I’d call mysterious anymore. When you have a long running comic franchise, it’s inevitable that nearly all popular characters will at some point have a creative team dig into that characters past or personality, for better or worse. Until the advent of Krakoa, Kwannon had been for the most part a character used as a dark reflection of Elizabeth Braddock because of their complicated history (which I’m not retreading thanks) until both Brian Edward Hill and Zeb Wells took an interest in her in Fallen Angels then Hellions respectively digging (very successfully) into her far deeper than ever before which, no matter what you may think of those series, definitely brought Kwannon to the fore and garnered her a wider following than ever before (She was certainly a break out character for me of the Krakoan era), which brings us to her own first solo series.

What do you when you when you were raised as a living weapon by ninjas and you’re not sleeping properly because you have unresolved identity issues? You start a side hustle by doing solo missions of your own obviously. Writer Alyssa Wong does a great job of balancing Kwannon as an unrelenting woman of action with a more introspective examination of Kwannon’s own inner turmoil as she struggles with inner upheaval around the idea that all she is made for is violence, her not wanting to be just that one thing and also her enjoyment of being so good at violence. Throw in a heavy dose of her own traumatic upbringing which ultimately leads to her throwing caution to the wind in a situation where a more circumspect approach would possibly yield a far less messy result and well you just know there’s going to get that dialed up to 11 X-Men drama! Wong throws in rescues’ a adopted sidekick, Greycrow, the X-Men, some Reavers, A.I.M, mutant Growth Hormone and multiple locales making it a packed issue! This is not a complaint because it all sticks! Wong’s deft handling of Kwannon’s emotional journey leads to action and boy does the artistic team of Vincenzo Carratu, colorist Fer Sifuentes-sujo and Letterer Ariana Maher deliver in spades!

Wild dynamic action scenes from Carratu, get to show off Kwannon’s wonderful ninja physicality which Sifuente-Sujo brings to life with the perfect amount of shades of pink and purple. it’s a very pretty book full of great angles and eye-popping color. Carratu’s style is his own but if I was going to draw a comparison I’d say his art style looks a bit like what if Valerio Schiti and David Baldeon had a baby and the baby took slightly more after Baldeon than Schiti? I hope that makes sense. Regardless the arts beautiful to look at, marvelously dynamic when required and Carratu pulls off emotive close ups really well too. The emotion he tries to convey on the characters face is always implicit and immediately recognizable.

There are some influences in Sifuentes-sujo’s coloring too and really the combination alongside Maher’s always on point lettering add a gravitas to the story that takes me back to early Krakoa, even though the story is on a smaller much more personal scale. It’s a masterful outing that combines mission impossible style action with an emotive character journey and a fantastic cover from Mahmud Asrar for an exceptional debut issue from all involved.