Psylocke #4: One Bad Trip Into a Trap..

Alyssa Wong and the rest of the creative team drop us into a late night mansion break in as Psylocke (with Devon acting as HQ backup and Greycrow watching on) sneaks into the home of the mysterious Ty Haniver aka the Taxonimist. It all goes as expected to begin with but when her curiosity at a very obvious trap leads her to take the bait and enter the house, things take a turn for the worse. Wong is really in this characters head space, and though she knows it’s a trap, Kwannon isn’t the kind to let that stop her. However her confidence in her abilities which are on display and formidable can’t prepare her for what she finds as an exquisitely laid trap that is a combination of an assault on her psyche and her physical self proves her to be her downfall.

Wong digs into Kwannon’s past as Revanche here as once again Kwannon confronts her own traumatic past including her lost daughter in a psychedelic fever dream brought on by the Taxonomist in another clever perversion of the butterfly motif made a physical delivery system for a powerful hallucinogenic dust that ultimately proves Psylocke’s undoing. Wong handles the characters masterfully including Devon and Greycrow. The Taxonomist is a dark horned devil in a wheelchair surrounded by mutated monstrous animals, some fully organic and others a mix of animal and machine. Devon is a bundle of nerves and worry, Greycrow trusts in Kwannon’s ability but even he’s worried and Wong and the team make you feel that on the page. The narrative path travelled this issue is short but compelling the entire time.

On the art front guest artist Moises Hidalgo, colorist Fer Sifuentes and letterer Ariana Maher, get to show Kwannon displaying her ninja skills in penetrating the Taxonomists mansion, we get more of Psylocke showing off what she can do with the awesome Kunai that Devon made for her. Hidalgo is so good at maintain the amazing dynamic quality of the book, Sifuentes so consistently good with the coloring theme of the issue, that I didn’t even know that they had a guest artist till I came back to the credits! Maher is perfection on letters as always and Mahmud Asrar delivers an absolutely flawless if creepy cover. The only thing we aren’t graced with is a double splash page of Psylocke in action but Hidalgo’s action scenes al communicate that slinky ninja grace and style that she has perfectly. I do want highlight something cool the art team did to show off the loss of communication between Devon and Psylocke. The panel below is a wonderfully clever way to visually represent interference. Kudo’s to whoever came up with that idea.