Psylocke (2025)

Psylocke
(2025, 11x14)

May I present everyone’s favorite telepathic-English-white-girl-turned-Japanese-ninja-assassin-via-James-Bond-level-body-swap-plot-device: PSYLOCKE!

Born Besty Braddock and first appearing in 1976 in issue Captain Britain #8 alongside her brother Brian (aka Captain Britain), she didn’t take the name Psylocke until joining the X-Men in New Mutants Annual 2 (1986). Took her sweet time, too, if you ask me. If the X-Men were like “Hey, we’re a bunch of freaky mutant types with superpowers and we fly all around the world in a custom-made jet fighting other freaky mutant types because whatever. Wanna join us?”, I wouldn’t take 10 years to get to “yes”.

During the Acts of Vengeance storyline in 1989, Betsy was kidnapped by The Hand (jerks) and seemingly transformed into Lady Mandarin, their ultimate assassin. Her first appearance as such was Uncanny X-Men #256 in 1989…and the world was never the same again. Or something.

It was later revealed that Betsy’s mind, memories, powers, etc. were swapped into the body of a Japanese woman named Kwannon in a bid to save Kwannon’s life because she was The Hand’s top assassin and also maybe girlfriend of the guy who ran The Hand at the time. It’s complicated. All you need to know is that Psylocke is cool.