It took a little bit for Psylocke to find its unique voice, so much so that the first few issues felt somewhat indistinguishable from the concurrently running Laura Kinney: Wolverine book, which started the month after Psylocke and which also featured a killer with a heart of gold setting out to rescue enslaved children mutants. The book quickly course-corrected, finding a unique initial villain in the distressing Taxonomist and leaning heavily into Psylocke imagery with a bevvy of purple butterflies.
The book really found its stride with its second major arc, collected in Nightmares of the Past, which set itself to make Kwannon a distinctive protagonist by examining a long-neglected past. The book looks to populate that past with a friend-turned-villain, the Yokai, whose powers are absolutely compelling (she communes with and controls Japanese folk-spirits, or yokai), and by entwining the character with Kwannon’s childhood, the book also deepens her Hand connections.
Marvel
The trouble with all this good news, of course, is that Psylocke ended up cancelled – the series ends with its tenth issue, meaning it didn’t even make it a year. This heightened new story arc, with its fancy new villains and supernatural flavor, suddenly finds itself racing to a conclusion. The book mostly reaches that conclusion satisfactorily, but it does so at an almost airless pace. The suspense could have used room to grow, as could Kwannon’s relationship with Yokai; the necessary inclusion of the book’s supporting characters Greycrow and Devon Di Angelo means precious time is used up on what amounts to a pointless, expository side quest.
None of this is exactly the creators’ fault. Writer Alyssa Wong does compelling work with the characters, attempting to enrich them even as their time gets cut down. Artists Vincenzo Carratù and Moisés Hidalgo do consistently stunning work, populating this world with statuesque heroes and weird little guys. Overall the book looked and read great; its downfall was never one of quality, but one of market.
Marvel
Hopefully the lingering threads of the book can find a place to be woven. Kwannon is a character consistently getting the short end of the narrative stick, and deserves the sort of care that might better define her narrative center, especially now that she has to hold her own without being directly tied to Betsy Braddock (as she was for three decades preceding Krakoa). Yokai certainly deserves more; the book finds her at the very edge of taking over the Hand by force, something that could have put her in opposition with the wider Marvel Universe. There was plenty at stake in these final six issues, and though the story wrapped with a tight enough bow, it leaves the reader hoping for more.
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