Geoffrey Thorne's Annotations for X-Force #7

Geoffrey Thorne's Annotations: A few more annotations in this one than the last although I did want to put them together for a couple of reasons. Three, actually.

1) We have a fabulous guest artist taking over the ill chores while Marcus is off having some personal time. Welcome Mr. James Towe for both of these issues.

2) Both of these issues represent a gearshift from the previous arc which was 100% "run-and-gun."

3) Both these issues take place in "virtual spaces." In issue 6 that's VR and, here, it's the mindscape/astral plane. If we're going to have a guest artist, I generally prefer for their issues to coincide with a style and/or venue change in the story in order to minimize the visual jolt for the audience. With #6 and #7 we had both. So.

Let's crack on.

Mindscapes in Marvel comics are, like many, many things, less defined than perhaps they ought to be. Their characteristics are wobbly by default as writers over the years have "defined" them however they've wanted to suit their stories.

I don't care for that but, as with all Big Two comics, we have to use the tools available and abide by the established rules of the road. At least, I do.

So, here, we have a private minds cape, a mental pocket dimension created by Betsy Braddock to house the psyches and psionic energies of herself and her lover Rachel Summers. It's a sort of private getaway telepaths can use to, well, get away. We've seen Emma Frost use this for illicit encounters with Scott Summers.

Betsy's, for Rachel, is a facsimile of the old Excalibur lighthouse, a place Rachel spent the bulk of her time in 616 and in which she had weird fun adventured and a family not friends. I figured that was the time and place she had to have been happiest since coming to 616 so that's what Betsy figures as well.

Some fans have already twigged the reappearance of the OG Psylocke outfits in this issue. And, yes, that's purposeful but not for the reasons one might think. Over the years of being merged with Kwannon, nearly every time we saw Betsy's mental/astral image it was identical to her trademarked physical appearance, i.e. an Asian woman.

This, of course, makes zero sense. Regardless of the body she was stuck in, Elizabeth Braddock grew up as a caucasian woman of British and Otherworldly extraction. There's no way her internal self-image would be asian.

So, here, we fix. (Also, anything that puts me in mind of Alan Davis art is Good.)

Also, as it's the mental plane, I thought it would be fun to have Betsy's look shift, depending on how she sees herself in the moment. So, when it's time to murder somebody, her mental self-image reverts to this [the Australian Outback armor].

Put together with her current Big Ass Sword construct, this version of Betsy just screams Fantasy Knight (and this was before she was even Captain Britain).