Battle of The Atom: Episode 57 – A Pack Of Misfits with Jim Zub

XavierFiles: "Hunt for Wolverine: Mystery In Madripoor" writer Jim Zub joins us to dive into the wild world of Psylocke, New Tian, and what it’s like to write weird X-Men.

What you’re probably most known for in the last few weeks is “Hunt for Wolveryne: Mystery in Madripoor” #4. Psylocke’s in her old body.

Jim Zub: Honestly, the response has been really good. The majority of people I’ve interacted with have been ecstatic or excited. They see the potential in what we’re doing. These characters, the X-Men in particular, go through permutations, and changes and evolutions in their history and this is no different as far as I’m concerned.

What got you thinking that now was the right time to make this change to Psylocke? How that come about?

Zub: We knew that the “Hunt for Wolverine” books each would have their own revelatory things happening. When we were talking what they could be, how could they take place, I brought up this idea of altering Psylocke and returning some aspects. She’s not going back in time. She’s still done all those things she’s done. In the end of the issue, the Japanese body is around. It’s not just British Betsy. There’s more now. The reason why the team got excited about and we got any momentum was because we were not losing a character, we were gaining a character. We were going to add a character to the mix that we can work with as a future ingredient for cool, dramatic X-Men stories. It’s not about negating Betsy or taking away the things she’s done. It’s about building new stories with these new ingredients. Then it became a matter of “How does this work?” It’s comics, there’s always a way to make it work, but how does this function? How does this track as comic logic? I had a funky way to do that as well and it was all centered around this obscure villain that Claremont created called Sapphire Styx. I kept waiting for the editors to say no, but they were really supportive. We liked this idea that we can do something to kick start a bunch of new, cool, dramatic plotlines for Betsy and inadvertently for Kwannon. I knew there was going to be some contentiousness, particularly when it leaked out what was coming before they actually read the issue. People didn’t know that we had the Japanese body still in play. That was tough because people were freaking out, screaming and yelling and I kept telling them to wait for the issue to come out and react to what’s really there instead of their assumptions of what will be there. I’m excited because the “Uncanny X-Men” team embraced what I was doing and now Betsy’s in the weekly book coming out. I don’t want to say that Betsy had fallen into a rut, but it felt like you couldn’t change anything about her, and I thought “Let’s see if I can change some things and add a bunch of new dramatic potential.”

It’s an interesting development and not something I’d expect from the tie-in leading up to the “Return of Wolverine” book, all things considered.

Zub: It’s because Madripoor was a core ingredient of when Betsy became Lady Mandarin, and Wolverine was such an integral part of that initial story. I thought Patch/Wolverine are integral to Betsy’s story in some ways. I felt like there was a tie there that we could build into. We teased that in the first issue, but readers didn’t necessarily know what was going to be.

It was an unexpected, but delightful surprise. People had concerns about changing Psylocke back impacting Asian representation in comics. What was your thought process with that?

Zub: I’m not here to tell someone what they should believe. People get passionate about the stories and these characters and that is totally valid. I have no ill against someone who tells me they didn’t like the story or what we did. That it’s totally your right and I have no problem with that whatsoever. The only thing I can say is those concerns and fears didn’t come out of the blue with us either. In the end, we had to have something cool coming out of this. We had to have stronger representation by the time this is all set and done. Some people are not going to be able to accept it or want it and that’s fine. I’m not trying to erase anyone’s feeling. I don’t laugh any of this stuff off. Equally, it’s important to know what if we don’t take risks, if we don’t do dramatic things with these characters, they grow stagnant  because people are too afraid to change them. We want to have more possibilities and more things we can do with Psylocke and the other stuff we teased at the end of “Mystery in Madripoor.” This is the only thing I can say without getting full-spoilery and the X-Office supports this. There was thought, and care put into this and a desire to come out of the other side stronger in terms of both representation and stronger characterization and good dramatic storytelling.