X-Plain the X-Men: G. Willow Wilson joins Rachel and Miles' podcast to talk abour her new run on X-Men, comic books and writing. Listen and download the interview here.
Who else is on the team? Psylocke!
Wilson: Psylocke was one character I had to do a lot of background research on because I got into the X-Men at the end of the Claremont era… I religiously watched the Fox Kids cartoon…. So Psylocke was kind of a new one on me. I had to take a look at her history and get a sense of her. There’s opportunity there to do some really deep tissue massage. She’s one of these characters that occupy a body that is not her original body. There are some very interesting things that are kind of problematic to go along with that because her adopted body is of an Asian woman, but she’s originally British. She’s another one I went very conservative with. I didn’t really do anything to her, but if I was going to be on this book for longer, I might’ve put her back in her original body.
Do you see [Psylocke’s addiction to killing] as more of a flash in the pan that’s currently affecting her or something that’s becoming more core of who she is?
Wilson: Each of the four issues is more or less from the point of view of a single character. In Psylocke’s voice over issue, we get to see into her head and we watch her think about where she fits into the power dynamic and how she sees her role. Her powerset as it stands is one of the more destructive ones. Psylocke with her psy-blades not only has the most obviously violent powerset, but also the most disturbing because these are not real weapons. They’re specifically for the inflicting of pain. I don’t go too deep on the psychology, but I do look at what she sees the role of that with regard to her position in the X-Men. We see that she has a very good idea of what the frontlines are in the team and what she has to do in her mind to fill those in.
I think you can do a really interesting Psylocke stand-alone book that is almost like Punisher and get really into that stuff.
X-Men #24
“For so long, my life has been out of control. Chaos and serendipity, wrapped in insanity. I have suffered, I have lost. Not just my life, but my very soul, my self. But no more. Now I know who I am.” – Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Braddock, daughter of Otherworld, mutant, telepath, telekinetic, defender of the realm and, above all, X-Man.
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