Psylocke Vs. Sabertooth.

[proteus_lives.insanejournal.com]

Greetings True Believers! The my recent post and Doug Ramsey/ Betsy Braddock inspired me to post another one of my favorite Betsy moments. The first fight she had with Sabertooth during the Mutant Massacre. It's a great fight and a great storyline. (Further evidence that X-Men achieved perfection in the 80's.) During the massacre Psylocke is new to the x-mansion and is trying to assist with the recovery efforts. She doesn't feel accepted by the X-Men yet and is worrying that she's not helping enough..... (These scans are from the Mutant Massacre TPB)






Betsy is using Cerebro to scan the mansion and uses her psychic butterfly to check up on the X-Men. She talks to Rogue and after checking on Kitty she goes a certain Mutie's room.




Betsy feels Sabretooth sneaking into the mansion but her inexperience with Cerebro knocks her out.




I love the flow of this running battle.











Wolverine and Storm show and save Psylocke. While Wolvie and Sabertooth are fighting Betsy comes up with a plan.




This one of my all time favorite x-pages. Betsy is drawn wonderfully and the W/S sequence is utter perfection for the characters. Have you ever seen a more perfect shot of the characters?




Psylocke gets hints of the Marauders mysterious "Master." But Sabretooth escapes and the adventure is over.
Next, Betsy is accepted as one of the Muties.




That a great costume. Sigh, I love this era of X-Men.

Comments

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

How so? She ran, got caught, and would have been killed if not rescued. Sabretooth would have torn her apart. She was no match for him, not even close, and subsequent rematches would prove exactly that.

So why does becoming Asian make her a kick ass fighter? Train her as she was should have had the same effect.

[proteus_lives.insanejournal.com]

I have a vague memory from Marvel UK. Wasn't Betsy a member of STRIKE, the British arm of SHIELD?
If so, wouldn't she have at least learned basic unarmed combat?

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

She was in their Psi-Division, so might have had less than a standard STRIKE or SHIELD agent (Mentallo was never what you'd call kick-ass)

Plus I meant to add that I wouldn't be sure that "Didn't manage to beat Sabretooth" should really indicate you were a poor fighter, since I'm not sure a significantly large percentile of the population COULD beat him. And her psi-powers made her formidable enough in most situations.

[kitty_tc_69.insanejournal.com]

Because she didn't just "become asian", she went through a very involved process utilizing both magic and technology to completely recreate her. One aspect of that was putting her consciousness in the body of an already trained and hardened warrior, whose body was conditioned for fighting. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the concept of "muscle memory", but physical skills aren't something you can just program into someone's mind and have it work. Kwannon probably began training in childhood, and her body was conditioned and trained to such an intense degree that someone starting in adulthood would probably never catch up. To go along with the body, the appropriate skills and fighting knowledge were transferred mentally to Psylocke as well, making her a hardened fighting machine in mere days whereas training her from scratch to that same level would have taken years if it were even possible at all.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

I'm aware of the method of the transformation, it just makes it even LESS impressive to me.

Had Betsy set out to make herself more of a fighter then I would have been fine with it. Brawn augmenting brain is hunky-dory. But she didn't, she put on body armour shortly after Doug was shot dead (A connection there? Perhaps) but other than that did very little to improve her physical combat skills.

And as I already noted, not winning against Sabretooth isn't a decent test of anyone's competence as a combatant as he's a better fighter and killer than over 99% of the population of planet Earth. She was more than capable of using her powers to flash-fry the mind of the twisted Captain Britain analog who tried to assault and rape her. Her telepathy makes her affective against just about anyone OTHER than an animalistic being like Sabretooth.

And as it turns out, her desire to become more of a fighter led to nothing from her own self. She didn't actually achieve anything, she became a fighter because Spiral waved a metaphorical magic wand and made her into one because it amused her to twist as aspiration that Betsy had. That always struck me as more contrived than interesting.

[kitty_tc_69.insanejournal.com]

Where do you suggest she find the time to train for 15-20 years to become the kind of fighter the Hand turned her into? With the sliding timeline being what it is, we'd still be waiting. Some applied phlebotinum was necessary to speed things up a bit.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Or rather than just adding ANOTHER highly trained hand to hand fighter and throwing in a tacky fanservice outfit, they might have done something radical (as they did with Doug) and explored the implications of someone who really WASN'T brilliant at hand to hand to combat who dealt with things via her telepathy.

[kitty_tc_69.insanejournal.com]

Maybe because heroes are dynamic, and solve things through action? Maybe because comics are a visual medium and a physical fighter is more fun to draw and look at? Maybe because fans were apt to question how she could be so poor in combat situations and yet remain alive and with the team, when logically one of those would have to give --just like they did with Doug? If you recall, he was killed by popular demand.

And as I pointed out, the character was motivated by a desire to stop being helpless and become a warrior, like those around her she admired so much. She was motivated by a desire to stand against a nightmare of a man who'd nearly killed her more than once, and by a fear of becoming a casualty of battle like Doug. And in her circumstances, who could blame her?

If those aren't good enough reasons, I don't know what to tell you.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Maybe because heroes are dynamic, and solve things through action?

Action takes many forms, would you deny Oracle is active? Or Professor Xavier in his original wheelchair?

Maybe because comics are a visual medium and a physical fighter is more fun to draw and look at?

But variety is the spice of life, if everyone is a kickass fighter, then there's no variety.

Maybe because fans were apt to question how she could be so poor in combat situations and yet remain alive and with the team,

Because her powers are effective and versatile in combat already. The fact she could use them whilst standing still is pretty much irrelevant unless slam bang action is all you crave.

when logically one of those would have to give --just like they did with Doug? If you recall, he was killed by popular demand.

One offhand comment from Louise Simonson to one side, I'd dispute that, I recall no bias against him in lettercolumns or in the local comic shops I frequented at the time (and much positive response to his mutation being so different), and no one liked his death that I recall.

And as I pointed out, the character was motivated by a desire to stop being helpless and become a warrior,

But I can see no evidence that she WAS "helpless". The battles she lost were targetted assaults by Slaymaster, Mojo/Spiral and Sabretooth, none of whom are lightweights in their fields.

[kitty_tc_69.insanejournal.com]

The character was written as feeling physically helpless, which after at least three incidents where she was nearly killed isn't a bad conclusion to come to. If you'd been through what she had, you might want to be tougher yourself to compensate.

Honestly, I'm not sure what your point is. She was written for quite some time as hoping and wishing for a physical upgrade, and the Siege Perilous (and the writer) gave her one. What about it grates on you so?