2026-2027 Rumor/Leak List - New Year, New Thread!

Being forced to accept the body swap and decades of subsequent growth of both women as a result, I can really only speculate on the missteps of the recent separation of the two.

And on that front, I find it endlessly frustrating that Kwannon gets saddled with Betsy's codename and power signature, while Betsy herself gets stuck being a female version of her Brother's mantle.

And she reads that way. The character spent, what, three decades as an Asian ninja assassin who thrives in shadow, but has seamlessly and immediately transitioned back into a posh British hero who fights with broadswords and dragons and is brightly colored and speaking on behalf of not one, but *two* nations on the world stage. She just freed herself from one forced identity theft situation, and just gets tossed into yet another one because Marvel spent a few minutes, at best, working through her character arc since her introduction, and now she's just Marvel's New Lipstick Lesbian for some reason?

Krakoa introduced a lot of concepts I liked/loved, but I absolutely fucking loathe what they've done to Psylocke. Her entire history is absolutely meaningless now, and Kwannon is being treated like the character we've spent all this time with instead, because she's in the more marketable body.

I'm salty over the X-Books.
 
Wait. What? Is that @Piffy?!?!?

Looking at your profile, it seems I'm late to the party. But please allow me to offer up a belated but obligatory...
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SQUEEEEEE!

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Wasn't the original story that Betsy was physically altered by the Hand and manipulated by them because she lost her memories - in effect they tried to create a new person and identity? Honestly that was a probably more interesting story than the body swap concept.
 
fac said:
Wasn't the original story that Betsy was physically altered by the Hand and manipulated by them because she lost her memories - in effect they tried to create a new person and identity? Honestly that was a probably more interesting story than the body swap concept.
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The original story is essentially magical plastic surgery being used to make Betsy Braddock look Japanese so they could insert her into the Japanese underworld or something. I think the story is that whoever took over writing the book after Claremont misunderstood that, and so created Kwannon and the body swap story. Kwannon (in Betsy's body) dies of the Legacy Virus, and basically isn't seen again until shortly before the Krakoan era (when they get un-swapped) and she finally gets a backstory of her own while Betsy becomes the new Captain Britain.
 
CTV said:
The original story is essentially magical plastic surgery being used to make Betsy Braddock look Japanese so they could insert her into the Japanese underworld or something. I think the story is that whoever took over writing the book after Claremont misunderstood that, and so created Kwannon and the body swap story.
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Yeah, they used Betsy as an assassin as she was unaware of her identity if I recall correctly (its been awhile) - I think the real problem on the creative side was that "sexy Asian swimsuit Betsy" got more attention and popularity - and fit into the whole Marvel Swimsuit Edition mindset of the 90's so they didn't want to change her back.

In any case, original look and/or Outback Betsy is needed.
 
Piffy said:
Being forced to accept the body swap and decades of subsequent growth of both women as a result, I can really only speculate on the missteps of the recent separation of the two.

And on that front, I find it endlessly frustrating that Kwannon gets saddled with Betsy's codename and power signature, while Betsy herself gets stuck being a female version of her Brother's mantle.

And she reads that way. The character spent, what, three decades as an Asian ninja assassin who thrives in shadow, but has seamlessly and immediately transitioned back into a posh British hero who fights with broadswords and dragons and is brightly colored and speaking on behalf of not one, but *two* nations on the world stage. She just freed herself from one forced identity theft situation, and just gets tossed into yet another one because Marvel spent a few minutes, at best, working through her character arc since her introduction, and now she's just Marvel's New Lipstick Lesbian for some reason?

Krakoa introduced a lot of concepts I liked/loved, but I absolutely fucking loathe what they've done to Psylocke. Her entire history is absolutely meaningless now, and Kwannon is being treated like the character we've spent all this time with instead, because she's in the more marketable body.

I'm salty over the X-Books.
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I agree with you from a character perspective, but I think the optics/politics are more complicated. They can't shelve Kwannon. Asian Psylocke has mainstream recognition, and she gives them some much-needed Asian representation.

What they've done to Betsy since then is bad. They know we want more queer representation in the X books. They think that any ladies kissing is fine as long as ladies are kissing. What we want is ladies who have always wanted to kiss ladies kissing ladies. I hope that made sense, because I refuse to rewrite it.

They unfucked the optics of the Betsy/Kwannon swap, but left us with two directionless characters. (The better play might've been retconning Betsy to have always been Asian.) Credit to Alyssa Wong for giving Kwannon a direction. Betsy, meanwhile, took up her brother's mantle and discovered that she's bisexual because they didn't know what else to do with her. The ninja shit is so central to her identity that the only things left happened 40 years ago. Worse yet, she can't be a ninja anymore because the newly returned Kwannon needs to keep those personality traits. It's a mess.
 
TheSameIdiot said:
The ninja shit is so central to her identity that the only things left happened 40 years ago. Worse yet, she can't be a ninja anymore because the newly returned Kwannon needs to keep those personality traits. It's a mess.
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Feels like they could split the difference with a change in aesthetics. Keep all the stabby ninja stuff, but shift away from an Asian theme to a European one. Psylocke the D&D assassin/rogue. Even sort of fits better as an extrapolation of her earlier costume with the hood and cape.
 
Piffy said:
I'm salty over the X-Books.
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I agree with this and also everything you said about Betsy beforehand. I don't think I even understood Claremont's original body swap story. At least.....I don't remember it that well. I'd have to go back and re-read. I do like Jim Lee's Japanese Betsy design, but the whole story, and the whole character is now a complete mess.

I'll tell you what else I didn't like was that whole "Cyclops seduction" subplot that they did in the 90s after X-men relaunched. I'm pretty sure Scott Lobdell is to blame for that turd. It got a one-panel explain-away in one of the issues before Cyclops and Jean's wedding. Why was that ever a thing?

However, I do want an Outback Betsy, please.

TheSameIdiot said:
What they've done to Betsy since then is bad. They know we want more queer representation in the X books. They think that any ladies kissing is fine as long as ladies are kissing. What we want is ladies who have always wanted to kiss ladies kissing ladies. I hope that made sense, because I refuse to rewrite it.
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Nope, I get it and I agree. I'd say the same thing about the men too. (Also, I don't know how close you keep tabs on Spider-Man, but Black Cat/Mary Jane? You can see it coming a mile away.)
 
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ya know... I'd actually really like to see that Christmas/Holiday Spiderman come into reality this year. Years ago I made a quick and dirty "Holiday Doombot" from an old Toy Biz ML Doom... painted his tunic red... put some white pipe cleaner fring on it... and made hime a quick little Santa hat... I still get a laugh out of it and thinks its fun. A holiday spider would go nice next to my holiday Doom!
 
TheSameIdiot said:
I agree with you from a character perspective, but I think the optics/politics are more complicated. They can't shelve Kwannon. Asian Psylocke has mainstream recognition, and she gives them some much-needed Asian representation.

What they've done to Betsy since then is bad. They know we want more queer representation in the X books. They think that any ladies kissing is fine as long as ladies are kissing. What we want is ladies who have always wanted to kiss ladies kissing ladies. I hope that made sense, because I refuse to rewrite it.

They unfucked the optics of the Betsy/Kwannon swap, but left us with two directionless characters. (The better play might've been retconning Betsy to have always been Asian.) Credit to Alyssa Wong for giving Kwannon a direction. Betsy, meanwhile, took up her brother's mantle and discovered that she's bisexual because they didn't know what else to do with her. The ninja shit is so central to her identity that the only things left happened 40 years ago. Worse yet, she can't be a ninja anymore because the newly returned Kwannon needs to keep those personality traits. It's a mess.
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I agree with all this, but--to be fair--the bisexual thing had already been explored with Betsy prior to returning to her original body. In the second Uncanny X-Force run (which is pretty under-rated, in my opinion), she had explored a relationship with Cluster. After Fantomex was split into three people, I guess she realized that, of the three, she was actually connecting with the female one. The whole Fantomex/Psylocke relationship was my least favourite thing to emerge from either Uncanny X-Force run, but at least that felt like a relatively organic way for the character to begin to consider same-sex relationships. She and Rachel getting together isn't completely out of left-field, at least for Betsy. It was perhaps out of left-field for Rachel, who (as far as I can remember) had only ever really had a relationship with Franklin Richards prior to this.

In general, I really like that Marvel has been pursuing a commitment to more diversity over the last decade or so, but they often exercise it in a needlessly condescending way. Like, we all agree that putting Betsy in an Asian body was a pretty poor way of giving Asians more representation. Why do they think it's somehow better to prop up a legitimately Asian character using the name and recognizable traits of a non-Asian one? It's just as condescending, and Kwannon is (at this point) a good character who doesn't need to rest on Betsy's legacy.
 
CTV said:
Rachel dated Korvus during the Annihilation era, and Nightcrawler during X-Men: Gold, which is one of the worst runs I've sat through.
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Oh, you're right. I completely forgot about those. Woof, yeah, that X-Men Gold felt incredibly aimless, especially for a run where the author went so far as to say it was basically an homage to the classic Claremont era.
 
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