Psylocke #6 // Review
A beautiful, blue butterfly is telling her to wake-up. So maybe it’s some kind of weird fusion between whatever the hell it was that she was dreaming and someone who might have actually been talking to her. Only thing is: when she wakes up, it’s still the blue butterfly telling her to wake-up. And it’s not alone. There are a LOT of other butterflies telling her to wake-up. As she does, she finds that she’s pinned to the board...rather like a butterfly. Things aren’t starting-out well for her in Psylocke #6. Writer Alyssa Wong continues a fun, little cyberpunk-esque adventure for the popular psychic mutant assassin hero. Vincenzo Carratu and Moises Hidalgo bring the action to the page in a throughly engrossing outing for Psylocke. Color comes to the page courtesy of Fer Sifuentes-Sujo.
The next thing that Psylocke notices is the fact that her hands are literally pinned to the glowing monitor that rests behind her. She’s told not to worry...that her hands will heal around the pins and before long she won’t remember what it was like to exist without them. It’s not very. comforting news...particularly as it’s coming from a pretty, blue butterfly. It’s okay, though. Psylocke is going to find a way out of her current predicament. The only question: what awaits her beyond her captivity? Could it be...more danger? Given her track record...it’s a definite possibility.
It's a pretty common convention in all superhero style fiction to have the villain deliver their backstory to the hero while they're not able to do much about it. At times, this can be worked into the overall structure of an issue with such delicate integrity that it feels like, it isn't a nauseating echo of so many other instances of the trope. That’s not the case in the sixth issue of Psylocke. Wong makes the villain’s backstory interesting, but the point at which he’s telling her about it doesn’t seem at all natural. Thankfully, mch of hte rst of the issue has a speed, poise and momentum that keeps the action moving with great, engaging efficiency.
Hidalgo has a bit of a challenge to work with early-on in the issue. The hero is pegged to a wall in her massive museum-like display for much of the early part of the issue. It’s hard to make the look dynamic, but Hidalgo does a really good job of making everything look dynamic even with a totally tied-up hero. Sifuentes-Sujo does a very good job of bringing an electrifying atmosphere to the page with the purple glow of the energy of the title character in a very visually appealing location.
Psylocke remains a very appealing character throughout the issue. The deeper exploration of her past while pinned to a backlit monitor might be one of the stranger places to engage in a little psyhchodrama, but Wong makes it work beautifully as initial conflict which must be overcome if she is to take down the villain.
