Episode 001: Betsy Braddock (feat. Tini Howard)

This episode first aired on September 1st, 2020.

In the inaugural episode of CEREBRO, Connor and Marvel writer Tini Howard talk Betsy Braddock: once Psylocke, now Captain Britain! Tune in for a deep dive on Betsy's wild 44-year publication history, and some exploration of Tini's work on Excalibur and the upcoming franchise-wide event X of Swords.

(Content advisory: Betsy's story includes sexual violence, brainwashing, slavery, and non-consensual body modification. This episode also features some discussion of racism and eating disorders.)

[ COLD OPEN ]

TINI: For I feel like 20 years she's been a ninja, and she's an awesome ninja, and she learned a lot of cool ninja stuff... but she also is like, a fairy princess, you know?

[ THEME SONG INTRO ] 

CONNOR: Welcome to CEREBRO, the X-Men podcast where a homo and his friends dig deep into the history of homo superior. I'm your host, Connor Goldsmith, and with me today is Marvel Comics writer Tini Howard, currently the writer on Excalibur and the co-writer, with Jonathan Hickman, of the upcoming franchise-wide X-Men event X ["Ten"] of Swords. Thanks for stopping by, Tini!

TINI: Hi, Connor! How are you today? 

CONNOR: I'm good! I'm a little nervous because this is our inaugural episode, but...

TINI:  Well, if you are any bit as charming and insightful as you usually are when we talk about the X-Men this is going to be a great time. [laughs]

CONNOR: Aw, that's very sweet. So full disclosure, I am Tini's literary agent.

TINI: [laughs]

CONNOR: But that's a relatively recent development, and before we started working together I was just a fan who became friends with her because I was really loving everything she's doing on the new run of Excalibur. 

TINI: Aww.

CONNOR: So I am very excited to have her here for our first episode to talk about one of my favorite X-Men — and also one of the most complicated, historically speaking, X-Men — which is why I thought it would be a really fun first episode, because I want to make this podcast newbie-friendly, and if you don't quite understand just how insane The X-Men can become, this is a great 'dive in the deep end' moment. 

We are here to talk about Betsy Braddock, formerly known as the X-Man Psylocke and currently known as the current Captain Britain.

TINI: Hooray! [laughs] We got a raise! 

CONNOR: [laughs] Yeah, no, exactly, she got a promotion! I mean, the thing is, she tried it out in 1986 and it did not go very well.

TINI: That's right.

CONNOR: So it's nice that these 30-something years later she gets another shot at it. 

TINI: I mean, isn't that a great story about opportunities, though? You know, sometimes something just isn't right for you at the time. But when you come back around, you're ready for it. [laughs]

CONNOR: I think so! And there's also something... I mean, there's sort of a funny... I was doing a lot of backreading before we did this because I love, love the old 80s Captain Britain stuff.  And I know that like me, you also prefer Psylocke before the Siege Perilous, which is like, not the most common opinion. 

TINI: I do.

CONNOR: So I appreciate that we operate on that level together. 

TINI: [laughs]

CONNOR: But I really wanted to go back and sort of revisit a couple of the key issues, like the Jaspers' Warp and stuff. And it is interesting, I had forgotten that Betsy is actually older than Brian by like a couple seconds. 

TINI: Mm-hmm.

CONNOR: And so there's sort of like, her getting the title now... it kind of does feel like she should have had it back then. You know what I mean? Like, she is the heir. She's just a girl, so. [laughs] 

TINI: Right, right.

CONNOR: Because, I mean, nobody is giving it to Jamie. You know what I mean? So, like, that you gotta bypass. But once you get down to the twins...

TINI: And there's also that thing of like... You know, it's in a book about Britain ostensibly. It's an interesting question. Right? The idea of is, is monarchy a good idea? [laughs] 

CONNOR: [laughs] Right! 

TINI: Like, is this kind of like hereditary transfer of titles the best way to do it? Or do we let the girl do it if she's better at it? 

CONNOR: Right. And I mean, the actual royals just altered their — it won't actually matter for the next like, two generations or whatever — but they did change the rule. 

TINI: Yeah!

CONNOR: You know, it would still be the princess who gets to rule. So it's not necessarily... it's not like we're, you know, radically undoing monarchy. But baby steps, I guess. 

TINI: [laughs] 

CONNOR: I just think it is a nice full circle thing for Betsy as a character, especially once I went back and reread some of those stories that I love so much from that time. And I also think that it was a really smart idea on Marvel's part, because for basically my whole life — because my father is an X-Men collector, and so I grew up reading mostly like, Claremont back issues, that was like my real bread and butter, and — I have wanted them to like, quote unquote, "fix" Psylocke for a long time, because I thought that the fact that... I mean, obviously ninja Psylocke is extremely cool! But I liked Betsy as... herself, you know? And I also, as I got older, realized sort of all of the very complicated racial weirdness about Psylocke. 

And I think that what's been done now, first in Mystery in Madripoor and then in Dawn of X in particular, is a really smart way to fix the character after, you know, thirty years — since 1989, when the Siege Perilous storyline happened — which is that you have now Betsy in her original white person, European body as Captain Britain, taking on a new mantle that she can feel good about, that feels like an evolution of the character that makes sense. And you give Kwannon ["Kan-nohn"] the Psylocke code name and the Jim Lee costume with the swimsuit. 

If anybody is getting weirded out right now, the W in Kwannon is silent. And I'm sorry if that's new information to you. I certainly didn't know it as a child, but I am going to say it that way. If you, listener, prefer to say "Kwah-nun", that is absolutely your right, but I would feel weird now that I know.

TINI: I also learned that recently and I'm like unlearning it, so if I say “Kwah-nun”, I'm trying. [laughs]

CONNOR: [laughs] No, you're allowed! You're allowed. I learned it like some years back because I was — it was completely unrelated — I was watching something about, like, worship of the Bodhisattva Kannon. I was like, “Ohh.” I read an interview with Fabian Nicieza, actually, where he was like, "I pronounce it with the W, but please, whatever the fans want to do is fine by me. I am hardly an expert on like, Japanese romanization."

TINI:  Yeah. 

CONNOR: Anyway, point is, to go back: I think it is really smart because the problem — and the reason why I think it's been so hard to bring Betsy back to basics — is that she became so much more popular in Kwannon's body. So that design of Psylocke is the Psylocke that most laypeople know. And it makes a lot of sense to me to have Kwannon be Psylocke and give her an opportunity... 

Because Psylocke was the biggest Asian superhero at Marvel for a long time, except she was secretly a white lady trapped in an Asian woman's body. So giving Kwannon the ability to be her own character, to be Psylocke, to have the look everybody recognizes and to like, actually be a Japanese woman in the X-Men, I think is a really cool idea. So I'm very excited. I've been enjoying the way that's shaken out.

TINI: Yeah!

CONNOR: But I'm also really, really enjoying your work with Captain Britain. 

TINI: Well, thank you!

CONNOR: So I guess what I want to do is sort of ask you... you know, I sort of just shared my backstory with the character, I guess. What's your history with Betsy? Where did you come to her? What is sort of your entry point with the character?

TINI: Sure! So I guess my original entry point with the character was the X-Men in the 90s, you know, I watched the cartoon. I didn't really read a lot of X-Men comics growing up. I just didn't, because I was, frankly... a little girl! And, you know, it was harder to get comics. I didn't go into comic shops to buy superhero comics until I was older and I was with the guy that became my husband, Blake, and, you know, my friend Alex. And they were the guys that kind of turned me on to superhero comics as a whole. But I kind of got into Betsy as a character in like the most kind of backwards way possible, which is that I really like Alan Moore's work. And so I kind I kind of like found my way there because I just really like a lot of British comic book writers and a lot of what was going on in that era in like the 80s, like Marvel UK stuff. It's just very like, aesthetically, and from a story... you can probably tell if you've read Excalibur, that's very appealing to me. 

CONNOR: Yeah. 

TINI: I really enjoy that kind of 80s-like Alan Moore-flavored weirdo magic. And so that was the stuff like... So I kind of got into Betsy like, the most backwards way possible. It wasn't like I picked up an X-Men comic and decided I liked her and went and learned more about her, which is probably how everyone else in the world got into this character. And for me, it was like, I like Alan Moore! I like these 80s British comics! Like, I'm gonna start reading these weird old Captain Britain stories. And they rule. I started, you know, enjoying them because I like fantasy, because I like... you know, part of why I like Alan Moore's work is because he plays a lot with the mythos of comics.

CONNOR: Absolutely. He treats them like, you know, a hero cult of old. He and Grant Morrison both kind of do that, I guess, that's sort of what they're both known for. 

TINI: I mean, and I love that. I eat that up. I'm absolutely, you know, just. A fiend for it.

CONNOR: Same.  That's my favorite stuff.

TINI: So for me, like the idea of me writing Excalibur was like, bringing back that that feeling.  

CONNOR: Right. 

TINI: So I got into Betsy, and the Betsy that I came to love first was actually the purple-haired mean girl in S.T.R.I.K.E. that the X-Men didn't really like.

CONNOR: [laughs] Right! 

TINI: I remember reading a Captain Britain comic, and it being like, 'this is Brian Braddock and his sister Betsy.' And being like, oh yeah! Like back before I really, you know, wrote for Marvel and knew the X-Men well, being like, “Oh yeah she used to be like… a white lady?” 

CONNOR: [laughs] 

TINI: And then being like, oh I really like this character. And then feeling very strange about so much of the... 

CONNOR: The baggage.

TINI: The baggage, yeah.

CONNOR: That she sort of had to deal with.

TINI: One thing I'm really grateful for is — you know, when we were talking about Kwannon earlier — is that the whole time we've been in the Dawn of X and writing this post-Mystery in Madripoor Betsy, where it's like, the Betsy Braddock as she was, you know, I don't want to say—

CONNOR: As she was created. 

TINI: Yeah, as the character was created.

CONNOR: Initially. 

TINI: I've been really grateful because there has been someone the whole time doing character work with [Kwannon as] Psylocke. And so I feel like I have been building and working towards... and we can tell this story in a way that I don't feel like I have to make sure that the character of color isn't being under-served, right? 

CONNOR: Right.

TINI: Like, I'm really really glad that I work with people who are... I work with a really like smart, knowledgeable, diverse crew of writers and creators who are in understanding that, like, these are two awesome X-Women. And Zeb Wells is doing incredible work in Hellions with Kwannon. Oh my God, I love that book.

CONNOR: I mean, I adore that book because as you know — because this is something that Tini and I talk about a lot — Madelyne Pryor is one of my all time favorite characters, and I'm a big Maddie partisan. So the fact that it's Kwannon and Maddie and Havok, who I have a soft spot for... talk about someone who's had a lot of baggage and bad storylines, but it's not his fault! 

TINI: [laughs]

CONNOR: You know, that book is really kind of made for me. I do feel like that should be the one called Marauders, though, right? Because it's Sinister. I know it came after, but it's confusing. 

TINI: No, I get you, yeah. 

CONNOR: It always throws me that Emma's book is called Marauders and Sinister's book is called Hellions. It feels like it should be the other way around. But, you know, that's life! And Marauders makes more sense for pirates, I do get that. 

But to go back for a sec, yeah I think that, you know, one thing that friends of mine who are fans who are Asian said when Psylocke was finally turned back... I mean, a lot of them were very happy about it, because it's a character that they want to love, but that they've always felt a little conflicted and strange about. And then, on the other hand, they also felt a little sad about it, because for a good stretch of time — you know, almost 30 years — that character was sort of the most prominent Asian X-Man. And so in terms of video games or movies or whatever, that's the Asian character you're going to get. It was basically her or Jubilee.

TINI: Right.

CONNOR: So I really am happy that... because I loved Kwannon when she was Revanche. Like, you know, the retcon is messy, and I'll get to that in the character overview in a second. But, you know, I loved Revanche's design, first of all. I would love to see her wear that costume again at some point. 

TINI: It's a great look. 

CONNOR: It is a great costume. But I found her to be a compelling character in the 90s, and I love that she's back and I love that this cool ninja chick who the whole world fell in love with in the 90s gets to actually like, own her own body and be the Psylocke that everyone likes, and it actually gets to be her. She's not just getting, you know, her skin used, essentially, for like... a cool, sexy vibe. 

TINI: Yeah. 

CONNOR: So I'm really excited about it. And I can't wait to see what happens in Hellions.  

TINI: It's a great gift too, in the hands of a writer like Zeb, because, you know, he's good at remembering that, you know, this is a person who had a past. Not just a superhero on a page.

CONNOR: Exactly. And I'm really excited to see where that goes. So speaking of, before we get too far into the weeds, because you're so easy to talk to that we could just do this—

TINI: I'm just gonna fangirl about Hellions for the entire call, a book which Betsy Braddock is not even in. [laughs]  

CONNOR: Yeah, like that's Kwannon's book, and she's great! But we should save that for a Kwannon episode at some point — which I would like to do, actually, once there's more of her. 

TINI: Yeah! 

CONNOR: But because I want this podcast to be accessible for newbies to the X-Men, I have prerecorded a like almost 15-minute — I'm sorry, there's a lot of Betsy and it's real complicated — an almost 15-minute character overview, which is... you know, this podcast is called CEREBRO, after Charles Xavier's mutant database. Each episode is sort of a file. And I want people to feel as though they learned something, I guess. And I'm approaching each character, not from an in-universe perspective, like, you know, "Betsy was born here and then this happened and then this happened," but rather from a publication perspective. So we're going to start with how the character was originally presented. We're going to talk about some behind-the-scenes stuff. I'm just going to jump right into that. And then we will come back to you for some more chat and get a little deeper into your work on Excalibur, which I'm excited to talk about. 

[ CEREBRO CHARACTER FILE ]

Elizabeth Braddock, called Betsy, is a character with a long and complicated history. She originates in the short-lived 70s Marvel UK series Captain Britain as the titular hero Brian Braddock's twin sister, a supporting character, but over the last 44 years she has dramatically eclipsed her brother in prominence, first as the X-Man Psylocke and, since 2019, as the current Captain Britain.

Created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Herb Trimpe, Betsy Braddock first appears in Captain Britain #8 in December 1976.  A young woman working first as a charter pilot and then a fashion model, she has unexplained precognitive visions of the future, which she uses to aid Brian in his work as Captain Britain. She and their older brother Jamie mostly serve as kidnapping fodder, with Brian frequently forced to rescue them both from Doctor Synne, or the Red Skull, or whoever else has captured them that day. 

The character first comes into her own under writer Alan Moore and artist Alan Davis in the more popular relaunch of Captain Britain in the early 80s. Here she dyes her blonde hair purple, which has been an iconic design element of the character ever since. Moore establishes that Betsy has blossomed from a precog into a full-blown telepath, and while she's become a successful model she now also works undercover as an Agent of S.T.R.I.K.E., the British equivalent of the better-known S.H.I.E.L.D. 

In the 80s Captain Britain stories, Betsy becomes a more integral part of Brian's adventures, which now span the multiverse as the Captain Britain Corps is revealed, in a retcon, to be a large organization safeguarding the boundaries of infinite realities. She also suffers a series of traumas: she's left reeling by the murder of her boyfriend, Agent of S.T.R.I.K.E. Tom Lennox, in the famous Jasper's Warp arc, and in a later story after Alan Moore's departure from the book, Brian is briefly replaced by an evil version of himself from another world, who attempts to rape Betsy. She kills the evil Brian with her psychic powers — the first time she has killed another human being — and finds it difficult to look her Brian in the face for some time afterward. It's established in this run that Betsy and Brian's late father was secretly a native of the mystical Otherworld, also called Avalon, which is the source of Captain Britain's powers.

Captain Britain was cancelled in early 1986, and the final arc sets Betsy on a bold new trajectory: Brian goes overseas, and Betsy is convinced to take his place as a temporary substitute Captain Britain. Her tenure is sadly short-lived, as the supervillain Slaymaster, Brian's arch-nemesis, beats her nearly to death and slashes her eyes out. Brian arrives in time to save her life and kill Slaymaster, but it's too late to save her vision. In the final issue, Betsy retires to Switzerland, now blind and using her telepathy to compensate for the loss of her eyes.

Enter Chris Claremont, Betsy's original creator, who brings the character over to his established X-Men franchise later that year in October 1986's New Mutants Annual #2. Here, in her first appearance in an American comic, Betsy is established via retcon to be a mutant like the X-Men, this being the source of her previously unexplained psychic powers, which now manifest with a butterfly motif energy signature. 

Betsy is kidnapped from Switzerland by the alien despot Mojo, an interdimensional slaver obsessed with television, who fits Betsy with new bionic eyes and brainwashes her into becoming "the Psylocke", his most powerful and favored slave. After several months as Mojo's corrupted servant, Betsy is rescued and restored to sanity by Captain Britain and the New Mutants. She decides to remain at the Xavier Mansion to strengthen her powers and ensure she is never victimized again. Betsy quickly demonstrates her value to the X-Men during the Mutant Massacre, an event that turns the mansion into a makeshift refugee camp and hospital. The team has no telepath at that time, so Betsy becomes essential for communication -- and then proves herself more than just another houseguest when the mansion is attacked by the Marauder Sabretooth, who wants to pick off the survivors of the Massacre while the X-Men are away. 

Alone, Betsy risks her own life to trap Sabretooth — and herself — far away from the injured survivors and the medical personnel tending to them. Though she's beaten and sliced up, Betsy ultimately survives by outsmarting Sabretooth, and reads his mind to learn details about his mysterious employer, the man the X-Men will come to know as Mr. Sinister. Wolverine, impressed by her bravery, nominates Betsy to join the X-Men — an offer she accepts, reclaiming the Mojoverse slave name Psylocke as her official codename.

Psylocke quickly becomes a key member of the X-Men, unaware that her bionic eyes are constantly transmitting video footage back to Mojo and his right hand woman, the body-shaping sorceress Spiral. Those hidden cameras are deactivated in the 1988 event Fall of the Mutants, when Betsy is killed in Dallas, alongside the rest of the X-Men. Sacrificing their lives to help their ally Forge defeat the being called the Adversary, the X-Men are resurrected by Roma, the Omniversal Guardian -- one of the rulers of Otherworld who first empowered Brian Braddock as Captain Britain. Grateful for Betsy's service, Roma entrusts her with the Siege Perilous, a relic that enables anyone to pass through a mystical portal and be reborn, with no memories, to a new life.

The X-Men decide to take the opportunity of their apparent deaths to begin operating undercover, and establish a new base of operations in Australia. In England, believing his sister is dead, Brian and his girlfriend Meggan form the new superhero team Excalibur with former X-Men Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, and Rachel Summers. During the Australian period Betsy is characterized as an especially pragmatic and morally flexible member of the team, believing that sometimes killing and dirty tricks are necessary. It's Betsy who thus ultimately moves the X-Men into their next era: in the fall of 1989, she experiences a precognitive vision of the team being slaughtered by their enemies the Reavers, and telepathically convinces her friends to enter the Siege Perilous and escape this fate.

At this point, the character of Psylocke undergoes her most significant and ultimately controversial transformation. The amnesiac Betsy is deposited by the Siege Perilous portal on an island near China, where she is discovered by the international Japanese crime syndicate The Hand. Their leader, Matsu'o Tsurayaba, conspires with Chinese supervillain The Mandarin and Betsy's old tormentors Mojo and Spiral to brainwash Betsy into becoming The Hand's most powerful assassin. As part of this process, Spiral reshapes Betsy's flesh to make her look East Asian, the better to blend into the criminal underworld of Hong Kong. As Lady Mandarin, Betsy becomes a master martial artist and develops the ability to focus her telepathic power into a psionic weapon, which she calls her psychic knife — the focused totality of her psychic power.

Wolverine and his new sidekick Jubilee discover Lady Mandarin and, after realizing who she really is, manage to undo the Hand's brainwashing and restore Betsy's memories. Though she's Psylocke once more, Betsy retains the martial arts expertise she gained as Lady Mandarin and continues to use the psychic knife, which becomes her standard offensive power going forward. 

Claremont intended for Betsy's physical transformation to shatter like an illusion when she regained her memories, but he liked the way Korean-American artist Jim Lee drew Lady Mandarin, so he decided to let Psylocke stay transformed until such time as Lee eventually left the book. Conflict with editorial, however, led to Claremont's sudden and unexpected departure from Marvel soon afterward in 1991. Betsy Braddock would remain transformed into an East Asian woman for nearly thirty years of publication, from December 1989 to August 2018. 

In a very messy retcon that creates a lot of continuity errors with Claremont's original story, but was ultimately probably for the best, in 1993 new writer Fabian Nicieza establishes that Spiral didn't simply alter Betsy — she actually swapped Betsy's mind into the body of an existing woman: the Japanese assassin Kwannon, Matsu'o Tsurayaba's lover and professional rival, who had been rendered brain-dead after a duel between them went wrong. Spiral, feeling mischievous, intermingled the two women's psyches instead of just switching their bodies, leaving both of them confused as to who was the real Psylocke. Ultimately Kwannon, in Betsy's European body, takes the new codename Revanche, while Betsy, in Kwannon's Asian body, continues to operate as Psylocke. Both serve with the X-Men simultaneously until Revanche contracts the terminal Legacy Virus and convinces Matsu'o to mercy-kill her. Betsy's original body dies with Revanche, and though her mind is fully restored, she is left stuck in Kwannon's body.

Psylocke's popularity with fans exploded after she became a more action-oriented and sexually provocative character in her new ninja design, and she quickly became Marvel's most prominent Asian superhero -- a dubious distinction for a character who was actually a white woman trapped in a dead Japanese woman's body. As the X-Men became more popular than ever before in the early 90s, many casual fans had no idea Psylocke had ever been anything other than an Asian character.

The overhauled Psylocke is a core member of the X-Men throughout the 90s, and enters into a romantic relationship with original X-Man Warren Worthington III, codenamed Angel — or sometimes Archangel; it's complicated, and we'll save that for another episode. Eventually Betsy gains new shadow powers from the mystical dimension called the Crimson Dawn after a duel with her old enemy Sabretooth leaves her near death. She then traps the evil telepath the Shadow King in her mind, understanding she must never use her telepathy again, lest she free him. With the help of Jean Grey, she develops telekinetic powers instead to replace her telepathy. This power switch-up coincides with the Revolution, a franchise-wide event in 2000 where Chris Claremont made his highly-anticipated return to the X-Men after almost a decade's absence... but his new story was not very well-received by fans, and the lead title quickly rebooted again into New X-Men, written by Grant Morrison.

Betsy briefly returns to England in Ben Raab's 2001 Excalibur miniseries, where she helps Brian ascend to the throne of Otherworld. Shortly thereafter Claremont takes her with him to a new title, X-Treme X-Men, and there -- reportedly unhappy with the myriad changes to the character since his departure -- he has her killed in battle by the new villain Vargas. Claremont's plan was to bring her back in short order with a back-to-basics powerset, potentially in her original European body, but Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada had recently implemented a new policy forbidding any dead characters from being resurrected. Psylocke was therefore taken off the board for a few years. 

In 2005 Claremont was finally allowed to resurrect Betsy, in a story where her older brother Jamie Braddock — now an insane, reality-warping evil mutant who has caused a lot of trouble for their brother Brian — alters time and space to bring her back from the dead, stronger than ever. For reasons not really explained, but probably due to the fact that 'Asian Psylocke’ had become the more popular version of the character, Jamie brings her back in Kwannon's body rather than her own. As her death had freed the Shadow King, she's now free to use both her classic telepathy and her newer telekinesis in concert.

After an ill-fated adventure with Brian and a new Excalibur team gets her lost between universes, Betsy briefly joins the reality-hopping team the Exiles. She's brought back to her own earth by the evil Sisterhood of Mutants, brainwashed into serving them and magically restored to her original body... for like, one issue. By the end of that storyline she's back in Kwannon's body, setting up the 2009 solo Psylocke miniseries by Christopher Yost, in which her original body is destroyed by the Hand, and Betsy ties up loose ends with Matsu'o Tsurayaba, ultimately mercy-killing him as he once did for Kwannon.

Reuniting with her ex-boyfriend Warren as part of the black ops team X-Force under writer Rick Remender, Betsy struggles with his corruption by Apocalypse, and is ultimately forced to kill him. (He gets better; don't worry about it.) At one point she has a whirlwind romance with her teammate Fantomex, and reveals she's bisexual when the part of his personality she loves winds up split off into a female body called Cluster. In my favorite story from the X-Force years, Brian learns of Betsy's bloody, murderous service with the team and summons her to Otherworld, in part to chastise her. There she is forced to kill their brother Jamie to prevent him from destroying the multiverse in the future, and does it by telepathically compelling Brian to snap Jamie's neck after Brian is unable to bring himself to do it. Over the years Betsy's time with X-Force tests her moral compass and her ability to forgive — in one memorable revamp of the book by writer Sam Humphries, she leads the team and recruits her longtime arch-nemesis Spiral after the sorceress is cast out by Mojo.

Then comes all the Inhumans vs. X-Men stuff, and frankly this podcast is going to just skip over that period entirely whenever we get to it. Trust me, you are not missing anything. 

Moving on!

In the 2018 miniseries Mystery in Madripoor by Jim Zub, Betsy is apparently killed by the psychic vampire Sapphire Styx. In reality, Betsy's disembodied spirit is trapped alongside Styx's other victims. She uses her telepathic force of will to channel those lost souls and destroy Styx from within, telekinetically reconstituting a new version of her original European body — now with naturally purple hair — from the resulting energy. In a twist, it's revealed that somehow this act also resurrected Kwannon, who finally regains control of the body Betsy has left behind. 

Betsy travels to England to reunite with her brother Brian and his wife Meggan, who are thrilled to finally see the Betsy they once knew return to them, and meets her young niece Maggie for the first time. After over a decade of stories with X-Force, Betsy rejoins the main X-Men team and remains with them until the 2019 franchise-wide soft reboot, Dawn of X, significantly revamps the character once again.

In the newest iteration of Excalibur, written by Tini Howard, Betsy is forced to take Brian's place as Captain Britain when he is mystically corrupted by Morgan le Fay, who has seized control of Otherworld. Though Betsy eventually frees him from the sorceress's influence, with the unexpected help of their resurrected brother Jamie, Brian feels unworthy to carry the mantle any longer, and encourages Betsy to remain Captain Britain going forward. Embracing her new identity, Betsy cedes the codename Psylocke to Kwannon, the woman whose body she inhabited for so many years, and with whose hands she has killed countless people.

Only time will tell what becomes of Betsy Braddock next, but she's set to play a major role in the upcoming event X of Swords, written by Jonathan Hickman and Tini Howard, in which she comes into conflict with Opal Luna Saturnyne, one of the most enduring memorable characters from the 80s relaunch of Captain Britain. As a big fan of those classic Captain Britain stories, and in particular a big fan of the character of Saturnyne, I am very excited to see what's coming.

[ CHARACTER FILE ENDS ]

CONNOR: So as I was just saying in the end there, the tail end of the character overview—

TINI: What a comprehensive overview. Fantastically done.

CONNOR: Thank you. I worked pretty hard on that. I was sort of like, "Why am I doing Betsy first?" Because she is one of the more complicated....

TINI: You could have started with Cable, I guess, if you wanted to make it more complicated.

CONNOR: Or like, I guess I could have jumped right in with Maddie Pryor. 

TINI: [laughs] Right.

CONNOR: I think I wanted to do it because it is a good sort of sampler of how complicated and intricate and byzantine these characters can become over, you know, 40, 50 years of publication — and particularly Chris Claremont's favorites, like Betsy, or Kitty Pryde, or Rachel Summers, tend to have these really complicated storylines because he wrote the book for 16 years, you know, completely uninterrupted.

TINI: Sure. And if I may say more, you know, Grant Morrison-type crap, it's really interesting because you know, byzantine is such a great word. Because... it almost in a religious text sense, at times, comes down to interpretation.

CONNOR: Absolutely.

TINI: Like you have fans who argue like religious scholars over like, well, no, she said it like this. Well no, the look on her face meant this. And it's like, well, I interpreted that, you know, very differently. And it's absolutely like religious texts, the way fans debate the meanings of singular panels 

CONNOR: For sure, and that goes back to what I was sort of saying about like the hero cult. I mean, I was a classics major back in the day. And, you know, people who are talking about Heracles or Theseus or whoever, they decide which stories are relevant to what they're talking about. And it's good that you actually mentioned Grant Morrison, because I always have really enjoyed... I would say after the Claremont run, my favorite run is the Grant Morrison New X-Men. 

TINI: Yes.

CONNOR: And my favorite thing that I think Grant does — and I was very resistant to this as a teenager when New X-Men was coming out, because I was like a total nerd continuity-head who had read all the Claremont stuff — but I do think that his approach to continuity is smart, which is like... Everything is canon and nothing is canon. No pun on Kwannon intended.

But I think that basically that's the way to approach it. If I were writing Emma Frost, for example, who is my favorite X-Men character in terms of the modern age — and Grant really did that. I mean, he really reinvented that character. And we'll talk about that someday in another episode! But if I were writing her, you know, quite honestly, I would just pretend that Inhumans vs. X-Men never happened. And I do think that that's kind of what people are doing. And I think that that's smart, because no fan enjoyed that book in terms of what it did with Emma. And, you know, we don't need to go there necessarily. You don't need to comment because I know [laughs] you probably are friends with the writers of that book. But I'm just saying that's an example of like… you can choose to sort of have a personal canon that makes sense for how you envision the character. And I think that when you're approaching it as a writer, that's sort of an important thing to do, because otherwise there there are so many, you know... it's almost 60 years now of history with these characters. 

TINI: Totally.

CONNOR: And it's very easy to get overwhelmed.

TINI: I think your approach is exactly right. With regards to like what I... or at least what I take, you know, is kind of the Morrisonian approach to it, which is the idea of like, when I'm writing a character, I'm kind of making a personal argument. It’s like when you do any sort of... if you've ever written an essay that's like, a critical argument. You know, in a way, what I'm doing is I'm saying, “This is who I think this character is. Here's textual evidence to support it.” I don't need to provide all the textual evidence against it. Like, that's not how an argument works. You can suppose like, a philosophical argument. You can have a section that says, “here are some arguments against.” And that's also a writing exercise, where I challenge it and I say, “Well, the character wouldn't handle this well for these reasons.” And I use textual evidence to show what they do poorly or, you know, to challenge them in various ways. But I very much view writing a character as making an argument. And I view everything that's ever happened to them or surrounding them as the wealth of of an herb garden that I am to go pick from and make something delicious. [laughs]

CONNOR: Yeah. So I guess what I would sort of ask is when you were... well, first of all, how did the idea for Excalibur come about? Did you pitch it initially like, "I want to write Betsy Braddock"? Or what was the the initial inroad?

TINI: Honestly, the character that was at the center of the idea that became Excalibur was Apocalypse.  

CONNOR: That makes a lot of sense. 

TINI: And it was because we kind of got sent this, you know, high level bible. And this was like, the very first X-Room. This was before House and Powers were out. This was, you know, the planning stuff for Dawn of X. These very first meetings when we were conceiving of books. Those of us that came to the room came to the room with pitches, but like almost none of those pitches are the same as what came to the room. Because it's not, you know. It's collaborative work, right?  

CONNOR: No, of course it's collaborative. Yeah.

TINI: Yeah. But, I mean, what I came to the room with was basically, after reading everything, with this idea that I was like… well, two things: One, you know, “What happened to the boy who got everything he wanted? He lived happily ever after.” But I'm like... that's it? Basically I was like, is this the end for Apocalypse? If mutants win. 

CONNOR: Right, because this is all he has ever longed for, right? Is Krakoa.

TINI: Yeah, so like what do we do? And then I ended up... and I can't, I guess if I really had to, I could trace all of the mental gymnastics, but I won't bog us down with it.

CONNOR: You can streamline it, yeah. I don't need you to break it all down. But whatever you choose to give us, I will happily take.

TINI: I came around to the idea that, you know, Apocalypse would want to reclaim things that had been lost to mutants, like the idea of certain aspects of culture. And one was that human cultures have these like, you know, proto-early times where... or even you know, today, there are there are many human cultures in this earth that are still very magical, you know, that use the idea of magic — and I  speak of magic in an anthropological sense, like a function of their society. I don't mean like whether or not you believe in things you cannot see. I mean, like if you are an anthropologist and you discuss “magic”, it is a thing that has a function in a society, and we don't have that.

CONNOR: I mean, right. As a stage in... as a stage in like religious... not necessarily development, because it can stop there, and that's fine. But like the difference between sort of: magic, religion, science. 

TINI: Yes.

CONNOR: In anthropology and anthropological studies, and in classics, those are sort of viewed as different potential evolutions of the approach to the divine.

TINI: Yeah.  And a lot of people who do this kind of anthropological slash occult theory talk about the idea that the overspecification of things, like... magic used to do everything, right?

CONNOR: Right.

TINI: Like the magic user could both cure your cold and fix your crops, and also birth your baby, and also curse your neighbor, or whatever. Now it's like, you go to a special doctor to birth your baby, and someone else for your crops. And there is an argument that certain cultural aspects are lost in that.

CONNOR: Right, you're not going to the pharmakis down the hill.

TINI: Right. Okay, so doesn't this all sound like great fun X-Men comics? [laughs] 

CONNOR: [laughs] Right. So then like, let's pivot to how that became a book about Betsy Braddock. 

TINI: [laughs] Right, so the way this became a book about Betsy Braddock is I talked about this stuff for hours and hours. No, really. And we came to the room and I had pitched the book and I called it something else. But when we got to the room, one of the things we got into really quickly was that they were like, we want to you try to use names of old, existing—

CONNOR: Like, classic titles. 

TINI: Yeah. And so with that, I kind of read the pitch. And Jonathan [Hickman] and Jordan [White] were like, “Well, that's Excalibur, then.” And then at the same time, all three of us were like... because one of the things that we kind of started the day with was like, what characters are on the board and why? And, you know, are there people on the board, we want to prioritize? You know, what characters have been through a big thing lately. And one of them was the development with Betsy. And so it was kind of like, “That's Excalibur.” And then at the same time, we were all like, “Well, that's what we do with Betsy.” Instantly.

CONNOR: Right. So you guys are so smart. Just to say it again, it really was the most elegant solution to a 30-year problem. 

TINI: Thank you!

CONNOR: And I am so, so happy to have both characters. All I want now is Giant-Size X-Men: Psylocke and Captain Britain. And I want [Russell] Dauterman to draw it and you to write it. And I think that someone should do that. And I'm just putting it out into the universe and, you know... free idea. [laughs]

TINI: It would be a blast.  Honestly, though, like, one goal I really have is to co-write a Betsy and Kwannon story with an Asian-American woman.

CONNOR: That would be amazing.

TINI: Or an Asian woman writer. Like, someone who I can sit and work with, and there are many Asian women writers—

CONNOR: Absolutely, in comics.

TINI: Even among the X-Men! Who are incredible that I would love to work with. 

CONNOR: Mm-hmm.

TINI: But yeah the idea of like, getting to to sit and have someone who I can sit with and we can be like, “Let's have conversations in this book.”

CONNOR: Yeah, let's hash out all the weird stuff about these women.  

TINI: Yeah. Let's talk about how it made you feel as a fan, and then talk about what I observed, you know, and the mistakes I made. Because I write Betsy as someone who is privileged and makes mistakes. 

CONNOR: Well, right!

TINI: That's something about her that I enjoy writing, that she is very very privileged and I enjoy—

CONNOR: She's British nobility.

TINI: Yeah.

CONNOR: You know, it doesn't get much more silver spoon than like, the daughter of like, Lord Braddock.  

TINI: Right. I mean, and it's like the most like, you know, like Anglo princess stuff possible. 

CONNOR: Yeah. It's like, "I became a cool ninja for a while and was like a sexy Dragon Lady type character."

TINI: "And then I got bored." Yeah.

CONNOR: Yeah. "So now that's over." I mean it is... The thing is that like — I've talked about this with you — but I, you know, I do like 90s Betsy. I mean, I'm not by any means a hater of ninja Psylocke. It’s just not my preference.

TINI: Oh, and listen, the part of your recap where you're like, “You know, it's because of how incredible Jim Lee drew her was part of why that happened.”

CONNOR: Yeah. 

TINI: Absolutely correct. Those 90s Psylocke comics, if you want to see little baby Jim Lee just do absolute fire, like go back and read those minis. I mean, they are gorgeous.

CONNOR: The two designs I think of with Jim Lee always, like when someone says "Jim Lee", the two designs I always think of are that outfit for Psylocke, the blue, you know, leotard outfit, and then Rogue's unitard with the leather jacket. 

TINI: Yeah.

CONNOR: Those are two absolutely brilliant outfits. And like, Rogue is another one — and I'll get to this whenever I get to her episode — but she's another one where the 90s version of the character is not my favorite. I really love her in the 80s. In the 90s stories, I think she got kind of bogged down in the Gambit romance, which was just like not really my point of interest — which I know is an unpopular opinion.

TINI: [laughs]

CONNOR: I like them now! I like how they are now. But at the time I was like, “Eh, I don't want Rogue moping about a boy.” That's like, not what I'm here for.

TINI: Right. 

CONNOR: But the design was so smart. I mean, there's a reason that she popped so much on the cartoon. And in part it's because the voice actress was incredible. But also it's just like that is such a fun, simple — but also a little intricate and weird — cosplayable-easily design. And that's what Jim Lee did really well in that in that period. And Psylocke is, you know, he drew her brilliantly. And I do think the fact that Claremont was collaborating with an Asian artist makes it a little bit more complicated as a story in terms of the the politics, the racial politics of it. You know, now, Claremont obviously is — I would say by his own admission, probably — like, a big Japanophile. I mean, he loves Japan.

TINI: Yeah.

CONNOR: His characters go to Japan... a lot. So, you know, is there like an Orientalism aspect? Sure. It was the 80s. You know, we hadn't really addressed that particularly yet, in terms of, like, white people talking about it in mainstream pop culture conversation. But I do think that it is notable that he was like — and this was only revealed recently in an interview he did that was interesting — but he was like, "That was only supposed to last like a couple issues. But Jim really enjoyed drawing her, and he made her look so cool that I was just like, okay, we'll just keep this until, you know." He was like, "Jim would probably be on the book for like a year,” because most artists were only on the book for about a year or two. But by sort of accidents of the out-of-story stuff, it ended up lasting a really long time and just becoming the way — because of the Capcom fighting games, and the Sega Genesis game—

TINI: Yeah.

CONNOR: And her brief guest appearances in the cartoon, like that's just the Psylocke that people knew.

TINI: Well and part of it I feel like, you know, part of why I'm really grateful for the way the Madripoor retcon handled them is that it's the way that I think if I had been asked to handle it, it would have been the thing that I would have built that concept around. Which would have been, look, this isn't just a body made to look like this was someone's body—

CONNOR: Oh, the Nicieza retcon you mean, where it's like, "this is a real person."

TINI: Yes.  This is not a shell or a morphed body, this is a person. This is a woman who something was taken from her, and like... 

CONNOR: Right. 

TINI: I think the most important aspect that I've been really grateful for in in the retcon is that is that Kwannon is a figure on Krakoa with a life, and is—

CONNOR: Yeah, she's a person who exists. 

TINI: I have been thinking about the eventuality of what has to be discussed between her and Betsy for, like, since I started writing Excalibur. And it's never been something I put off; it's been something I've been building to.

CONNOR: Well, there's that great moment early in Excalibur where they sort of see each other like across the way. And like it's just this very awkward eye contact moment, and then Kwannon just like walks away, like "we're not having this conversation." I thought that was great.  

TINI: Thank you. And there's, you know, a direct line between that and the conversations in Excalibur #7 and #8's Warwolf adventure, wherein Rictor is like, you know, "I am a brown, gay Catholic, guys. So there's a lot of things I see that you don't see." 

CONNOR: Right. 

TINI: Having Betsy having to to chew on the knowledge of her privilege to me is part of... the realistic way in which she would deal with it. Right?

CONNOR: Yeah.

TINI: I want superhero comics to be a warm and welcoming place full of heroes. And they are. But I think it would be disingenuous and ignoring Betsy's privilege to have her not have this like complicated guilt that makes her not want to talk about it. Like, is she being spoiled and white and avoidant about it? Absolutely, because she is Betsy Braddock. 

CONNOR: Yeah. And my favorite thing about Betsy... So Emma is my favorite X-Man now. But on some level, that's because the modern Emma Frost is a lot like the 80s Betsy Braddock. I mean, in terms of who Psylocke was to the X-Men in that Claremont run.

TINI: Mm-hmm.

CONNOR: She was the sneaky one.  She was the one who was willing to kill people. She was the one who would use her telepathy in unscrupulous ways if, like, Storm was being too honorable about things.

TINI: Mm-hmm.

CONNOR: You know, that was her role. She would push the envelope. And the Siege Perilous storyline is actually really great, because she does end up suffering the most from the Siege Perilous incident.  And she's the one who forces them all to do it. And there's that great page where, you know, Havok is like, "I absolutely won't do this. This is insane." And she just — and they've sort of had a vague flirtation, but like a hate, a love-hate, like we don't like each other kind of flirtation, over the course of the Australian period. And she just basically telepathically forces him to do it. And she does it... she gives him a kiss and like, seduces him, and then like pushes him through the portal, basically. 

TINI: Right. 

CONNOR: And then she follows after. And she's the one who then, because of everything that happens with Matsu'o and... Oh, and speaking of pronunciations, I want to apologize for any Japanese speakers who listened to the character overview, because I am confident that I butchered "Tsurayaba". 

All of the stuff with Matsu'o and the stuff with The Hand... it's almost like her punishment for having forced all of her friends to to to give up their lives. 

TINI: Yeah. 

CONNOR: And I don't necessarily believe that everything has to have a moral. But it does feel like a good like, you know, thing for the character in terms of her full arc.

TINI: That's part of what writing a character is. You know, it's just looking back at those things and trying to find connections and challenges for them that maybe haven't been explored before. Right? Like looking back at that and saying, like, “Hey, you know, to me it looks like this was a punishment for that.” Like, has... is this something... had she ever discussed that or brought that up before? 

CONNOR: Right. 

TINI: How can we give her, you know... and how do we make it more than just her, you know, getting sad and drunk and telling this to her friends? You know, can we structure an arc or a story or a journey for her around that connection that no one else has ever made before? Like, that's the journey of writing a character that's been around for this long. You know? 

CONNOR: Yeah. And the the 2009 Psylocke miniseries approached that a little bit. But like, she was still in Kwannon's body. So there was only so much that could be done. 

TINI: Right.

CONNOR: And I think that there's a rich vein to tap into now, especially because, as you know, the Nicieza retcon that creates Kwannon... I mean, first of all, in terms of like problematic ideas about race and colonialism and everything else that Psylocke kind of does dredge up by her or her nature, I think that it would be way worse if we were looking back and we're like "she spent 30 years in yellowface." Like, magic yellowface, but... 

TINI: Right. 

CONNOR: Like it's good that it's an actual body that, like, existed. You know what I mean? But that then creates the colonial sort of issue of like, this is a white British woman who took a Japanese woman's body — and she didn't take it on purpose. It's something that was done to her. But she gets to keep it, you know? And so I think that I mean, I've talked about this with you, but I really... when I say that I liked 90s Betsy, the thing I liked most was I loved Betsy and Warren's relationship. 

TINI: Yeah!

CONNOR: And it occurred to me, reading Excalibur, that Warren has only ever known Betsy, really, in Kwannon's body, and that they dated while she was in Kwannon's body. And so, like, he has never had sex, for example, with Betsy in her own body. 

TINI: NO COMMENT, CONNOR! [laughs]

CONNOR: [laughs] OK, well, I'd love to address that at some point in the pages of these comics! And I'd love to know what Kwannon thinks about Warren, this guy who like, was having sex with her body while she wasn't there. Like, I just think that there's a lot of really interesting stuff that could be done because, again, it's no one's fault. Like, Spiral did this to both of them. So it's not, you know, it's not like Betsy stole her body. But at the same time, this is a fucked up thing that happened to to both of them. And the power dynamic is complicated. 

TINI: Well, and I think one of the other big things to remember about all of this is when we zoom out and we get out of the page and we look at it as a book that goes into the hands of people, what it ultimately did was create a really prominent Asian character. 

CONNOR: Yes. 

TINI: And in a visual medium, where we can see her kicking ass, and the worst thing to do would have been if there had if if the retcon had had to be such where it was like... “Well, we just put Betsy back.” And then we lose that representation, you know?

CONNOR: Right, no. I was so, so happy that Kwannon got to be a real X-Man and got to be Psylocke. Because she is Psylocke, you know?

TINI: So the Nicieza retcon kind of saves us in a way, you know, because it's like... she was a woman, who had something taken from her, who is a character that we can explore, and you can read all about her just looking amazing and wrecking face in the pages of Zeb Wells and Stephen Segovia's Hellions, which I am back to promoting instead of my own book. [laughs]

CONNOR: I will say I kind of hope she goes back to the purple hair eventually just because I think it's such a cool look, but I did laugh because it occurred to me — I have thought this for many years, that it must have been a real downer for Betsy to have gone from dyeing blonde hair purple to then having to dye black hair purple, which would require you to bleach it outrageously first. And I mean, it was already a bit of a stretch, the idea that she would maintain that lovely lavender hair color while like, on the run in Australia. But it made a little more sense when it was just something she could slap on.

TINI: Now it's just purple. 

CONNOR: Yeah no, which is a great genius bit from Jim Zub. But I would I have to imagine that Kwannon got her body back and was like, "oh my God, my hair is fucking fried. What have you been doing to my hair?" 

TINI: [laughs] She just like shaves her head and starts over. 

CONNOR: Yeah. I mean, we both have dark hair, and Kwannon’s hair is obviously darker than ours. 

TINI: Oh, I’ve bleached my hair. 

CONNOR: But yeah, I just... that's a lot of effort to get that color going. But that said, I'm sure there's a mutant hairdresser on Krakoa who could do it if she decides she wants to go back to the look.

TINI: I know. I always have Meggan in Excalibur changing her hair color and stuff randomly. Because I’m like, why wouldn't you? Change it to match your outfit.

CONNOR: Meggan is one of my all-time favorites. 

TINI: Meggan’s a queen. I love her. 

CONNOR: The classic Excalibur in the 80s was my favorite of those Claremont books when I was reading my dad's back issues — which is so weird, I know, but I also loved fantasy. I loved Alan Davis’s art, particularly.

TINI: Mm-hmm. 

CONNOR: And I will say, Betsy is very close to my heart in one respect because the two — and it's interesting, because I'm not usually that into blonds — but like, the two homosexual awakenings that I had reading the X-Men as like, a young child, was like first... that one John Byrne panel from Dark Phoenix Saga where Warren comes down from the ceiling in his tank top with the chest hair spilling out. And Candy Southern’s like making them a martini or whatever. And then the second is, like.... there's a whole Brian in a Speedo with Meggan thing that was just really... wild. 

So just these two men who are closely associated with Betsy Braddock were like... oh. Hmm. I think I'm gay. And thank you for that, John Byrne and Alan Davis.

TINI: I did a big, big Excalibur reread before I wrote the book, obviously.  

CONNOR: I have to assume, because you have so many great Easter eggs in there for fans of the original book.

TINI: But I have to say that when it comes to sweet faced heroes with just incredible bodies, Marcus To absolutely gives Alan a run for his money in that respect. 

CONNOR: Yeah no, I'm very into Marcus’s art.

TINI: The thing I remember from my last big reread is like, Brian Braddock’s butt... is like...

CONNOR: Astonishing.

TINI: You could bounce a farthing off of it. [laughs]

CONNOR: Yeah. Long before long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe gave Captain America that butt, Captain Britain had that butt. It was a true butt situation. Like, Nicola Scott level butt going on. 

TINI: Yeah, absolutely. 

CONNOR: I've always said that Alan Davis is the only straight man I can think of who draws men that hot. Because I think like, Phil Jimenez draws incredibly sexy men—

TINI: Well, sure. 

CONNOR: But like, Phil is gay, so that makes sense, right? He also draws incredibly beautiful women! But like, I feel like a lot of the time men are sort of less—

TINI: Soft, and appealing, and receptive, and... yeah. It’s very aggressive drawings. 

CONNOR: Yeah. Right. And I think that there are a lot of other gay artists now, and female artists who are attracted to men, who have done great [work]... but Alan Davis, man, I don't know what it is. It's always real high quality stuff. 

So to go back, because we keep — I'm loving the tangents. And this is the thing, this podcast is gonna get tangential, because it's the X-Men, and the X-Men are something that you just sort of talk around sometimes, because there's so much. 

TINI: There’s a lot. 

CONNOR: To go back, you were talking about your reread, and you were talking about the classic Captain Britain and other stories involving Betsy, involving, you know, quote unquote "Asian Betsy". 

When you were approaching Excalibur and sort of reframing Betsy for a new generation — for new readers, because that's the idea behind Dawn of X in a lot of ways — which stories were sort of your watchwords? Because she has had such a varied run from her original time in Captain Britain through her time with the X-Men, through all of the years with X-Force, up 'til now. Like... what sort of throughlines did you want to bring through? What are your favorite storylines?  

TINI: I really love her appearances in S.T.R.I.K.E. with those characters — the Stuarts and all them.

CONNOR: I miss them. 

TINI: Yeah, I think they're fun. 

CONNOR: Alison Double should come back.

TINI: Alison Double... oh, wasn't that like her bestie?! Yeah, Alison Double should come back!

CONNOR: We haven't seen Alison in like literally like 30, 40 years.

TINI: Yeah, a long time. There's a lot of characters where I'm like, "yeah, you should come back." I really, really love the whole first story where she joins the X-Men, that Annual.

CONNOR: Yeah.

TINI: And the Uncanny issues right after it. I love that whole era. And I do really, really love Rick Remender's Uncanny X-Force. That really inspired a lot of the relationship between Betsy Apocalypse in my run. There's stuff in my Excalibur run that is, you know.... someone like outright clocked it on Twitter, and finally I was like, "You see me!" The whole — [hesitates] I hope... I don't know if you're listening to this and you don't read Excalibur. Anyway, there's a point in my run where Betsy asks Apocalypse to spare a baby something. 

CONNOR: Mm-hmm.

TINI: And it's like, a very deliberate callback to Uncanny X-Force. 

CONNOR: Yes. 

TINI: And like, I don't know, their relationship... like their first interaction in Excalibur #1 from me, where I hit the ground running on their relationship was very much inspired by Uncanny X-Force.

CONNOR: That makes a lot of sense. I think that for me part of it is... I was like, a lifelong X-fan. And then I felt very betrayed by the Decimation; the Decimation to me after House of M felt like it sort of stole all of the things I loved about the X-Men.

TINI: A lot of cool toys, yeah.  

CONNOR: Which was most of the characters, because I've always liked the sort of C-listers more; that's always been kind of my thing in comics. The number one, sort of like A-list characters are not usually my favorites, with a few exceptions like Emma, and Storm, and Betsy. I felt like a lot of great characters were lost — but I also, more importantly, felt like the sort of minority metaphor that is, to me, the heart of the X-Men, got really lost... because once, you know, it's 198 people, that's like... that's a lecture hall. That's not a subculture. You know what I mean? 

TINI: Yeah. Yeah.

CONNOR: So it just wasn't the book that I wanted. So I fell off for quite a while. And I think that most of the big Uncanny X-Force stuff sort of happened in the wake of like, Second Coming, right? And that just was when I was not... and I've now gone back and read, but I don't have that sort of, like, primal attachment to it that you would have if you had been reading it as it came out. You know what I mean? 

TINI: Totally. Well also, that was one of the first... I think that was one of the first X-Men books that I read as it was coming out. Yeah. I had been reading Marvel stuff for a long time by then, and I'd read like, some big X-Men events and stuff, and I'd read other stuff. I think Uncanny X-Force was like — and it was because my friend Alex was like, "this is really, really good." And I was like, "Okay, I'll check it out." And I think, yeah, I think it might have been the first X-Men book I was like pulling and was like, "Oh man, I'm really up on this." And I think that's probably where I first decided, like, oh, I really like Betsy a lot. 

CONNOR: Yeah. 

TINI: That's probably where I first was like, I love her. And then I remember going back and reading Captain Britain stuff and just like kind of falling in love with the very huge range of her strange history. Like, I think that's one of the things about Betsy that I have the most fun with, is that for I feel like 20 years she's been a ninja, and she's an awesome ninja, and she learned a lot of cool ninja stuff... but she also is like, a fairy princess, you know?

CONNOR: Right, and what I love about what you're doing with her in Excalibur, particularly now that she's Captain Britain. So much of what Betsy does... I mean, she was a model, right? Like she's about sort of exterior appearances. And I was as I was writing the character overview, I was thinking a lot about Uncanny X-Force, actually, because it's a really dark book. And she goes to really, really dark places. I mean, toward the end, in like one of those final — not Remender's, but like one of those final X-Force runs. She's like, "I'm addicted to killing. The only way I can feel is like, fucking people." And she's really, you know, messed up.

TINI: Well, and the whole Otherworld stuff in that run too, with Jamie, is great.

CONNOR: That's my favorite, yeah. That's my favorite thing from any of that stuff. 

TINI: And isn't it... Greg Tocchini like does the art for that run? And it's beautiful. 

CONNOR: It's beautiful. It's absolutely stunning.

TINI: It's so pretty, yeah.

CONNOR: But you know, what's interesting is now that she's back in her body and she's Captain Britain, part of her, it feels to me — reading Excalibur as just a reader — that she's kind of like, "Okay, it's 1986 again." I mean, like, sliding time scale, obviously. But she's kind of like, "Everything's fine. Everything that happened to me when I was Kwannon is like a bad dream, almost." You know what I mean? 

TINI: "That was someone else's life," yeah.

CONNOR: Exactly. Like, "Kwannon did those things," which is why I like that Kwannon is alive to be like, "Actually, no, you did those things and I'm not responsible for them."

TINI: Exactly. "If you shirk your responsibility to it, what does that say about me and my lack of agency?" 

CONNOR: Exactly.

TINI: That is like, so much of the core of that argument. Yes. 

CONNOR: So I love that she's like, you know, when she was in Kwannon's body... this is actually something I talked about once with a pro who was at Marvel at the time, who is of Asian descent. And I don't know if, like, they want me to say who they were, so I won't. But, you know, we were talking about Psylocke, and about how — this was around when Mystery in Madripoor was coming out — and I was like, "I feel like they they tried to fix the messiness of Psylocke by having Betsy get like really into Japanese culture, and like, wearing kimonos, and using a psychic katana, and other stuff, and I'm not actually sure that that made it better." 

And this person's like, "No, it made it worse actually, because it just underlined that it's like, not really her culture or her life." 

TINI: Right.

CONNOR: But it makes sense that she would be like, "Okay, this is who I am now. I'm this psychic ninja. I'm gonna go all in." And it makes just as much sense that once she's back to being herself, that she'll be like, "Well, now I'm a knight." And she like has a sword and shield. And she's like, "I am a Knight of Avalon." And it's about the physical sort of trappings. And what I'm interested in is seeing sort of... 

I'm just really excited to see what happens in X of Swords and to see what's coming next for the character, because I have to imagine that that's sort of a state of denial that can only last so long, and that soon enough she's going to have to face the fact that actually, for a long time — I mean, it's a sliding time scale, so let's say maybe it was five years or something — for a long time, she was this other person who did terrible, terrible things. 

TINI: Right.

CONNOR: And she needs to accept that and sort of holistically understand that that's part of who she is. And you can move on and become a better person; guilt is not always the most useful emotion. It's kind of a fundamentally selfish emotion, right? Because you're dwelling rather than doing something proactive.

TINI: Right, it blocks accountability. 

CONNOR: Right. And I think that it's more interesting to see her go like, "Okay, I'm Captain Britain now. I'm like, an important hero. I'm not just like, 'one of the X-Men.' This is a legacy. This is a big deal. Like, I have to be someone. I have to be representative of my country, even as she's also a citizen of Krakoa, so it's complicated.

TINI: Well, sure. And if you kick back on the island with everyone else and have a tiki drink, then you have to think about everything. 

CONNOR: Right. And I think that that is a more interesting story. I think that having her come to terms with what she's done and move forward to become a better person is interesting. And the thing is, what I like about Betsy — and what I think is interesting about Brian thinking that he doesn't deserve to be Captain Britain anymore, because of what happened early in Excalibur — is that, you know, by moral standards, Betsy doesn't deserve this at all. And Betsy even says that. You know, she would have taken the sword, right?  

TINI: Which is another part of Betsy's personality that I really love. 

CONNOR: Yeah! 

TINI: Imagining her as a young girl in this incredible estate, you know? And it's like, of course she likes flying planes and riding horses, and smacking things with swords. 

CONNOR: Yeah!

TINI: Her brother's a friggin' nerd! All he cares about is science. 

CONNOR: Yeah. She was like, a 19-year-old charter pilot.

TINI: Right! She like, flew around in her expensive sunglasses, and yeah. I love her. 

CONNOR: I do, too. And I actually went before we did this and reread those 70s Captain Britain stories, the ones by Claremont initially, and truly... She is really, even then, much more aggressive than Brian. Much more sort of... a little petulant.

TINI: Mm-hmm.

CONNOR: But like in a way that's very self-assured.  And I think that—

TINI: She very much sees herself as the bad twin. Absolutely. 

CONNOR: Yes. And she knows she's the bad twin. 

TINI: She's the bad twin, yeah.

CONNOR: And that's why Brian saying, "You're the good twin now," she's like, "What am I supposed to do with that?"  

TINI: Yeah. "How can I exist if I'm not beating myself up for stuff?"

CONNOR: "For not being as good as you."

TINI: "And if I'm not beating myself up I have to stop and assess it, and assess who I am." And I think also — you know, again, not to get too far ahead of myself... If I've been quiet, it's because I am doing a lot of writing lately, and there's a lot of stuff I don't want to say, because I want it to be said in the book.

CONNOR: Right, no, of course I don't want you to give anything away. Right.

TINI: But I will also say that it's really interesting to me to write Betsy as a woman who is a model, or was a model, and has a really complicated relationship with physicality and bodies. 

CONNOR: Mm-hmm. 

TINI: And how various women's bodies are seen and perceived.

CONNOR: Well, it's notable that she she starts dressing sexy once she's in a new person's body entirely. 

TINI: Right. Right. 

CONNOR: Like that's... you know? She starts showing off her body once it isn't her body.

TINI: Right. And starts doing, you know, arguably more dangerous things once it's a body that isn't her own. And there's... I think there's a lot that's... easy to... [pauses] 

I think part of why I may be a good person to write Betsy, is because I see her in that, and I sympathize.

CONNOR: Mm-hmm.

TINI: With the idea that... [pauses] 

Maybe if I felt like I was freed from... a body that I feel negatively toward, and then I had to go back to it? That would be really complicated, I think, for me. 

CONNOR: Yeah, absolutely.

TINI: And I think it's complicated... it's complicated as a woman and it's also complicated, you know, as a model. Someone who worked in a field where, you know, eating disordered behaviors are—

CONNOR: Well the kind of muscles you develop, yeah—

TINI: Yeah. 

CONNOR: The kind of muscle tone you develop as Captain Britain or as Psylocke is not really something you want for the catwalk when you're modeling Givenchy, right?

TINI: Oh my God, yeah! One of my favorite... this wrestler I love named Alexa Bliss used to be a fitness model, and then she became a wrestler, and she was on a podcast talking about how she had, you know, a pretty serious eating disorder when she was a bodybuilder and a fitness model, because she had to have a certain look about her. And then once she became a wrestler, she was like, "I can eat. I need to be strong. I need to be bigger." And like, I think a lot about, you know, how that mindset would apply to someone like Betsy. 

CONNOR: Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, I have struggled with disordered eating stuff in my life, and so— 

TINI: Aw, high five. [laughs]

CONNOR: [laughs] Yeah, like big high five. It's one of the reasons I love Polaris, actually.

TINI: Mm-hmm! 

CONNOR: Because in the 90s X-Factor that Peter David did, she develops an eating disorder because she's suddenly such a public superheroine 

TINI: Mm-hmm.

CONNOR: And she's like... I mean the only women on the team, it's her and Wolfsbane. And at the time, Wolfsbane was trapped in her wolf form all the time, her half-wolf form, because of stuff that happened on Genosha. So basically Polaris is like, "I'm like, the hot girl on this public, government-sponsored team."

TINI: Right!

CONNOR: And she ends up going to a lot of therapy sessions with Doc Samson to, like, talk about the fact that she hates her body. And then she starts wearing this very sexy outfit to like, overcompensate for it. And everyone's like, "This is not... you..."

TINI: "This is not you." Yeah. 

CONNOR: "What's going on?" Right. So I've always enjoyed that about about her.

TINI: I love those Doc Samson therapy issues, too. [laughs] I love that run.

CONNOR: Yeah, they're great. And I actually think that Polaris and Psylocke are two characters that have a lot in common, in the sense that they both have been through a lot of sort of.... body shenanigans.

TINI: Mm-hmm.

CONNOR: Because Polaris had the whole Malice situation.

TINI: Not to quote myself, but as as Rachel says to Betsy in Excalibur, "It's an island of women who have been through a lot." [laughs]

CONNOR: Yeah! Yeah. And partly that's because Claremont really liked the female characters best, you know?

TINI: Mm-hmm. 

CONNOR: And I think that he put that ethos sort of into the book — not to say that his representation of women was always perfect.  

TINI: But it really did inform X-Men forever. 

CONNOR: Forever. I mean, there is a reason why outside of like, "Do you like Cyclops or Wolverine?" It's like... 

TINI: All the best X-Men are women. 

CONNOR: Yeah. The most memorable characters that people reference are usually women, because they are the really iconic ones. 

TINI: I think Apocalypse, deep down, agrees.

CONNOR: Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. 

So we are... this is running a little long, so I hope people are okay with that.  

TINI: Yeah. And hopefully you're gonna edit out our... [laughs] dumb stuff.

CONNOR: I'm going to edit stuff that's like, yeah, that's not perfect.

TINI: You've sounded great. 

CONNOR: Thank you! I just hope that the audio quality is good. I'm like, so nervous. I've never really done this before. I am the... I am your host, I am the talent booker, and I am the producer, everyone. So it's a one-man operation over here. I'm going to say 'we' a lot, because I feel like podcasts say 'we', but it's really just, like... me in my house. So hopefully this sounds good. 

But so first and foremost, I just want to... you know, I don't want you to give anything away, obviously, but I know that Betsy is going to factor into X of Swords. 

You and I have talked at length offline about Opal Luna Saturnyne, who is one of my favorite comic book characters like, of all time, and I can't tell you how thrilling it is to have her not only be back, but be the centerpiece of a story like this. Because I've had to explain on Twitter like, 20 times now, who she is to people. I'm like, "No, no, no, guys, she rules. She's awesome."

TINI: "She isn't Emma Frost!" [laughs] 

CONNOR: "She looked like this before Emma Frost!"

TINI: Yes! 

CONNOR: Emma was still wearing... Emma still had like, a yellow bob and lingerie on. The whole platinum blonde Veronica Lake white dress look, Saturnyne was doing that, you know, decades before Emma was. 

A friend of mine said — who is not familiar, and is not a huge comics person, but she had read New X-Men because I knew she would love Emma — she said to me when I was like, posting sort of Saturnyne Greatest Hits from back in the day, she was like, "I'm getting like, Emma Frost, but an Earth Sign vibe."

TINI: [laughs] 

CONNOR: And I was like, "That is... really good." Right? 

TINI: Yeah.

CONNOR: Because Emma has like, a Scorpio kind of vibe.

TINI: Sure, yeah.

CONNOR: But like, Saturnyne's a Virgo. You know what I mean? 

TINI: Yeah, yeah. She's absolutely, oh, absolutely a Virgo. Yes.

CONNOR: So all that to say... and RIP Courtney Ross, obviously, as we must say, when any Saturnyne — That wasn't this Saturnyne, that was the evil Sat-Yr-9.

TINI: [sighs] 

CONNOR: This is the only sort of evil Saturnyne. Excalibur was a complicated book, guys.

TINI: We've all seen Spider-Verse! We know what a multiverse is. Whenever people are like, "I don't know, guys, X-Men gets confusing. There are different realities." I'm like, "You all watched Spider-Verse." Different realities make perfect sense. [laughs] Let's all stop pretending like we don't understand it.

CONNOR: Captain Britain really did that first. I mean, Earth-616 [“Six-Sixteen”], or Six-One-Six or however you want to call it.... I believe it's Saturnyne who's the first person to say that on panel. 

TINI: I mean, there's a history of the Captain Britain Corps not being a group of people that defend England, but the defenders of the multiverse. Like, the tribunal of multiversal judgment.

CONNOR: Right. And they just happen to be in England because that's where, like, Avalon spills out. 

TINI: Yes. Exactly.

CONNOR: I know for a fact that Captain Britain in the 80s is where Six-Sixteen comes from, but I do think actually it's Saturnyne who says it first. I could be wrong.

TINI: Also the editors say Six-One-Six, and I'm always like, "Really?"

CONNOR: I know, and I hate it. Sorry.

TINI: It's Six-Sixteen. I say Six-Sixteen.

CONNOR: I have two things that I just cannot budge on in terms of like, the way it is in my head. Like, I will drop the W from Kwannon. But: Selene is pronounced “Seh-leen”. And I was a classics major, I know it should be “Seh-lee-nee”, but it's been “Seh-leen”, like Céline Dion, in my head since I was a child. 

TINI: It's “Seh-leen”, yeah.

CONNOR: Her name is “Seh-leen”. And then: it's Six-Sixteen. It just is. I'm sorry, I can't. But I'm also the person who hates when you say like, "Two Thousand and Twenty." I'm like, it's Twenty-Twenty. Can we just, like, simplify it, please?

TINI: This is gonna be the thing that gets me an email from the higher-ups being like, "You can't call it Six-Sixteen, Tini."

CONNOR: "You can't call it Six-Sixteen." Well we're on my podcast, it's my rules. And Six-Sixteen to me is more auditorily pleasing.  

TINI: My views do not reflect the views of Marvel Comics. 

CONNOR: No, you're only reflecting your own personal views.

TINI: However, in my house we say Six-Sixteen.

CONNOR: Well, that is how British people would say it, right? I feel like. So it was like, a Captain Britain book. 

TINI: I don't know! If you're British, and you're listening, leave a comment. [laughs]

CONNOR: And you know if they're just walking around, like, Betsy's like, [in a terrible British accent] "Oh, here we are. We're back on Earth Six-Sixteen." Like they say, you know, like, [again in the terrible accent] "It's 30 past 24".

TINI: Right.

CONNOR: What can you tell us about X of Swords? 

TINI: This is in a lot of ways the Captain Britain story we've been building to; I'll say that for the Betsy-centric fans that are in the house. Yeah. It's very much an Otherworld story for a reason, and in X of Swords and after, what goes on in Excalibur will just... the function of Excalibur will change, and the landscape of what's available to them in the Otherworld and all of that will change entirely. 

It's gonna be a while, but yeah, if you've been looking for the story that recontextualizes the "Why Captain Britain?" of all of this, it's coming.

CONNOR: I'm very, very, very excited. I really can't wait for that. 

TINI: Aww.

CONNOR: And I will say that I am just so happy that the first... this is probably the first time ever that a franchise-wide event is anchored on Excalibur as a book. Like that has never happened before. [laughs]

TINI: [laughs] It feels weird.

CONNOR: So the last fun bit that we're gonna do, this is going to be a recurring bit. The two things that I probably love most in this world, pop culture-wise, are the X-Men and The Real Housewives on Bravo. I actually represent a couple of Real Housewives at this point... and I represent you! And Steve Orlando. And so I basically like, just... you know, "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life," right?

TINI: I think Steve Orlando and I are Real Housewives by extension.  And the Real Housewives can be X-Men, if they'd like! [laughs] 

CONNOR: I think so. So, what I want... I almost called this podcast The Real Housewives of Krakoa. 

TINI: Yaas.

CONNOR: And then I thought that might be a little niche, and like, the SEO on it might not be great — not that the SEO on "Cerebro" is going to be great, but we'll make it work. 

Anyway, point is, if you're not a Real Housewives fan, to the people listening: the Real Housewives each season, in the opening credits, they each will turn one by one to the camera and have like, a quippy tagline that they say while their name is sort of superimposed. And so what I want everyone to do at the end of each episode is come up with the tagline that the character might have on The Real Housewives of Krakoa. 

I will say that Leah McSweeney, who's currently on Housewives of New York, has a perfect Psylocke Betsy tagline. She boxes at a gym, sort of as a hobby. And so hers this season was, "I may float like a butterfly, but I sting like a bitch," which I think is fantastic. 

TINI: That's really good.

CONNOR: And I was a little bit like, now I feel like I can't do a butterfly one, which is pretty obvious with Psylocke. But anyway, what would you have Betsy say? You're the writer. What would you have Betsy say?  

TINI: Connor, I have such good news for you. I wrote one while we were having this conversation, and it's so good. I'm gonna read it in a bad British accent, though, because [in a bad British accent] "I'm Betsy."

CONNOR: No, do that. Do that. Absolutely.

TINI: So she comes out, she does a little turn, and she says, [in a bad British accent] "Some psychics eat their twin in the womb. I waited ‘til we were out to take over my brother's life." 

CONNOR: There you go! I love that. 

TINI: And it was a little nod to our love for Cassandra Nova in New X-Men.

CONNOR: You know I love Cassandra Nova.

TINI: So I was like, you know, we'll throw a little nod towards some psychics trying to eat their twin in the womb, but not Betsy — she'll eat him up when she gets out!

CONNOR: I was actually born with an extra thumb, and I have one of those, like, weird freckles that it turns out is a third nipple. So I realized suddenly, I was like, "Did I eat my twin in the womb? Like, am I Cassandra Nova?" It seems possible. I mean, it was probably just a mutation, but you never know.

TINI: Yeah! A very groovy mutation. [laughs] 

CONNOR: No, I know. When when they told me about it when I was an adult, I was like, "What was I, an X-Man? You like got rid of my mutation?" They were like, "The thumb had no bones in it." And I was like, "Ew, disgusting." They were like, "Right! So we took it off." I'm like, "Okay, fine." 

Had a fingernail, though. Fucked up!

TINI: That's the one that was haunting me when I was like, brushing my teeth before bed last night.  

CONNOR: Yeah, I did tell you, I was like, "You better come up with a Real Housewives tagline."  

TINI: I know, it was haunting me. But I wrote one while we were on the call, and I was proud of it, so.

CONNOR: I don't want to make people listen for too much longer than an hour—

TINI: Yes!

CONNOR: Because I know attention spans are limited, even in in quar. But I would like to thank you, first of all, for coming on the pod as the first inaugural guest.

TINI: Thank you for having me!

CONNOR: I really appreciate you doing it. Why don't you tell us where people can follow you online, and what they should be buying in the comic shop? Do some plugs.

TINI: Well, sure. I live online at @TiniHoward, just T-I-N-I and Howard, like The Duck. All one word. On like, Twitter, Instagram... I don't know, I'm not great at social media, but I'm on. Or you can check out Excalibur in the local comic shops. A lot of comic shops right now are still open, even for curbside service or for delivery. So definitely support your local bookstores and comic stores during this time, because reading is a great thing to do with your mask on, or safely from home! So do a lot of reading, and check out X of Swords with me and Jonathan Hickman and Pepe Larraz, and an amazing battery of chapters from the entire X-team. My whole brain is in this event right now. If I sound a little brain-dead to you guys, it's because everything else has been pushed out and my entire brain is X of Swords.

CONNOR: Pepe Larraz posted some Saturnyne art today and I like, almost fell down. 

TINI: [sighs happily] 

CONNOR: I love the way he draws her so much.

TINI: Listen, him and I mean... really the gift here, the angle was just trying to get a bunch of people to draw me sexy Saturnyne art, and I won. We're eating so well. 

CONNOR: That Russell Dauterman cover where she just looks like Veronica Lake is like, absolutely stunning.

TINI: It's beautiful. Body-ody! 

CONNOR: I know! Real zaftig energy, I'm enjoying it.

TINI: Mm.

CONNOR: Vargas Girl, kind of.

TINI: Mm-hmm!

CONNOR: The Omniversal Majestrix  — but like, also a sexy pin-up — is exactly right.

TINI: Yeah.

CONNOR: Well, you can follow CEREBRO online on Twitter at @CerebroCast. You can follow me there at @dreamoforgonon or on Instagram at @connorgoldsmith. I'm hoping eventually to get @ConnorGoldsmith on Twitter, but right now some teenager from England is squatting on it. So, you know... hope springs eternal.

But thank you for listening. I'm really excited about this podcast. I hope it was a fun listen. And you can chat with me — on Twitter would probably the easiest way — with any thoughts, input, because I'd love to hear from you all and fine-tune this as we go. So I guess that's it for now. Tini, thanks so much again for joining me!

TINI: Connor, thanks so much for having me! This was a blast, and I can't wait to listen to the rest of the episodes, where you have smarter guests on than this one. [laughs]

CONNOR: [laughs] Thank you. And we'll have to have you come back at some point once some other people have had a turn, because I know there are other characters you’d love to talk about. 

TINI: Indeed.

CONNOR: So thank you so much. And until next time, everybody... Bye! 

TINI: Bye!

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