Psylocke #8 // Review
Devon Di Angelo wants to help-out Kwannon. He’s going to get himself killed doing so. John Greycrow is. trying to convince him of the gravity of the situation, but Devon wants John to help HIM out. Of course...none of this is being said in the presence of Kwannon, so it’s difficult to tell how she’s going to take any help that might come her way in Psylocke #8. Writer Alyssa Wong continues an appealingly engaging walk into danger and adventure with Psyloke in an issue brought to page and panel by artist Moisés Hidalgo and colorist Fer Sifuentes-Sujo.
Kwannon is in a snowy bamboo forest in Kyoto. It’s a forest she sees in her dreams. The bamboo brushes the sky. The snow muffles the sound. She’s walking with an ally...treading in each other’s footsteps to hide their numbers. No matter how far she walks, she can never find her way out. So it’s not really a forest in her dreams. It’s a forest in her nightmares. That’s okay: you can learn a lot from your nightmares. You can learn a lot from memories of training as well. Kwannon has a lot to work through as she travels through her past.
Wong toggles the narrative back-and-forth between present events and the title characters childhood. And while it is fun to get to know her a little bit better, it doesn't really feel like there's a whole lot in her past that seems to be framed in a way that is all that powerful. Perhaps it's the fact that there are so many women kicking around comic books that have been trained to be warriors in very brutal ways. it's hard to find a way to do that in a fashion that's going to feel terribly original.
Hidalgo does a remarkable job of making the kinetics of violence and aggression feel smooth and well articulated. The momentum across the page feels bracing and powerful. The flipping of the scenes occasionally does Rob some of the action of some of it impact. The author has paid a lot of story to tell and a lot of ideas to get across, and there isn't always the right amount of time to really explore the power of a given encounter. This is a bit of a disappointment. There's so much to get through, but there isn't enough time with any one scene.
Wong has been doing a very good job to this point. And it's really just a matter of time before she finds the right rhythm. The desire to go into the characters pants is something that's absolutely necessary at this stage and the overall narrative of the serial, but it COULD have been handled with a bit more patience and it would have hit the page in a way that would have resulted in a bit more intimacy and intensity. As it is, the current narrative just feels a little bit rushed, which is a bit of a disappointment.
