Uncanny X-Men 256 - Acts of Vengeance

We come now to the first of the X-Men issues of the crossover, written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Jim Lee, the latter doing a second fill-in issue about a year before he became the series's regular artist. These are probably the best-known chapters of the whole event and have certainly had more reprints than anything else, with only Amazing Spider-Man #328 coming close. So it's surprising to see how little direct connection there is to the wider crossover. Instead this issue could easily have stood alone as one of any number where a villain from another series appears in the title without any wider motivations.

Uncanny X-Men #256

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Jim Lee
Inker: Scott Williams
Colourist: Glynis Oliver
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Editor: Bob Harras
Tai-Pan: Tom DeFalco

For reasons that I'll discuss when looking at the next issue, the chronology of Wolverine's adventures pretty much forces the X-Men issues to be placed relatively late in the crossover under just about any order. One result is that up to now in the wider storyline the Mandarin has been the least used of the six leading villains, just appearing at their meetings in either his strange bare-chested 1980s costume or the blue battle armour that had recently superseded it. Part of the reason is that he's a rather awkward character for many creators to use, often dismissed as "A poor man's Fu Manchu" and not just by the Red Skull (who thinks this in Captain America #367) and similar comments go right back to some of the character's earliest appearances. By the late 1980s there was a growing backlash against the stereotypes and this presented problems when it came to characters created in earlier days. One solution was to transform them where possible. Ming the Merciless was recoloured green for the Defenders of the Earth cartoon, a practice that would later be applied to the Mandarin on the mid 1990s Iron Man cartoon. But that wasn't an easily available option in an ongoing fictional universe. Another option was to simply not use the characters any more, but the Mandarin's position as Iron Man's traditional archenemy again made it difficult to ignore him. However that probably explains why so few of the "Acts of Vengeance" issues wanted to use the character, especially when there was the option to get to play with some of the big-name villains like Doctor Doom instead. But here in X-Men Chris Claremont had already done a memorable story (only for John Byrne to rapidly it) and so instead picks up an underused character.

For this issue the story has decided to present the Mandarin pretty much as the Hong Kong equivalent of the Kingpin. We first see him in an office in a skyscraper, dressed in a suit and smoking a cigarette, a far cry from a mystic in a darkened underground lair full of opium smoke or indeed from a wizard in armour as he's appeared more recently, including elsewhere in the crossover. His concerns are entirely business ones, focused especially on how to develop his criminal empire and prepare for the-then forthcoming transfer of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China. And as part of expanding his power in the area he entertains an offer from the Hand, a guild of assassins who offer him a gift of a particular individual.

This issue came out during one of the oddest periods of X-Men history of all, when the remains of the team had faced defeat at the hands of the cyborg Reavers and had instead opted to run away, with most of them scattered to the winds by entering the Siege Perilous crystal to be recreated in new lives elsewhere, leaving Wolverine to find them. Coming straight off the back of a period when the X-Men were presumed dead and magic spells made them invisible to detectors, the result is that they have been an unknown force for a long time. (This also explains why they haven't been targeted by the alliance of super-villains.) A shocked Psylocke has been found by the Hand who subject her to both physical and mental changes to make her into an assassin.

This is the famous issue where Psylocke is transformed from a British telepath who felt so vulnerable in battle that she always wore armour in the field to an east Asian ninja warrior in a skin-tight costume. It's a bold transformation to say the least and it's difficult to imagine something like this being tried today. There's always controversy whenever a character's race is changed in an adaptation or alternative universe, but performing an in-continuity race change would draw far more. However back in the day Psylocke's new form proved wildly popular and explains why what was intended as only a temporary move has become permanent despite a few attempts to undo it. The in-story justification given is that "We can't have a westerner running the Hong Kong underworld". How the change is performed isn't really explained here - during the switch all we see is a dream sequence including a moment where Betsy is dragged to a make-up chair and given a full makeover, then she's seen in her new body and later we see she has been changed in reality as well. (All the stuff about Kwannon/Revanche is a later retcon and that character doesn't appear here at all.) The sequence itself mainly focuses on Psylocke's mental transformation, symbolised by her steady collection of the Mandarin's ten rings of power, as she journeys through sequences from her life. Even to a regular X-Men reader this sequence can be difficult to follow if one hadn't read the original Captain Britain stories, but to a reader only picking up the issue because of the crossover it must have been especially hard to penetrate the continuity as her past is deconstructed. Still it makes for a dramatic climax.

As a crossover chapter this is unfortunately disappointing because it basically ignores the wider plotline and contains such a continuity heavy extended scene. And the decision to alter a character's race is rather unfortunate, even if it was only meant to be temporary and did radically transform Psylocke's popularity. However the issue does well to make the Mandarin a more modern threat and builds a dark scenario for the future.

Uncanny X-Men #256 has been reprinted in:

• Uncanny X-Men Acts of Vengeance (Boxtree, 1995)
• X-Men: Mutations (1996)
• X-Men Visionaries: Jim Lee (2002)
• Essential X-Men volume 9 (2009)
• Acts of Vengeance Crossover Omnibus (2011)
• X-Men by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee Omnibus Volume 1 (2011)