This one's not so not-ungood. Partially it's because there is nothing left to be said with the mean, dried crusts and funeral meats left behind of that character Psylocke. In truth Betsy Braddock was pretty much used-up and burnt-out by the time Alan Moore had finished with her, but still in came Chris Claremont with a patent Mary-Sue hard-on for her and further exhausted the character. He had a Beckett-like grim tenacity. "Nothing left to do. Nothing to say. I can't go on. I'll go on." He made her Japanese for reasons presumably his own and psychosexual in nature.
What can you do with a girl like Psylocke?
(I miswrote her name just then as "Paylock" –– nearly "Paydirt" –– which I don't suppose is the least bit apt for this boring drain on our resources!)
Rick Remender did a fair okay job with her on Uncanny X-Force, which was generally a high point in the recent years. That was the last good thing Betsy Braddock was going to do or say on this earthly plane.
In the next series she did what a lot of boring people do to desperately garner attention. No, she didn't get lots of tattoos. Instead she became flamboyantly bisexual.
As for Cable, all I thought at the end of this first arc was, "Why is Cable always ill?"
"Am I still ill? Oh oh oh oh oh."
This character has been infected with a crippling virus, then he was in a coma, then he was killed, then he –– he has some auto-immune deficiency. He has lupus. In this version he generates a new clone of himself every day because his real ur-self is in a water tank dying day by day.
I'd say that Marvel needs to come up with a scenario where this man Cable is not dead on his feet. All the readerly energy is quite used-up in worrying about the poor guy's health. You read it and in the back of your head is a quiet, inexact anxiety about how much longer he has to live. That doesn't create narrative tension, it creates a dull gnawing tristesse. Not what fanboys come to the table to have.
I'd say that Marvel needs to do that but what the deuce difference does it make when in a few months they're going to destroy the entire multiverse anyway. None of it matters. We're all going to die. Devil take Cable and his poor health. When the new golden multiverse comes, as it must, praise God inna Jerdan and hallelujah in the highest down to ole Beulah Canaan land, maybe they'll revisit the character with a clean bill of health.
Or at worst a headcold.
