Then I learned her 'origin' and wondered how someone could have come up with something so stupid. Keep in mind, I was about 13 and close to giving up comics for the first time entirely, so a lot of things were bugging me (like how Marvel at the time told me Peter Parker, who I'd know as Spider-Man since before I could read, wasn't really Spider-Man, and some guy named Ben Reilly was, even though he hadn't been around since before I was born). 

Anyway, onwards and upwards. Marvel and DC are in my past, and there are many great comics to read that aren't written by committees full of morons. 

 

I wonder if such an idea was suggested and Claremont, always unwilling to let go of a character in whom he's invested, said, "Great idea! And I know exactly which character we can turn into this new Elektra!"

Of course, by then Betsy Braddock was already involved in the reality-altering plans of Roma and Merlin, her insane brother, Jamie, and was an unwitting cyber-spy for Mojo. Why not tie her in with the Hand as well? And the Shadow King. And the new Hellfire Club.

What? It's just comics. Comics are like this.

I distinctly remember turning the page and going back to check the credits to see if it were an art-jam issue. It wasn't. It's just Jim Lee, but turning that page back and forth, I kept saying, "Art Adams. Barry Windsor-Smith. Art Adams. Barry Windsor-Smith..."

The switch between the delicate, doe-eyed British beauty Psylocke in her pink suit with the diaphanous sleeves, and her kick-ass, easily 200 times as lethal Ninja Assassin self was vaguely reminiscent of Voyager's kicking Kes to the curb to bring in Seven of Nine. 

Except, if Claremont had been writing Voyager, delicate, frail little Kes would have been assimilated by the Borg, had her mind raped, and come back infinitely more powerful, ready to kick some serious ass, fed up now to here with all the weak-sister, heel-dragging, thumb-sucking men who kept getting in the way what needed to be done! Kes, in her new Borg suit, and Janeway with a blaster... That's all it would have taken to bring down the Collective... 

Assuming that bringing down the Collective was ever going to be a thing to do. No one ever felt that bringing down Mojo's TV network was a thing to do. Or the Hellfire Club. Or anyone, really. 

Apparently, in a Claremont script, evil has just as much, if not more right to exist on its own terms than good does. It's all the heroes can do to stay true to their own inner selves and not allow evil to seduce them with its endless offerings of their "heart's desire" in a thousand and one alluring forms, each more seductive than the last. And hey, if you do cave in, go all evil-grinning happy and what not, don't sweat it. If there's seven of you, six can sell out, and that last one will save your tuchas in the end. Usually it's Wolverine.