In this feature, I spotlight storylines that have been, well, left unresolved. Click here for an archive of all storylines featured so far.
Today, we look into why Jean Grey and Psylocke switched powers.
Chris Claremont returned to the X-Men titles with X-Men #100 and Uncanny X-Men #381. His debut story took place after a "six-month gap" where various changes were made to the characters. The idea would be to jump in with the characters in their new status quos and then slowly fill in the blanks as to what happened during that six month period. However, Claremont's tenure on the book ended up being so short that he never really got to address a lot of what happened.
One notable thing was that Jean Grey and Psylocke switched powers. Jean Grey's telekinesis went to Psylocke, while Psylocke's telepathy went to Jean.
We see this in action with them in the first issues, like Uncanny #381, where Jean notes her loss of telekinesis by borrowing Cable's...
And in X-Men #100, where we see Psylocke use telekinesis that she never had before...
And Colossus notes about the change...
(By the way, of course Psylocke still has a psychic knife...
)
Claremont planned an annual or a mini-series or even just a story arc to address the power switch, but it never happened.
So it's just a mystery now.
Go to the next page to see how they got back to their previous powers...
In New X-Men #116, Grant Morrison just gave Jean her telekinesis back without explanation...
The odds are that it was either a secondary mutation, or more likely, a sign that Jean was exhibiting the powers of Phoenix again.
Psylocke took longer, not until Uncanny X-Men #511, when she was brought back to her original body and powers, but under the brainwashing of the evil Sisterhood. She broke free and took control of her Asian body and now had her telepathic powers back while also maintaining her telekinetic abilities...
If anyone else has a suggestion for a future edition of Left Unresolved, you can drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!