Quote Originally Posted by psylurker View Post
I love that story-arc, I had read a few X-Men issues before but the Lady Mandarin saga really turned me into an X-Men (and Betsy Braddock) fan for life.

And to answer your question, Claremont's original take was that Asian Betsy was simply British Betsy given Asian features via surgery and magic, so it would make a degree of sense for Logan to recognize her if that was the case.

Years later when Nicieza came up with the Kwannon retcon, at some point he revealed it was actually Kwannon who attacked Logan in that instance... never mind the hair, eyes and everything that's actually on panel, but that's the official explanation.
I just got the latest omnibus and totally had the same reaction rereading that. It was such an oversight on the editors part, even if Nicieza missed one issue. It was pretty obvious what Claremont's intension was, but I wonder how much input Lee had on Betsy's change. It was defiantly before editorial push for the artist over the writer, but Claremont usually had great relationships with his artists that I could see Jim suggesting her redesign.

But all of that was in the 80s and hindsight is 20/20. Having Betsy run around in yellowface is the meaning of 'problematic'. Creating Kwannon was a much better choice, even if it was convoluted as hell.