From Betsy Braddock to Whoopi Goldberg in Seven Geeky Paragraphs

If I told you that I was trying to connect X-Men and Star Trek: The Next Generation using only etymology, you’d probably say, “Oh god, get away from me, you, dork!” And I’d have deserved that. However, I’d still continue with this line of conversation, punches to the face notwithstanding, because I researched this one through. In the end? It didn’t pan out. My hunch turned out to be wrong and the connection I thought seemed obvious just didn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean the journey wasn’t educational.

Having grown up in an environment where everyone I knew was Catholic, I’m always interested to learn that my childhood religion into the histories of places where I assume Christianity wasn’t ever a driving force. For example, Christianity plays a surprising role in the history of Japan. Prior to 1637, a segment of the Japanese people openly practiced a brand of Christianity that we now refer to as the Japanese Catholic Church, but the Shimbara Revolution of 1637 forced these Japanese for Jesus to worship a lot more quietly. Consequently, these people are known as Kakure Christians, from the Japanese word for “hidden.” And one of the ways they could practice their chosen religion was to do so under the guise of it being a more accepted one. That’s why this statue is so interesting:

the virgin mary in her best party costume, basically

It’s the Virgin Mary disguised as a figure from East Asian Buddhism: Guanyin, an incarnation representing compassion and mercy usually styled as female. In fact, Guanyin is abbreviated Chinese for Guanshiyin, or “observing the cries of the world,” so the link between this Buddhist figure and the Virgin Mary is apt. What is Mary, after all, aside from an embodiment of femininity and a magnet for the sorrows of the world? Anyway, being a significant figure in Buddhism, Guanyin’s name was translated from Chinese into other Asian languages, and this is where we get out pop cultural connection. In Japanese, Guanyin becomes something that can render in English as Kannon, Kan’on, Kanzeon or Kwannon, the last of which should be familiar to X-Men diehards. Kwannon, in the Marvel comics continuity, is the supervillainess who swaps bodies with Betsy Braddock, a.k.a. Psylocke. Long story short, the two get their all-of-them mixed up —abilities, memories and even looks, which is why Betsy, Captain Britain’s twin sister, looks Japanese for a significant period of her comic book existence.

psylocke on the left, kwannon on the right... i think...

Knowing that Kwannon’s name wasn’t simply plucked out of the ether, I thought for sure that this character, an empath, was named for a reason, and that the same reason might explain why Star Trek: The Next Generation featured Whoopi Goldberg as a this wise bartender character saddled with the odd name Guinan. (And yeah — I get how it’s funny to talk about unusual names for characters played by an actress whose stage name was inspired by her flatulence.) There’s a certain empathetic quality to Guinan, and I would have put money down on the fact that she, like Kwannon, got her name from one of the many ways that Guanyin could be transliterated into the English alphabet.

Nope. But I still learned something.

While an X-Men-Star Trek connection would span geeky universes, Guinan actually gets her name from a real-life saloon owner, Texas Guinan, who served drinks in Prohibition-era New York and entertained patrons with her Waco-bred manner. She’s a thoroughly cool lady, and if her existence comes as news to you, I strongly encourage you to read up on this kickass dame of yore.

On one hand, oh well. It would have been cool to put two and two together and make four. In this case, two and two are just two and two. On the other hand, however, I pulled up enough cool bits of history — like, history history and pop culture history — that I couldn’t just toss it all aside. From covert Catholics in Japan to a Texas-to-the-core saloon mistress yet still manages to ding two nerdish pegs from my youth? That’s a trip worth taking.

Thanks, internet!

Cyclops Construction

I never thought I’d have to make the distinction between construction materials and the optic blast-enabling superpowers, but I had to today.

two kinds of beams

Today I called Palmer, our copy editor, and asked how we write out the term that, when spoken, sounds like either “eye beam” or “I-beam.” I meant the latter version. I suppose that should have been obvious and I might have been the only person in the office who might have reason to use either, but I felt compelled to clarify the moment I said it. “I mean the metal beam that’s shaped like the letter ‘I,’ not laser beams you shoot from your eyes.”

Palmer politely explained that it would make sense that it would follow the pattern established with T-shirt.

Of Skunks, Horny and French

I arrived at my computer and found the following image on my computer’s desktop background with this, all stretched out and pixelated.

Apparently, someone was demonstrating how Wikipedia works and ended up on the Wikipedia page for Fifi Le Fume, the Tiny Toons character. That page led to the page for Miss Mam’selle Hepzibah, a character from Walt Kelly’s Pogo. She apparently is also a horny female skunk. This strikes me as odd. Why should there be more than one amorous French skunk in the universe of animated characters? Logically, one could assume that one ripped off the other, though Wikipedia is unhelpful in determining whether Hepzibah or Pepe Le Pew — Fifi’s Looney Toons analogue — came about first. Rather, I think the trend of making skunks French and horny merely comes from the fact that Americans like to regard the French as gonad-driven and drenched in body odor. Which, I assume, sucks for the French.

The tipper here is that Hepzibah struck another obscure pop culture note with me. The very last graph of her Wikipedia entry explains that in the X-Men universe, there’s actually a character also named Hepzibah. Initially a skunk-girl, the series directors eventually changed her into a cat-girl. Either version of this Hepzibah is a member of Corsair’s Starjammers, and I actually remember her from the cartoons.

Strange, that. But I like that some guy drawing X-Men characters would be familiar enough with Pogo to name a character after that series’ sole female.

Trivia on the Superhuman Scale

Being back in Crawllister forces me to care about the little things. For instance: this article in the Hollister Free Lance noting how my sad, lonely little hometown was mentioned in an article of a spin-off X-Men miniseries.

In the comic, a mutant named Erg explains how his uncle was one of the Hell's Angels who rioted in Hollister in the 1940s. The incident, which was overblown by the media and which eventually inspired the Marlon Brando film "The Wild One," involved only a few actual berserkers. By and large, most of the motorcyclists in Hollister at the time were as much bystanders to carnage as the town's residents were. Those who later studied the event figured that approximately one percent of the motorcyclists present had engaged in the wild criminal behavior that news media had so widely publicized. As a result of that estimation, many Hell's Angels — the fictional Erg's fictional uncle included — wore a pin bearing the phrase "one percent."

Anyway, the printed article had a scan from the actual comic. It's very strange to see accurate historical information about my town being printed in word bubbles with that thick all-capped font you see in comic books. But I suppose you'll just have to imagine what it's like.

Well, go ahead.