Karma Karma Karma Mindcontrol-eon... You Come And Gooooo

Oy, we're doing one of these again? Fine...

After Wolverine, excuse me, Patch's initial outing in Madripoor, the local crime lords were getting restless. Madripoor is ruled by a corrupt government, so no one was too surprised when the viceroy turned up dead. But the way he died was somewhat curious, so Patch got on the case.

Turns out the viceroy was killed by the mercenary duo known as Roughouse and Bloodscream, two thugs hired by former Vietnamese general turned crimelord N'guyen Ngoc. Discovering just who he was up against, Patch went on a mission to find some allies.

Yeah, turns out the crimelord is actually also the uncle of former New Mutant Xi'an Coy Manh, better known as Karma. So, what would drive a nice person like Xi'an to ever work for a bad guy like uncle N'guyen Ngoc? 

Someone had kidnapped her younger siblings back during Claremont's run on New Mutants. Even professor Xavier was unable to find her brother and sister, so a despondent Karma turned to uncle Ngoc for help. The deal she made, forced her to come to Madripoor where she proved herself a hero once again, interfering several times on Wolverine's behalf against her uncle's employees Roughouse and Bloodscream.

"Karma again, bless her, has to be!"

Still, that was hardly the only time Karma used her powers to help the story along...

Heck, even Karma complains about her loss of ideals in these telling scenes from Wolverine # 3.

But Karma's betrayal was about to come with a price, as her uncle sent Roughouse to show her the repercussions of not obeying a man...

Forget the mind control for a second... This panel is far more interesting in retrospect...

"All you need to make your life complete... is a man."

Ignoring the obvious, sexist undertones here... What really makes this gawdawful to watch in retrospect is the realisation Karma is actually gay. To have a male character assure a lesbian that a man will make her life complete is beyond offensive. But, in all fairness, its doubtful that at the time Claremont even knew about Karma's sexuality when he wrote these scenes. And if anything, he was aware of what he was doing when he wrote Karma's coming out in the Mechanix limited series back in 03.

So, how did this caper end? Well, there was the usual boom-boom and the unavoidable shock and awe. Roughouse and Bloodscream got theirs, while Wolverine... excuse me, Patch... and Karma escaped with their hides firmly intact.

And no one even stopped to think that Patch fellow looked awfully familiar. ....*sigh*....