Kari Limbo is a manipulative bitch!

If you don't know who Kari Limbo is, you are a sad sad person who's not read a lot of Green Lantern Volume 2. Kari however is a blight on those largely entertaining stories.

Okay, Kari is a gypsy and psychic because you can't have a non-psychic Gypsy in comics. Because racial and ethnic stereotypes are Cool. She's an example of the worst kind of female psychic too...swooning terribly as she is "overwhelmed" by her visions. Dude, I watch the Dead Zone, and Anthony Michael Hall never fuckin' swooned. Keeled over sometimes, but not swooned. There's a difference. But I digress.

Anyway she's involved with a nice young gym teacher named Guy Gardner. Their peaceful existance is shattered when the Green Lantern himself appears to request that Guy temporarily fill his shoes. Tragedy strikes and Guy is killed (presumably) in an explosion of the power battery. (In reality, he got zapped into another dimension to be tortured by Sinestro for what was probably months...but Kari's so damn psychic that she couldn't tell until she swooned on her wedding day. Hmm.)

Now when the distraught Green Lantern comes to tell her of her loved one's fate, she has an understandable angry reaction, slapping him in the face. Now it wasn't really Hal's fault of course, but still, who can't understand that reaction.

However, what happens next is straight out of West Side Story: "You killed my brother, you bastard! Let's sing a song!"

(GL 117)

Hmph, not wasting any time here is she. Now I'm giving Hal a bit of a pass for what happens in the subsequent issues, because I think it's pretty clear she's manipulating him. And he's kind of dumb.

But if you think I'm exaggerating at the level of manipulation, check this out from one issue later...two since Guy's death:

(GL 118)

"I have feeling that this crumbler is somehow connected with the death of my beloved Guy Gardner!"

a) Broken English is annoying. Yes, she's a Gypsy, we get it!
b) Notice the wording...if it were a genuine sentiment, she'd have something like "I have feeling that this crumbler is somehow connected with Guy's death!" Almost the same, but not quite. For one, it'd actually be easier to say. For two, the use of both first and last name means that she's deliberately trying to remind him. Trying to slam Hal's head into the fact that he's somewhat culpable for the loss of her "beloved". And it's not like some weird foreign thing like Teal'c from Stargate. She's a gypsy, not an alien, and Gypsies have first and surnames too, as far as I know.

This is a deliberate attempt to poke at Hal's guilt. And it succeeds of course.

She's good too, she doesn't let up for a moment: Hal leaves her for a moment to save a guy from falling off a cliff: (from the same issue)



She forgives him again! What a saint!

Anyway, by the end of the issue, she's gone *home* with him:



I like O'Neil most of the time but damn if Hal in this scene doesn't sound as foreign as Kari does. What the hell is up with that? Proves that even "the Greats" should read their damn dialogue out loud to see if it sounds okay.

But that's a digression. Notice how she has to mention Guy's name right before she kisses him? Emphasizing her loss and Hal's role in it? Damn if she's not good.

No wonder she'll have him at the altar only a few issues later.

Where she's conveniently, *finally* realize that he's still alive. And apparently, despite being so bad a psychic as to not notice that he's been tortured for weeks/months, she can still mentally accompany Hal on his journey to save him...

Riiight. Bitch.