BIOGRAPHY - Page 2
The mind of Amahl Farouk survived, but only just. It took years on the astral plane for the shreds of his consciousness to knit itself back together, preserved only thanks to his connection to the 
Shadow King. Deprived of a body of his own, Farouk was now nothing more than a vengeful spirit lurking in the collective unconsciousness, seeking the means of returning. By the time he was ready, Charles Xavier had gone on to found the X-Men, and his second class of students, the New Mutants. In these younger students, Farouk found a vessel that suited him, the psychic Xuan Cao Manh, Karma. He entered her thoughts as the New Mutants were caught up in conflict with Viper and the Silver Samurai. A massive explosion separated the students, allowing Farouk to make off with Karma under his control. Xavier sensed a malevolent presence on the scene, but he did not recognize his old enemy’s mental signature. Although he suspected Karma was still alive and in danger, Charles allowed his students to believe her dead. [New Mutants (1st series) #6-7]
Farouk nestled into Karma’s mind and used her body to satisfy his own appetites. Over time, Xuan’s form became as corpulent and obese as Farouk’s old body, making her nearly unrecognizable even to her closest friends. Using his telepathy and general cunning, Farouk restarted his criminal empire with business holdings in Madripoor, Los Angeles and a bar called Pharaoh back in his beloved Cairo. In Los Angeles, he seized control of the underground fighting ring known as the Gladiators. Farouk secretly did away with its old master, Alexander Flynn, though he occasionally used a holographic projection of Flynn when convenient to hide his own involvement in the shadows.
Farouk had plans to strike further at Xavier through his students and paid for the Gladiators’ acquisition department to kidnap Magma and Sunspot of the New Mutants. Once they arrived back in Los Angeles, “Flynn” claimed he held children hostage to ensure the good behavior of his new Gladiators, forcing the mutants to fight for him in the ring. Soon the other New Mutants, along with Lila Cheney, Dazzler, Kitty Pryde and Rachel Summers, attempted to rescue the captives, although many of them were waylaid by the sudden arrival of the Beyonder on Earth. Using inhibition lowering drugs and the combination of his telepathy and Karma’s possession powers, Farouk pressed his Gladiators and their rescuers to fight one another. They fought off his control, and Karma was finally revealed as the true mastermind behind the Gladiators. With innocent lives under her control as collateral, Karma forced the New Mutants to let her go, leaving them with more questions than answers. [New Mutants (1st series) #29-31]
The New Mutants pursued Karma / Farouk to Madripoor, where they owned a mountainside chalet. Mirage believed she could lead the team against Farouk’s minions, but one-by-one most of her teammates were possessed by the evil one. Farouk’s unique brand of telepathy was more about corruption than domination – the New Mutants were re-written on an almost spiritual level, retaining their personalities while willingly serving Farouk and delighting in his depravity. The free New Mutants (Mirage, Warlock and Magik) received some aid from Storm, who knew Farouk for what he really was, but they still risked losing allies every time they fought their foe. Worse, Farouk used the New Mutants to massacre his own bodyguards, making the team fugitives in Madripoor.
Magik made a dangerous play where she allowed all her teammates, except Warlock, to be captured, feigning treachery and making Farouk believe she wanted to switch sides. Her and Warlock had natural psi-defenses, which allowed Warlock to pose as Magik and approach Farouk in Pharaoh. While Karma focused on breaking “Magik’s” mind, the real Illyana teleported the mind-slaves into Limbo and broke Farouk’s mental connection to them. The ruse worked and the combined assault by Storm and the New Mutants afterwards pressed Farouk into abandoning Karma’s body and hopping to a more convenient host. This gave Karma – the real Karma—an opportunity to stand up for herself, challenging Farouk to astral combat. He attempted to sow doubt in Xuan’s mind, making her believe she was naturally weak, but Karma reasserted her strength of will and fought back, intimidating Amahl Farouk enough that he fled back to the astral plane to fight again another day. [New Mutants (1st series) #32-34]
The next time the Shadow King reconstituted himself to reach the physical plane, his focus was revenge on Storm. Ororo was in a precarious position, separated from the X-Men, suffering from amnesia and reduced to her pre-teens by the crazed Nanny. She washed up on the levies of Cairo, Illinois during a major storm and was brought to Cairo Memorial Hospital for care. The man who found her was the local FBI chief, Inspector Jacob Reisz. The Shadow King found Reisz’s 
mind while searching for Storm, and the man’s heart apparently gave out under the strain of Farouk’s probing. The Shadow King was then able to inhabit Jacob Reisz as his new primary host, using his psychic energies to maintain and support Reisz’s meat to contain his essence. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #253]
Ororo no longer remembered her time with the X-Men but, even as a child, she still remembered the Evil One from Egypt and feared he was after her. Doctor Lian Shen of Cairo Memorial reported Ororo as a possible mutant to Jacob Reisz, and he arrived to take her into custody under the Mutant Registration Act. However, Ororo had already made her escape from the hospital bed. Reisz searched the building with Dr. Shen and Dr. Stuart Haydn, but could find no trace of Ororo. When Haydn started asking too many questions, the Shadow King adopted a new tactic. He gruesomely murdered Stuart in order to arrange a manhunt for the “psychotic killer mutant,” leaving her nowhere to run from him. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #255]
Farouk took possession of Lian Shen as well, corrupting her mind and personality so she would back up Jacob Reisz’s story as an eyewitness to Stuart’s murder by Ororo. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #257]
During his search for Storm, the Shadow King soon found a delightful new playground for himself. Charles Xavier’s telepathic son Legion interfaced with a new Cerebro unit on Muir Island, clumsily reaching out in a manner that caught Farouk’s attention. Muir Island was home to Moira MacTaggert and a collection of mutants and allies to the X-Men, trying to fortify themselves against recent attacks in the X-Men’s absence. Even more enticing for Farouk, the resident Polaris had new powers which fed her strength by amplifying and absorbing negative emotional energy around her. In other words, everyone on Muir Island was already attuned to their darker impulses, the aspect of the human soul which the Shadow King also fed upon and was deft at manipulating. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #259] After one simple meeting arranged with Moira MacTaggert, the Shadow King had a touchstone with Muir Island from that point onwards. [Gambit (6th series) #1]
