BIOGRAPHY - Page 3
As his dark psyche wormed its way into Muir Island and its inhabitants, the Shadow King continued his search for Storm. As Jacob Reisz, he learned of a series of “robin hood” burglaries along the Mississippi River, and recognized Ororo had reverted to her childhood habits. Reisz and Lian Shen predicted her next target and lay in wait at an illegal art collector’s mansion. Just as he unlocked the wickedness in Dr. Shen’s soul, the Shadow King released the savage beast in the minds of the collector, his wife and their two bodyguards, turning them into loyal but animalistic Hounds under his control.
When Storm arrived, Farouk was amused enough to play cat-and-mouse with her, allowing the Hounds to hunt her to ground, rather than seizing her mind immediately. Even the young Ororo had the skills and growing mutant powers to fight free, however, blasting Jacob Reisz’s body with lightning. The Shadow King’s power could restore his physical injuries, but the struggle gave Ororo time to flee. She ran into another thief named Gambit, who was also casing the mansion. Gambit’s mutant powers gave him a resistance to psychic interference and packed an explosive punch, another variable the over-confident Shadow King wasn’t ready for. Gambit called the police as they escaped from the mansion, forcing Jacob Reisz to remain behind and edit the memories of the authorities in order to retain his useful host body. Alone, Lian Shen and the Hounds were unable to catch the thieves and soon Storm and Gambit departed Cairo altogether. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #265-267]
Meanwhile, Farouk went to work rebuilding his criminal network, acting as a power broker on the world stage as he exchanged intelligence information for favors, building his collection of corrupted pawns. His activities drew the attention of Russian intelligence’s Alexi Vazhin, who shared his concerns with Valerie Cooper, national security advisor to the President on super-powered affairs. Unfortunately, Val’s own investigations brought her to the Shadow King’s attention, and he seized control of her mind. Farouk wanted revenge against Freedom Force’s Mystique and Destiny for their past encounters, and Val served as their government liaison. 
Hearing of Destiny’s death, the Shadow King ordered Val to assassinate Mystique. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #264-265] Mystique’s death was soon reported, sending ripples through the intelligence community and leaving Farouk satisfied he had a useful pawn in Val Cooper. As an added benefit, he arranged for Cooper to name the decorated FBI investigator Jacob Reisz as her new deputy. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #266,269]
The Shadow King continued to circle the X-Men in anticipation of his final revenge on Storm and Charles Xavier. After passing through the Siege Perilous, Rogue and her absorbed copy of Ms. Marvel’s personality were split into two bodies. They were separated further during a teleporting accident, with “Carol Danvers” winding up on Muir Island. Farouk corrupted this construct and sent her to attack Rogue. Only Magneto’s intervention saved Rogue and caused the death of her counterpart. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #269] After a struggle in Genosha, Marvel Girl tried to use Cerebro to reach out and find the other lost X-Men. The Shadow King was waiting in the astral plane, surpassing Cerebro’s outdated defenses to reach Jean Grey’s mind directly. He tried 
to corrupt her into his new Shadow Queen, but Psylocke intervened and severed their connection. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #273] The X-Men traveled out into space to finally bring Charles Xavier back to Earth after many months, and so the Shadow King began preparing his end game. He found Colossus, another of the scattered and amnesiac X-Men who went through the Siege Perilous, and corrupted the metal powerhouse to his will. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #277]
The Shadow King found a way to amplify his power using Polaris and her new ability. At the heart of Muir Island, Lorna Dane was transformed into a nexus of negative emotional energy, linking the physical plane and the astral plane like never before as a psychic magnifying point. Through her, the Shadow King fed off of the increased negative emotion Polaris brought about, transmitting it around the globe to cause a worldwide increase in hatred, aggression, selfishness… the shadow side of the human psyche from which the King drew his strength. Soon, when the entire world had succumbed to hatred, the Shadow King would reign supreme. A delicious side effect was the corruption of the entire astral plane in his image, creating psychometric interference for any other telepath attempting to exert their power through his domain.
With Legion’s psychic abilities as his touchstone and Polaris bound as the nexus, Muir Island became a focal point of the Shadow King’s power and his growing collection of wicked and corrupted pawns. Among the residents under his control were Moira MacTaggert, Multiple Man, Siryn, Guido, Amanda Sefton and even Rogue, who unwittingly delivered herself to her attacker after the destruction of “Carol Danvers.” Banshee had long suspected something was wrong with Moira but, by the time he brought the X-Men to investigate, the Muir Islanders were totally under the sway of Farouk. One by one, they were beaten and, in their weakened states, quickly corrupted by the Shadow King’s growing power, adding Wolverine, Psylocke, Gambit, Banshee and Jubilee to his menagerie. The only X-Men who remained free were Forge and (regrettably) Storm, whom Legion set on fire and cast into the sea.
As this victory came to him, the Shadow King finally confronted his old foe, Charles Xavier, for the first time since their encounter in Cairo all those years ago. Farouk had dispatched Colossus to accost Stevie Hunter in order to gain access to the ruined X-Mansion’s bunkers and the Cerebro unit which lay within. He chased Stevie to the mansion, where Charles was surveying his destroyed home. Farouk took the opportunity to taunt Xavier with the defeat of his X-Men, and eagerly prepared to murder his oldest foe with the hands of one of his own students. After a game of cat and mouse through the bunkers, Professor Xavier used the Danger Room as a distraction and lured Colossus into a trap. With his telepathic power, he finally purged the Shadow King’s influence from Piotr Rasputin. Back in the body of Jacob Reisz, the Shadow King was counseled by Lian Shen that only his power kept the FBI investigator’s corpse animated and useful. Each time his attention turned towards another temporary host, he risked losing Reisz permanently. No matter how useful Reisz was, a new host would be needed before long.
On Muir Island, Forge used guerilla tactics and successfully freed several X-Men from the Shadow King’s control, using a neurosynaptic buffer to block his influence. Meanwhile, Professor Xavier and Colossus liaised with Charles’s original students in X-Factor and an international task force authorized by the president to bring the Shadow King down. Unfortunately for them, their advisors were Val Cooper and Jacob Reisz, putting the fox directly inside the hen house. Using a psi-blocked S.H.I.E.L.D. submarine, X-Factor infiltrated Muir Island through a static zone created by Forge. Legion and the Muir Islanders ambushed X-Factor, just as 
“Jacob Reisz” leapt upon Charles Xavier in the submarine to strangle him with his own hands.
In his arrogance, the Shadow King had become over-confident and spread himself too thin. Farouk was shocked when his pawn “Val Cooper” revealed she wasn’t Cooper at all, but Mystique in disguise. Weeks earlier, the real Valerie resisted the Shadow King’s order to kill Mystique and turned the gun on herself instead. Mystique contacted Nick Fury and they arranged for S.H.I.E.L.D. ESP-ers to implant a surface personality in Mystique, letting her pose as Val Cooper so long as Farouk never scanned his puppet too deeply. When a post-hypnotic trigger went off, Mystique reverted to her true personality, free of the Shadow King, and summarily executed Jacob Reisz before he could do any more harm. By involuntarily losing his host, the Shadow King risked losing his connection to the physical plane altogether.
Only the nexus on Muir Island prevented the Shadow King from being lost in the astral seas without a host, like what happened after he was severed from Farouk or Karma. He chose Xavier’s son Legion as his new physical host, wielding impressive psionic might and hoping to 
reverse his change of fortune. Legion / Shadow King unleashed an unprecedented psychic blast that exploded Muir Island, the mental equivalent of a nuke. Charles Xavier personally came to Muir Island in search of his students, only to find his son and his greatest foe lording over the captive X-Factor and X-Men. The Shadow King maliciously confronted Xavier with the fact that his son liked what had been done to him and relished the opportunity to lash out at his absentee father. Still, it was another loose thread that struck at Shadow King, as the recuperated Storm resurfaced in time to blast an unsuspecting Legion with lightning.
Legion retreated deeper into Muir Island to recover, leaving his puppets to oppose the X-Teams. Half of his foes sought out Polaris to sever her from the nexus, while the other half guarded Charles Xavier’s body as he entered the astral plane to battle Farouk once more. The changes made to the astral plane and his accumulated hatred and negative energy made the Shadow King far stronger than their previous battle. Months earlier, Xavier regained the ability to walk thanks to a cloned body, but now the Shadow King shattered his legs, crippling his foe. As Jean Grey brought the other X-Men into the astral plane to fortify Xavier’s defenses, the Shadow King 
became distracted with his oldest foe. The other team made their way to the nexus and Forge innovated the use of Psylocke’s psychic knife to short-circuit the nexus and free Lorna Dane. The Shadow King was undone. His power base dissipated as separating from the nexus destroyed Legion’s mind in the backlash as well. The Shadow King’s essence washed away to the far shores of the astral plane, leaving him with no connection to the material world even if he ever managed to crawl his way back. [Muir Island Saga crossover]
[Note: Several retcons were applied to Amahl Farouk during this extended arc. First was the name Shadow King itself. It was actually used a month prior in Excalibur (1st series) #21, during Excalibur’s Cross-Time Caper bouncing through other realities. There, Farouk was the “Shadow King” puppeteering the Hellfire Club’s black and white royalty from behind the scenes. It was suddenly applied to Farouk in Earth-616 in UXM #265. Afterwards, everyone from Storm and Xavier to Nanny and Alexi Vazhin were using the title as if Amahl Farouk had been going by it for literally decades.
Second is the subtle introduction of the idea that the Shadow King was an entity above and beyond Amahl Farouk. Beginning in #265-266, the King began saying things like “a human lifetime” or “a human generation.” In #269, he specifically called out that his lifetime was longer than a human’s. In #279, he first refers to “Amahl Farouk” in the third person, and X-Factor #69 finally lays plain the idea that the Shadow King is a perhaps centuries old psychic entity totally independent of Farouk.]