The Bachelor: Shadow King Edition

Would you date this man?

The Shadow King has been portrayed in a variety of ways over the course of Chris Claremont's involvement with the character. Yet, all the King really wants is to love and be loved back. But finding romance can be tough, especially as he started out as a corpulent and sweaty, sitting in a Cairo cafe in Uncanny X-men #117...

The King as a fat, fez wearing Egyptian not really your type? Well, no worries... You see, Shadow King is actually a mental presence without a permanent physical body. He can hop bodies as he sees fit... So, if you like him to be a domineering woman, its his pleasure!

Well, of course she's a big girl... Hey, more to love, right?

Or maybe you prefer your dream man to be, well, a man.. A man who is less bloated,  slightly more caucasian and proves his manhood by growing a beard? Shadow King can manage that... And it makes all the ladies swoon and sob a little too...

Yet... all of these loves seem to involve a fair amount of mind control. Now, don't get me wrong, when you're a highly evolved disembodied telepathic presence, you'll find very little wrong with some old fashioned brain tampering, but... is that really how one finds Ms. Right?

No, of course not... And any ol' bachelor usually has his mind set on one particular gal. In this case, there's a certain mutant mama he's been gunning for all along...

Ah, no, no, sorry. Sure, Chris Claremont established that the Shadow King and Storm share a long history, going back to when she was a street urchin girl in Egypt... It seems her mentor Achmed Al Gibar promised the young Ororo to the King, but having a middle aged man force his will upon a minor just won't do.

In fact, its probably safe to say the Shadow King is spoken for. He knows who he really wants and it makes a lot of sense. He loves taking over minds, so who better to welcome as his Shadow Queen than Rogue, a woman who forcibly takes over another person's mind just by touching them.

Ahhh... Its the old story... Disembodied boy meets and mind controls power leeching girl and *BAM*, magic starts to happen.

Still, before anything substantial came out of this sensual seduction scene from Uncanny X-men # 278... Xavier and his X-men defeated the King.

But, wherever evil exists, the King lives...And he doesn't just forget about his love interest. This explains these scenes from X-treme X-Men annual 2001 when Rogue found herself face to face with the Shadow King again...

Ah yes... take the time to read this dialogue. Its Chris Claremont basically stating all that's been happening to Rogue over the past decade and a half is actually part of the Shadow King's plan. 

He wanted her by his side as his consort, the Shadow Queen, but she had to be properly groomed for that, so Shadow King influenced everyone around her... From the precog Destiny to Mystique, even Charles Xavier was unwittingly roped along so Rogue would become...

The Shadow Queen. Yet, Rogue declined his suggestion and broke free not long after that. So, if anyone out there wants to date a man who isn't too eager to let you escape his shadow... and will probably beat you severly if you dare eclipse his greatness... step right up.

... Ow Rihanna, what *ARE* you doing here, girl?

Shadow King's Shtick part 1: King Control

Shadow King.

If there's a single villain Chris Claremont created that served his penchant for mind control during his tenure as writer on Uncanny X-men, it has to be him.

Who is the King? A malevolent psychic entity with no physical form who delights in causing pain, trouble and mental suffering. His main foe is Charles Xavier, who he met many years ago when the Shadow King inhabited the form of Egyptian telepath Amahl Farouk. Check out this page from Uncanny X-men # 117.
 A young Charles meets Amahl in Cairo and senses his innate evil.

Charles and the Shadow King fight, the villain wants to destroy Xavier's mind and leave him an empty shell, ready to be corrupted by the King's evil presence. This is basically his entire shtick. But Shadow King severly underestimated Xavier's mental powers.

 Charles defeated Fahrouk, which forced the King to flee the Egyptian's body, basically condemning the entity to a life on the astral plane. This ensured the Shadow King's vendetta with Charles Xavier.

Yet, for the longest time (Uncanny X-men 117 was released in the late 70s) the villainy of the King wasn't much more than just another part of Xavier's origin... Just like Charles had been buddies with Magneto or had his legs crushed by the villain Lucifer... That was, until New Mutants came along and the King resurfaced again.


Xi'an had every right to be frightened. After a fight against Viper and the Silver Samurai she had mysteriously disappeared . She'd presumedly died in a big explosion only to resurface months later... Not quite herself... Well, lets just say there was more of her to love.


Yes, this is Karma, friends... The Shadow King had taken control of her mind, still in his 'Amahl Farouk' persona. Using Karma, the King finally had an outlet for his physical urges again. He liked to indulge himself with food and drink, causing Karma to become hugely obese (as Farouk had been). But don't be afraid, good always triumphs over evil in the end. No matter how obese...

Begone fattie, be goooooone... Ah, if only actual weight loss was that easy. Still, this wasn't the last time Amahl 'Shadow King' Farouk would plague the team.



A couple of years later, Shadow King was back. This time, the X-men had disbanded and the mutant inventor Forge was trying to locate the team. On the astral plane, he came face to face with the King (again posing as Farouk).

Forge had to fight for his very life, because the King planned to consume his mind and take over Forge's body... All in an attempt to once again gain entry to the physical world. Forge managed to beat off the Shadow King, but in the end the entity accessed our world through the corpse of one detective Reisz.

In that guise, he would plot one of most audacious (mind control) gambits yet. More on that next time!