ABSTRACT
Long ago I learned my lessons from the comic books. I learned that mutant bodies were powerful but vulnerable bodies; vulnerable because such powers made one a target for social control, prejudice, enmity, and evildoers seeking recruits, vulnerable because these energies threaten to overcome and eclipse the fragile vessel of the body. In 1980 the Marvel universe introduced the superhero team called the New Mutants, a multicultural crew of misfit teens led by an ascetically thin Vietnamese refugee Xi’an Coy Manh, the daughter of a South Vietnamese colonel with an evil twin (and also mutant) brother and a criminal ganglord uncle. Recruited by Professor Xavier for his New England School for Gifted Youngsters and called Karma in her X incarnation, she was a grim and conscientious figure, able to seize control of other people’s minds and bodies—a fortuitous alteration of her genetic code in the aftermath of her mother’s exposure to mutagenic chemical defoliants used during the war. The luckless subjects of her power would become extensions of her will and her senses—prosthetic mannequins speaking in her voice, attacking their fellows with their physical strength or armor where she had little of both. Though she could possess several subjects simultaneously, her control would be fragmented and sometimes awkward, distributed among the hosts. In many ways, it was a curious power that left her vulnerable to physical threat and harm. Her own flesh was not protected by any aspect of her power, and she was forced to find some discrete corner or shield herself with the bodies of her more physically powerful team members. And the experience drained her; often she would eventually collapse from the exhaustion of controlling another’s mind and body. If she remained in possession of her subject for too long, she would begin to leak into the subject, or the subject into her—and her distinct personality and memories would be melded with those of the host. Nine issues into the series Karma had been captured by an enemy called the Shadow King and disappeared, only to reappear herself possessed by his disembodied spirit and of monstrously large proportions, having lost both her psychic strength and bodily control.
