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gerrysherry · 5 months

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Xuan Coy Mahn’s journey from one shot guest star to Xavier alike to her own woman

Introducing….Karma!

Xuan Cao Mahn is introduced as Xi’an Coy Manh and is an untrained mutant telepath with the power of possession who works as a secretary to support her younger siblings after the murder of their parents. Born in South Vietnam, the children are orphaned escaping the Vietnam War. Her twin brother Tran, who left for America years earlier, uses his identical power to serve in their uncle’s gang, mind controlling people into submission. By contrast Xuan is happy to subsist on her meager paycheck and never use her power, which she sees as monstrous. That is until her uncle kidnaps his youngest niece and nephew in order to blackmail Xuan. With the help of Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, she rescues her kidnapped siblings. However, this comes at the price of stealing her twin’s mind and life force. There is something tragic about the scene, how she must kill one sibling to save others. Sensing this duality, Xuan chooses her codename - Karma. As she has now become the sum of good and evil. One could interpret this as the sum of her good and her brother’s evil, but I choose to see it as the duality and moral grey of both the twins instead. A great comic that shows Mutants outside of X-men comics and is fair for its day.

Note: Xi’an (pronounced Shan) isn’t a real Vietnamese name. I assume that Claremont wanted his good mutant character to have a name starting with ‘X’ to compare her to Xavier. When a Vietnamese-American writer finally got a chance to write about Karma he revised her name to the Vietnamese name Xuan (pronounced Swun). In the comics, it’s revealed Xuan’s name was always Xuan, she was just too nice to correct anyone. This is sadly plausible for her character.

Work-Study-Battle program with the New Mutants

Xuan joins the X-men team called the New Mutants. Xavier even gives her a stipend for a work study program so she can support her siblings while learning to control her powers.

She quickly becomes the New Mutants’ woman in the chair, with her teammate Danielle “Dani” Moonstar as field leader. The relationship of Xuan and Dani archetypically mirrors that of Xavier and Scott, with Xuan being calm and collected and forgiving and Dani wanting to show villains their greatest fear and be done with it. Dani has also been compared to (the then late) James Proudstar (thunderbird) and perhaps that comparison is more apt.

When Magneto takes over as headmaster he’s close to Xuan because of her mix of combat pragmatism but also his respect for her strong moral compass. And of course, while he survived World War Two (and the Holocaust) and she survived the VietNam war, they do occasionally connect on being war orphans. There is a famous panel where he brings a brooding and underdressed Xuan in from the freezing cold. When Xuan remarks her body has survived worse ‘during the war’, he grows pensive and reminds her that doesn’t mean she doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve good things now. It’s implied he’s had this conversation with many others and possibly with himself. Great character studies all around. But all good things come to an end as Karma’s siblings are kidnapped again and she goes off to search for them, again.

Finding her family and herself…..over and over again

Xuan fights the Shadow King and… falls under his thrall. Xuan’s other nemesis is Viper, the former Madame Hydra. So she’s shaping as a foil to Captain America and once again Xavier. But a Xavier who is untrained and one who fails in fighting off the Shadow King and must be rescued (which would make an interesting ‘Marvel what if’ comic).

Xuan often holds back but when she doesn’t we see how truly messed up her powerset is: She can mostly possess people or force them to tell her things, the more she possesses someone the more she becomes them and she can only do this to the weak willed. And she’s aware of her powers and calls them ‘monstrous’. She’s a hero with a super villain powerset and so she uses her powers sparingly and mostly to protect her biological siblings and her found family - the New Mutants.

Dark Phoenix shows us this true of more standard telepathy as well. Let’s look at Charles and Jean. What sets Charles apart is that through his wealth he can carve out a niche for himself that he actually likes and that makes society accept him and see him as harmless (the prejudice we hold about wheelchair users, seeing them as weak and harmless, might sadly add to that).

Jean struggles with just settling down and being wife and mother and being Phoenix. Both extremes are something she is caught between. Before she can reconcile this she dies again. Not that Xavier hasn’t died a lot but his death serves a different narrative meaning - the death of his dream.

But again look no further at constant kidnappings of her siblings to see that Xuan doesn’t have the privilege or safety that wealth and whiteness grant Xavier. Xuan has tried to leave the New Mutants and sticks around New Salem for her stipend and the protection that being close to a bunch of other well trained mutants offers her and her family.

However Xuan is often given leaves of absence or given her ‘woman in a chair’ role because otherwise she’d be overpowered and make the stories uninteresting. Hence she’s constantly trying to find her siblings, finding herself (and discovering she is a lesbian along the way) or fighting a supervillain who wants to use her possession powers for his (or occasionally her) own ends. Throughout this, Karma keeps her nice and forgiving attitude knowing there isn’t a villain she can’t forgive, redeem or shoot (or more hypocritically, mind control into submission when all else fails). So far, so good. An interesting foil to Xavier and fascinating character in her own right.

Even when she’s the student advisor and French teacher and librarian she gets some good scenes such as when she begs her teammates to help her or she’ll burn out (something Charles would never admit to). Another interesting moment comes when she comforts the young Anole, who feels like the only openly gay mutant at the school since (the openly gay) Northstar died. While Karma doesn’t come out to him, she assures him he’s not alone. This makes sense as this was an era when discussing one’s sexuality with a student was considered highly inappropriate. Moreover, despite being telepath with a teaching role and too many responsibilities, Karma doesn’t come off as ‘Xavier but female and Vietnamese’. She feels like her own woman.

Two steps forward, three steps back

This is changed by the more recent utopia and schism storylines where among other things, the death of Xavier has other characters take up his dream. While the series focuses on Scott and Wolverine (notably making the ‘by the book’ idealistic Scott more militant and the more trigger happy murderous Wolverine more merciful and pacifist) it also recasts Karma as more similar to Xavier, to the detriment of her character. It starts during a fight against a right wing anti mutant organization called simply ‘the right’ (sometimes Comics aren’t subtle), the writers had Xuan lose her left leg. Karma now joins a slew of characters with cool prosthetic limbs. Since robotic limbs look cool and can do COOL THINGS we don’t think of them as mobility aids the way we do with crutches, scooters or wheelchairs. The former along with canes are seen as ‘cool’ and ‘classy’ while the latter are seen as shorthand for ‘this character can’t walk’ or ‘a quick ways to make a character visually striking’. In fact the last one is my personal theory as to why Kirby drew Xavier as a wheelchair user in his X-men run. However, cybernetic prosthetics are mobility aids and quite expensive ones when your friends aren’t rich heirs, tech billionaires or high tech monarchs.

I’m not complaining in the slightest, the more disabled representation the better. Especially when her journey of acceptance is well written (although she’s very on the ‘Safe, Virtuous, Inspirational Disabled person’ side of things like Charles before her). While Karma has her allowed issues of mourning her new state ( likewise, Xavier angsts over his paralysis for a while in flashbacks before starting his school), she quickly bounces back. In a way, she spends more time mourning her body when the Shadow King forces her body to gain weight while possessing her (in an issue that did not age well) than when she loses her leg. Karma is back to her nice forgiving self with a flavor of ‘I can and will possess/shoot those who hurt my loved ones’. She’s not seen as tragic for being an amputee and once she gets over the prosthetic being heavy (remember her problem with weight) and ‘unsexy’ (Xuan’s words, not mine), she moves on.

She accepts her disability to such a level that when she gets resurrected post Krakoan age into a perfect version of her body she’s resurrected WITH her leg missing and calmly reattaches her old prosthetic. Apparently that’s how her mind/soul imagines her perfect body to be, although it’s never explained exactly. Also she does this to free her twin Tran from her mind so he can live again, because everything Xuan does is for her family, both blood and found.

Here’s where the foil stumbles. It’s around this time she takes in Face, a mutant child who can blast energy from his entire face and is left blind, deaf and devoid of taste and smell from a combination of his powers and the evil government right wing group who want to recreate weapon X. Xuan frees his mind from the brainwashing, helps him free everyone else in the facility and becomes his guardian. In fact, she becomes his interpreter and savior, going back to the rebuilt Xavier school, now run by Wolverine, to teach Face and help him re-adjust. While.

They have shed the foil to Xavier to essentially make her Xavier lite. Which, while frustrating, could have worked. An arc where she helps Face gain independence and pairs him off with some other telepaths to act as interpreter, would have worked. Depending on how they wanted to play it the team could have five members and all be foils to the first class. It sort of worked with Hope’s team in ‘Messiah Complex’. Face and Karma could have an arc where he grows to resent her and feels that she’s been using him. Considering Karma’s powerset is to literally use people like puppets, it’s easy to come to that conclusion. Alas that’s the last we see of her in that role. Frankly, I’m glad the arc ended but I would have liked to see more of the sensory deprived foil to Scott that is Face. Sadly, Face is never mentioned again.

Digging up old ghosts

We next see Karma in Astonishing X-men where she’s given some girls to have one night stands with, a pinup of her doing maintenance on her leg and and a friendship with fellow gay X-man Northstar. This is the story that lets Northstar marry his boyfriend on page, by the way.

Karma then loses control of her powers because of (bear with me) parasitic mind worms embedded there by Xuan’s evil half sister Dao. Turns out her father cheated, killed Dao’s mother and sold Dao to a sweatshop. Xuan knew this but since Dao had started a business empire, Xuan assumed that like Tran and their uncle, Dao would leave her alone. Like in her debut issue, Xuan is sorely mistaken.

Just when the new team and all of Madripoor and possibly also NYC are slated to be blown up by Dao’s wrath, Xuan regains her powers and steps in. Xuan is able to show her long lost step, er, half sister, that they’ve both suffered and that violence isn’t the answer. We have a splash page of their fates to compare and contrast. Dao is affected, hyperventilating and crying but we never show if Xuan’s psi attack of compassion sticks because their father (who is long thought to be dead but is somehow alive) shoots Dao in the head.

Ignore all the cliches and plot holes and can we see that story clearly harkens to X-men 12 where suddenly our leader has an evil step-brother that the team must fight. In order to make Karma be conflicted about family again they completely retcon her backstory to essentially make her fight Tran again. However, the triumph is that Xuan’s typically villain power is used for good and it works! Dao hesitates upon being shown compassion. And the reason this works is because Xuan and Dao have so much in common besides ethnicity, powerset and father.

But also when Xuan inherits Dao’s corporation and suddenly she’s rich. Xuan tells her siblings about their sister they never knew while eating sushi and taking off her leg. Again potential for Karma to be her own character and not just another Xavier-alike.

Sadly this arc goes nowhere and instead of codedly bringing back Tran with Dao, they literally bring back Tran as mind controlling Xuan. The terrible idea is given a terrible execution and is best forgotten. Comics writers would rather retread a good comic instead of moving the character arc along and if they have to resurrect dead family members to pull that off, they’ll think of any excuse to dig up old graves.

New life on other planets

Finally, the Krakoan age gives the New Mutants something to do, but it also give Xuan an actual girlfriend. Xuan agonizes that she might accidentally mind control her crush Gabrielle ‘Elle’ Diwa into liking her. (Can we just pause for a second to notice that the one love interest who Xavier is worried about manipulating with his telepathy is also named Gabrielle? And unlike Karma, he does so AFTER his relationship with Gabrielle Haller is over.)

Everyone thinks this is silly and Illyana Rasputina (her name in proper Russian) tells Karma to ‘Mutant up’ and ask Elle out. Xuan asks and Elle says yes. Even if their romance isn’t meant to be, it’s great strides for the character.

Xuan finally confronts the Shadow King who claims that he’s reformed. Karma says she forgives him only to move on but if he harms anyone else like Kinneys or Rathe she’ll show him the true meaning of her codename. This is the Karma I love!

I only hope this run will show her dealing with the newest fall of the mutant homeland with the same grace and optimism she handled Utopia. And this time by contrasting her to Xavier whose become quite the monster in recent stories. Let Xuan escape Xavier’s shadow like the First Class did. Let her marry her girlfriend (or even break up with her) instead of killing off Elle. I don’t want her to necessarily be happy but I want her to move on and define who she is for herself.

P. S.

(I use ‘Mutant’ when writing from the perspective of or about Magneto and ‘mutant’ for when writing from the perspective of or about Xavier. The basic idea is that Magnus sees Mutants as an ethnic group and Charles sees mutants as a subtype of human that could have assimilated if not for pesky anti-mutant rhetoric. Obviously the ‘you’re not really an ethnic group/minority’ is something I, as Jew , hear all the time. But it must especially grate for Magnus who lost his family because they as Jews were seen as an ethnic other to be killed.

Xuan is mostly apolitical on mutant rights herself, but since I posit here that she’s a foil to Xavier, I use terminology typical of Charles. Maybe that’s unfair to Xuan. Also hello new readers to me using capital ‘M’ Mutant. It’s a thing. )

#xuan cao manh #xi'an coy manh #xmen #x-men #x men #new mutants #danielle moonstar #charles xavier #cao mahn family #my writing #my essays

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