It’s finally hit me what the current New Mutants series is missing - about 400 pounds!
In all seriousness, Karma has a thirty-year track record as being the perennially overlooked New Mutant. Way back in 1982 when Bob Mcleod was designing her look for the original series, Chris Claremont told him not to bother, as he’d be killing her off within the first few issues. Why that didn’t happen has never been officially explained, but all evidence suggests that he simply forgot. If that’s not a neglected character, I don’t know what is!
You’d think that she could have some romantic drama going on, but the openly gay Shan has never had a romance play out in the comics, and if you think she’s gonna start engaging in hot girl-on-girl action now, with Disney calling the shots, you’re huffing Steam Boat fumes.
But aside from the long-resolved issues with her family, the one time that Karma was brought to the forefront (presumably on a flatbed truck) was when she was possessed by the morbidly obese Shadow King, who continued his gluttonous lifestyle while inhabiting her, then left her high and dry. And fat.
For what may have seemed at first glance a superficial plot twist, Fat Karma made for a surprisingly sympathetic storyline. The former blank-slate Shan had suffered a fate that resonated deeply with readers.
And check out those gams - could Arthur Adams bring those drumsticks to horrifically realistic life on the page, or what?
Whether or not we admit it to ourselves or others, I suspect that every man and woman, no matter how heavy, thin, or super-hot physically fit, has struggled through a long dark night of the soul, fighting the urge to just stop trying, shut out the world and just curl up with a trough of Ben & Jerry’s for the rest of our lives.
Now the New Mutants are back in their own title, and Shan is once again - forgive me - vanilla. Let’s put some meat on those bones! It’ll make for great reading, the struggle to lose the weight will help to flesh her out (sorry) as a character (and convince Cyclops to buy a Wii Fit for Utopia), and when it’s all over we’ll all be relieved to see a thin, sexy Karma - without the extra folds, but with a weightier personality!
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