Originally Posted by
salarta
Okay, and this is where I have a huge problem.
Storm having powers that are similar but different is one thing. Storm being all godmode where suddenly she's inherently "better" than Lorna (or any character really, but I specifically care about Lorna) in every possible way is not. I don't care if certain writers wrote her that way. Any message they sent that says Lorna is inherently inferior to her is wrong. Same as it would be wrong for a writer to make Storm inherently inferior to Lorna.
Let's talk about psychic powers. I've talked many times elsewhere about how, based on the science of how electromagnetism works, Lorna could theoretically have pseudo-psychic powers. The brain has electromagnetic waves. From rudimentary real world experiments, memory can be influenced, messages can be sent and received, a person's mental state and emotions can be radically changed, their perception can be twisted, all through the electromagnetic field of a person's brain.
I'd like to see Lorna explore such pseudo-psychic uses, but I keep one detail in mind: they should be low-level, possibly even with some additional limitations to boot. Lorna's primary power set is electromagnetic manipulation. If she's suddenly doing all her stuff plus everything a psychic can do, then that's insulting for full-fledged psychic characters for whom those abilities are their main jam. The intent is not to make Polaris "better" than everyone else, it's to see her potential utilized in a way that's also fair to all the other characters out there. If Lorna asks a psychic how they know someone was murdered in an alley, and the psychic says "I can pick up their last moments," I'm not going to point to New X-Men #132 (where Lorna stored and played back the last moments of Genosha's millions dead) and say Lorna didn't need a psychic cause she can do it all herself. Lorna may be capable of doing such things to a weaker extent when needed (e.g. what happened on Genosha took a massive mental toll on her that a psychic likely would not experience), but she's not the expert. Nor should she be.
Which brings me to the part I skipped last time.
I'm aware that Claremont was really hopped up on Storm. If I'm looking exclusively at Storm - not considering any other characters, considering the cultural and social context of the times - then how heavily Claremont focused on her is objectively a good thing. She's perhaps the most famous character of color in comic books, and has provided meaningful representation for decades where comics have been written with an eye essentially for white men. This is how I went from at one time complaining that she got a third solo volume while other characters got no solo at all, to supporting Storm having a solo regularly. The cultural significance and need for representation.
But that's looking just at Storm by herself. The picture changes when I look at how Lorna was treated at the same time. Claremont pretty blatantly saw Lorna as "competition." He wanted to build Storm up, find ways to make her appear more powerful, and his process included making Lorna look bad and tearing her down. While Storm's out there being written as able to do everything Lorna can do but better, Lorna's getting "remade" by having her actual powers stolen from her and then replaced with generic ones that don't overlap with Storm's. While Storm's leading an X-Men team, Lorna's playing Stepford wife to Havok in some dishes-cleaning civilian life. While Storm's facing danger head-on, Lorna's suddenly terrified by Sabretooth's growls and crying for Havok to save her.
There's establishing a character and making the most of what they have. Then there's undermining other characters in service to artificially making one's fave look better. That's what Claremont did to Lorna. He wanted to make Storm the queen, and his idea of how to do that in Lorna's case was to ruin her reputation and take away her powers so Storm could take everything she had and stand "unopposed."
Storm should be interesting and viable enough in her own right to not need this kind of behavior. She should be celebrated because people love her personality, her history, and what she's capable of herself. She shouldn't need to take things away from other characters to build her up. A good writer can make her look powerful and cool without making another woman near her look weak, pathetic or worthless.