Lorna Dane: Polaris Appreciation 2020

[loke13]

I misspoke. She left the team and appeared at the very end of the twelfth issue but it is not confirmed that she will have an interesting role after the thirteenth issue

I mean that's true of every character after the 13th issue tho. And as for your comment on Bobby, Pyro, and Storm "doing absolutely nothing" in Marauders is hyperbole at best. They've had several standout moments throughout the 12 issues. They're not just wallpaper.

[juan678]

[juan678]

https://www.comicartfans.com/Gallery...?Piece=1648103

[juan678]

https://www.comicartfans.com/Gallery...?Piece=1661998

[jmc247]

Anyone else read X-Factor issue 3? I think I have to accept this book just isn’t what I expected and isn’t for me...

Here’s hoping Lorna lands in a new book after x of swords and new books get announced!

I bought issue #3 and its very 90s or at least parts of the era that I wasn't a fan of. Lorna's past few runs (other then Prisoner of X) tried too hard to resurrect the 90s with her and so far this one hasn't felt different in that regard. Issue #4 will provide a guidepost for the character going into the next year, but she really could use a motivation/agenda outside of detective work. I have liked of late the Cuckoos appearances on X-Men, Cable, and other titles here and there. Its good to have an agenda even if we don't know what it is with them.

[Sutekh]

I had a random thought a little earlier.

What if there were originally plans for Lorna to be in X-Men: Empyre, but they would’ve been horribly insulting, and Marvel decided it was better to cut her there than to do something that really hurts perception of the company?

I think there just wasn't room in that mini to deal with anything like Lorna's past with Genosha in a meaningful / respectful / mindful manner, and so it was deemed best to keep her away from it, rather than do a crappy dismissive job of it.

Any writer who might have been thinking it would be a great vehicle to advance her characterization might have been warned up-front, "Yeah, we're gonna need to devote a bunch of pages to Hordeculture snark, plants vs. zombies, and some dude named Explodey Boy having a heart-to-heart with his zombie, can you squeeze this Lorna development you want into panel six on page fourteen of book three?" And, wisely, said, "Yeah, no, I'll save Lorna for when I have space to actually do it right, and don't have to service a bunch of event nonsense."

In-story, it's easy enough to rationalize that Lorna has *ZERO* desire to go back to that place-of-skads-of-dead-people-screaming-in-her-soul, given her history and trauma surrounding the place, and when the X-peeps mention looking for volunteers for a mission to check out some weirdness on Genosha, her hand shot up and she said, "Not it!" and pushed Ilyanna forward to jump on that grenade.

[salarta]

I think there just wasn't room in that mini to deal with anything like Lorna's past with Genosha in a meaningful / respectful / mindful manner, and so it was deemed best to keep her away from it, rather than do a crappy dismissive job of it.

Any writer who might have been thinking it would be a great vehicle to advance her characterization might have been warned up-front, "Yeah, we're gonna need to devote a bunch of pages to Hordeculture snark, plants vs. zombies, and some dude named Explodey Boy having a heart-to-heart with his zombie, can you squeeze this Lorna development you want into panel six on page fourteen of book three?" And, wisely, said, "Yeah, no, I'll save Lorna for when I have space to actually do it right, and don't have to service a bunch of event nonsense."

In-story, it's easy enough to rationalize that Lorna has *ZERO* desire to go back to that place-of-skads-of-dead-people-screaming-in-her-soul, given her history and trauma surrounding the place, and when the X-peeps mention looking for volunteers for a mission to check out some weirdness on Genosha, her hand shot up and she said, "Not it!" and pushed Ilyanna forward to jump on that grenade.

I can see good reason for not addressing Lorna's past with Genosha in Empyre... if there were plans to address it elsewhere in a better, more notable fashion. And for all I know, maybe there are such plans. But if there are, Marvel hasn't shared them.

I can't go by information I don't know. I can only go by information we've been given, information I can dig up or that gets sent to me, and Marvel's pattern of past behavior. All of those elements strongly suggest that Marvel has no plans to address Lorna's Genosha history any time soon. There's been no indication of plans, that history has been ignored by Marvel for over 15 years now, and Marvel has been allowing other characters like Jean who weren't there for the genocide to be involved with Genosha and speak on it while they're doing nothing for Lorna. Pair that with Marvel's general pattern of treating her poorly, and I have to follow the expectation that Marvel has no plans to acknowledge that history for her. At least not in any meaningful, respectful way.

As far as in story, I have some very strong thoughts. What you say would be true if Lorna was a real person. But as a fictional character, trauma of the scale Lorna experienced is something that is expected to have an intense, lasting impact. It's something we as readers expect to see regularly so that we may understand where the character comes from and empathize with them. We expect to see those experiences serve as a core driving force for who they have become.

Outside of X-Men, Batman's parents being murdered as a child, and Uncle Ben getting killed for Spider-Man, are pivotal traumatic points in their lives that shaped who they are. Within X-Men, Wolverine's trauma with Weapon X continues to come up. Magneto's trauma with the Holocaust persists and regularly comes up for him in multiple forms of media. Magneto and Spider-Man especially have their traumas as core defining features to who they have become as people and what they do with their lives and powers.

Marvel has no problem whatsoever with acknowledging these traumas with these men. Why is it that they absolutely refuse to acknowledge Lorna's trauma from Genosha, understand her character from it, and work with it? Why is it that they aren't beholden to treating Magneto like a mustache-twirly villain like in his original appearances, but for Lorna they would rather act like Genosha never happened to her and she has no idea what it even is?

I could go into a longer post about how Marvel seems to generally write men (Magneto, Wolverine, Spider-Man, etc) as powerful victims and women (Jean Grey, Scarlet Witch, etc) as powerful failures. But I'll refrain for now.

But secondly, I'd like to speak from a hypothetical scenario where it would be fine to handle trauma in fiction the same way we handle trauma in real life. If that was the case, then why didn't Marvel provide a scene in Empyre like the one you describe and find a way in the story to explain why she doesn't want to go to Genosha? Doing at least that much would have shown that Marvel hasn't forgotten what happened to her, and would have allowed readers to know it did. Especially those readers who might not know of Lorna's Genosha history but wonder why the daughter of Magneto and former half-sister of Scarlet Witch isn't joining in the mission.

If Marvel has other, greater plans than Empyre for addressing what happened to her on Genosha that do her justice, then I can respect why they didn't include her on Empyre. And when I say greater plans, I don't mean a single issue or story arc of X-Factor for Marvel to then go off and ignore it again for another 15 years. That would have been fine to me a decade ago. After fifteen years of nothing, it needs a much higher platform than X-Factor, like the one Empyre seemingly would have provided. Maybe they can do a oneshot or mini of all the characters that were affected by Genosha (Lorna, Emma, Toad, etc) and address it there, if they need a book that doesn't give a dedicated spotlight for Lorna because they're so dead set on the idea of her not being worth anything. But not a repeat of how they told Lorna's origin story in X-Factor #243 (back in 2012) after 44 years with absolutely no promotion of the book and haven't acknowledged or used it since. It needs to be more than that.

[salarta]

I've been overdue for posting several pieces of fanart that I don't think have been posted here yet. Now's the time.



Shared by 4261NN. Not sure who the artist is. Maybe someone will recognize the artist signature.



A big image of less appreciated X-Men characters by a lot of different artists collaborating, but I got it from a tweet by one of the artists, Megan Huang.



This one's by ahzrukhals

[juan678]

today cover with AoA lorna

[Soulsword323]

AoA Lorna was bad. Not even a cool redesign.

[Phoenixx9]

I so love this cover!

[salarta]

So this is something that I think is worthy of a post.

When Lorna was added to Marvel Puzzle Quest recently, while I overall liked her getting added (I haven't obtained her, but I'm still playing) and most of what was done with her, I complained a little about how she's a 4 star while Havok's a 5 star. Tonight, I realized that the only versions of Wanda and Pietro in the game are 3 star characters. Knowing that makes me more accepting of her as a 4 star character instead of 5 star.

I'm used to gacha games like Fate GO and Granblue Fantasy where the star ranking is meant to denote character worth to some extent. Have a lower ranking? Less valuable, less likely to be used. That context combined with Marvel historically treating Lorna bad around Havok, and having a clear double standard up to right this moment where they treat him much better than they're willing to treat her, gave me an overall impression that the 4 star ranking put her "beneath" Havok. Seeing that Wanda and Pietro have lower stars than Lorna with no higher star variants despite Marvel itself clearly viewing the two more highly made me realize star ranking doesn't mean as much with Puzzle Quest as those other games.

[salarta]

One I forgot to post (or someone else posted before and I forgot they did it), and a new one, both by mutantapologist.




There's a Magneto one on the second post too but I'm too lazy to get that up and over on the Magnus family thread.

[salarta]

A little detour of a post.

Pages from when Lorna had lost her powers as a part of Wanda's "No More Mutants" declaration. Post-Genoshan genocide.

[salarta]

Also, a few relevant panels from an issue that did well by Lorna in the 90s.