Lorna Dane: Polaris Appreciation 2021

[Soulsword323]

Looks even better in color. Adore those green magnetic lines coming off Polaris as she flies in. Cool touch.

[juan678]

[Angleman70]

Looks even better in color. Adore those green magnetic lines coming off Polaris as she flies in. Cool touch.

Just really digging this look on her! Her front and center to prove herself! Art is great, Lorna is going to shine!

[juan678]

https://www.cbr.com/x-men-polaris-ma...r-turned-evil/

[Vishop]

X-Factor 10 by Miguel Mercado

A well rendered variant cover I would say.

In terms of the topic being discussed I always try to be fair and even handed with writers discussing what I think is working and what isn't. I also fully appreciate Lorna is a harder character to capture then most other x-women. Many writers like to go back to iconic runs for source material on characters. That tact doesn't work too well with Lorna as a fair bit of her best stuff can be found on less then critically acclaimed runs.

This looks good. I don't see whats bad with this holo dress.

[juan678]

fan art




https://twitter.com/RPHutch1975/stat...215172/photo/1

[salarta]

This looks good. I don't see whats bad with this holo dress.

Again, it would be fine if it was just a random person under real world design constraints or Lorna attending a random lower key fancy event, it's bad as something for Lorna to wear at what's supposed to be the most important fancy mutant event of the Marvel universe. It doesn't represent her identity at all, and at its default it doesn't use her powers either.

The team page in X-Men was a huge improvement that salvaged a lot of it, because 1) it incorporated her powers, and 2) her hair's up and flowing.

https://www.cbr.com/x-men-polaris-ma...r-turned-evil/

While she's been a villain many times, unfortunately the worst of those times have been "oh no she's been brainwashed/mind controlled/possessed I guess she'll just have to be beaten up and humiliated" in nature. For those cases, the article presents the initial "she's a villain" pages but not the wrap-up pages which showcase how badly those stories really treated her. Also as has been said before, Lorna only being able to serve as a threat when brainwashed/mind controlled/possessed and otherwise being depicted horribly makes it look like she's a bad character who can only be interesting when used by other, "better" character.

One comparison I've made before is the Igraine episode of the Camelot Starz series. It's an episode where Morgan Pendragon takes on Igraine's form to infiltrate Camelot while the actual Igraine is held prisoner at her castle. In that episode dedicated specifically to Igraine, we see all the great qualities of a character that's typically undervalued. With Morgan's pretending, we see the kind of influence Igraine has in Camelot that Morgan was able to easily exploit (her hidden power), and how deeply she touched others. It even almost turned Morgan from evil to good indirectly by Morgan playing out Igraine's positive effect on a child, in spite of Morgan deeply hating Igraine. Morgan was mostly "being" Igraine, not simply wearing her face but remaining herself. Meanwhile, we saw the real Igraine fight to escape the castle she was in - she didn't passively accept it and simply cry in a corner hoping someone would help her.

It's not brainwashing/mind control/possession, but it's similar in that you have someone using the body of a different character to exploit their capabilities while the actual character is held captive. And what the Igraine episode did right was emphasize how all the things Morgan exploited were common for Igraine, while actual Igraine still had her own agency and voice and did things with it that we were able to directly see.

All of this to say, while I like well done mind control stories, I don't think they should be pursued any time soon with Lorna. Especially not with the current book. Both from a Lorna fan standpoint and from a what's good for the book standpoint. For Lorna, she needs a lot of focus on who she is for herself - not on how she's been misused to benefit other characters. For the book itself, having Lorna brainwashed/mind controlled/possessed will turn readers off fast. It's been done too many times. She was also just mind controlled on X-Factor, which makes a second go at it far too recent. Readers would see that and think "Oh it's another story with Lorna mind controlled, yawn, I guess they're running out of ideas."

[jmc247]

https://www.cbr.com/x-men-polaris-ma...r-turned-evil/

Thanks for the link juan.

Possession is the dog ate my homework of creating tension between the X-Men and Lorna. Runs that rely on it to create issues between Lorna and the X-Men haven't done their back work to figure out how she can have issues with the X-Men to the level they come to blows without making her someone else's slave.

Lorna's main betrayal of the X-Men or one can say mutants in general over the years has been not being there when she was most needed. The last time being when mutants were facing extinction for a decade she decided to divorce herself from anything mutant related for a very long time.

Lorna's first storyline was more a not very well executed divided loyalties tale. Genosha for her was a better turn against Xavier's dream arc, but it suffered for a number of reasons including playing out over too many runs with not enough agreement on the goal of the story and not culminating in a major X-Men event that pitted her against her friends.

[juan678]

Tyler Kirkham's #Xmen #1 cover for Unknown Comics

[kcekada]

For someone who really loves the 60s green Marvel Girl mini-skirt, I'm not fond of Lorna in a skirt. The new outfit isn't bad, but I wish it had tights instead of a skirt.

I'm also kinda missing the headpiece -- even though one of my favorite outfits of Lorna's was the purple Shi-ar outfit -- but that had a huge collar that made up for the absence of the headpiece.

It's been ages since I read an X-Men comic -- probably the mini-series that resurrected Jean, but I think I will try this one -- maybe just digitally. The colors really look great here on the screen.

[LordAllMIghty]

fan art




https://twitter.com/RPHutch1975/stat...215172/photo/1

This looks 100% better than the concept artwork did.

[juan678]

new cover variant Greg Horn

[rhaenylis]

According to the New Mutants group chat (see New Mutants #19), Rahne voted for Lorna

[Soulsword323]

According to the New Mutants group chat (see New Mutants #19), Rahne voted for Lorna

That's really cute.

I love how far those two have come. The only time I like Lorna acting like a big sister is with Rahne.

[juan678]

Duggan has a comments on this topic.



https://twitter.com/GerryDuggan/stat...50279415885824

Thanks jmc247