Polaris: The Mistress of Magnetism Appreciation 2022

[Lucky99]

I know I’m the only one but I think Polaris and Exodus would make a great couple. Their dynamic and relationship would be interesting to see. It would also break the image people have of always putting her with Havok. I’d need some fixing of Exodus though since I’m really not into what’s being done with him in Immortal X-Men #2

The hellfire design above has nice art but I really wish the gifted never got people into thinking Lorna has a pale, goth girl aesthetic. I prefer her less conservative but fun and athletic style.

I was happy to see Polaris included in that game announcement! It’ll probably be another mobile game but at least she’s in it!

I think they should shock the fans and put Jean with Princess Lorna. With Exodus, she may end up having to slap him around if he goes one trend too far. But a conversation or them needling each other is a easy read.

[LoganAlpha30X33]

I’m honestly more annoyed that it shows Lorna around Havok yet again than that Lorna died, though Lorna somehow dying with ease despite this enemy being metal is a really stupid writing move. What is this, the 80s?

I wonder if that was less Marvel trying to put them together or something along those lines and more that in that suit Alex is just an easily recognizable character...

[UncannyLZ]

I think they should shock the fans and put Jean with Princess Lorna. With Exodus, she may end up having to slap him around if he goes one trend too far. But a conversation or them needling each other is a easy read.

There are way more interesting women for Lorna to be with than Jean Grey lol. Exodus is house of M adjacent so there would be some interesting stories to come from him and Lorna. Their personalities and motivations would be interesting to see together as well

The solicit for X-Men #14 sounds like there will be a completely new roster. I really need to know where Polaris will be next after her time on X-Men ends!

[jmc247]

Who knows where she will be next. My hope is that what she does next is something specifically focused on mutants and mutant politics something Lorna has been divorced from for a long time. Lorna outside the comics continued to accrue new fans various ways.

#1 The Gifted continues to be watched for the first time by people around the world that are learning about Polaris for the first time. BTW Emma Dumont will be at her first in person appearance at a comic con since 2019 in a little over two weeks.



#2 Wolverine and the X-Men continues to be rewatched by a new generation of readers.



#3 The House of M and it’s universe has become both a cult classic and a mainstream hit among MCU fans. The main series and it’s tie ins has really helped establish the warrior princess/queen view of the character and cemented what the family is to a new generation of fans.

[salarta]

There are way more interesting women for Lorna to be with than Jean Grey lol. Exodus is house of M adjacent so there would be some interesting stories to come from him and Lorna. Their personalities and motivations would be interesting to see together as well

The solicit for X-Men #14 sounds like there will be a completely new roster. I really need to know where Polaris will be next after her time on X-Men ends!

Whereas I see much more interesting stories and dynamics coming out of Lorna in a relationship with Jean than in Lorna with Exodus.

The reality here is that Lorna with virtually anyone could be interesting in the hands of a good writer taking a good approach with enough support from Marvel. It's not a question of whether a relationship would be interesting, but what possibilities could come out of the relationship and what Marvel is likely to do with it.

There are a lot of things I can say in this regard. I could dig into every layer and break it down. But I don't think it's necessary at the moment. What I will say is that in a binary choice between Lorna and Jean or Lorna and Exodus, I think there's much more chance of Lorna being treated right with Jean than with Exodus. Lorna hasn't been in a relationship with another woman yet. Her treatment around other women is a mixed bag; sometimes treated poorly, sometimes treated well. The same can't be said for treatment of Lorna around men. Marvel tends to follow the Havok template whenever they decide to give her any sufficient time around a man. We saw the attitude of "Lorna needs to be subordinate to the man and serve as a supporting character for his needs" with Havok, then outside of that we saw it applied to Gambit (ANXF #3-6) and Magneto (X-Men Blue). Based on that, I sincerely think if Marvel had Lorna in a relationship with Exodus, it would just result in Exodus being another Havok in Lorna's life. He'd get reframed as heir apparent to Magneto's dream instead of Lorna, and Lorna would be turned into his supporting character princess girlfriend that gives Exodus more legitimacy in the same vein as political marriages among royalty. There's a reason Exodus was put on the Council in affiliation with Magneto while Lorna wasn't.

But in reality, as much as I've supported Lorna and Jean as a couple, I've increasingly sided more with people who think she shouldn't be dating anyone at all. Because Marvel keeps refusing to do all the things they need to do with Lorna that would put her into a position where dating another character could be a way of exploring her opportunities and tapping into her full potential instead of taking things away.

[Lucky99]

There are way more interesting women for Lorna to be with than Jean Grey lol. Exodus is house of M adjacent so there would be some interesting stories to come from him and Lorna. Their personalities and motivations would be interesting to see together as well

The solicit for X-Men #14 sounds like there will be a completely new roster. I really need to know where Polaris will be next after her time on X-Men ends!

She got voted in...logic wise, she should be the last member to leave the book unless it was for a solo or a House of M book.

[Lucky99]

Whereas I see much more interesting stories and dynamics coming out of Lorna in a relationship with Jean than in Lorna with Exodus.

The reality here is that Lorna with virtually anyone could be interesting in the hands of a good writer taking a good approach with enough support from Marvel. It's not a question of whether a relationship would be interesting, but what possibilities could come out of the relationship and what Marvel is likely to do with it.

There are a lot of things I can say in this regard. I could dig into every layer and break it down. But I don't think it's necessary at the moment. What I will say is that in a binary choice between Lorna and Jean or Lorna and Exodus, I think there's much more chance of Lorna being treated right with Jean than with Exodus. Lorna hasn't been in a relationship with another woman yet. Her treatment around other women is a mixed bag; sometimes treated poorly, sometimes treated well. The same can't be said for treatment of Lorna around men. Marvel tends to follow the Havok template whenever they decide to give her any sufficient time around a man. We saw the attitude of "Lorna needs to be subordinate to the man and serve as a supporting character for his needs" with Havok, then outside of that we saw it applied to Gambit (ANXF #3-6) and Magneto (X-Men Blue). Based on that, I sincerely think if Marvel had Lorna in a relationship with Exodus, it would just result in Exodus being another Havok in Lorna's life. He'd get reframed as heir apparent to Magneto's dream instead of Lorna, and Lorna would be turned into his supporting character princess girlfriend that gives Exodus more legitimacy in the same vein as political marriages among royalty. There's a reason Exodus was put on the Council in affiliation with Magneto while Lorna wasn't.

But in reality, as much as I've supported Lorna and Jean as a couple, I've increasingly sided more with people who think she shouldn't be dating anyone at all. Because Marvel keeps refusing to do all the things they need to do with Lorna that would put her into a position where dating another character could be a way of exploring her opportunities and tapping into her full potential instead of taking things away.

I don't think they can get away with Exodus strong arming someone as impulsive as Lorna. And it seems to me...something is up with Exodus and Hope Summers. Maybe he thinks highly of her for being the Messiah or they might curveball it and do something...different. She liked his cheerleading at the end of Immortal this week. That might be a clue.

Lorna and Jean...the thing is..I've never seen Lorna mad at Jean for anything. Even when she was deadlier than usual after the wedding debacle, Jean still wasn't too loud or aggressive with her.

[jmc247]

I don't think they can get away with Exodus strong arming someone as impulsive as Lorna. And it seems to me...something is up with Exodus and Hope Summers. Maybe he thinks highly of her for being the Messiah or they might curveball it and do something...different. She liked his cheerleading at the end of Immortal this week. That might be a clue.

Lorna and Jean...the thing is..I've never seen Lorna mad at Jean for anything. Even when she was deadlier than usual after the wedding debacle, Jean still wasn't too loud or aggressive with her.

You are right in terms of Lorna never being aggressive with Jean and never even wanting to argue with her. Frankly it’s a missed boat because no I don’t think Lorna is going to sleep with Jean or Exodus, but in the case of Jean they have underplayed the potential meat that can be had from issues and conflicts between them. Magneto and Xavier are an enormously popular relationship no on panel kissing needed.

Fans like relationships with well written fire between them which is why Jean and Emma is popular and Lorna and Jean as friends is an embryonic ideas most fans don’t care about. Though I have to highlight the well written conflict idea, because OOC and forced conflict as we saw of late with Magneto and Lorna is damaging.

Lorna has long suffered from a lack of interesting relationships and from having a father and sister who are vastly more popular with far better stories and ideas for their characters under their belt while writers over the past decade for Lorna other then Duggan were obsessed with going back to Lorna's worst writer for ideas and keep centering on generic heroine who has to fight possession/victimization by evil. I have said it before and I will say it again. These ideas are the arm pit of pathos because there is no debate to be had the person being possessed is the victim and has no moral blame for their actions.

The Dark Phoenix Saga was popular because it was a much debated and complex corruption story not a possession story. It was so complex in fact it doesn't translate well to film as two big budget Dark Phoenix stories demonstrated.

[salarta]

I feel the need to point out that this article posted by CBR is wrong. It falsely claims Lorna wasn't present for the Genoshan genocide.

Polaris joined Magneto on Genosha for a time, but she left before the Sentinel attack that killed nearly every mutant in the fledgling mutant nation.

This isn't just wrong, it's really wrong. Her whole Austen run was heavily influenced by her PTSD as a result of the genocide. We saw a whole issue dedicated to a focus on Lorna in the aftermath of the genocide. We later saw pages depicting her actual in-the-moment experience of that genocide when Xavier went into her mind during Austen's run.




If you're going to write about Lorna and Genosha, you need to know what actually happened to her. Even the Marvel wiki page for her explicitly states what happened, and I could have almost understood making this mistake if it was someone lazily glancing at the Marvel wiki and it had the wrong information. As it is, the best case scenario is this writer made an assumption and ran with it because they didn't care enough to check if their assumption was true.

As it is, the fact they got Lorna's history here completely wrong means I can't take anything they write seriously. Because who knows what else they got wrong.

[Gray Lensman]

Take it from a Cyclops fan, Salarta. CBR's character articles aspire to be worthless, but they have a long climb before they can reach such a lofty perch. Major errors, bias overuling well known facts, and a complete lack of anything even approaching research are the norms.

[jmc247]

I feel the need to point out that this article posted by CBR is wrong. It falsely claims Lorna wasn't present for the Genoshan genocide.

Wow, I would have expected that sort of error from someone on twitter who read Lorna in two or three issues in the early 2000s.

Ridiculous.

[kcekada]

The original golden Lorna Headdress sometimes seemed to go towards the back of her head on top if I remember correctly.

Was definitely drawn as more of a helmet by Don Heck (issue 52). When she next appeared in costume ins 56, Neal Adams drew her and came up with the definitive classic Lorna look.

[Phoenixx9]

Was definitely drawn as more of a helmet by Don Heck (issue 52). When she next appeared in costume ins 56, Neal Adams drew her and came up with the definitive classic Lorna look.

Exactly!

While I did like the green and gold and the original design, I also like the classic look as well as the green teal accents too.

[jmc247]

Exactly!

While I did like the green and gold and the original design, I also like the classic look as well as the green teal accents too.

The original look was what I at times call a half helmet.



The second look in her first stint on the X-Men also went half way around the head. How it is depicted varies a bit.



The best artistically rendered versions have it come down to the bottom of the face.



Anyway Marvel Strike Force has a cheaper way to pick up Lorna currently up for now.

https://i.postimg.cc/Wb7VkpmB/14766-...F6-FEBDBBA.jpg

[Phoenixx9]

The original look was what I at times call a half helmet.



The second look in her first stint on the X-Men also went half way around the head. How it is depicted varies a bit.



The best artistically rendered versions have it come down to the bottom of the face.

I love the green and gold look on Lorna, including golden arm bands and lacings for her boots. It did not clash at all with Jean's green and yellow Marvel Girl costume (different hues of green & yellow/gold).

Also, Lorna's original gold tiara was practical in really holding her hair back out of her face and gave her a regal appearance.

I like the green headdress from New X-Men books when the New X-Men joined and also the Proteus story. Lorna really looked great with that design and coloring.