Polaris: The Mistress of Magnetism Appreciation 2022

[WallStreeter]

The card for Lorna in X-Men Age of Heroes out next March. Also, Marvel Puzzle Quest has a free Polaris cover for those who log in tomorrow.



What Lorna really needs at a macro level is her mutant rights views and history there dealt with something we haven’t seen since 2004.



Agreed, though I felt she did better with her in Deadpool.

We already know he history. Mutants rights at a time when there is something of a huge backlash against social Justice warriors is probably not a good idea. She would need what any character needs. A writer who is interested in writing her and putting her into good situations.

Duggan’s three main characters were Synch, Jean, and Cyclops. We can see how is work Jean lead into Jean being a central character in AXE.

Someone suggested that they should have Polaris head the Everforge domain. That would work if Excalibur got a writer who could get good enough sales.

Maybe going to Arrako might be good for her.

I don’t see Polaris wanting to be on the quiet council so inmortal XMen is not for her. Then again I take back. Storm doesn’t do much in the Quiet Council. Maybe she can resign and suggest Polaris replace her. And Polaris can reluctantly step into the role.

[salarta]

https://www.cbr.com/most-muscular-women-marvel-comics/

That entry comes across to me as someone that doesn't really know much about Lorna.

We already know he history. Mutants rights at a time when there is something of a huge backlash against social Justice warriors is probably not a good idea.

... What?

No really. That makes zero sense. The "SJWs" term is really just regressive tools that don't like positive change, hoping that throwing ignorant labels around will let them get their way. But even if there was a "backlash" like you claim, what you just said is like saying a Holocaust survivor shouldn't fight for the rights of their own people because Nazis wouldn't like it.


Ultimately, if Marvel and the X-Men office knew what the hell they were doing, they would pay attention to what actually resonates and work with it instead of trying to force "Havok's girlfriend from 90s X-Factor" nostalgic bullshit on her. I am quite sincerely nearly at my limit. It's becoming increasingly clear there's no point in trying to be nice. While there's a decent chance Kelly Thompson will do well with Lorna (based on when she wrote Lorna on Deadpool), that is not the place Lorna should be right now. Any other character with Lorna's history and connections would be front and center making huge waves in the X-Men franchise after what's happened in Judgment Day. Literally the ONLY reason she's not is because the X-Men office is run by people who flat out don't respect the fictional universe they're in charge of beyond whatever personal fanboy whims and biases they have flitting through their heads, and it's not a shocker to me that top talent in the industry would rather work on other franchises than X-Men with the way it's being run.

I'm well aware of what they've been trying to do in the past few months. One more step in that vein and gloves come off.

[jmc247]

We already know he history. Mutants rights at a time when there is something of a huge backlash against social Justice warriors is probably not a good idea. She would need what any character needs. A writer who is interested in writing her and putting her into good situations.

Assuming you know one's politics is never a good idea. What I will say is Magneto has a great deal of fans both liberal and conservative because the issues he faces are timeless and cross political boundaries. The same is true of Lorna. Her popularity isn't built on only individuals of one political ideology and certainly wasn't from The Gifted. Marvel publishing hasn't wanted to commit to the issues that made her more than a useless love interest character in well over a decade.

They did write Lorna as a survivor of the worst anti-mutant genocide ever faced inside their universe and they want to pretend it never happened not for all mutants just for her and even mutants who only experienced it by coming to Genosha to save Lorna weeks later like Jean and Storm are allowed to comment on it over and over again.

Another mutant genocide just hit that deeply impacts Lorna's story and she is nowhere to be seen. The events on Arakko impact her story not what the Brood are doing in another galaxy.

Lorna's story in the comics sans mutant activism, sans her history as a genocide survivor, and sans interesting complex family relationships (they have been garbage for years now) is left with only romantic soap opera hijinks and generic heroics. I don't care about either of those two things which doesn’t leave me anything left regarding Lorna's story.

[Soulsword323]

KT will most likely do a great job displaying Lorna’s powers, personality and may even touch on her history and character. Since it’s still “Captain Marvel”, I really want Polaris to have a new home in a X book. I’m glad that home is no longer X-Factor and I think her time on Duggan’s X-Men showed that “X-Men” is a home for her. Unfortunately, the X-Men have a rotating roster so she’s not guaranteed to always be there (I’m glad she proved she can though!). Where else would you like to see her have a role/home in a X book?

At this point, I'm hoping there is some book being/has been planned that will feature Polaris. I don't foresee her joining any of the current titles, so if a relaunch is coming soon, then hopefully Lorna will have a decent place somewhere. Would love to see an Acolyte or Brotherhood book featuring Polaris, but given the recent news, I don't think they'll reuse that title soon. Hate that we went from getting some decent content, to nothing at all.

I'm really hoping that someone will remember that Magneto has a daughter, and that given what recently happened to him, it would make sense to touch base with Lorna to see her reaction. Hate that she is such an afterthought that no one seems to do even the most painfully obvious with Lorna. Very frustrating.

[salarta]

Growing consensus online seems to be that Marvel hates Polaris.

Here's my current takeaway of the landscape. Certain people at Marvel hate Lorna. Those people are capable of getting their way, so they go forward with their own hates and biases taking precedence over what people want and what's actually right for the fictional universe they're supposed to be overseeing. They thought that Lorna would lose the X-Men vote last year, and her losing would vindicate them in their hatred of Lorna. Instead, she won, so she had to be acknowledged to some extent much more than they want her to be acknowledged.

Note I'm NOT saying Gerry Duggan is one of those people. I don't think he is. As I said before, he's the best writer Lorna's had in the past decade even though he didn't touch on things about her that need to be covered.

Now that we're past the "damn it, we must acknowledge her" period, they're compensating by treating her even worse than before. Which is also NOT saying anything bad about Kelly Thompson, but again, exiled into space is not the place she should be right now. The difference between last time Kelly Thompson wrote Lorna and this time is that last time, Lorna was on Krakoa and taking part in the mutant society and culture. This time, she's being cast out of it at the most consequential moment for her in this entire so-called "era."

If Marvel were actually trying to do the right thing, Lorna would have a mini right now. They would be addressing the Genoshan genocide. They would be addressing the impact of Magneto's death with her. That none of those thing is happening is damning of the entire company, not just the comics. And it was incredibly obvious they were moving in this direction when they started writing Lorna very out of character leading up to and including Trial of Magneto just so they could have a half-assed justification for not acknowledging her in places they know, for a fact, that she should be.

[ARkadelphia]

Growing consensus online seems to be that Marvel hates Polaris.

You sound like a former a president of the United States here…

“My sources say that…”
“People are telling me…”
“I’m hearing that…”

[salarta]

You sound like a former a president of the United States here…

“My sources say that…”
“People are telling me…”
“I’m hearing that…”

Nonsense, if I was president there'd be a Polaris in every household and a chicken in every pot.

But yeah, I'm not going to bother with documenting the cases I'm seeing, especially for people who I know would be in denial anyway. I'm perfectly content with simply saying what I'm seeing. People who choose to shrug it off are, as always, free to do so with all that entails.

[mugen]

Polaris is busy drinking coffee and shopping, maybe marvel will remember that she is as powerful as her father who was the only one who almost destroyed nimrod and karima in inferno thanks to his powers over magnetism if the screenwriter had decided that the machines should stay alive for the next story

[jmc247]

Back from NYCC my thoughts.



Al Ewing is a good writer, but also is an 80s fan who has zero in terms of respect Polaris. Among the ‘daughters of Magneto’ that have come up in his books of late I count four references for Wanda and three for Anya.

Not including Lorna in a story of her own fathers death is Omega level shade. There were one shot and mini options as well to tell the story. More space adventures is not what she needs.

It was nice seeing Duggan speak. Duggan did better than most writers for her of late, but didn’t deal with her history or give her a motivation sadly. I am not in the mood for a coffee joke.

[kevlon]

Back from NYCC my thoughts.



Al Ewing is a good writer, but also is an 80s fan who has zero in terms of respect Polaris. Among the ‘daughters of Magneto’ that have come up in his books of late I count four references for Wanda and three for Anya.

Not including Lorna in a story of her own fathers death is Omega level shade. There were one shot and mini options as well to tell the story. More space adventures is not what she needs.

It was nice seeing Duggan speak. Duggan did better than most writers for her of late, but didn’t deal with her history or give her a motivation sadly. I am not in the mood for a coffee joke.

I'm not sure if he's just an 80s fan. He seems to have a love for 90s too, specifically the New Warriors. Not that any of this helps Polaris

[anyajenkins]

Nobody has the energy for that kind of conspiracy…most of the Marvel folks just don’t care about her, so don’t write her. BTW, Duggan picked the people we’re going to be on the x-men. So he does like her and wanted to write her, but he like Scott Jean and sync better.

[jmc247]

I'm not sure if he's just an 80s fan. He seems to have a love for 90s too, specifically the New Warriors. Not that any of this helps Polaris

You are correct, but I was more referring to his Magneto related storytelling which is very much rooted in the 80s nostalgia. I didn't mind his focus on Anya nor Wanda, but his lack of interest in even bringing up Lorna in a story that should deeply impacts her tells me he isn't interested in peeking out of his nostalgia there which is an issue of many writers.

On a larger level the real problem is Lorna herself needs the kind of character work that Leah Williams talked about, but failed at because she wanted to own not rent the character and write over her best stories. What Morrison had her do in New X-Men 132 would have been enormously degrading and embarrassing to any character under a less gifted pen and less extreme circumstances. His pen sold her breakdown at having 16 million mutants' memories who relied on her for their protection as something powerful and uplifting even with her completely out of it from most of it and having Storm and Jean try to save her. Having some mutant she never met die in battle and trying to re-enact similar dynamics was going to go very badly.

I understand what she wanted to do with Lorna and Magneto's relationship, but again it needed a very nuanced pen to do something very new for their relationship of having him be mean as hell to her to motivate her to better herself (which is what I believe she was going for). The way she had her react emotionally to his abuse made it even worse and did massive damage to their relationship that Marvel had no interest in repairing.

I have been of the option for years now the solution for Lorna's storytelling is not to try to force all her drama around her family relationships and romantic relationships, but to write her an actual middle ground character like she was in her first storyline capable of having major disagreements and fights with the core X-Men on her own accord. Duggan came the closest to doing that since Austen, but didn't commit when he could have had schisms with Jean and Laura.

Austen's run was very successful with Lorna's X-Men relationships in a way none have been since then because she was on good terms with Logan, Xavier, and other X-Men, but they had very real and visceral feeling disagreements as well and both came off stronger for it. Forced conflict and drama is horrible, but drama and conflict arising from actual differences of option can be powerful.

I think many at Marvel who love the early 90s and early 90s X-Factor like Jordan White has said he does need to realize what took Lorna to Genosha in the first place was the storytelling limits on forcing all drama with Lorna onto the same old names. Genosha as Alan Davis wrote her appearance there was an attempt to get her back to the 60s where her own views could generate tension and drama with the other X-Men. Forcing all her drama through romantic and family soap destroys those relationships and also renders her a generic character.

[salarta]

Nobody has the energy for that kind of conspiracy…most of the Marvel folks just don’t care about her, so don’t write her. BTW, Duggan picked the people we’re going to be on the x-men. So he does like her and wanted to write her, but he like Scott Jean and sync better.

Two comments.

One, people at Marvel actually do have the energy for such things. Brevoort was vocal in his opposition to Lorna as part of the Magnus family. He didn't stop there, though. In Children's Crusade, he had an image from House of M redrawn to replace Lorna with a random woman. During Axis, a variant cover of Wanda and Enchantress was tinted in a way that made Enchantress' hair look green (and Wanda's red), at the same time All-New X-Factor #14 (where Lorna and Wanda actually interacted) wasn't promoted and had its cover withheld until the Friday before release. Also during the Axis retcon, the script had Wanda claim Magneto no longer had any children, as if Lorna didn't exist. Finally, in Uncanny Avengers post-Axis, they tried to replace Lorna with Luminous as the twins' sister.

In short, to say nobody at Marvel has energy to deliberately undermine Lorna in various ways is naive at best.

Two, Duggan picked people for the vote that he said he would be fine with writing if they won the vote. Being okay with writing her is not the same as wanting to write her. You can be fine with eating something despite not really liking it. Same applies to characters. That is NOT to say Duggan hates her, to be clear. But there is a big difference between wanting to do something and simply being okay with doing it.

It's also worth adding that if I heard correctly, many of the candidates for the first year's vote came from writers of existing books (one character per book), and Williams offered Lorna. Yes, Duggan had to be okay with writing her, but it's also not like he got to look at the X-Factor cast and say "I'd most like to write this one."


To the matter of Lorna's history, notice that the actual best writing - and what most writers do - for established characters involves acknowledging their history and building on it. People are raving about Ewing's writing of Magneto, and where that comes from is acknowledging history. As an example, he recognized Anya as significant to Magneto and used it - rather than inventing an entirely brand new character. People at Marvel keep wanting to pretend Lorna didn't exist past the 90s or at best 80s. Sometimes, they want to pretend she didn't exist until the exact moment they're writing her. Instead of doing a service to Lorna, what they're really doing is saying they have no respect for the character and what she offers, and think she's always been trash prior to them coming along and writing her.

[juan678]

https://twitter.com/Entimani/status/1579400319381164032

[Rift]

Two comments.

One, people at Marvel actually do have the energy for such things. Brevoort was vocal in his opposition to Lorna as part of the Magnus family. He didn't stop there, though. In Children's Crusade, he had an image from House of M redrawn to replace Lorna with a random woman. During Axis, a variant cover of Wanda and Enchantress was tinted in a way that made Enchantress' hair look green (and Wanda's red), at the same time All-New X-Factor #14 (where Lorna and Wanda actually interacted) wasn't promoted and had its cover withheld until the Friday before release. Also during the Axis retcon, the script had Wanda claim Magneto no longer had any children, as if Lorna didn't exist. Finally, in Uncanny Avengers post-Axis, they tried to replace Lorna with Luminous as the twins' sister.

In short, to say nobody at Marvel has energy to deliberately undermine Lorna in various ways is naive at best.

Two, Duggan picked people for the vote that he said he would be fine with writing if they won the vote. Being okay with writing her is not the same as wanting to write her. You can be fine with eating something despite not really liking it. Same applies to characters. That is NOT to say Duggan hates her, to be clear. But there is a big difference between wanting to do something and simply being okay with doing it.

It's also worth adding that if I heard correctly, many of the candidates for the first year's vote came from writers of existing books (one character per book), and Williams offered Lorna. Yes, Duggan had to be okay with writing her, but it's also not like he got to look at the X-Factor cast and say "I'd most like to write this one."


To the matter of Lorna's history, notice that the actual best writing - and what most writers do - for established characters involves acknowledging their history and building on it. People are raving about Ewing's writing of Magneto, and where that comes from is acknowledging history. As an example, he recognized Anya as significant to Magneto and used it - rather than inventing an entirely brand new character. People at Marvel keep wanting to pretend Lorna didn't exist past the 90s or at best 80s. Sometimes, they want to pretend she didn't exist until the exact moment they're writing her. Instead of doing a service to Lorna, what they're really doing is saying they have no respect for the character and what she offers, and think she's always been trash prior to them coming along and writing her.

Dang, I didn't realize Lorna was so based. She's outright defying people IRL who seek to stop her.