Polaris/Lorna Dane: Queen of Mutants/Mistress of Magnetism Appreciation 2023

[jmc247]

Bunn had his hands tied when it came to how much he could do with Lorna in Xmen Blue bc the book was about the teen O5 and the focus had to be kept on them. He only got a chance to branch out when he temporarily transferred them over to the Venomized/Poison story arc that he was writing elsewhere. With that said, given his limited take on Lorna, I wish he had done more with her in relation to the O5. I dont think any of her previous relationships with them came to play like with Jean or Iceman. A conversation would have been nice or have her really step in as a mentor which he didnt really take much advantage of

Soulsword232 had the correct term for Bunn's Lorna when he did show his hand with her in Cry Havok when the poster said it was 90s Lorna with a bit less obvious sexism to the depiction. Outside at most two or three issues the 90s was a wasteland for her with her as a generic composite heroine with no depth.

What I will say positive about Duggan's Lorna is that it wasn't 90s Lorna repackaged. It felt more like post 2000s Lorna. But, she needed to bring some of her history to the table, so we had some idea what was driving her. I mean besides coffee.

Trying to play it coy worked for a little while, but stopped working for me about a year ago. Certainly, the play it coy stuff was dead and buried by Judgement Day. Hopefully, in Fall of X we do start to learn what Lorna thinks about her past and mutant related topics because I don't know right now.

[SilverScarlet]

To be honest, I’d like to see Lorna break away from the whole X clan....and join the Avengers!

[Havok83]

I cant see her abandoining the X-men to fight for the Avengers whom traditionally dont really priortize mutant issues. IMO that would feel out of character for her. She would need to constantly call them out and actively work to make change from within which Im not convinced she would be allowed to do so.

[jmc247]

To be honest, I’d like to see Lorna break away from the whole X clan....and join the Avengers!

Lorna should be a character divided between Xavier’s way and old school Magneto’s way in normal times.

They haven’t allowed her to be that character since 2004 other then one issue of House of X, but I am not ready to give up on Lorna’s queen of mutants identity just because they made Storm the Magneto legacy character dealing with his death and leading the Brotherhood.

Lorna’s story is in a ditch I will completely agree, but the Avengers aren’t the solution.

[salarta]

I commissioned Fin_Nomore for a Polaris minicomic focused on Genosha. This is the first page. New pages to come roughly once per month.

I had been weighing whether or not to do it for quite some time, because I didn't want to give the appearance of setting a direction for how writers at Marvel might address this aspect of Lorna's history (beyond, of course, picking up from the development previously given by Austen). There are a lot of ways that trauma shapes a person.

That changed once it became clear to me that Marvel, particularly the X-Men comics, weren't going to acknowledge or respect Lorna's history with the island at all. At that point, I decided it's time to commission the minicomic. Marvel won't do it, so I will.

I hope that we manage to capture the intended tone and message through the completed minicomic. If not, then sorry - but it's also better than the complete absence of anything, and more than Marvel is willing to take even a single panel in over 15 years to do.

[jmc247]

I commissioned Fin_Nomore for a Polaris minicomic focused on Genosha. This is the first page. New pages to come roughly once per month.

I had been weighing whether or not to do it for quite some time, because I didn't want to give the appearance of setting a direction for how writers at Marvel might address this aspect of Lorna's history (beyond, of course, picking up from the development previously given by Austen). There are a lot of ways that trauma shapes a person.

That changed once it became clear to me that Marvel, particularly the X-Men comics, weren't going to acknowledge or respect Lorna's history with the island at all. At that point, I decided it's time to commission the minicomic. Marvel won't do it, so I will.

I hope that we manage to capture the intended tone and message through the completed minicomic. If not, then sorry - but it's also better than the complete absence of anything, and more than Marvel is willing to take even a single panel in over 15 years to do.

That looks great.

It has been over a decade and a half that her story was completely disconnected from those events in a way they did not do with anyone else directly involved like Magneto and Emma or indirectly involved like Kitty, Jean or Storm.

I get they wanted to move onto new stories which was fine and good I didn't want nor expect them to stay on the same story arc, but understanding Lorna as well as her view on mutant/human issues was incomprehensible when you had her time as an Acolyte, Magneto's apprentice/his right hand in the Genoshan government, and then as a genocide survivor forgotten about in a way beyond that of merely putting it in the rear view mirror.

Its been very apparent the many runs that didn't treat any of Lorna from that era as canon which is quite sad because there was so much meat there and it does still stand as Lorna's greatest story arc.

At the most basic level what Lorna thought about Utopia or Krakoa was never explained in terms of her own major life experiences. That isn't hard to do as writers did it was Emma, Magneto, and a number of other characters.

Lorna supported Krakoa, but opposed Utopia. There were ways to justify that including her opposition to Utopia that could have made sense even with her being the power behind the throne of a nation of 16 million souls. Instead of using her history to thread that needle X-Factor (2013) tried to sell the character as a hard core Xavierite. That sort of thing really dragged down PAD's second run with her. That run and it wasn't just that run didn't want to work with her history to provide rational possible answers for her decisions at a given point in time so her responses came off the writer giving their view using the character rather then the character giving their view using their own experiences.

This problem created a completely incoherent Lorna on basic issues of what she believes about many of the major issues of the x-line. It also dragged down Lorna and Magneto's relationship because the refusal of runs to take cues from what worked there between them on Genosha.

The sole exception there remains the House of M universe side ongoings which did take cues from the Genosha era where the relationship remains the most complex and interesting of the various incarnations of their father/daughter relationship. The general/leader, advisor/leader relationship was a workable metaphor for a bad dad relationship in a way that trying to force a real to life bad dad concepts like him trying to control all aspects of her life including her drinking flopped at doing and simply degraded their relationship.

[juan678]

Kate is grumpy about not being able to save Threshold, and talks to Kurt, who asks if she's tried everything. Kate gets an idea.

Kate goes to Genosha and reveals the plan: a circuit to send the spirits of everyone who died in Krakoa to the past in the box-thing, which then becomes the first generation of what eventually becomes Threshold. This is why the next step of human evolution exists billions of years before any type of humans exists. The circuit is Polaris, to handle the Mysterium, Tempo, for the time Travel bit, Cerebra for the DNA and tech side (who is late), Theia to get everyone to fit in the box, Fang to regenerate everyone in the past, and Wicked to get all of Genoshas dead (human and mutant, including Kate's dad) on board. The humans are haunting Genosha and the mutants are communicating via the Waiting Room.

Kate didn't get any sort of permission from the Council to do this, which I hope will make for a fun issue of Immortal down the line

Fang goes after Brimstone Love and his cult, it doesn't matter and is completely unrelated to the important part right now.


TLDR: Threshold is a future version of Genosha sent back in time, which means technically Kate created Okkara and therefore Krakoa.

Polaris Cameo in Marauders

[jmc247]

My very quick thoughts after getting the issue this morning.

The good. I liked Lorna's line about playing God. Lorna was actually involved at all in something Genosha related. A hell of alot has happened with the island over the past 15 years. Magneto tried twice to rebuild the island. It was used as an anti-mutant concentration camp by Red Skull. Cassandra Nova took over the island. The population were turned to Zombies twice. I could go on and on.

There has been a very concerted effort to disconnect her story from that major part of her history in a very off-putting way that frankly hurt the runs a great deal that I strongly suspect the creative staff's believed it would help by freeing them to focus on their own ideas. The Genosha era provided some guard rails to Lorna depictions to avoid problems like the incoherent mess of Lorna's mutant rights views and unreadable mess that Lorna and Magneto's relationship became before he was killed and it provided a window to help understand the character that has been missing.

The bad. The coffee jokes felt out of place and are sort of overplayed at this point. I will give the writer a pass there as it's his first bout with the character. I was somewhat confused about what they are doing. I am leaning towards the idea they are using Genosha to seed a past civilization, but it was not entirely clear.

The ugly. I felt some of the stakes for Kitty being back there involving her past feelings about her dad and the genocide. No stakes for Lorna. It is possible next issue will have more there from her, but at least for Lorna unlike Kitty one wouldn't know she had any history there at all with the island unless one already knew.

[Krakoa]

My very quick thoughts after getting the issue this morning.

The good. I liked Lorna's line about playing God. Lorna was actually involved at all in something Genosha related. A hell of alot has happened with the island over the past 15 years. Magneto tried twice to rebuild the island. It was used as an anti-mutant concentration camp by Red Skull. Cassandra Nova took over the island. The population were turned to Zombies twice. I could go on and on.

There has been a very concerted effort to disconnect her story from that major part of her history in a very off-putting way that frankly hurt the runs a great deal that I strongly suspect the creative staff's believed it would help by freeing them to focus on their own ideas. The Genosha era provided some guard rails to Lorna depictions to avoid problems like the incoherent mess of Lorna's mutant rights views and unreadable mess that Lorna and Magneto's relationship became before he was killed and it provided a window to help understand the character that has been missing.

The bad. The coffee jokes felt out of place and are sort of overplayed at this point. I will give the writer a pass there as it's his first bout with the character. I was somewhat confused about what they are doing. I am leaning towards the idea they are using Genosha to seed a past civilization, but it was not entirely clear.

The ugly. I felt some of the stakes for Kitty being back there involving her past feelings about her dad and the genocide. No stakes for Lorna. It is possible next issue will have more there from her, but at least for Lorna unlike Kitty one wouldn't know she had any history there at all with the island unless one already knew.

They didn't really talk about the stakes for Wicked either. They're not cast members of the book. To me, it was clear Orlando chose characters with history with Genosha that would mean something to long time fans, but also didn't want to spend page time in a compressed two issue finale really explaining that to fans who aren't.

[jmc247]

They didn't really talk about the stakes for Wicked either. They're not cast members of the book. To me, it was clear Orlando chose characters with history with Genosha that would mean something to long time fans, but also didn't want to spend page time in a compressed two issue finale really explaining that to fans who aren't.

Oh, I fully understood the possible reasoning and the limitations to this two-issue story. I am not even saying the story had to spell out the stakes in the same way they did for Kitty. A shift in framing on the part of Lorna dialogue recognizing on some level of the importance could have helped in this area and its something that very well might happen for the next issue.

[UncannyLZ]

Polaris is on Genosha in this week’s issue of Marauders #11

143E1D52-E813-479D-91E8-189512FC2113.jpg

[Soulsword323]

Orlando including Lorna in his Genosha plot is really great to see. Love that Polaris has a part to play there, and I'm happy that someone is utilizing characters that have a connection to Genosha.

[JB]

From the Marauders #12 preview. That first panel is amazing.

[cam18]

no need for that........Polaris is just as important to the X clan as Scarlet Witch is the Avengers one the 2nd lady of the X-Men and the other the 2nd of the Avengers different lanes

[salarta]

Okay, I have time to chime in here.

What actually, really matters is if Lorna's history with Genosha is explicitly acknowledged and respected. New readers need to know she actually has a history with this island. Future writers need to see that it's recognized as important to Lorna's history so that they know Lorna should be used for similar stories in the future.

Acknowledging and respecting her history doesn't mean the book has to spend pages on pages delving into that history. It just means making it clear to readers and future writers that she has an actual pre-existing connection to the island, and what that connection is. Within the scope of this specific story, that can be handled with just a line or two of dialogue in a single panel. For example, the panel with the "coffee desert" line could have easily been used to bring this up, and using it to acknowledge her history with the island would have been infinitely better than a random coffee comment that doesn't mean anything.

Lorna standing on the island alone isn't enough. If her history isn't openly acknowledged in the process, she's just there to help Kitty, and nothing else in the X-Men comics is going to acknowledge Lorna's history, then Lorna being in this book is actually worse than not being in it. Because being here but depicting her as if she has no history of her own with the island acts as a quiet retcon on that history. It encourages future writers to pretend everything the character went through never happened.

All of that said, I realize there's another issue to come. I don't yet know what's actually going to be in that issue. Because of that, I'm going to reserve judgment for the possibility that maybe the next issue will acknowledge Lorna's history with the island. Or at the very least, that the X-Men office might announce something else that will do it instead of this book.

But. If in a month from now, Lorna's history with Genosha isn't explicitly acknowledged whether in this book or elsewhere in the comics, then I'm going to assume it's a deliberate attempt to soft retcon that event out of Lorna's character history. For which the blame would still go to JDW, not Orlando, due to JDW's track record.

Wrapping up, I do notice that Marauders is using Lorna's iconic outfit instead of the more modern one. I appreciate that, but there are more important matters than what she's wearing at stake here. Acknowledging her history matters more than what she's wearing when it comes to Genosha. And of course, the art is excellent, but story matters more than art. In this situation, a black and white comic of stick figures that acknowledges Lorna's history with Genosha means more than a comic with the best art ever drawn that doesn't acknowledge that history.