The Mistress of Magnetism: LORNA DANE POLARIS Appreciation

[jmc247]

Nurse Annie

Lorna's best known love triangle since her first one in the 1960s.

Needless to say Lorna wasn't about to be nice or tolerant on this Nurse mucking up her plans to marry and go off and live the simple life again and forget about the mass genocide. Which leads to unhappy altercations.

No that below isn't the relatively nice Xorn who Lorna helped find and supposedly has on her new team, that is his less nice twin brother who decides New York City had too many humans on it. Lorna was actually shown as one of the extremely few people in the x-mansion picking up very weird vibes from Kuan-Yin Xorn with her facial features.



Needless to say Nurse Annie ends up near catatonic seeing brief glimpses of Lorna's memories of the extermination of a population. Their back and forth evolves with time and Nurse Annie comes to appreciate her a bit more after saving Carter.



Still there is not a lot of love there.

[jmc247]

Ferris

The most interesting new relationship Lorna has had in the past two years happens to be Ferris.



Sorry, blind teenage mutant Ninja the robot beats you out in this regard.

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He is one of the many characters that Lorna must have interacted with a fair bit in the past (there are a number of Acolytes on that list) as he was part of the take over of Genosha and was the helper robot at the Imperial palace where she stayed many months, though they never actually interacted on panel until now.

[jmc247]

Wolverine

Lorna’s post Genosha attitude went along well with a certain furry mutants take on things, well some things not others as there was some ideological differences not on everything though.



Needless to say Lorna developed an opposites attract relationship with Logan at the high point of his early 00s popularity.



Do I think the writer intended it to go further? Yes, but it didn’t quite get there. Either way it was fun and I think on some level both were having fun with it.

[jmc247]

Logan II



Lorna had in her history two great spurts of relationship building. The first in 1968 and 1969. The second in 2003 and 2004. Logan and Xavier came out of this era even if writers don’t want to do much with them. The relationships exist.



Of course there was a time in first run Claremont where Lorna was scared to death of Logan, but that was just the writer building up Logan at the expense of Lorna what happened in regard to every character Lorna came in contact with during first run Claremont.

[jmc247]

An occasional ally of the X-Men would be a better description. The fact that she is almost never present during big events - when it really matters - seems to indicate more the role of a contractor and less that of a loyal X-Men member/soldier.

My personal optimistic reading trying to reconcile the various depictions of writers over the decades: She's open to opportunities to make connections - whether through serving existing government and corporate entities, or serving on a team with unknown/shady types - Ultimately, her underlying core drive for mutants never quite lined up with the way of Xavier and the X-Men, and keeps her on the periphery of that inner circle.

I was looking back for the Xavier part back through the decades and outside a long period of first run Claremont she always wanted to make a difference in the world in some way.

Yes, she was an x-ally after starting out their antagonist in her first arc. When the world needed saving and Havok seemed to agree on the topic she was more gung ho about the whole thing then the X-Men themselves as in using the kind of coercive methods she did dealing with the 'evil' mutants when she ran the show there.

Well anyway its a good enough time to get my Havok section out of the way.



When she meets Havok its not exactly love at first sight from her prospective as she is dating Bobby. It turns into a fight and at this point Havok wants to be an X-Man and make a difference. When Havok changed his tune on the whole we need to help the world bit because he decided it would endanger them



Once his mind was made up that being an X-Man endangered them and they couldn't be heroes and couldn't save the world she didn't question his judgement and became a bigger backer on the idea then he was.



There were some unfortunate implications during the X-Factor era she was only deciding to make a difference again because of her boyfriend. Though it wasn't consistent so one can read it more then one way. It was pretty clear though that she was in space because a certain someone wanted her there.

Based on my reading I would say she does want to make a difference in the world, but she often got confused on what her significant other wanted and what she wanted and the two things blurred together in her mind.

In terms of philosophy on how to help the world there things change and go back and forth more then most X-Men. Her philosophy on using force against opponents being higher then the 'core' X-Men is actually the most consistent aspect of Lorna as a character outside of a period of the mid to late 80s to the very early 90s.

[jmc247]

As part of the Xavier article it got me to re-read many of the stories of the mid to late 80s from a different prospective. Obviously, Lorna is no longer a hero nor wants to be because her boyfriend made the decision they shouldn't.



And, he promptly makes the decision for her that they are going.

Lorna later convinced herself that she never wanted to be x-anything or help anyone and coming out to X-Factor and helping people was all for Alex in her few scenes with Kurt as a character.



But, I think this was Lorna in her very emotionally broken state trying to rationalize her life choices that took her to the point she was at. The Lorna of the 1960s did want to make a difference at times. But, at the same point in time Havok's views and Lorna's views did get sort of amalgamated and JM and other writers of the mid 90s started to be not shy in discussing this matter.

[jmc247]

Also, something I have noticed in terms of the Cry Havok arc. In the 70s and 80s the metaphor for Havolaris was a car wreck.



Their relationship really began with the comic Cry Hulk Cry Havok and now we are to Cry Havok and the last issue of the series has car wrecks all around.



From Malice appearing to Lorna's voice in this arc it is very 1980s. Havok of the 80s didn't want to help mutants nor the world and now by magic he is inverted and wants to save them.

Lorna after a failed attempt to reason with him and then fighting him in X-Men Blue #9 was decided to rely on her father's larger expertise to try to deal with the matter which amounted to Magneto trying to reason with him and then fighting him. Well I guess they don't know its a magic spell so there is that. What to make of her decision to effectively become an X-Man something she cast off and washed her hands off many times before and in the era in question this arc is heavily rooted in did for her ex?

[jmc247]

Xavier

Now to Xavier. You have seen some of its early stages already, but suffice it to say if one went back 20-30-40 years she would have been more likely putting him down in some way then building him up. She respected him, probably it was at its peak towards the end of the first run of the X-Men, but decided on a very different direction. Well one can argue on how much she decided, but she took a very different direction and resented Xavier a fair bit while seeming to respect him at the same time.



Does Xavier care about her? I think so, but he didn't understand her, when wanting to know about her he relied on Magneto which actually when one thinks about it makes more sense in retrospect as Xavier had been in Magneto's head many times.

She was an X-Man in the early days long enough to hear out some of his ideas and philosophy, but he never really understood her and that seemed to vex him. Obviously, in time she got to explain herself to him that she doesn't view Magneto's more radical mutant schools as fundamentally different then his own. Just different ideas.



Very few X-Men are as connected to non X-Men teams then Lorna is with different view points fro an iteration of the Brotherhood in all but name to working for the U.S. government to the Acolytes, to X-Men and on and on and on. Well the optimistic view on this is that she saw enough flaws in Xavier's vision of the world to seek out different ones and Uncanny X-Men 443 lends itself to this.



The pessimistic view is she does things for individuals not ideas. I would say one has to look at it as a combination of the two. Certainly, if it involves her ex or father she is much more likely to get involved in something then otherwise. Certain characters outside of them she will come out of her at times non-team existence to help namely Jean.

Obviously, we have seen Magneto's logic against the deployment of Mothervine on the world. Her ex believed he would win over Magneto and with him Lorna to support it. But, that wasn't to be, which does beg the question why Lorna is opposing it. I mean I can see the possible reasons why she wouldn't support it and some where she might, but she hasn't given her view on the matter.

The fact that it is a debate on the board if its good or not means it probably should be an internal debate for Lorna. Her logic in X-Men Blue #9 was pretty simple that allying with the White Queen is bad and he is not himself. Her logic so far has been very old school for her so far which isn't necessarily out of character as Lorna can be very black and white in her thinking certainly you go back decades and the world was either good or evil for her.

We will see what happens when she has to deal with the matter and sees it for herself.

[jmc247]

I feel like I have done Alex and consider the end of the last page to be my start on Bobby.

Bobby

The first X-Men Lorna met and kind of romantic interest.



Well at least Scott thought so enough to boot him off the mission out of a lack of objectivity.



Her off panel meets up with Lorna's adoptive parents who were posing as her real parents and admit she was adopted now and they collude a bit. Its pretty clear there is more then has been told about Lorna's adoptive parents or at least they likely knew more, but that is a story for another day. Bobby's relationship with Lorna quickly falls into a love triangle with Havok where she gets crowded out sort of as the woman yelling in the background as they fight.

[jmc247]

Bobby II

Now Bobby over time in losing to Havok sort of gets pegged as someone Lorna likes though how high a regard she holds him in was at its pinniple in 1968 and 1969 and continues to drop from there.



Lorna lets it slip in her pre-wedding party that she never actually slept with Bobby. Though why call him lover and other terms of endearment?



One Milligan takes over he restarts the Havok/Bobby/Lorna love triangle and that dominates alot of Lorna's 2005 and 2006 story. After that she attempts things again with Bobby in Astonishing and ends up being iced and waking up sleeping next to Nurse Annie. She finds out via text he is gay.

[JasonEsta]

I never liked the Bobby love interest. He's like kid mentally compared to Princess Lorna.

[jmc247]

I never liked the Bobby love interest. He's like kid mentally compared to Princess Lorna.

It was not the most mature of love triangles. By the second iteration of the love triangle under Milligan the love triangle was still kind of pathetic. There is a lesson to be had there of trying something new.

[jmc247]

Rogue

A relationship that first got started in New X-Men in the Austen era.



Future writers didn't do alot to further it after him save a few conversations and one big jobbing, it could have opened up some interesting conversations certainly, but at the same point I don't think neither Lorna nor Rogue would have much interest in talking about certain matters.



In terms of the jobbing it was like textbook ripped from the 70s and 80s where Lorna gets beaten on one of her core competencies. In this case hit by metal and then Rogue steals her power and uses it vastly more competently then Lorna in the comics.

[jmc247]

Xorn

Lorna's first interaction of course came with the genocidal insane Xorn hiding out at the mansion recruiting.



Yes, Lorna was one of the only ones to detect there was something seriously off about the character as he was selling himself as one thing, with a manipulative extremist undercurrent that I think she picked up on, but she was too busy with her own affairs.



She helps to find Xorn's brother who will now be serving on X-Men Blue and happens to be the one relationship with a team member she has coming into to the current team, well other then Jimmy.

[jmc247]

Juggernaut

Their relationship starts out bad.



And, hits bottom with him beating her with a tree.



Does their relationship warm up? Not so much, but they were on the same team together for quite some time.