Lorna Dane: Polaris Appreciation 2020

[whitecrown]

The broad theme of Lorna as a political prisoner and mutant rights activist is popular in China to this day. Season one of The Gifted did internationalize some themes that were highly successful from early 2000s Lorna.

Lets just say from what I have seen Lorna works when she is a political character motivated by life events. When she is written as the girlfriend of X or the daughter of X with no core theme in the background behind it she can have good stories and bad stories, but by in large the character flounders. That was exactly what season two of The Gifted showed and really her last several comic runs showed.

The mistake writers made was an all or nothing affair that Lorna is entirely steeped in mutant issues or none at all. Its a balance most writers do effectively with her father, but most also have also failed at with her.

A second mistake is not streamlining her core trauma. I will be blunt... her mind control trauma when written as the core of the character is a curse not a blessing for her. It doesn't provide a motivational direction for the character. It doesn't impact what she thinks about mutant rights, humanity, or the world around her. Its not even helpful in allowing fans to understand Lorna as how many fans can rap their brain around being mentally puppeted?

Once writers moved away from Genosha as the anchor that kept a core understanding for fans (as well as for writers) her character came unmoored and she lost her voice and any real centering and started to be written around other characters like she was in the 80s and 90s. If Leah and other writers continue what Hickman started a little bit of it will pay off in spades for the character no matter if she is a detective or anything else.

I hope Marvel sees the success of Lorna's character in China and most importantly, why she was successful there. If so, maybe they'll bring that direction to the MCU or the comics although I'm not holding my breath.

And I agree that her character works best with a political direction and not solely as Magneto's daughter or as Havok's girlfriend. Considering what Magneto stands for or Havok's role in Uncanny Avengers, even those relationships could have accentuated Lorna's character but the writers have consistently failed to do that.

Mind control has become a joke for her character and various other female characters in her vein like Wanda and Jean. Writers use that as a crutch because it's all they seem to know and each time it unfortunately grinds away at whatever essence the character actually had. Lorna lost a lot of viability because she was reduced to the crazy possessed girlfriend and the sad thing is that this trope is now being turned on its head these days, but no such thing has been done for Lorna as of yet.

[salarta]

Starting from the Silver Age all the way to the fact that she should hate Cassandra Nova for what she did to Genosha but I don't think I've ever heard Lorna even mention her name. Even in X-Men: The End, I have no memory of Lorna having any confrontation with her.

It's the big problem Marvel has with characters that don't cater to their personal nostalgia. They don't care if they ignore essential details, as long as whatever gets published pleases themselves.

It's a big chunk of why I just plain don't see why there's any reason to read X-Men comics at all. Generally in other mediums, things that happened before actually mean something and have an impact on later events. For the X-Men comics, that's only true of characters that people working there fawn over, and events that put those characters on a pedestal. What's the point of reading books where there are massive gaping narrative holes where interactions should exist but don't just because some writer or editor doesn't give a damn about a particular character? It's like if they had Magneto around in Age of Ultron but the script says Magneto just goes off and spends all his time making cars and guns for SHIELD cause the director thinks Magneto sucks and wants him out of the way. I don't see the point in buying a product that's missing important parts. Makes no sense to buy a car with eight tires cause the dealer really loves tires but without a gas tank cause the dealer hates gas tanks.

Nostalgia has definitely set up Lorna to fail because like you said, if she's remembered, it's for being crazy or brainwashed or flat out absent from the picture. She's not part of the 05 or the Giant-Size X-Men team or the Outback X-Men or the Blue/Gold teams.

I don't think I mentioned the crazy or brainwashed stuff (I think that was jmc), but it's true that those aren't really the important things she should be remembered for.

I differ from other people in that I think those things could be good and lead to good stories. I've been a fan of mind control style stories for a while, and I see a lot of potential in them if done right. But for them to be done right, there needs to be an understanding of what the character has to offer and why their being mind controlled or possessed is such a big deal. The understanding needs to be had by the writer and editor, and expressed well enough for audiences to get it.

I'll use an example here: Euphemia from Code Geass. In the anime, a stray command Lelouch gives her leads her to behave as this genocidal monster who comes off like she absolutely adores murdering an entire people, and who was apparently conniving enough to trick every one of them present into thinking she was a good woman out for their interests. The ONLY reason this is such an emotional, powerful, horrific and tragic moment is because you see across multiple episodes that Euphemia acting like a genocidal monster is NOT AT ALL who she really is. She's a kind, loving and honorable woman. There was build-up to the moment. It wasn't a lazy plot device where a character was exploited to add random drama to the story, or to serve a mechanical purpose of culling X number of characters from the story. It made you feel for Euphemia herself and better understand and appreciate her by her body doing things that the woman herself would abhor.

Marvel never does this with Lorna. They use her being possessed or mind controlled to use her as a tool in other characters' plots, or to make other characters look better and cooler by how they can have her at their beck and call. It's lazy, it's stupid, it's boring and it squanders so much character potential. Worse, it makes people lose sight of a character's value.

This is why I didn't rant about how Malice possessed Lorna on X-Men Blue, but also didn't praise it. It could've been used as a gateway to explore Lorna's worth, but it didn't get used that way. There was no case of seeing inside Lorna's mind to grasp how horrific or rage-inducing it is for her to keep getting controlled or possessed like that. There was no new usage of her powers in ways Lorna wouldn't use them to demonstrate how dangerous she could be if she really cut loose. There was no exploiting Lorna's relationships and the trust people place in her for Malice to play people against each other. It was just "Hey, Lorna's possessed. Oh, Lorna broke free. The end!" before the story continued with promoting Havok. It could've been much worse, which is why I don't often say much about it, but it also could've been so much better.

Jean's female friendships tend to be ignored anyway to deal with the love triangle nonsense so that hurts Lorna and now that Iceman is gay, that romantic relationship with Lorna is also out of the picture (unless the MCU introduced a closeted Bobby who starts off dating Lorna).

As for Iceman, I've been a strong proponent that there's tons of untapped potential there between Lorna and him post-reveal. Lorna was Bobby's first "love interest." She was there in his early days on the X-Men. She could bring up things about him that no other characters possibly could, and support the reveal itself by way of her supporting his coming out after those early years of seeming to be into her but really not. Especially, she could play a role in quashing ideas like that a man showing interest in a woman earlier in life somehow means he's "not really gay" or that he "lied" to them. Unfortunately, Marvel's so opposed to Lorna (or maybe they're just really not that supportive of diversity after all) that they would rather waste what's possible than pursue it. And when I say all of this, I don't mean hitting people over the head with blunt statements. I mean simply letting them have good, regular interactions together could serve this purpose splendidly.

I used to like Alex and Lorna together but it's hard to support them considering the long history of Alex throwing Lorna under the bus. When she's clearly possessed by Malice and not at fault for her actions, Alex still somehow blames Lorna and turns to Maddie for comfort. And when Maddie is gone, he's out mourning her by hooking up with some other redhead in that Wolverine and Havok miniseries. Then in the 2000s, he dumps her for Nurse Annie of all people and we're supposed to believe he got his happy ending and root for him whereas Lorna is villified as the woman scorned. Something tells me Marvel is fine including Alex without Lorna considering his time in the Outback X-Men, Remender's Uncanny Avengers and Axis, X-Men Evolution, X-Men Legends, X-Men: Next Dimenson, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, X-Men: First Class, etc. There's a whole plethora of appearances for him on the comics and other media that don't feature Lorna at all and if the MCU rumors are true, that may very well continue. I guess if his profile was raised enough and Lorna could benefit from that by being attached to him, I could accept their relationship again. I definitely can't see Alex and Lorna being kept apart for 10 years. For that matter, what's the longest they've ever been separated from each other in the comics?

Marvel really loves acting like Lorna is to blame for everything bad that happens through her body. It's why when Lorna was getting sent into space to be his token girlfriend, it started off with Lorna crying on Havok's shoulder and saying she should go to prison because of what Apocalypse made her do as Pestilence. Maybe that would've worked for the first one or two times she got controlled or possessed, but not after nearly 40 years of repeated cases.

Between the two, Marvel also loves acting like Havok is the only one that matters, and anything notable Lorna does should only happen if he can benefit in some way. He was there when Lorna got her origin story told, he kept showing up on All-New X-Factor, he hijacked Lorna's return in 2017, and so much else. Lorna was the breakout star of Gifted in its first season, yet Marvel just shrugged and thought "Hey, people like her, maybe we can turn those fans into Havok fans if we use her around him a lot." They've never grasped what people see in Lorna, and they haven't shown any signs of wanting to find out or see just how big her fandom can get with the right support. It's all negative biases and bending-over-backwards efforts to prove those biases are right, at Marvel.

Your comment about Lorna bending spoons when she's not crying for Alex to save her reminds me of the issue where she's first possessed by Malice and crying behind some rock as Sabretooth stalks her, wishing Alex could be there to kiss the fear away or something like that. I never understood how the end of the issue revealed that Malice had been in control over her the whole issue because that thought bubble clearly didn't convey that unless Malice was just acting out how she felt Lorna would act and think.

The crying behind rocks scene is actually what I was thinking about when I wrote that. That scene is in my mind most of the times when I rant about Marvel. I don't expect Marvel to go back and correct it, but I do expect Marvel to try to repair the damage of such scenes by giving her better treatment and opportunities in the present. As for the scene itself, my headcanon way of dealing with it is to say it was Malice pretending to be everything Lorna isn't, for the same reason as the headcanon of Zaladane actively forcing those awful new "powers" on Lorna to humiliate her. It comes down to that they were threatened by how great she is and they wanted to tear her down mentally and emotionally.

[jmc247]

Agreed, although I guess Milligan's best contribution was that it put Lorna on a major X-Men team again. This was the first time (unless you count Austen's run) that Lorna was a standing member of the X-Men since the Silver Age. Of course that didn't last long with Brubaker but I'm not sure if it was his intention or not that Havok, Polaris, and Rachel be stranded in space or if that was editorially mandated.

I think the x-office had plans to pick up the story arc and finish the Vulcan Saga, but the cosmic books/Inhumans took precedence because of the film rights issue. I do think editorial realized that them being stranded there fit there current goals and kept it going far longer then otherwise. Once she got back from space her storyline basically had to restart and it was so divorced from things that worked that frankly there was a level of forgetting in some big areas.

I'll need to check out Austen's run again to see more of those Logan/Lorna moments because they must have flown over my head.

A lot of the ideas that the storyline was playing with really wouldn't work today with Wolverine's hostility to Mags over Fatal Attractions and his conflict with her over mutant issues. Its a situation where if things are too good between characters there isn't a story to be had.







The same could be said of Lorna and the core X-Men where I don't believe her relationships with any of them will restart until there is built in drama to be had. That said when the issues between mutants start again if Lorna has back a unique prospective it will come in handy.

Oh lovely, Alex and Lorna together again (insert sarcasm here). If it helps raise her profile, I'm fine with it I guess but I doubt that'll happen considering it didn't for decades. I'd love to see her and Magnus go to Genosha though. That's long overdue imo. Lorna really should have been part of X-Men Red so she could interact with Jean, Kurt, and Remy and have some sort of confrontation with Cassandra Nova. Writers have never pointed out that Lorna has a significant grudge against Nova for the destruction of Genosha.

The big question for Empyre X-Men happens to be how much time is there for any one story in such a packed mini series. But, yes Lorna lacking a grudge again Nova and really being divorced from everything Genosha related for a very long time now has been her reality. We will see how much that changes.

[salarta]

Thank you for posting that! I've long been enchanted by your avatar pic and was hoping to see the full image. And I love those vintage Barbie dolls. Gosh, I would love something like that to show Jean and Lorna off in their 60s/early 70s time period.

I'm starting to realize that Jean gets shipped with a lot of female characters in the fandom actually. Storm, Lorna, and Wanda come to mind. From what I've seen of Storm fans they are mostly mixed on who she should end up with. A lot of people want her with Black Panther again particularly because it'll raise her profile because in an ironic twist, she's no longer the A-lister she used to be during the Claremont run and hasn't been for two decades now. Some like her with Wolverine, others want her with Yukio and some refuse to accept Storm as bisexual.

Now I can reply to this post.

Thanks about liking my avatar pic. I've posted the full image before but don't have a handy link to it. Maybe I should make a separate link to an imgur post with all my Polaris commissions and who did them, like I have a link for the Polaris minicomic?

I think fans want to see more female character interaction, and Marvel doesn't provide enough of it in a form that fans want to read. I speak a lot about how Lorna specifically needs it given her history, but I think it's just generally true all around. You see a lot of dynamics where men are involved. You have brothers like Thor and Loki or Cyclops and Havok, or father-son like Magneto and Pietro, or father-daughter like Magneto and Wanda or Magneto and Lorna, or brother-sister like Pietro and Wanda, or lovers/spouses like Peter Parker and Mary Jane or Reed Richards and Sue Storm or Cyclops and Jean. It's rare to see women spending any meaningful time with other women. That rarity is part of why so many female fans gravitate toward Lorna and Wanda as sisters to this day in spite of Marvel abandoning it 6 years ago.

With a character like Storm, fandom can be very complex. I'd need to be more involved with that fandom to speak much on it. What I can say generally is that I think she's important culturally and for representation, and I think she needs more presence and usage than she's had. But other characters deserve good treatment simultaneously. Marvel's advanced this false "scarcity of roles" angle for decades, especially around diversity, and it needs to stop. Particularly when they seem to have no problem with things like a Lockjaw miniseries or the Worst X-Man Ever book where they created an entirely new white boy just for that story.

[whitecrown]

It's the big problem Marvel has with characters that don't cater to their personal nostalgia. They don't care if they ignore essential details, as long as whatever gets published pleases themselves.

It's a big chunk of why I just plain don't see why there's any reason to read X-Men comics at all. Generally in other mediums, things that happened before actually mean something and have an impact on later events. For the X-Men comics, that's only true of characters that people working there fawn over, and events that put those characters on a pedestal. What's the point of reading books where there are massive gaping narrative holes where interactions should exist but don't just because some writer or editor doesn't give a damn about a particular character? It's like if they had Magneto around in Age of Ultron but the script says Magneto just goes off and spends all his time making cars and guns for SHIELD cause the director thinks Magneto sucks and wants him out of the way. I don't see the point in buying a product that's missing important parts. Makes no sense to buy a car with eight tires cause the dealer really loves tires but without a gas tank cause the dealer hates gas tanks.



I don't think I mentioned the crazy or brainwashed stuff (I think that was jmc), but it's true that those aren't really the important things she should be remembered for.

I differ from other people in that I think those things could be good and lead to good stories. I've been a fan of mind control style stories for a while, and I see a lot of potential in them if done right. But for them to be done right, there needs to be an understanding of what the character has to offer and why their being mind controlled or possessed is such a big deal. The understanding needs to be had by the writer and editor, and expressed well enough for audiences to get it.

I'll use an example here: Euphemia from Code Geass. In the anime, a stray command Lelouch gives her leads her to behave as this genocidal monster who comes off like she absolutely adores murdering an entire people, and who was apparently conniving enough to trick every one of them present into thinking she was a good woman out for their interests. The ONLY reason this is such an emotional, powerful, horrific and tragic moment is because you see across multiple episodes that Euphemia acting like a genocidal monster is NOT AT ALL who she really is. She's a kind, loving and honorable woman. There was build-up to the moment. It wasn't a lazy plot device where a character was exploited to add random drama to the story, or to serve a mechanical purpose of culling X number of characters from the story. It made you feel for Euphemia herself and better understand and appreciate her by her body doing things that the woman herself would abhor.

Marvel never does this with Lorna. They use her being possessed or mind controlled to use her as a tool in other characters' plots, or to make other characters look better and cooler by how they can have her at their beck and call. It's lazy, it's stupid, it's boring and it squanders so much character potential. Worse, it makes people lose sight of a character's value.

This is why I didn't rant about how Malice possessed Lorna on X-Men Blue, but also didn't praise it. It could've been used as a gateway to explore Lorna's worth, but it didn't get used that way. There was no case of seeing inside Lorna's mind to grasp how horrific or rage-inducing it is for her to keep getting controlled or possessed like that. There was no new usage of her powers in ways Lorna wouldn't use them to demonstrate how dangerous she could be if she really cut loose. There was no exploiting Lorna's relationships and the trust people place in her for Malice to play people against each other. It was just "Hey, Lorna's possessed. Oh, Lorna broke free. The end!" before the story continued with promoting Havok. It could've been much worse, which is why I don't often say much about it, but it also could've been so much better.

I don't bother with current X-Men comics either for the same reason you listed as well as the fact that every writer has their own perception of the characters so in some runs, certain characters will be completely OOC and act like they're someone else entirely. In Lorna's case it's a double-edged sword because she's generally ignored by writers so we don't even get to complain like the fans of other characters that she's being written incorrectly because she's not written at all. She's one of the oldest X-Men characters but it's like she doesn't even exist even in major events that should involve her due to her various connections.

You're right, you didn't bring up brainwashed or crazy Lorna but you mentioned nostalgia for a mishandling of the character and I consider that a part of her being mishandled. For writers who are nostalgic for Claremont's run, they won't have an affinity for Lorna because she was barely featured in it and when she was, she was always brainwashed or possessed. I suppose we're lucky a writer didn't love her time on Muir Island and decide to remove her powers and make her She-Hulk 2.0 again.

I do agree with you that mind control stories can work really well if they have a purpose for the character and there's some sort of ramification afterwards, whether positive or negative. The issue with Lorna is that being controlled by Erik the Red or Malice wasn't done to benefit the character in some shape or form or even develop her. She was picked because an expendable X-character was needed and Lorna was always there on the fringes not doing anything else. There's nothing in the 70s about her coping with Erik the Red's brainwashing or how she only gained her codename and new costume from her time with him. How she feels about Polaris as a codename and if it suits her now that she's back to normal if there even is a normal for her. It still shocks me to this day that she only gained her codename and even her power to fly during this brainwashed period. And eventually certain characters (typically female) become so heavily associated with these crazy powerful woman storylines that they're often killed off or thrown into limbo. The three female Silver Age mutants (Jean, Wanda, and Lorna) are textbook cases of this. It's a real shame that some writer never decided to group these three together considering their rich history. And as for the latest Malice story, I never expected Marvel to do anything meaningful with it beyond a throwback to her past. It's very clear what they associate Lorna with at this point and I imagine another Malice possession will be imminent sometime in the future because that's what they associate her with.

There were so many rich opportunities between post-outed Bobby and Lorna like you said but I really had no expectations to see any contact between them. I honestly was still shocked that Lorna and Wanda got to meet and talk during her X-Factor days after her origin was finally revealed because of how Marvel seemed to go out of their way to position Lorna as far as possible from any character who isn't Alex or occasionally Magneto.

I honestly forgot about Lorna as a Horseman of Apocalypse being yet another possessed period in her life because of the fact that she has so many that this becomes a mere footnote. I have no idea why she was so upset since like you said, it's nothing she hasn't done before and then it never gets brought up again anyway. The very fact that Lorna was used in The Gifted showed Marvel's cynical point of view towards her imo, because she was the only major X-Man left who hadn't been utilized in the films and they clearly had no interest to do so. Having the daughter of Magneto appear in a TV show would help boost promotion and interest because they can tease Magneto's presence without ever having to feature him (much like they did with Xavier in Legion, but at least Legion was entirely David's show. Lorna may have been the face of The Gifted but they didn't put enough interest in her arc for the second season.)

Oh I prefer your headcanon that Malice is pretending to be what Lorna isn't. Claremont really found new ways to put the character down when he had Malice easily defeat Sabretooth using Lorna's powers within a day of taking her over, the implication being that Lorna had never explored her powers or been proficient enough in their usage to be able to do the same. What could have been interesting is if Lorna had been able to regain control and push Malice out (can you imagine Claremont ever letting Magneto be under the control of Malice for years? Within one issue, Magnus would have found a creative way to expel Malice using his magnetic powers, so surely Lorna could have been able to do the same) and then decide that actually she's happier here on the Marauders and she'll take over leadership herself without Malice in charge. At least Lorna would have regained her agency and could still be kept on the antagonistic side if that had to be in the cards for her.

[whitecrown]

I think the x-office had plans to pick up the story arc and finish the Vulcan Saga, but the cosmic books/Inhumans took precedence because of the film rights issue. I do think editorial realized that them being stranded there fit there current goals and kept it going far longer then otherwise. Once she got back from space her storyline basically had to restart and it was so divorced from things that worked that frankly there was a level of forgetting in some big areas.



A lot of the ideas that the storyline was playing with really wouldn't work today with Wolverine's hostility to Mags over Fatal Attractions and his conflict with her over mutant issues. Its a situation where if things are too good between characters there isn't a story to be had.







The same could be said of Lorna and the core X-Men where I don't believe her relationships with any of them will restart until there is built in drama to be had. That said when the issues between mutants start again if Lorna has back a unique prospective it will come in handy.



The big question for Empyre X-Men happens to be how much time is there for any one story in such a packed mini series. But, yes Lorna lacking a grudge again Nova and really being divorced from everything Genosha related for a very long time now has been her reality. We will see how much that changes.

It's a pity that no one in Marvel ever took advantage of the fact that Lorna was in Shi'ar space and it was a Shi'ar agent, Erik the Red, who had tracked the X-Men down through her and given her the codename of Polaris as well as a new costume. Lorna has a history with the Shi'ar, certainly more than Warpath or even Kurt, but she was basically just included because she was the "sister-in-law" to Vulcan (replacing Jean) and the energy manipulator (replacing Storm). I think most X-Fans were tuned out from War of the Kings and the cosmic events anyway so that certainly didn't help Lorna when she came back.

Thanks for those scans. I really would have liked to have seen more Lorna/Logan moments and it would have been great to see this dynamic explored in Schism rather than Lorna basically take whatever side Alex chooses. And her on the Uncanny Avengers with Logan and Wanda would have been a great collab as well. I'd like to have seen what Lorna felt about Wanda's love life with Simon or her interactions with Captain America and Thor. Potentially Captain America might have issues with her because she's so pro-Magneto and he doesn't think that's a good fit for the team but Wolverine vouches for her.

My guess for Empyre X-Men is that it'll be as consequential as the X-Men tie-ins for Secret Invasion or Civil War were, in other words absolutely meaningless. Whenever Marvel does these Avengers/Fantastic Four events, they just throw a bone to X-Fans with a couple of issues that add up to a sum total of nothing.

[whitecrown]

Now I can reply to this post.

Thanks about liking my avatar pic. I've posted the full image before but don't have a handy link to it. Maybe I should make a separate link to an imgur post with all my Polaris commissions and who did them, like I have a link for the Polaris minicomic?

I think fans want to see more female character interaction, and Marvel doesn't provide enough of it in a form that fans want to read. I speak a lot about how Lorna specifically needs it given her history, but I think it's just generally true all around. You see a lot of dynamics where men are involved. You have brothers like Thor and Loki or Cyclops and Havok, or father-son like Magneto and Pietro, or father-daughter like Magneto and Wanda or Magneto and Lorna, or brother-sister like Pietro and Wanda, or lovers/spouses like Peter Parker and Mary Jane or Reed Richards and Sue Storm or Cyclops and Jean. It's rare to see women spending any meaningful time with other women. That rarity is part of why so many female fans gravitate toward Lorna and Wanda as sisters to this day in spite of Marvel abandoning it 6 years ago.

With a character like Storm, fandom can be very complex. I'd need to be more involved with that fandom to speak much on it. What I can say generally is that I think she's important culturally and for representation, and I think she needs more presence and usage than she's had. But other characters deserve good treatment simultaneously. Marvel's advanced this false "scarcity of roles" angle for decades, especially around diversity, and it needs to stop. Particularly when they seem to have no problem with things like a Lockjaw miniseries or the Worst X-Man Ever book where they created an entirely new white boy just for that story.

You should definitely post the full image in a separate link!

There are very few female friendships I can think of which have any prominence in the Marvel Universe. Jean/Storm and Carol/Jessica Drew come to mind. The former got the spotlight because of Claremont and he also created Carol/Jessica's friendship which Bendis clearly liked and heavily promoted in his books. However other female friendships like Jean/Lorna or Carol/Wanda got sidelined like they don't even exist. I don't remember Wanda or Janet having any scenes together in Uncanny Avengers. And the MCU is even worse about this because there's not a single female friendship besides Gamora/Nebula who are sisters. I suppose you could count Carol and Maria Rambeau as that will likely extend to Carol and Monica when the adult version of Monica is introduced.

Lol, I forgot all about Worst X-Man Ever. I think I didn't give that book a passing thought and for good reason it seems.

[juan678]

X-Factor #4 - Chapter 2

Lorna in Sword crossover

Thanks Luchystar

[salarta]

You should definitely post the full image in a separate link!

There are very few female friendships I can think of which have any prominence in the Marvel Universe. Jean/Storm and Carol/Jessica Drew come to mind. The former got the spotlight because of Claremont and he also created Carol/Jessica's friendship which Bendis clearly liked and heavily promoted in his books. However other female friendships like Jean/Lorna or Carol/Wanda got sidelined like they don't even exist. I don't remember Wanda or Janet having any scenes together in Uncanny Avengers. And the MCU is even worse about this because there's not a single female friendship besides Gamora/Nebula who are sisters. I suppose you could count Carol and Maria Rambeau as that will likely extend to Carol and Monica when the adult version of Monica is introduced.

Lol, I forgot all about Worst X-Man Ever. I think I didn't give that book a passing thought and for good reason it seems.

I took your cue and made an album of my Polaris commissions, and made it public. It's in my signature now but here's the link.

https://imgur.com/gallery/huBiVmH

It doesn't include NSFW commissions (I have a few; mostly variants of SFW pieces) or the minicomic (I say plural on the post cause I plan to commission at least one more).

It's been pretty obvious to me that Marvel views female characters as second or lower tier compared to male characters. They'll sometimes say they support women, and sometimes do a project or two that's about women, but the regular operation isn't very supportive. I genuinely think that much of what they do offer is cause they don't think they can get away with doing less, and I think their attitude toward Lorna is a perfect example. When it's Jean, or Storm, or someone else high profile, Marvel knows they have to treat them as actual characters in their own right. But with Lorna, you get things like this cover from two years ago.



Can you imagine Marvel doing a cover like this focused on Jean or Storm and not having tons of backlash over it? Imagine if it was Jean in the middle with Cyclops and Professor X fighting over her, or Storm with Black Panther and Thor fighting over her. But because it's Lorna, somehow it's fine.

I remembered Worst X-Man Ever because Marvel and some of their hardcore fans will sometimes claim Lorna can't get anything due to limited resources, but then Marvel will make something like Worst X-Man Ever. A book nobody asked for, with a completely new character that hasn't been established anywhere beforehand and that Marvel has no plans to do anything with ever again. Marvel can devote precious resources to a one-off five issue miniseries like that... but they can't do a oneshot focused on Polaris? Or include her in a story arc where her history should matter? Or even so much as acknowledge her value for one panel of one page of one comic book issue?

If you ask someone at Marvel today, they'll probably say Worst X-Man shouldn't have been made and they would never make something like it now, but that's kind of a cop-out, isn't it? It's so easy to look at something that happened 4 years ago, with the lack of payoff and arguments made around it, and say "I wouldn't have done it." Especially if saying something like that means not having to deal with the consequences. Worse, successfully getting a pass on such things only encourages future behavior like it, because why bother changing for the better if you can wait a year and then come back and say "Yeah, we should've done better, but too late now." It's a perpetual denial machine.

[whitecrown]

I took your cue and made an album of my Polaris commissions, and made it public. It's in my signature now but here's the link.

https://imgur.com/gallery/huBiVmH

It doesn't include NSFW commissions (I have a few; mostly variants of SFW pieces) or the minicomic (I say plural on the post cause I plan to commission at least one more).

It's been pretty obvious to me that Marvel views female characters as second or lower tier compared to male characters. They'll sometimes say they support women, and sometimes do a project or two that's about women, but the regular operation isn't very supportive. I genuinely think that much of what they do offer is cause they don't think they can get away with doing less, and I think their attitude toward Lorna is a perfect example. When it's Jean, or Storm, or someone else high profile, Marvel knows they have to treat them as actual characters in their own right. But with Lorna, you get things like this cover from two years ago.



Can you imagine Marvel doing a cover like this focused on Jean or Storm and not having tons of backlash over it? Imagine if it was Jean in the middle with Cyclops and Professor X fighting over her, or Storm with Black Panther and Thor fighting over her. But because it's Lorna, somehow it's fine.

I remembered Worst X-Man Ever because Marvel and some of their hardcore fans will sometimes claim Lorna can't get anything due to limited resources, but then Marvel will make something like Worst X-Man Ever. A book nobody asked for, with a completely new character that hasn't been established anywhere beforehand and that Marvel has no plans to do anything with ever again. Marvel can devote precious resources to a one-off five issue miniseries like that... but they can't do a oneshot focused on Polaris? Or include her in a story arc where her history should matter? Or even so much as acknowledge her value for one panel of one page of one comic book issue?

If you ask someone at Marvel today, they'll probably say Worst X-Man shouldn't have been made and they would never make something like it now, but that's kind of a cop-out, isn't it? It's so easy to look at something that happened 4 years ago, with the lack of payoff and arguments made around it, and say "I wouldn't have done it." Especially if saying something like that means not having to deal with the consequences. Worse, successfully getting a pass on such things only encourages future behavior like it, because why bother changing for the better if you can wait a year and then come back and say "Yeah, we should've done better, but too late now." It's a perpetual denial machine.

Thank you! You have an excellent collection. I love the first one with Wanda as a witch and Lorna as a heavy metal knight as well as the third one with that fanmade green costume. I'd like to see a look like that in the comics. My favorite is probably Jean and Lorna in the bar for St. Patrick's Day in their classic costumes. The metallic armor she has in the third to last picture reminds me a bit of Vulcan's armor in War of Kings for some reason.

Honestly, I wouldn't put it past Marvel to make a cover like that Magneto/Havok one with Scott and Wolverine fighting over Jean. They've had covers like that before although Jean was never incapicitated like Lorna which is really the icing on the cake there. Absolutely no agency whatsoever for her.

Even if Lorna can't get her own miniseries or limited series right now, what's the excuse for not including her in a high-profile team book? Magneto had a long running series so how come Lorna never had a substantial role in that? Or in Cullen Bunn's Uncanny X-Men, especially since he originally wanted to include Rachel. Surely Lorna would fit into the team between Magneto and Rachel, and I'm sure fans would have loved to have seen Lorna interact with Sabretooth or Monet. If not Gambit and Lorna, then Fantomex was on the team and that could have been an interesting dynamic as well.

[Dipter]

I took your cue and made an album of my Polaris commissions, and made it public. It's in my signature now but here's the link.

https://imgur.com/gallery/huBiVmH

That’s a lovely album of commissions you have there, Salarta. I especially like the Lorna and Wanda art. They deserve to be sisters again.

[jwatson]

Just a sketch of the siblings. I still consider them siblings. Loved the issue with the three of them were lorna was telling them to stop because she didn't want to use her powers on them. No matter what Scarlet witch did to mutants Marvel made a huge mistake taking lorna's siblings away for me. In just few issues if you think about her in my mind her relationship which each stood out. Pietro was the brother she could trust, and wanda was the big sister she wanted to get to know, despite her own powers being taken.

MAGNUSSIBS.jpg

[salarta]

Thank you! You have an excellent collection. I love the first one with Wanda as a witch and Lorna as a heavy metal knight as well as the third one with that fanmade green costume. I'd like to see a look like that in the comics. My favorite is probably Jean and Lorna in the bar for St. Patrick's Day in their classic costumes. The metallic armor she has in the third to last picture reminds me a bit of Vulcan's armor in War of Kings for some reason.

That’s a lovely album of commissions you have there, Salarta. I especially like the Lorna and Wanda art. They deserve to be sisters again.

Thanks! Sometimes I see these commissions show up randomly from people liking and spreading them, which is great, but I wish they'd bring the artist info along for the ride. Credit where credit is due.

As far as I'm concerned, Lorna and Wanda are still sisters, and Marvel's retcon is invalid. In my headspace, Lorna has a generally great day-to-day life of catching up with her family and dating Jean. Though that doesn't mean no conflict. People often diverge on views no matter how close they are. You could imagine tension between Lorna and Jean as far as the image mutants should project to the world after all. My Lorna and Jean commissions tend to use their costumes from early on to emphasize how long they've known each other, something Marvel never does.

I think Lorna's costume should generally look the same as it currently is, so casual readers can recognize it's her. Especially because Marvel refuses to give her the kind of presence needed for people to follow her with a costume change. But, I also think she could do with a modernization of that costume. What I liked about Kris Anka's redesign concept was how well it gave off a "royal warrior" vibe that fits her personality, while adding a secondary color and level of use suitable to her power set that doesn't overshadow the green. I think it could be more of an armored look but keeping the cape, in fantasy knight fashion.

Just a sketch of the siblings. I still consider them siblings. Loved the issue with the three of them were lorna was telling them to stop because she didn't want to use her powers on them. No matter what Scarlet witch did to mutants Marvel made a huge mistake taking lorna's siblings away for me. In just few issues if you think about her in my mind her relationship which each stood out. Pietro was the brother she could trust, and wanda was the big sister she wanted to get to know, despite her own powers being taken.

MAGNUSSIBS.jpg

Good work! I think if not all of Marvel, then at least a certain editor at Marvel, understood just how much interest and potential there is in Lorna with the twins even though he didn't like it. It's been 6 years now and fans are still making fanart, fanfic and cosplays of the family which includes Lorna.

It goes back to the artificial "scarcity of roles" thing I talked about too. Marvel tends to act like any characters that aren't white cis male have to compete for a role, instead of acknowledging that multiple characters can occupy the same role in different ways. Lorna and Wanda can both be daughters of Magneto in different ways, and frankly their sisterhood is more important.

Honestly, I wouldn't put it past Marvel to make a cover like that Magneto/Havok one with Scott and Wolverine fighting over Jean. They've had covers like that before although Jean was never incapicitated like Lorna which is really the icing on the cake there. Absolutely no agency whatsoever for her.

I could see Marvel making a similar cover involving Jean but with Jean looking more proactive, with painstaking effort made to dress it up as good. Like perhaps Jean facepalming to demonstrate she thinks it's stupid. Whereas with Lorna, there wasn't even a thinly veiled attempt to make it look good. She's simply an unconscious trophy for two men to fight over for dominance.

Even if Lorna can't get her own miniseries or limited series right now, what's the excuse for not including her in a high-profile team book? Magneto had a long running series so how come Lorna never had a substantial role in that? Or in Cullen Bunn's Uncanny X-Men, especially since he originally wanted to include Rachel. Surely Lorna would fit into the team between Magneto and Rachel, and I'm sure fans would have loved to have seen Lorna interact with Sabretooth or Monet. If not Gambit and Lorna, then Fantomex was on the team and that could have been an interesting dynamic as well.

I don't think Marvel has any legitimate reason for thinking Lorna can't have at least a mini or oneshot. She's existed for going on 52 years. They've given those kind of opportunities to characters with far less history, exposure or need. They've spent decades misusing her to promote other characters, and undermining every chance she's had to demonstrate her potential. That includes what they're doing this very second as I'm typing this post. They can spare the budget to create and properly support a single 22-page comic book focused on Lorna for the first time in her whole 52 years of existence. Especially with how they've treated her since 2015.

With Bunn, I was initially supportive of him using Lorna and I was glad when she showed up on the Magneto solo. But honestly, I don't think Bunn really cared about Lorna beyond what could be done for Magneto using her. I think he started to get better about the dynamics between Lorna and Magneto toward the end of X-Men Blue, which was very important, but Blue still had those Havok problems and there were no signs of intent to do better by Lorna on that mark.

It was really Blue that "reset the clock" for me on how long Lorna and Havok need to be kept apart. Late 2012 to end of 2015 had made decent in-roads in spite of Marvel not giving her stuff the support it needed, and I would've been willing to brush off a 2-year gap if Lorna's return had truly done a lot for her that made up for the time gap.

[jmc247]

By RamArtwork



By Arkensteller

However other female friendships like Jean/Lorna or Carol/Wanda got sidelined like they don't even exist.

With Jean and Lorna Marvel has tried every decade or two and failed to make their relationship interesting. Ironically Lorna and Rachel fell into the very same problem and were actually on the same team for five years in space with two pages of panels between them and mainly talking about their significant others. That was exactly what Jean and Lorna fell into and their their interaction had zero conflict or drama to it so writers stopped writing them together. It will be interesting to see if Leah manages to make Lorna and Rachel interacting more interesting then stale bread, because their space writers didn't manage it.

[whitecrown]

Thanks! Sometimes I see these commissions show up randomly from people liking and spreading them, which is great, but I wish they'd bring the artist info along for the ride. Credit where credit is due.

As far as I'm concerned, Lorna and Wanda are still sisters, and Marvel's retcon is invalid. In my headspace, Lorna has a generally great day-to-day life of catching up with her family and dating Jean. Though that doesn't mean no conflict. People often diverge on views no matter how close they are. You could imagine tension between Lorna and Jean as far as the image mutants should project to the world after all. My Lorna and Jean commissions tend to use their costumes from early on to emphasize how long they've known each other, something Marvel never does.

I think Lorna's costume should generally look the same as it currently is, so casual readers can recognize it's her. Especially because Marvel refuses to give her the kind of presence needed for people to follow her with a costume change. But, I also think she could do with a modernization of that costume. What I liked about Kris Anka's redesign concept was how well it gave off a "royal warrior" vibe that fits her personality, while adding a secondary color and level of use suitable to her power set that doesn't overshadow the green. I think it could be more of an armored look but keeping the cape, in fantasy knight fashion.



Good work! I think if not all of Marvel, then at least a certain editor at Marvel, understood just how much interest and potential there is in Lorna with the twins even though he didn't like it. It's been 6 years now and fans are still making fanart, fanfic and cosplays of the family which includes Lorna.

It goes back to the artificial "scarcity of roles" thing I talked about too. Marvel tends to act like any characters that aren't white cis male have to compete for a role, instead of acknowledging that multiple characters can occupy the same role in different ways. Lorna and Wanda can both be daughters of Magneto in different ways, and frankly their sisterhood is more important.



I could see Marvel making a similar cover involving Jean but with Jean looking more proactive, with painstaking effort made to dress it up as good. Like perhaps Jean facepalming to demonstrate she thinks it's stupid. Whereas with Lorna, there wasn't even a thinly veiled attempt to make it look good. She's simply an unconscious trophy for two men to fight over for dominance.



I don't think Marvel has any legitimate reason for thinking Lorna can't have at least a mini or oneshot. She's existed for going on 52 years. They've given those kind of opportunities to characters with far less history, exposure or need. They've spent decades misusing her to promote other characters, and undermining every chance she's had to demonstrate her potential. That includes what they're doing this very second as I'm typing this post. They can spare the budget to create and properly support a single 22-page comic book focused on Lorna for the first time in her whole 52 years of existence. Especially with how they've treated her since 2015.

With Bunn, I was initially supportive of him using Lorna and I was glad when she showed up on the Magneto solo. But honestly, I don't think Bunn really cared about Lorna beyond what could be done for Magneto using her. I think he started to get better about the dynamics between Lorna and Magneto toward the end of X-Men Blue, which was very important, but Blue still had those Havok problems and there were no signs of intent to do better by Lorna on that mark.

It was really Blue that "reset the clock" for me on how long Lorna and Havok need to be kept apart. Late 2012 to end of 2015 had made decent in-roads in spite of Marvel not giving her stuff the support it needed, and I would've been willing to brush off a 2-year gap if Lorna's return had truly done a lot for her that made up for the time gap.

I have mixed feelings on Wanda being Magneto's daughter. The mutant connection has almost never helped her character and in fact gotten her tons of flack from X-Fans. Not only has it not served Wanda but I feel like it also hurt Lorna in the long run since for decades if was the Maximoff Twins who were known as Magneto's children thus making Lorna even more superfluous. The only aspect of Wanda being Magneto's daughter that I really like is her being sisters with Lorna. That I did want to see way more of but of course there's barely been anything like that in the comics. And what little there was felt cheapened with the retcon shortly afterwards. At least we have fanart of Wanda and Lorna together. And honestly they don't even need to be sisters for that relationship because Jean, Wanda, and Lorna are the original three silver age mutants. It's almost criminal that nothing has ever been done with these three together besides this.
[img]https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/b/bd/Fantastic_Force_Vol_2_2.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/340?cb=20180125032922/[img]

Back when Scott was dead (and I wish he had been dead much longer than he was), I think a great idea could have been to reunite the original X-Men but in an expanded team featuring Lorna, Wanda, and Pietro (and possibly Alex if we need a Summers member). We've seen the 05 get together all the time but this would be a different lineup that is still true to the silver age while being more unique.

I agree that Lorna needs her iconic green costume just for viability amongst fans, but I've never liked the monochromatic look. Something like purple or gold or even silver helps to balance her out. I like the armored look but definitely with the cape for that fantasy knight vibe like you said. Although it may clash right now with Betsy as Captain Britain especially if that's a permanent change.

In Lorna's case, had she been conscious and trying to fight back against Magnus and Alex, the cover could be somewhat redeemed. The fact that she's robbed of all agency and literally being fought over as she's unconscious and not even aware of what's going on just makes it a thousand times worse, especially since it exemplifies just how she's been treated in the comics for decades now. That cover is a perfect allegory for Lorna's publication history. I certainly hope Jean wouldn't get a cover like that but like I said, she was pretty hated by Marvel editorial and writers during the 2000s to mid-2010s so I wouldn't put it past them either. They've shown enmity towards practically any female character whether it's Lorna, Jean, Wanda, Ororo, etc. and that's just from the X-Universe.

Considering how a character like the Invisible Woman just got her own miniseries, I definitely can't see Marvel prioritizing Lorna anytime soon, not even for a one-shot or limited series because they've made it very clear that they have no interest in doing anything with her. At best she can be recognized in a B-lister book with other B-listers and claim that's all the representation she needs and even that is too good for us apparently.

I agree that I don't think Bunn was much interested in Lorna besides how she could help Magneto. And X-Men Blue proved the same with Alex.