Has any X-woman been done dirtier than Polaris Cinemaphile?
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Has any X-woman been done dirtier than Polaris?
Has any X-woman been done dirtier than Polaris Cinemaphile?
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She can't really be done dirty when it all that's going for her character.
That is one muscular fricking Alex Summers.
Polaris' problem is that she's never really been a particularly good or interesting character so nobody's ever had any idea what to do with her. She was largely just there for a love triangle between Alex and Bobby originally, didn't do much of anything in Claremont's run aside from being possessed by/having to share her body with Malice, dicked around being Alex's wienersleeve and little else in X-Factor, then really did nothing at all until coming back to the team in the 2000s where some times she's crazy and some times she's not (a trait she shares with Aurora).
And by "done dirty" do you just mean misused (of which she's not) or put through a lot of shit? Because if it's the latter she hasn't gone through near as much as Karma who might have the flat out most miserable life of anyone in the X-Men. Although I wonder how they've changed her origin seeing as it was tied to the fall of South Vietnam and her being a boat person which hasn't really been much of a thing since the early/mid-'80s.
>Polaris' problem is that she's never really been a particularly good or interesting character so nobody's ever had any idea what to do with her
Any character can be made interesting. That's a problem with the writers, not the other way around.
Maybe but I think some characters are just harder to make interesting than others as shown by the fact you have characters like Dazzler who never sticks no matter how many reinventions they give her or Miles who they just keep shoving new powers onto. Things these characters have in common is utter pointlessness. Like why would you bother with Dazzler when Jubilee fills the same role on a team (light show energy blasts) but has a way better personality and character? You use Dazzler if Jubilee is already taken. Her pop star thing could be interesting but it doesn't really work on a team and nobody will have interest in a Dazzler solo nowadays and i wouldn't trust most Big Two writers to be able to write something outside the lane of basic cape comics even if the premise is interesting (as shown by how bad X-Corp was). The best thing for Dazzler would have been to just have her career collapse soon after AoA so you can just have her be a bitter, hardened chainsmoking washout like she was there.
With Polaris specifically, her whole thing about maybe she is or isn't Magneto's daughter was usurped by Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver who are way more popular and way better developed and even with the dumb AXIS retcon most people probably still think of them as Magneto's kids. She's mentally ill... well okay so are a lot of other characters including (as mentioned) Aurora who basically has more of a somewhere (is Alpha Flight still some gay SWORD branch or Carol Club or whatever they've been doing since the 2010s?). So what do you use Polaris in a book for that you can't really use anyone else for? You use her if you want a knockoff Magneto or a knockoff Wanda. There's not really a good hook there to be invested in and if the character has been around for 60 years and nobody's found that hook, then maybe it's just not there.
Also tangent but holy frick they gave Malice an actual physical body? For what purpose?
>And by "done dirty" do you just mean misused
Shes become a Yass queen slay coffee sipper
Personally I always found her being the Unfavorite of Magneto's kids, down to usually just being given a palette swap of Wanda's outfit, kind of compelling and interesting. Liked her more than Wanda at least.
She wasn't Magneto's kid for most of her existence. It was a brought up and dismissed plot point during the Silver Age and didn't come back until they decided to make her crazy in the 2000s.
It would make a good if cliched rivalry Wanda got everything that should have been Lorna's
>Bio daughter is a mutant but born out of her racist father's affair with a married human woman. Only living heir but the embodiment of his shame
>Adopted daughter isn't even a mutant but tickles Magneto's memories of Magda his firstborn
>Lorna craves Magneto's attention and never receives it
>Wanda shuns Magneto's attention but can never escape it
>Wanda is always changing costumes trying to find her identity
>Lorna always defaults to rip off of Wanda's original costume because she can't escape her identity as Magneto's mistake
>Wanda always has Pietro as well as her friends. Literally created a family out of thin air
>Magneto killed her family to hide his shame, even if they were alive her mother's husband was abusive. Abandoned by Alex, she never got a chance to make a family of her own
>Green vs Red. Villain color vs Hero color. Colors on the opposite sides of the color wheel
Course it'll never happen because modern writers always seem to have every female character be friends/allys or turn into friends/allys at some point because women fighting is bad or some shit
You remember that short lived Exiles book? It had both A Wanda and A Lorna on the team and one of the worlds they visited had them up against their parallel selves who couldn't stand each other. It's a shame that book got shut down hard. It would have been nice to actually explore the two's relationship.
the Jeff Parker curse
Mags hates Pietro more than Lorna tho
Yeah, because he actually gives a shit about Pietro. Lorna could betray him at any given time and Magneto wouldn't fricking care or maybe even notice. Pietro turning on him, fricking up his plans, etc actually mattered and had impact to Magneto because in his weird fricked up dickhead way he actually cares about them.
This guy gets it.
The problem with Polaris has alaways been that she was created to fill a single story role: "We need someone with magnetic powers who can be a standin for Magneto". She was just Mesmero's pawn and that was it. No deeper thought was put into bringing her back in the 70s other than that she existed and wasn't a complete monster like most "evil" mutants of the era which landed her as an ally of the team in arcs like the Z'Nox invasion. but they never really DID anything with her during those years. I know vol 1 of X-Men isn't exactly replete with strong character beats, But Lorna always felt like someone they put no thought into beyond her powerset.
I still think she could have had a chance if Claremont had cared about her. But she was the one original X-Man (not counting characters who were dead at the time like Mimic) that he cared the least about. He used Havok a bunch but Lorna was relegated to being retired and then dragged back to be possessed by evil entities (TWICE!). The only time of any length Claremont used her was when she turned into a She-Hulk style muscle girl and lived with Moira's weirdo X-Men on Muir Island and I can't say Polaris got the strongest personality even then.
The only writer to really try to develop her in a way that isn't destructive or treats her like an adjunct to Magneto is Peter David in X-Factor, but between his runs she gets shat on so much it's difficult to say that he "saves" the character. Today I can't even fricking tell you what personality Lorna is supposed to have. Who is she outside of "Magneto's daughter" and "bipolar hero-villain switch"?
Yeah it's kind of sad for how long she's been around yet how little she's really been used.
>And by "done dirty" do you just mean misused (of which she's not) or put through a lot of shit?
done dirty as in "austen completely demolished her character"
>Also tangent but holy frick they gave Malice an actual physical body? For what purpose?
same purpose they turned Shaw into a wifebeater and one of the hellfire brats into a child rape victim: The ANAD clique believes redeeming female villains is **empowering**
>same purpose they turned Shaw into a wifebeater and one of the hellfire brats into a child rape victim: The ANAD clique believes redeeming female villains is **empowering**
But why? Like what does Malice with a body do? It's not like she was the greatest character but you take away her entire shtick by doing that unless she can still possess others which means she's a discount Karma.
>But why?
it makes people retweet you and bleedingcool and other newspages give you notes. The damage you do to the brand doesn't matter, it's all short term benefit. Editors? They are my friends.
these Black folk are basically the last dregs of the 2015 ANAD era, the "this is what a feminist looks" like wave of writers that meme'd marvel to death. Quarantined to the X-Office until the shogunate deems it safe to get rid of them, but meanwhile every half a year we get a mayorly moronic arc that completely """"reinvents"""" a character rendering either unusable or completely boring.
To their credit, they did make the gay orgy island work in their favour and have enough sales to sustain some books, even convinced big names like Ewing to play ball with them. Well not many sales, Tini howard keeps getting her shit ass minis cancelled.
>Claremont underused Poralis
Poralis and Havok were already a thing before him, and he wrote them so they were happily "retired". Whenever Havok came in, Polaris was by his side.
Then X-Factor destroys Claremont's interest in the books and he begins the muir island and inferno half-assing. But even THAT failed to destroy the pair, PAD pick them back up. Polaris remained consistently depicted "idgaf about your mutant bs I'm here for my bf" for more or less all her appearances.
It wasn't until the Austen run where Polaris' character was completely ruined beyond repair and she hasn't recovered since.
>It wasn't until the Austen run where Polaris' character was completely ruined beyond repair and she hasn't recovered since.
Though perhaps in a depressing convenience Lorna is typically so low profile they could probably just put her on the back burner for a little while and have her come back without ever addressing the issue again and most people would probably not notice or not care to notice
>Polaris' problem is that she's never really been a particularly good or interesting character so nobody's ever had any idea what to do with her.
i liked her being an emotional wreck trying to recover and get along with her siblings in the serval x-factor series, but that was too much for the world apparently
Yeah, I liked that book too and she was absolutely fine through Krakoa, characterized as competent and not miserable.
Her mistake for picking the guy who has even more personal baggage than his older brother, who's a case in of himself.
Also pointless: Jessica Drew, at least pointless in how they've used her since Bendis brought her back. As she's been used for the last 20 years, she serves no purpose. She's a warm body for team books with no real personality and her series just die because, again, there's no real point to them.
Want Jessica to work and have a niche? Take her back to her roots. Her original book had more of a weird vibe to it, horror and 1970s grittiness and all that. Give her a solo book that's a throwback in style to her old book and trippy, weird, mysticism filled period of '70s Marvel run by guys like Gerber, Englehart, Wolfman and the like. Have her battle weird villains, get involved with cults and shit like that.
Does Wanda count?
Is Moira an X-woman?
Sometimes I feel like deep down everybody hates Polaris because when someone say "Magneto daughter" we always imagine Scarlet Witch, it's like she stole Wanda place in the Marvel universe.
Wanda never gave a frick about that tho
We just Wanda in another "we are like family UwU" scene with Polaris
Was Polaris Malice the same as Sue Storm Malice?
No, Sue Malice was just an alternate personality. Polaris Malice is (or was) a disembodied body hopper who only got mixed up with Polaris because Polaris' powers caused things to get wonky and the two of them to share her body.
I think there may originally have been an idea to retcon the Sue Malice persona to be the same bodyhopper but they have long since been separated. The Marauder Malice got resurrected in her original body on Krakoa and that made her reform
Where would they have even gotten Malice's body from? Didn't they require some kind of genetic template and Malice had always been a disembodied psionic entity and presumably had been that way for a long time prior to her first appearance. There was nothing genetic for them to use.
IIRC it was in one of the Infinity Comics so I don't think the creators even understood how the frick the protocols work. But then that's not unique to there you get like three different ideas of them just in the team books.
It happened in Excalibur
Malice possessed the clone body of Betsy that Jamie Braddock commissioned from Sinister
Betsy teamed up with Kwannon to expel Malice and saw her backstory
Apparently before she became a disembodied psychic entity, Malice was a teenage girl with depression. She killed herself and got stuck as Malice
They were able to resurrect a body for Malice because apparently Sinister has an endless DNA database of every single mutant who has ever lived
God, every time I try to forget how shitty Tini Howard is someone reminds me. They gave her three fricking tries at writing a Betsy book and she fricked them all up.
I shouldn't even be getting worked up over largely minor character like Malice but I think it's irritating to me because it's a good example of how utterly moronic and useless the current crop of writers and editors are. Like the character has one thing and nobody at any point stopped to go "but what happens when we take it away?" because in current comics nobody can be a villain, everyone needs to be some kind of poor misunderstood soul ready for redemption. Especially if they're a woman.
This.
Why did Krakoa have to redeem fricking every single villain? Sinister is the only one they can use in the future, everything else they have left is what, sentinels? After Orchis they will seem like a joke. Mojo? Wasn't even a threat when he popped up during Krakoa. Goblin Queen? She's got her own thing now and doesn't care about the X-Men at all. It's so fricking stupid, the threats have been tuned up or redeemed and they have NOTHING left.
The thing about the Marauders is that now that Sinister isn't being constrained by Krakoa, he can just clone a new batch of them at their worst. Even make a new Malice who is just as Psycho as the original, maybe even stick her in Lorna's body from the getgo
And there's plenty of other X-Villains who can easily backslide into villains again now that Krakoa doesn't have anything to offer them anymore
Plus the Marauders were already cloned and killed a bunch of time before this. I'm not even sure Sinister doesn't already have a cache of them somewhere, stashed away for the future. But that does make me wonder, did any of the Marauders ever get any page time in Krakoa? I mean other than Malice, but did they try to actually adress how fricked up these guys are in general?
Scalphunter, now going by Greycrow bc come on, got a lot of development in Hellions. don't think any others did.
>Scalphunter
I forgot about that, frick. I actually ugly laughed at the idea of some 80s comics writer sitting down and going "What do I call my native american villain ? Oh I know Scalphunter!". Youd think they would have explored some of the others like Arclight too since shes allegedly a 'nam veteran.
Vertigo isn't even a mutant so I guess she just wasn't invited.
For someone that wasn't even in the original group of Savage Land Mutates, Vertigo seems to be a runaway success story in terms of appearances.
Almost certainly because her first appearance was drawn by Michael Golden. That first arc of Fanfare is so fricking great looking, it's a deserved classic. The others are pretty much just confined to Savage Land stories tho, dunno why Vertigo in particular ended up in Marauders. probably just her power set
I think it's a multi-part thing. Part of it is because her powers allow for artists to get a little trippy with what they draw if they want to show the disorienting effects they have which can probably be fun. The other is that she has a very distinct, striking, and memorable look and is hot. She's never been important but you see her and she leaves an impact and you remember her. She's a great visual so why not use her as at least scene filler?
Thinking about it, Lorna might have been better off just being Vertigo. Like have her powers changed in the Savage Land, keep her thing with Zaladane and have her adapt the Vertigo identity.
It's weird that nobody's brought Zaladane back but then I remind myself that Claremont made them sisters and that was only predilected on Lorna not being Magneto's kid.
She would rock the Vertigo outfit though. It's even her color scheme!
Right, it would have been a fine reinvention and given Lorna he own identity.
Do you think the Magnetic powers are a problem for her? Since they just make her into discount Mags?
Definitely a big part since it just leaves her tied to Magneto no matter what and it was inevitable for a shitty writer to go "she has magnetic powers so she really should be Magneto's daughter".
So when is the retcon that every psychic has a common great grandparent or something?
Aren't basically most of the psychics in the X-Men tied to the Phoenix Force? I'm half-surprised they haven't done a story that's said that psychics in the MU are basically "children" of the Phoenix Force created as potential vessels for it or some shit.
I mean canonically this is basically the case, the PF has been basically babysitting the one family line for millennia and is why their mutations are always psychic powers, either through direct intervention or just bleed off from its host being one of their parents.
>the PF is just another Dominion except it spec'd into biotech and is retroactively genetically engineering species to assume supremacy before the others
>Definitely a big part since it just leaves her tied to Magneto no matter what and it was inevitable for a shitty writer to go "she has magnetic powers so she really should be Magneto's daughter".
I am still totally convinced it happened because of sloppy writer research. They looked at her introduction, saw "Oh she's Magneto's daughter" and then didn't read the part where that Magneto was a fake created by Mesmero. It's similar to how Duggan made a story about the time Clea fricked Benjamin Franklin without continuing to read that arc to find out that "Franklin" was a construct created by the villains they were fighting, so the real one wouldn't even know about that. The game of telephone with long-running franchises can give some awful results.
It's not poor research, it's the "this makes sense to me so that's what I'm doing" style of writing that's been prevelant for the last 20ish years.
That's also possible but I still think it was a misreading.
Just make them half sisters. Hell, make it so that Mags was having a long running affair with Lorna's mom and they're both his kids but Zala isn't a mutant so Mags doesn't give a shit about her.
Lorna was probably the biggest victim of the reprint era. If the book wasn't canned they probably could have had more time to develop or ingrain her into the series.
Honestly you have to think about this a little more logically. Claremont wrote the book for 16 years. Polaris' only notable story from the silver age run tired her directly to one his pet characters from that run (the others being Storm, Kitty and Wolverine). She is also a female character and Claremont is such a coomer that he obviously had a boner even for characters like Callisto. Yet in his entire run he couldn't find any use for a female character tied directly to one of his pet characters. I think that's a pretty damning indictment of her prospects.
Not really.
Polaris had other things beyond being a mutant. She was decidedly a side character. Havok was too, they were both geologists ffs. Then shit happens and Havok basically guilt trips himself into the x-men and he hates every minute of it then malice happens.
But at their core they were always the "it got other shit beyond being a mutant" couple. hell it's basically multiversity tier karma that Alex's life keeps spiraling the more he insists on superheroing.
Man, old X-men really does just feel like a whole different universe when you go back to it.
>Yet in his entire run he couldn't find any use for a female character tied directly to one of his pet characters
I gotta speak up about this because I see people say this a lot.
Please remember that Lorna was NOT Magneto's daughter during Claremont's ENTIRE duration as X-Men writer. The revelation in the pre-reprint era that the "Magneto" who had revealed himself to be Lorna's dad was a robot controlled with Mesmero was NEVER contested until the 2000s. 80s and 90s Lorna really was the biological child of the Dane family, and Zaladane was her biological sister. So Claremont had no interest in writing her as Magneto's daughter. Why should he? It would be a blatant retcon and Claremont was very averse against those. He prefered to move things forward than tinker with the past. So no there's no mystery for why Claremont didn't use her with Magneto, the two weren't related in any way at the time. Lorna hadn't even MET the real Magneto until that run.
She has nothing going for her as she is. You'd have to radically change the character for her to have something unique to her.
>magnetism powers
Magneto is more popular than her, ensuring he will get the spotlight over her.
>Mentally ill
There are tons of crazy characters, a lot of them more popular than her.
>Magneto's kid
Wanda and Pietro, especially with how they've been making Wanda more a daddy's girl over the years, so BOTH "loves Magneto" and "hates Magneto" are already taken by characters more popular than her.
>one half of a power X couple with Havok
There are multiple loved X-Men pairings that are way more popular than her and Havok.
>being coomer material
Most of her best outfits are just green Wanda.
>Magneto is more popular than her, ensuring he will get the spotlight over her.
Power overlap is hardly exclusive to her. We have more psychics than we'll ever need and any number of people whose power just boils down to energy blast. Hell her having the same powers as Magneto is actually kind of interesting in itself compared to how many redundant telepaths we have. Especially if want to get fricky with magnetic poles.
>Especially if want to get fricky with magnetic poles
im suprised the never did something that with max and joseph
>Has any X-woman been done dirtier than Polaris Cinemaphile?
Karma
Monet/Penance
any X-kid created in the past 20 years
Husk really deserved better than to be Warren and Toad's sloppy seconds. She was so eager and bright.
Polaris going off the reservation and feeding thousands of people to Brood in revenge for their actions at the Gala probably would've made a much better turn to evil moment if it wasn't for the fact that the X-Men were also there killing everyone and the entire Fall of X arc didn't frame all of Orchis as evil fascists deserving death.
She's the Vulcan equivalent of the Maximoffs.
Vulcan had a memorable period in the 2000s at least. Has Lorna had anything similar?
Vulcan is one of the worst things ever foisted on the X-Men. I wish Brubaker's entire run could be erased. Deadly Genesis wasn't needed and added nothing good.
I liked her most when Apokolips tortured her into being his Horsewoman
>x-woman done dirtier
moira mactaggart?
Frick it, favorite lower tier X-Men chicks?
>We need a non A-list X-men member to turn crazy or evil
>Say no more
What happens if you make a Polaris clone?
>What happens if you make a Polaris clone?
Almost every X-character is a plant clone now, so look in the comics I guess.
which issue was this? Important for winning a nerd argument over if Magneto was bullshiting about his power loss by the time of Genosha being wiped out.
New X-men 132
Honestly if someone is going to have to go crazy and naked they could do worse than Lorna.
That short-lived costume was legit fire though
Most mutants haven't had good stories. Wolverine is an exception because he's not even a mutant
The artist here did her real dirty. Idk wtf is going on with her body.
Her neck is like a foot long
I miss her bros.
Why does Marvel fear this pairing?
Gambit/Rogue is way too popular, especially among girls. I knew a few girls when I was in high school, all of them hot/cute, who liked the X-Men and to a tee it was because they loved the Rogue/Gambit romance. It's very shoujo when you think about it. Rogue is the melodramatic put upon heroine, Gambit the ravishing, rough, and charming bad boy (but sweet) love interest loyal to her. All it's missing is the b***hy love rival or a second guy pining over Rogue.
Partner with Viz to do an X-Academy dramatic romance manga focused on Rogue and Gambit and it'd probably sell really well.