I think you can’t REALLY have the X-Men without the “feared and hated” status quo. It’s the entire point behind the creation of the characters and franchise.
I believe it’s also the reason Marvel tried to take it away from the X-Men and give it to the Inhumans while Marvel was pissy at Fox for having the X-Men film rights.
On top of the most basic and obvious reason for keeping “feared and hated” going, I have a personal vested interest because that kind of climate is where Lorna WOULD thrive in the comics if Marvel stopped ignoring her character history and potential. What happened to her on Genosha SHOULD mean she’s heavily involved in advancing mutant rights, on top of so much else.
In the MCU, post-Infinity War would be a good time to reintroduce mutants with the “feared and hated” aspect intact. People will have just gotten out of a damning demonstration of how dangerous super powers can be, which would undoubtedly convince them that countermeasures need to be taken more than ever. People will already be on edge about the intentions of just one new person showing up with powers. Millions that nobody knows about living among them would make paranoia worse.
I still think the ideal way of introducing mutants into the MCU isn’t Scarlet Witch, but the Infinity Gauntlet and Quicksilver. You could say Quicksilver’s traits were split between X-Men film Quicksilver and MCU Quicksilver by the Gauntlet, over Quicksilver trying to stop the Gauntlet from being used to split the universe in two and being closest to the Gauntlet when it happened.
You stood by your sister’s grave, gripping followers tightly in your hands. Tears were flowing down your cheeks, despite your attempts to keep your emotions in check. No one could blame you for being so upset however. Sonya, the only family you had left was dead.
If John, Clarice, Marcos, and Lorna weren’t here by your side you weren’t sure if you would have been able to survive. Gently you placed the plants down on Sonya’s grave and John proceeded to give you a hug. Sonya meant a lot to him too so he came the closest to sharing your pain.
”[Y/N] i’m… I’m so sorry” said Clarice. You forced yourself to give her a weak smile as you wiped tears off your cheeks.
”Thanks Clarice. Thank all of you guys for being here for me and Sonya”.
All your friends nodded and with that you formed a giant group hug. You’d be hurting for a long time because if Sonya’s death but with these four around to support you, you may just get through this dark time.
me: what the hell is wrong with me
brain: here’s a repressed memory that explains a lot of things
me: Well Lock It Back Up?? Did I Ask For All That????
I was tempted to do a title of “State of the Blue” or “State of the Me” for this post, but right now I feel like that’s going overboard.
Bunn gave Lorna some good moments in issues after Blue #23. They’re not as good or as in-depth as they should be, especially given all the bad moments that have happened throughout Blue, but to a certain extent they do make up for bad moments. It’s not enough to balance the scales, but it’s enough that I’m no longer in “fight mode.” I’m no longer in the mindset where I’m absolutely certain she’ll be treated poorly, and I’m no longer so fed up with everything that I kinda want to be pushed over the edge of dropping all things Disney and Marvel to “get it over with.” That’s where I was, it’s not where I am now.
My view of the situation has changed for the better, even if it doesn’t look like it.
That said, two caveats.
First caveat. If I get the feeling that I’m being jerked around as a Lorna fan, that the intent is “how shitty can we treat her and get away with it” instead of genuine effort to treat her well that simply doesn’t go right, that’ll push me to the breaking point and probably past it much faster. Intent matters.
Second caveat. If something colossally bad happens, that can instantly wipe out any positive views I’ve acquired from post-#23 issues and push me past the breaking point too. I was raving about Gifted and more enthusiastic about it than I think anything in my life besides Final Fantasy two decades ago… and how poorly they handled Dreamer’s death was enough to wipe out all of that for me. If it can happen for me with Gifted, it can happen for me with Blue.
Though keep in mind with Gifted that it wasn’t just “I’m mad Dreamer died.” A lot of things demonstrating poor writing and disrespect to the character and audience led to that. It wasn’t a single plot point, a single scene. It was multiple scenes across 2 episodes paired with continued lack of respect in subsequent episodes and on official social media. So when I say “something colossally bad,” it’s not just the one moment. It’s everything around it. I’m less harsh about a screw-up if I get a sense that nothing bad was meant by it, and that whoever wrote it was trying to be good and respectful.
Also, the post-#23 good moments are the reason I’m choosing to view the current story arc of Blue as “it’s too late to change things to what they should be, so this is good for what we have to put up with.”
I could choose to be more abrasive and pissed off about the current arc than I have been post-#23. I could hold a lot more enmity toward Bunn for deliberately sticking Lorna in a Havok-centric story after already letting Havok hijack what was supposed to be Lorna’s big moment in Blue #8 and #9. I’m making a conscious decision to view the current situation as one where it’s too late to change things like they should be changed (read: Lorna shouldn’t be interacting with or talking about Havok at all). That’s entirely thanks to recent good moments.
To make it even clearer. Without the good moments, the last pages of Blue #27 pulling the “Lorna needs to try to redeem Havok” garbage would’ve been the last straw for me. With good moments, I’m willing to let it pass as “junk I have to put up with cause it’s out of Bunn’s control and too late for him to do better than this for Lorna.”
Next issue is the one with the shitty cover (in its implications and what it represents, not raw quality of the art). Either the story inside is just as bad as the cover or worse, or the cover grossly misrepresents what could be a good story inside. We’ll see what happens in two weeks.
P.S. – I’m still sorting out my feelings on how strict I’ll be about if Lorna has anything to do with Havok after this arc is done. I’m adamant Havok should be kept out of Lorna’s stories for 10 more years after what happened on Blue. The question for me is if I’m going to do something about it besides complain if he’s forced into her stories again.
I strongly believe a big chunk of why Lorna got screwed over in Blue #8-9, why the potential for Malice was wasted as a tiny footnote for Havok’s story, etc, comes from fans appearing to be too okay with him forced on her. If that’s true and I do nothing about it besides complain, I’m part of the problem.
You’re getting more this time if you read this post.
By the way, here’s what I use as search terms when I look for these tweets.
polaris x-men
polaris marvel
lorna x-men
lorna marvel
lorna dane
On rare occasions, I’ll go outside them, but these are my regular search terms.
Just another case of Lorna included among characters as a fave.
Damn right she does!
This is the ever-cool @dipolarismoment on Twitter again! And I agree, it’d be cool for Lorna to get her PhD.
At the same time, it reminds me of a discussion I had on Twitter (you’ll notice I usually don’t include my own tweets/replies on these lists). Someone was complaining about Carol Danvers’ power grid card putting her intelligence too low. I pointed out the power grids seem to be bullshit more often than not.
If you look at the Marvel wikia for example. Polaris and Havok both have the exact same Master’s degree, yet somehow, Lorna is just “Normal” (2) intelligence while Havok gets to be “Learned” (3). Then if you look at Jean Grey, she’s ALSO “Learned” (3) even though she’s only college-level education.
In other words, power grids are just yet another place where whoever makes them and oversees them can pretend their bias toward characters (for or against) is more objective than it actually is. “Look at this concrete number, you have to write her as being only that smart, no smarter.”
I happen to like the idea of Lorna being bi.
Aside from me just simply liking it, the only partner she’s ever been allowed to have in 50 years is Havok, and her interactions with men have been tainted by that history (too much of ANXF #4-6 was pretty clearly treating Gambit like another Havok in her life). Same as how I think Lorna would be best off with a female writer, I think being in relationship with another woman might result in writers writing her better in relationship. They might stop thinking of how “masculine” (read: dominant) her partner has to look around her and try to write her as an actual character in her own right.
Awwwww yeah.
I never thought about this before, but I’ve decided that it explains why I have this song on my smartphone. I mostly listen to songs with female singers (nothing against male ones, I just like them more; may have been a result of coming of age in the time of Lilith Fair), so songs with male singers is rare for me to have on my phone.
Two more tweets about how Lorna should get a solo, and seriously, it really is time. Moreso than literally any other time in her entire character history, and moreso than a lot of other characters that have been given solo books just because someone at Marvel likes the character regardless of interest anyone has in reading them.
Not only is she more popular than ever and prominent on TV, again, it’s her 50th anniversary in October. Literally everything has aligned for this to be the time Marvel should give her a solo.
Considering they gave Scarlet Witch a solo and heavily promoted it despite low sales, and they both let Havok hijack her big return on X-Men Blue and are giving HIM team book he leads, I’m going to see the lack of a solo and nothing major for Lorna for her anniversary by October as Marvel continuing to show bias against her. She’s gone most of her existence undervalued and ignored. She deserves something for her 50th.
I continue to see this sort of request. It’s interesting how much people want Lorna and Wanda to interact – moreso Lorna coming to MCU than the other direction. I think the perception is “Lorna is a great character, she should be alongside these other great characters in a cinematic universe compared to others I could mention.”
This makes me think of how some fans go with Lorna Maximoff, which is a pretty neat name change. I don’t know how I’d feel about if that became canon somehow, but it’s interesting as fanon.
Now here’s something worth talking a bit about.
Their relationships are all complicated because Lorna only finally got Magneto being her father restored in the past decade, but she was the first actual intended child before her forced retcon and before Wanda and Pietro were revealed as Magneto’s kids (and not forced retcon to not be).
As such, it’s only in the past decade that Lorna and Pietro both using green has been an issue.
Also interesting, one version of coloring for Wanda’s first appearance gave her a green costume as well. So basically Wanda and Pietro really really wanted to be Lorna even before she existed. 😛
There’s also one panel out there from the time she was on Genosha (I think an AU; been a while since I saw it) where she was wearing Wanda’s old costume in green. They loev stealing each others’ clothes and colors.
Seriously though, one final possible reason behind giving Pietro a green costume is to try to make it harder to undo their forced retcon and for fans and readers to see them all visually as siblings. It’s the same reason Enchantress was made to look like Polaris for an Axis cover, and why they tried to introduce a new “sister” called “Luminous” with blue color scheme post-Axis. They know the color coordination matters and they’re trying to undermine it cause they don’t like all of them together as a family and don’t want fans to see them that way.
I like that Lorna is specifically cited as a possible skin. And frankly, if she was, I’d actually be interested in trying out Fortnite. Right now I don’t really care. I’m in the middle of Far Cry 5 and I have a long backlog of other games to play, on top of others I still need to buy.
Last one. I see tweets fairly often of people responding to green hair by saying the person looks like Lorna. To me, that says a lot about how iconic Lorna’s become and becoming, especially with the green hair. They could’ve said she looks like Rydia (FF4), or Aphrodite IX, or Agent Brand, etc, but they went with Lorna.
Thanks for joining me for another list of tweets! See you next time, same Polaris Time, same Polaris Channel!
salarta 