Sometimes, I feel terrible for complaining about Marvel, and especially calling out Brevoort and Remender for things they’ve said and done. Story-wise, Polaris has had a lot of good things done for her, from coming back to Earth and confirming her as a mutant and Magneto’s daughter, to having her origin story told after 40 years and getting to lead her own team on All-New X-Factor.
But then I remember why I’m complaining and push onward.
I remember Lorna as a nameless cameo in Avengers vs X-Men, one that Magneto ignores getting mind-controlled into submission by Emma Frost despite Magneto having just gone out into space specifically to rescue Lorna in X-Men Legacy’s Five Miles South of the Universe.
I remember that Lorna having her origin story told after such a long time got next to no promotion; the only thing Marvel did to promote it was a short piece on Marvel.com that quickly disappeared.
I remember that All-New X-Factor got no promotion out of Marvel aside from when it was announced, and they went so far as to withhold the cover for All-New X-Factor #14, the issue where Lorna and Wanda spent time together as sisters, until a week before the issue’s release when it was too late for casual fans to preorder a copy of the issue.
I remember Marvel quickly followed this up by putting out an Axis variant cover pairing Enchantress and Scarlet Witch that was very clearly designed to make Enchantress look like Lorna. They even went so far as to color Wanda’s hair red and Enchantress’ green.
I’m extremely grateful for the good stuff Marvel’s done for Lorna, but I can’t keep quiet when books get canceled or sell poorly, or Lorna’s excluded from events she should be taking part in, just because people at Marvel don’t like or respect her enough to promote anything involving her, or because they’re in the middle of some pissing match with Fox over film rights.
If this sounds paranoid, well, there’s an easy way to disprove what I’m saying. All they need to do is use her in events where she has reason to be involved (e.g. Axis since it was on Genosha and heavily involved her family) and actually promote books she’s on every once in a while (e.g. All-New X-Factor). That’s really all it takes. Stuff like the Axis variant cover last year while ANXF #14 got absolutely no promotion only proves me right and makes me more likely to complain.
This’ll probably be the last time I rant about this for… at least a week, unless something new happens that’s bad.
