I wrote a thing on Twitter about Lorna, Marvel, and treatment of her in relation to male characters. I’m bringing it over here because I feel I got to an important place with it.

When Marvel actually bothers to acknowledge Polaris exists and use her, the biggest obstacle to overcome is getting them to see Lorna as her own character. It’s a problem that’s more insidious than it first appears.

Marvel editors and writers are entrenched with an idea of Lorna as defined by men. Which is an annoying problem, because Lorna started out very feminist and empowering for her time, especially compared to Jean as SHE was written at the time.

Then, over the span of a few decades, Lorna’s treatment by Marvel declined from “not who takes who to the next sock hop” and “I’m nobody’s girl,” to fawning over how she gets to be Havok’s domesticated pseudo-housewife/girlfriend that needs him to rescue her.

Marvel writers and editors forget who Lorna is SUPPOSED to be. They only remember what later writers, especially Claremont, turned her into. So when they’re asked to do things with Lorna, they keep falling back on the bad later stuff instead of referring to the good early stuff.

Which is why they have problems with writing her male relationships. Gambit on All-New X-Factor and Magneto on X-Men Blue, both cases started out treating her relations with those men in the same way her relation with Havok has been historically treated.

And in both cases, ANXF and X-Men Blue, the writer DID eventually do better in her dynamic with Gambit and Magneto, respectively. But that they had such trouble at all underscores the problem Marvel writers and editors have of a tendency to devalue Lorna and overvalue men.