I was recently informed that Polaris has received a major overhaul for her pages (now plural instead of singular) on Marvel.com.

For my two cents, the article not talking about Lorna’s post-Genosha trauma, and talking way too much about Havok, are problems.

However, everything else is a big step in the right direction.

Outright acknowledgment of Lorna’s mission to fight for mutant rights and against persecution. This is something Marvel was ignoring, so to see the company make that the opening blurb is a big deal.

I’d say the line about her father is important too, buuuuuuuut

It’s way more important that the connections section is showing her bro and sis as relatives. 🙂 Before people ask about Wiccan, this is only part of the list. On the site, you can scroll over to see Vision and Wiccan. It’s alphabetical order.

On that note?

It’s pretty damning that the Enemies subsection only has these two. It shows that Marvel uses Lorna so little as her own character, she doesn’t have any core enemies to highlight currently in use. Neither of these villains has been involved with her since like the 70s or 80s.

One weird thing though.

(No, not the Havok part. After what happened with X-Men Blue, fuck him)

The Allies section doesn’t really make much sense. She hasn’t really interacted much with Captain America. I don’t think she’s ever been around Falcon. She’s had more interaction with Wolverine, Iceman and Jean Grey than with Cyclops, so why’s he on here when those three aren’t?

If Marvel were doing well by Lorna, I’d like fandom fantasies take me places with ideas of Lorna being on an Avengers team or a core X-Men team with Cyclops or something. With Marvel’s recent track record, I think this is just nonsensical additions.

The curious part though is that X-Men is at the end of the Allies list. Compare that to Scarlet Witch, who has a whole separate Groups tab to show her affiliation with the Avengers. Lorna’s basically seen as outside the X-Men but working with them.

But one of the most important things to say about these new pages is what they say about Lorna’s character history that wasn’t being acknowledged before.

Marvel has finally acknowledged that she was part of Genosha and survived the genocide. It’s not the full story, it’s still missing the subsequent trauma, but Marvel doing this much is a very important first step.

It’s also one of very few times where Marvel admits to Lorna having a history dating back to the original 5 X-Men. This is huge because it opens the doorway to having that history explored some day.

Realistically, all the positive remarks I’ve made here probably have no real bearing on Marvel as a whole. This is probably a job assigned to an intern and they don’t care what the intern puts online as long as it’s not a bunch of hate speech.

But also realistically, even this much matters no matter what the full context is. Every little bit helps.

Polaris Standard Overview | Marvel