Not much of an improvement over the previous as retcons go. But that’s retcons.

I think this is definitely the best iteration of Polaris’s origin / the death of her parents so far. Adds a nice tragic touch to the whole thing.

Am I the only one that thinks Lorna’s dad (step-father? cuckold?) looks like the Captain? THAT would be an interesting retcon!

Still haven’t decided if I think this is an interesting twist on Polaris’s origin or a stunt designed to create some cheap pathos. With most other writers I’d probably write it off as the latter, but I’m willing to see where PAD takes this before making up my mind.

Retconning a Chuck Austen story is never wrong.

Michael P, that needs to be a t-shirt.

@Michael P.

Amen brother.

So did Bobby lie about the whole thing to get in Lorna’s pants? Suppose he’s been lying about hetrosexual for years now so anything is possible.

I loved X-Factor #243 I thought it was a great issue. The original retcon really hurt Polaris’ as a character. She was introduced as Magneto’s daughter/successor with a particular power level and morality and by reversing her parentage by the end of the story no one knew who she was. She basically had no concept by the end of it. I think it’s why her voice has been so changeable over the years. Hopefully this origin will help solidify her voice in the coming years. I think if they were to re-retcon her origin now they would just obliterate the character. As Tim Gunn says “make it work”!

The robot thing was ridiculous though. No one could defend that story. How could the mistress of magnetism not tell she was talking to a robot? How did Jean not notice?

there is still final question: was zaladane a sister of polaris?

Magneto does refer to Suzanna as the “mother of his children”. Whether that means that was his purpose for Suzanna or that she had other children for him is up in the air. But it’s still pretty interesting. Magneto kept talking about how Zaladane reminded him or himself before he killed her too.

Of course Bobby didn’t lie. He had affidavits!

“Am I the only one that thinks Lorna’s dad (step-father? cuckold?) looks like the Captain?”

I thought that too. It’s the ears.

I read that story recently Iceman was behaving like a stalker all the way through. Magneto came off less creepy and Lorna more stable.

Perhaps in this case it only happened because this is a follow-up to Peter David’s comment, but what Cronin did here is what a lot of Lorna fans expected with the last Polaris article: spending time to mention material that supports the current understanding.

In any case, Brian Cronin does do a good job of pointing out cracks still present between the past “not Magneto’s daughter” retcon and Lorna’s origin story, but I’m sure that the affidavits could be part of some form of cover-up, and given it’s much later, we might even be able to say that Lorna’s supposed age of just recently born was part of that. Or, someone could have “conveniently” given Bobby all the information he needed, perhaps Magneto himself still thinking Lorna wasn’t ready to be a part of his life yet and thinking she could go back to a normal life for a little longer.

Purely ideas, of course.

Anyway, I liked Peter David’s issue a lot. I was pleased to see him willing to move Lorna forward, I feel it shows how much of a true professional he is that he’s willing to develop the character rather than regress her to an earlier, more pathetic state like lesser writers would have done. Before X-Factor #243, I really thought Peter David having her under his pen would turn out to be a bad thing and had the risk of destroying her potential as a character, but the issue proved I was completely wrong about Peter David for thinking that. I still think Lorna should be more active in the Marvel universe overall, but now I don’t mind her staying on X-Factor at all for the time being.

About the whether or not Zaladane is also Magneto’s daughter question.

Most of the time, the question of “is Zaladane also Magneto’s daughter” seems like it was used by people that didn’t like Lorna returning to her wonderful potential as one of Magneto’s daughters, so invoking Zaladane was a way to tack on an extra person to make it sound goofy.

It’s possible, but obviously there are other approaches as well. One I like to note that someone else figured out was that Zaladane could just as easily be Lorna’s sister on her mother’s side, not her father’s side. There’s also other possibilities, like magic involved, Zaladane being a Sinister creation, etc.

I like the idea of Zaladane being Magneto’s daughter and Lorna sister because it holds a lot of dramatic potential for them both. Magneto executing his own child would be an extremely dark story. By the same token if she’s merely Lorna’s half sister he may have been so brutal with Zala because she had hurt his daughter. Either way it’s very interesting.

I’m inclined to the cheap pathos assessment,but not so cheap it couldn’t produce good results down the road.

So is it a rule that mutant powers manifest at puberty, are there exceptions, or is it there no rule?

“So is it a rule that mutant powers manifest at puberty, are there exceptions, or is it there no rule?”

All in all, it seems like the most common time, but with a fair few exceptions.

“I’m inclined to the cheap pathos assessment,but not so cheap it couldn’t produce good results down the road.”

Why is it a bad thing that a story triggers an emotional response from the audience? Isn’t that the point?

Havok comments at the end are pure PAD awesomeness, I like it.

BTW, Austen stories are . . . well, are Austen stories, just try to ignore them, your life will be easier.

Peace

PAD’s dig at canon is almost as good as his snark at Richard Arnold in his TNG novel ‘Before Dishonor’. Arnold tried to stop PAD from having a female Borg in a prior novel called Vendetta (from around TNG’s 4th or 5th season) and there was a disclaimer in the book saying it didn’t jibe with Gene’s ‘vision’. So, nearly 20 years later, PAD’s doing a new Borg TNG novel and Geordi mentions that some Starfleet Borg experts didn’t believe there were female Borg. Seven of Nine calls this ridiculous and Geordi replied something like ‘Go argue with self-declared experts’.

I LOL’d

Silver Age Polaris is hilarious. “Oh, Magneto isn’t really my dad? Ok, I guess I don’t have to be the Queen of Evil after all.”

How many superheroes have parents that died in a plane crash? Seems like some sort of trope.

@Max: Yeah, gotta love the Silver Age. Bobby’s comment “I kid you NOT” is also pretty hilarious given the context of the conversation.

I like PAD’s retcon; it builds on the existing history, adds a detail to make it more tragic so the character can be developed further, and gives an overall sense of closure to the origin story so we can FINALLY stop revisiting it.

By the way, other mutants who developed their powers super young or showed signs of those powers include Madrox himself, Nightcrawler, Marrow, and Cable. So it’s not entirely unprecedented.

This is why I can’t get into X-Men. It’ s become a comic book that requires Cliff Notes.

Perhaps the description “mother of my children” (note the plural) that Magneto uses here means that, yes, Zaladane is his daughter.

OMG! Where’s the spoiler alert?!?!?

Kidding.

Ryan W, I feel ridiculous mentioning this, but each of the examples you mention has some mitigating circumstance for them being an exception to the “powers manifest at puberty” guideline. It has been at least strongly implied that each of them are not children of baseline humans, so early development of mutant powers can perhaps be justified. I do remember noting similar exceptions as I’ve fallen deeper down the down the comics rabbit hole, but none come to mind, and some writers, like PAD, seem to be bending the arc of canon to bend towards a tolerable convergence.

Obviously, the next retcon has to be that Lorna’s parent that died in a plane crash are the Summers and Alex is her brother a la Luke and Leia.

As far as exceptions to the puberty rule; didn’t Xavier and Cassandra Nova’s powers manifest in the womb under Morrison? Also add Franklin Richards and possibly Jean Grey (she could have been starting puberty at ten) and mutants who manifested later like Psylocke to the list.

Magneto’s powers didn’t develop until he was married and had a girl. It’s really just that mutant powers generally develop during a mutant teen years but it’s not a guarantee.

I don’t think Franklin counts–a lot of his powers tie in with being blasted by Annihilus’ cosmic-ray energy.
But there’s Proteus–didn’t he develop powers very early on? And Kurt, as far as I know, looked diabolic from birth (feel free to correct me if I’m out of date on that one).
If I remember the backstory for Wanda and Pietro given in 185-187, their powers manifested in childhood. Of course, Wanda’s were touched by Chthon, but I don’t think Pietro’s were.
But yes, generally it’s teen years.

interesting that not only did marvel keep letitng writers change polaris being magnetoes daughter but also now polaris metal state is caused by magneto having master mind mess with her head and she not him caused the plane crash that killed her parents. plus also love peter adding the bit about polaris mother having an affair with magneto to produce her. poor polaris marvel sure has put her through the ringer with her history

The big secret that the heroes line at Marvel don’t admit is that the Scarlet Witch and Pietro’s origin is waaaaaayyyy more complicated and problematic than Polaris.
Animal people, suspended animation, the High Evolutionary, Gypsies, Demons, World 2 heroes, it’s just a mess.

Given Magneto didn’t form the Brotherhood until the early 60s, Lorna is way too young if he was in costume at the time of the crash.

PAD would have been much better off to reveal that Zala was the older sister who discovers her mother’s affair with Magnus and so sabotages the plane with the aim of setting him up as the one who brought it down because she is jealous that Lorna is likely to develop powers whereas she isn’t because he’s not her father.

Perhaps in this case it only happened because this is a follow-up to Peter David’s comment, but what Cronin did here is what a lot of Lorna fans expected with the last Polaris article: spending time to mention material that supports the current understanding.

This article is exactly the same as the last article. It showed a plot point, it showed said plot point then being abandoned and forsaked. That is all this article shows. Just like that is all the other article showed.

What some Polaris fans, including yourself, expected was to show some other examples affirming the abandoned and forsaked story, like showing how Polaris was also Magneto’s daughter in House of M. Such information was unnecessary, since it only re-affirmed that she was Magneto’s daughter, something that was never changed after Chuck Austen established it in Uncanny X-Men #430-431. And thus, not a discussion point for this column, which is showing a plot point then showing a plot point that abandoned and forsaked the previous plot point. Here, the plot points were “Lorna’s parents died weeks after she was born,” “Magneto killed Lorna’s parents” and, to a lesser extent, “The attack on Genosha drove Lorna insane.” Peter David’s story abandoned all of those plot points and forsaked them in the latest issue of X-Factor, which shows that Lorna’s parents died when she was a little girl, Lorna killed them and her future mental problems stemmed from that incident.

If “Lorna fans” (which in your usage clearly means you, as you’re the only Lorna fan who still comments about the original article) expected the content in this article from the last article, then “they” should be pleased, as the content was the same.

I’ll admit I was confused by the format of this the first time round. But once you explained it to me everything was fine. The only thing is that Lorna was calling Magneto “Daddy” in Grant Morrison’s run. Austen just kind of ran with it. Seems like that would warrant inclusion.

But sure either way though I’m very happy with this issue. 44 years is a longtime for a character to be without an origin so it’s nice that Polaris and X-Factor are getting some positive spotlight on comicsbookresources, comicvine and a bunch of other sites for issue #243. I think the character is finally in position now that her origin is fixed to move onto other storylines and not be bogged down by lingering questions.

One down just Zaladane to go now.

Oh yeah, I get that there was some confusion the first time over the purpose of the column, so I explained it then and that was acceptable for 99% of Lorna fans out there. It sure seemed like that was the end of it. “What about ___?” “Oh, this column is about ____.” “Okay.” Everyone happy. Well, almost everyone happy.

Ha well you can’t please everyone. Especially on the internet. On an unrelated note I enjoyed the Fire/Ice Maiden one too. That was a bizarre story.

But for practical purposes, Derek, most of that stuff doesn’t have to affect anyone using Wanda. She’s Magneto’s daughter, mom fled him and died, Wanda’s mutant powers were enhanced by Chthon. That’s the most anyone reading about her is likely to need to know in most stories.The Whizzer isn’t even part of her origin really.
That’s not to say it isn’t complicated, but it’s not like anyone has to reference her as more than “magic using mutant” when she shows up.

“I’ll admit I was confused by the format of this the first time round. But once you explained it to me everything was fine.”

Yeah, pretty much that’s what I was pointing out before. On the one hand, I feel such things should be set down at the start of the article so there’s no confusion. It’s sort of like how you shouldn’t have to explain a joke or a major point in a story after the fact. I was fine once the nature of the article was explained, but I also felt that if it had to be explained in the comments, then at least a little extra disclaimer at the beginning of the article would be helpful. On the other hand, what I said earlier in these comments about this article was in reference to how Peter David’s X-Factor #243 is both mentioned and had pages shown.

In any case, at least for the moment I won’t say much more in that regard at least for now because I get the feeling my comments are being taken by some as a personal attack of some kind rather than the constructive criticism I intend them to be.

In any case, at least for the moment I won’t say much more in that regard at least for now because I get the feeling my comments are being taken by some as a personal attack of some kind rather than the constructive criticism I intend them to be.

If a moment is all we’ll get, I’ll be grateful for the moment.

Yeah even her being a magic using mutant is complicated. Her powers are so confusing. I’ve not really understand her powers or any of her decisions since Bendis starting to write the character. Not knocking Bendis overall, loved some of his stories but he kind of ruined the Scarlet Witch for me.

The first time I ever heard of Wanda was through X-Men: Evolution, and there all I really knew about her at first was that she could toss hexes around. I didn’t even realize it counted as magic until I started reading more of the comics.

It seems to me like it’s pretty common for comic books to reach a certain point with a character through a complex series of storylines, then later simplify to the core storyline and core components. I think that’s also why the complex pathway to Wanda and Pietro’s origin stories doesn’t get mentioned much, new readers might think there’s too much information for them to be able to get into the character. I also think Marvel has for the most part done well in avoiding that risk.

I always assumed that Zaladane (last name Dane) was Lorna’s sister from a different mister, meaning she is NOT Magneto’s daughter, else Magneto would not have killed her.

When Stan Lee wrote her, I thought it was pretty clear what Wanda could do, though not particularly explained (I don’t think it was identified as altering probability until Englehart): She points, wills it and something bad happens (though she doesn’t have much say in what). Roy Thomas had her powers fade and then brought them back as “hex spheres” and had her go weak if she did it more than a couple of times (rereading his run, it strikes me he wasn’t particularly keen on her as part of the team). Under Englehart she got much stronger at her mutant power and eventually took up magic as well (what she could do as a mage was more unclear).
Bendis … well, that’s another story, isn’t it?

Fraser, thanks for your comment! I know if I truly wanted to understand Wanda that I’d have to do a lot more reading on her myself, but it’s fascinating to know a little bit more about her character history. The way you described it, it looks like there are parallels in how Lorna and Wanda have been treated in the past that I wasn’t aware of. Both of them had later writers weaken them power-wise and then change the nature of their powers. Since it seems like Wanda’s managed to gradually amass more and more appreciation and respect from Marvel editors, writers and fans over time, I hope that means we will see the same happen for Lorna over time.

I hate DC’s reboots but I would not oppose a reboot of the X-Men. It hurts my head just thinking about it.

Brian, you should do a Jean Grey one and watch the comments section explode!

I just got X-Factor #243 today. It’s about time that we got the truth of Polaris’ origin. Now, I want her and Magneto to spend an issue together as father and child. The only time that I’ve seen them connect and act like family was in House of M. In the regular 616 universe, they barely acknowledge each other.

OHhhh, so Lorna is her own Mother. Got it!

I was confused there for a while.

It was a great issue and a great article, by the way. For the first time, I read Lorna´s past and was satisfied with the ending.

I’d never buy another marvel book if they rebooted. The history is the best part.

It totally gasts my flabber that anyone, anywhere still gives a flying crap about Zaladane.

And there’s no real reason Polaris and Magneto should have a father-daughter relationship at this point. He may have donated one of her chromosomes, but he didn’t raise her. He was never there for her growing up, never did any of the myriad things a real father does for his daughter. He only showed any interest in her after she was an adult with powers, i.e., someone he could use to further his cause. If I were her, I wouldn’t want anything to do with him.

Zaladane was a cool villiain in my opinion. I can see your point but I find their relationship interesting for some of the reasons you stated and as such would like them to interact. I mean the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver aren’t exactly his biggest fans but they constantly appear with him regardless.

Judging by the number of comments, we should have more articles featuring Polaris…

Actually, I’m just into schadenfreude.

… We don’t know the full extent of circumstances regarding the past. I think it says something positive about Magneto that he didn’t just recruit Lorna right then and there, but decided to let her live a normal life. Of course, a case might also be made that he didn’t want to deal with raising a child while working on his goals, looking at it in an even and honest manner.

But, more importantly, characters change, which is something they should do as they undergo character development across decades. The Magneto back then isn’t the same man as he is now, and I think it also says a lot about him that he didn’t reveal her being his daughter again while she was on Genosha, Lorna figured that out herself. It was only after Lorna discovered it for herself that Magneto started acknowledging her as his daughter.

I choose to take that as a sign Magneto didn’t want to use being her father to manipulate her into his cause as happened in the late 60s before Marvel made the mistake of retconning away her whole introduction as a character. Which to me is pretty much on par with if Storm’s backstory of coming from an African tribe and being seen as their goddess got retconned as that she was brainwashed and she’s actually from an average family in Queens, New York.

Overall, not allowing Lorna to interact with any of the Magnus family is a huge mistake for all characters involved. It robs all the characters and the Marvel universe as a whole of amazing potential storylines. The only reasons I can think of for why certain characters “shouldn’t” interact is a person’s personal hatred for a character or a relationship between them. If someone can make a case otherwise then please do so, but as far as I can recall that’s the only time I’ve seen people opposed to characters interacting with each other. Myself included at times, unfortunately.

What a character may or may not want is a separate issue from what a story should do with them; Wanda may not like Magneto, that doesn’t mean all storylines having to do with the fact Magneto is her father and interacting with him should be forsaken. Even if events unfold where Lorna “shouldn’t” want to interact with Magneto, it should still happen.

X-Factor is the only X book I buy.
Just thought I’d throw that out there.
Have you done one on how Xtreme was supposed to be the ” other” Summer’s brother?

@ Polaris interacting with Magnus family, has anyone thought her interaction with Crystal in War of Kings was weird? They acted like they were having regular family dinners in the past, but I’m not sure if they even met before that mini.

Yeah, that was pretty stupid.

I didn’t have a problem with them getting on. I didn’t have a problem with Polaris’ using her political savvy to make Crystal a star. They also definately met before at Jean Grey’s wedding, they sat next to each other. It was really just how close they seemed. I thought Polaris and Crystal were well written at least, even if their friendship was a continuity error. However Luna in that story was completely out of character.

I forgot how brutal the Luna/Polaris relationship was. It was like the writers just saw that she was technically Luna’s aunt and figured that was just how the comics had always portrayed their relationship.

Well in fairness they didn’t have one at all. In the 90s if Luna was behaving like she was in War of the Kings fine. But Luna is an extremely depressed and solemn child. She doesn’t smile. Life really handed her a bag of crap and she’s smart enough to realize that.

I hate DC’s reboots but I would not oppose a reboot of the X-Men. It hurts my head just thinking about it.

Brian, you should do a Jean Grey one and watch the comments section explode!

Despite being the butt of a lot of jokes for having a complicated backstory and dying a lot, it turns out a lot of it is exaggerated. There are plenty of X-Men with more complicated, more convoluted origins than Jean Grey, and who have died more times to boot.

T. has a point. Look at Cyclops, who started out as just an orphaned mutant with uncontrollable optic blasts. Now his pre-Xavier’s school history includes Havok, Mr. Sinister, Corsair and the Shi’Ar (assuming nothing else has been added since I last read the mutant books regularly).

I was an X-Men fan throughout the Bronze Age, but haven’t really kept up. Brian Cronin and the commenters do an admirable job arranging all the material and trying to bring everyone up to date…but honestly, all this shifting Polaris stuff is so convoluted, my feeling is, “Unless I read every X-related book ever published, I’ll never keep it all straight.”

I just have one question (forgive me if this has been covered elsewhere and I missed it): no matter who Lorna’s real (biological) parents were, their last name wasn’t “Dane.” (One of the bits above says after her parents’ death, Lorna was adopted by “her mother’s sister and her husband” — who would have a different last name.) The people who raised Lorna were the Danes. Hence, “Dane” isn’t Lorna’s “real” last name. If Zaladane is Lorna’s “real” (biological) sister but wasn’t raised by the same parents Lorna was, why is Zala’s last name Dane?

Man with No Face: You have it backwards. Lorna’s mother is Susanna Dane, her (non-biological) father is Arnold Dane. We don’t know the names of the (presumably non-Dane) aunt and uncle who raised Lorna.

Suzanna and Arnold were not called Dane. Dane is the name of Arnold’s sister and her husband who adopted Lorna. If you notice PAD did not mention a surname for Suzanna and Arnold in that issue. He made a comment about not sticking to continuity but….Peter David is all about continuity! He also researches this stuff you can also tell, there’s very subtle references to stories within stories in every issue of X-Factor. It’s one of the reasons I appreciate the book I like being in on the joke, so to speak.

Christos Gage called “Susanna” Dane in House of M. She’s a radically different character to Suzanna both in appearrance and personality. I’d imagine Gage wasn’t aware of Lorna’s backstory and just made a mistake. There’s a very easy in story explanation for it though that Wanda gave Lorna what she wanted a “love story” regarding how her parents met as opposed to the rather sordid and tragic way it went down on Earth-616.

I’d also imagine that Chris Claremont also called Zaladane “Dane” by mistake and wasn’t aware of the original story. In fairness to Chris that story was published years before he took over the X-Men and it would have been much harder to research back then than it is now.

I stand corrected. Serves me right for trying to make sense of X-Men lore when even Chris Claremont can’t do so.

The problem with the “it was hard for Claremont to do research” excuse is that Claremont didn’t start the whole “Zaladane is Lorna Dane’s sister” business until the Evolutionary War summer crossover (Uncanny Annual #12, where Havok notices a resemblance between Lorna and Zala), published in October 1988. He followed up on it with the “Zala takes Lorna’s powers” story in Uncanny #249-250, published in October, 1989.

But Polaris’ entry in Marvel Universe #10 clearly states that “Dane” is Lorna’s adopted, not real, name…and that was published in September 1986! Pretty difficult to say “it was hard to do research” when Marvel Universe was out there two years earlier.

I think this is less a case of “it was hard to find out the facts” than it was that Claremont just screwed up…or, more likely, wanted to pursue a “neat idea” he had, and if that meant ignoring previously-established backstory and continuity, so be it.

Which, judging from this thread, seems to be the entire history of the Polaris character anyway.

A bit late to this one but I have a lame theory about Zaladane.

Zaladane is Lorna’s half-sister and Magneto’s daughter. They don’t have different fathers they have different mothers. Zaladane is in fact Anya Magneto’s eldest child with Magda. Thus making Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver Zala’s full siblings.

After the fire that supposedly killed Anya she was found by someone like Mr. Sinister or Apocalypse and her body was repaired, her memory wiped, her powers enhanced, they kept her on ice for a while and when she woke up she was given a false cover story.

Her cover story was that she was Lorna’s sister and that the Danes were her parents. Whoever saved Anya/Zala tried to cover up Anya’s identity as Magneto’s daughter by giving her a cover story that made her related to Polaris the only other high profile mutant with magnetism powers at the time. At the time they had no clue Polaris actually was Magneto’s daughter. They gave her a cover story to hide the fact that she was Magneto’s daughter by inventing a sister for her…never realizing that said invented sister was actually Magneto’s daughter with another woman.

So this leads to the obvious question.. Who Is The Third Dane Sister?