Polaris (Marvel Comics)

• 1. Introduction

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  Lorna Dane, the Marvel Comics mutant known as Polaris, first appeared in The X-Men #49 in October 1968. Readers then waited decades to learn who her father was. She controls magnetism, much as the X-Men's early enemy Magneto does, and fans guessed for years that the two were related. Her story is crowded with lost memories, borrowed minds, a destroyed homeland and a wedding that never took place. She has been called Polaris, Malice and Pestilence. How did a character with so little control over her own mind become one of the best loved mutants at Marvel? And what did her writers keep asking her to survive?

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• 2. Magneto's Daughter

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  Mesmero's psyche-generator reached out to mutants across North America whose powers had not yet woken, and Lorna Dane, still a student, felt compelled to travel to San Francisco. There the X-Man Iceman broke her trance by making her slip on a patch of ice. He then persuaded her to come to his apartment, where she met the rest of the team. Mesmero and his android Demi-Men seized her and carried her to a desert headquarters. The machine awakened her abilities, and Mesmero named her "Queen of the Mutants."

  When the X-Men came to rescue her, Magneto revealed himself as the leader behind the kidnapping. He also claimed to be her father. The X-Men insisted he was evil, yet Lorna could not bring herself to fight him. Iceman then visited her foster parents, who told him her birth parents had died in a plane crash years before. That news turned her against Magneto. A buried truth about the crash would take decades to surface.

  The Magneto who made that claim was soon exposed as an android. Issue #58, dated July 1979, confirmed that the supposed father was a robot. Most readers treated the early revelation as cancelled, and the question stayed open. Inside the story, Lorna settled it herself years later. After Wolverine severed Magneto's spine, she stole a blood sample from his medical tests and used it to prove he was her biological father. For readers, The Uncanny X-Men #431 in November 2003 delivered a DNA test with the same answer.

  During the Breaking Points storyline, Longshot used his psychometry to read a photograph of Lorna's mother and nominal father. He learned how they really died. Lorna made him show her what he had seen, connecting through the telepathy of M. She was devastated to find that the first outbreak of her powers had killed them. Magneto had arranged for Mastermind to manipulate her memories so that she would never remember her part in it.

  Family ties also paid off in space. During the War of Kings, Lorna used the fact that Crystal was her sister-in-law to talk the Starjammers, the team she had joined, through the Kree defensive shield.

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• 3. Minds Not Her Own

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  Magnetrix was the first code name Lorna Dane tried, and she quickly decided she disliked it. Havok kept using it anyway, partly to annoy her and partly to flirt.

  A Shi'ar Intelligence agent named Davan Shakari, who also called himself Erik the Red, gave her the name she has kept ever since. Shakari served D'Ken, then emperor of the Shi'ar Galaxy. He kidnapped Alex Summers and Lorna and subjected them to a powerful form of mind control. His goal was to turn them against the X-Men and assassinate Professor Charles Xavier. A massive battle followed at Kennedy International Airport, where Storm defeated Polaris. Shakari still escaped with both captives, and Xavier eventually freed them.

  For years afterward Lorna and Alex lived as civilians, settling in New Mexico and finishing their college degrees. Then the Marauders ambushed them around the time of the Mutant Massacre. A psionic being called Malice overtook Lorna's mind, and she attacked the X-Men as leader of the Marauders. Malice became permanently bonded to her body, and she led the Marauders again during Inferno. When Mister Sinister was seemingly killed, Malice's hold weakened. Lorna regained enough control to phone the X-Men in Australia, but they arrived too late.

  She had been taken to her alleged half-sister Zaladane, a priestess for the Savage Land's Sun People. Zaladane commanded an army of natives controlled by a Savage Land Mutate named Worm. Using the High Evolutionary's machinery, she stripped Lorna of her magnetic powers and took them for herself. The same process separated Lorna from Malice. Dr. Moira MacTaggert later confirmed that Zaladane could only have taken the powers from a biological sibling. In the fight that followed, Lorna's secondary mutation activated. She grew taller, became invulnerable and gained superhuman strength. The change also amplified negative emotions in people near her, such as anger and hate.

  The villainous Shadow King noticed that she acted as a nexus for those feelings. He used her as a gateway from the astral plane into the physical world, and anger and violence rose around the globe. X-Factor and the X-Men freed her during the Muir Island Saga. Her magnetic powers returned after Zaladane's death and a strike from Psylocke's psionic blade, which erased her size, strength and emotion-control powers. Malice came back to trouble her once more, and Havok and Polaris each tried to absorb the entity to protect the other. In the end, Malice died at the hands of Mister Sinister.

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• 4. After Genosha

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  Psychiatrist Dr. Leonard Samson helped Polaris come to terms with her experiences of mind control while she served with X-Factor, and he helped her build her confidence. Her stories keep returning to mental health, particularly bipolar disorder, which repeated brainwashing and other traumas make worse. Those same struggles drive the episodes in which she turns evil or loses control of her abilities.

  Genosha was the place where the damage became hardest to repair. After the battle with Apocalypse, Polaris went there with Magneto to supply him with power and help him keep order. She believed it served the greater good. Magneto then launched a full-scale assault on Carrion Cove, the last city opposing his rule, to gain technology that would restore his full abilities. Polaris tried to stop him, lost, and left with the Avengers. She later returned with Quicksilver. After Quicksilver was discovered and forced out, she stayed behind quietly, smuggling refugees to other nations and watching Magneto's actions.

  Cassandra Nova's Sentinels then destroyed Genosha and massacred millions. Polaris was one of the few survivors, and she was left scarred by witnessing a slaughter she could not prevent. Members of the X-Men who went to survey the ruins found her nude and deranged. When she rejoined the team she was darker and more ruthless, and she even killed some members of the anti-mutant Church of Humanity.

  Her wedding to Havok was the next blow. He broke things off as they were about to marry, leaving her at the altar. During his time in a coma, he had begun an affair, conducted through telepathy, with the nurse Annie Ghazikhanian. Polaris went berserk and rampaged until she nearly killed Havok. Juggernaut finally knocked her out. Psychic therapy with Professor Xavier brought her back, and she promised to do no more harm. The X-Men accepted her return.

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• 5. The Havok Question

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  Roy Thomas and Neal Adams, who followed Arnold Drake and Jim Steranko on the series, introduced the romance between Lorna and Alex Summers, the mutant called Havok. Iceman was attracted to her for a while, but she did not return his feelings. She fell in love with their teammate instead. The two left the X-Men to pursue geophysics and moved to the Diablo mountain range in California. There they were later seen battling the Hulk.

  Valerie Cooper asked Polaris to join the newly formed X-Factor, and Havok and Polaris became its leaders. The partnership brought more pain than rest. Agents of the Dark Beast kidnapped Havok and left a forged note saying he needed to get away from her. Polaris felt abandoned and betrayed. When Havok later attacked X-Factor, apparently under mind control, she reached out to him and was attacked and severely injured. She forgave him after learning that his "terrorist" activities were a front for undercover work, but she rejected him romantically.

  She still agreed to join his new X-Factor team. During their first meeting, she watched helplessly as Havok was seemingly killed when a faulty time machine built by the mutant Greystone exploded. He had left her in charge, but she felt unable to hold the team together, and it disbanded soon after.

  Iceman later admitted he still had feelings for her, and after some mild flirtation the two began a relationship. It could not last while her feelings about Havok stayed unresolved. When Havok confessed he still loved her after Annie left him, Polaris pushed him away. Years later, after the team won its first battle against a regiment of Shi'ar soldiers, she told him to "just shut up and kiss me." He hesitated, wary of starting up again, but the scene ended with a kiss. They broke up once more when Havok agreed to lead the Uncanny Avengers and she chose to stay with X-Factor.

  Critic Matt Merante wrote that readers connect with the pair because of their mercurial relationship and their resistance to familial expectations. He added that "For them, love is a choice made even in times of great strife."

  The tangle did not end with the breakup. In All-New X-Factor, Polaris leads a corporate team protecting the interests of the company Serval, and her half brother Quicksilver is on that team. He is secretly spying on her for her ex, Havok.

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• 6. Powers and Their Cost

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  The first full display of Lorna's strength came when the old and new X-Men fought the mutant island Krakoa. She disrupted the Earth's magnetic field, and the island was flung into deep space. Her gift is the control of magnetism, and over the years it has taken many forms. She can manipulate metals that respond to magnetism, generate magnetic energy pulses, raise magnetic force-fields and fly. She can even act on the iron in a body to reverse its blood flow.

  Her senses work differently too. She is able to perceive the world solely as patterns of magnetic and electrical energy, and she can see the natural magnetic auras around living beings. She can also absorb energy. A stranger talent appeared under Apocalypse's influence. She can ingest virulent diseases without harm and absorb their traits. According to Apocalypse, she can spread a "meta-plague" that kills anyone not inoculated with a vaccine called the Blood of Apocalypse. She also fights off toxins and drugs faster than normal.

  In Egypt, during the battle with Apocalypse, Magneto discovered that he could use Lorna to tap into the Earth's magnetic field with incredible force. This effectively hid the reduced state of his own powers at the time. Back on Genosha she enjoyed the education in her abilities that he gave her.

  M-Day took the powers away entirely, and she hid the loss from her teammates. When Valerie Cooper confronted her, Polaris claimed the loss was psychological and that she was blocking her own abilities. When she finally admitted the truth, every teammate except Iceman and Havok said they had already guessed. She left with Havok, irrationally convinced that her powers lay with an alien named Daap. Daap crashed to Earth and kidnapped her along with the Leper Queen, who led the anti-mutant Sapien League.

  Apocalypse took them both and forcibly transformed Polaris into the new Pestilence. Seemingly mind-wiped, she ingested viruses from the World Health Organization and began trying to create a meta-plague. Wolverine discovered who Pestilence really was during the battle between the X-Men, the Avengers and Apocalypse. Polaris refused to leave with the former Horsemen Gambit and Sunfire and quit the X-Men. She went alone to Egypt, hunted until Havok and the new Uncanny X-Men saved her. Her magnetic powers were later restored when celestial technology reactivated her X-gene.

  Beneath all of it sits a quieter qualification: Lorna Dane has earned a doctorate in geophysics.

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• 7. Page and Praise

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  Writer Arnold Drake and artist Jim Steranko created Lorna Dane, who debuted in The X-Men #49 in October 1968. Her powers manifested in issue #50, and she joined the X-Men in issue #60. She appeared in the 1975 Giant-Size X-Men #1, then quit the team in The X-Men #94 in August 1975. Issue #97, in February 1976, brought her back as a villain who called herself Polaris for the first time. By The X-Men #119 in March 1979 she was back to normal and a regular in the supporting cast. She joined the relaunched X-Factor in issue #71 in October 1991 and stayed until the series ended with issue #149 in September 1998. More recent series include the 2014 All-New X-Factor, the 2021 X-Men and the 2024 Fall of the House of X. Artist Lukas Werneck designed her costume for that last series, after Marvel asked for a suit paying homage to Magneto.

  Alex Schlesinger of Screen Rant called her one of the "X-Men's most iconic mutants" and an "iconic hero." Deirdre Kaye of Scary Mommy described her as a "role model" and a "truly heroic" female character. Maite Molina of ComicsVerse wrote that Lorna "has lived a history where much was taken from her." Lukas Shayo of Comic Book Resources said she is "remarkably creative with her powers."

  In the Dawn of X era, Professor X and Magneto invited all mutants to live on Krakoa. Polaris was seen with Magneto as he explained the resurrection process that depends on the combined powers of The Five. Later she joined Rachel Summers, Daken, Northstar and the former students Eye-Boy and Prodigy on a team that investigates any mutant death for The Five. Their first case was the supposed death of Northstar's twin sister, Aurora.

  In 2021, Marvel held a popularity contest to choose the final member of a new X-Men team debuting at the Hellfire Gala. Polaris won.

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• 8. Other Worlds, Other Screens

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  In the Age of Apocalypse reality, Polaris is a prisoner in Sinister's Breeding Pens and a victim of the Dark Beast's tests. Rogue had absorbed half her powers permanently after a fallout, leaving her nearly powerless. When Prelate Scott Summers frees her, she mistakes him for Magneto, whom she believes is her father.

  The House of M storyline gives her a different childhood. Magneto becomes involved with an American exchange student named Susanna Dane, then sends her home when he learns she is pregnant. Lorna grows up in California, and Magneto later reveals himself as her father once he rules Genosha. She storms off, angry that he was never there. In time, she becomes royalty alongside Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch and develops a close relationship with him.

  In Mutant X, she dies in her father's arms during a reality-threatening battle involving Madelyne Pryor and the Beyonder. Ultimate Marvel makes her a member of the Academy of Tomorrow, led by Emma Frost. She is framed for killing dozens of people and imprisoned with Magneto, who beats her at nothing but violence and escapes by swapping places with Mystique. The Exiles draft a version from Earth-8149 just before Sentinels kill her.

  On screen, Mary Long voiced Polaris in X-Men: The Animated Series, where she left the X-Men with Iceman before joining X-Factor and entering a relationship with Havok. Liza del Mundo voiced a sheltered Genosha-bound daughter of Magneto in Wolverine and the X-Men. Emma Dumont portrayed her in The Gifted in 2018, as a co-founder of the Mutant Underground who has a daughter named Dawn with her boyfriend Eclipse.

  Tara Strong voiced Polaris as a playable character in Lego Marvel Super Heroes. She is also playable in Marvel Puzzle Quest, Marvel Future Fight, Uncanny X-Men: Days of Future Past, Marvel Strike Force, Marvel Super War and Marvel Snap, and she is an accessory in Marvel Rivals. In 2022, HeroClix released a Polaris figure in the Hellfire Gala Premium Set. Marvel Legends has issued two figures, one in 2017 and a second alongside Havok in the 2019 80th Anniversary Box Set of X-Factor.

  Neve Campbell is set to voice her in the second season of X-Men '97.

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