Polaris Appreciation III

[The_Greatest_Username]

That costume was fine... the hair on the other hand...

I wonder how she got it to stay.

Lorna almost always looks better in more exotic costumes then team costumes or super powered 'every-girl' costumes.

You're right though. Just looking at that assortment of costumes, the eye will allways go to the more unique costumes.

And you're right about the "every-girl" thing. I don't care to read about her everyday problems and find her much more interesting when dealing with more tragic, defining events.

[jmc247]

You're right though. Just looking at that assortment of costumes, the eye will allways go to the more unique costumes.

And you're right about the "every-girl" thing. I don't care to read about her everyday problems and find her much more interesting when dealing with more tragic, defining events.

No and I didn't become interested in her personally as a character until she developed into a character that cared about things bigger then herself and her everyday life issues.

[Siena Blaze]

To be fair, mundane Polaris is the only version that fits on X-Factor.

[salarta]

I've been thinking of the recent Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm and Star Wars, and in relation to Marvel comics and Lorna's treatment in particular. A lot of buzz came about over a possible Episode VII for Star Wars, and I found this explicit quote from Lucas on NY Times:

“It’s now time for me to pass ‘Star Wars’ on to a new generation of filmmakers,” Mr. Lucas said in a statement.

I've seen some people freak out over the possibility that Disney will ruin the Star Wars universe, unaware that Disney was behind films like Pirates of the Caribbean and the Marvel movieverse films, but I think that's just people afraid of the unknown. They know what to expect from Lucas, they don't know what to expect from Disney handling the franchise.

With his comment, Lucas has displayed what I think shows a very commendable disposition: as a creator, he loves and understands his own creation, but Lucas seems to know that for the Star Wars franchise to spread its wings and reach its full potential, it should be passed along to a new generation of filmmakers that have love and genuinely new, enriching ideas for the world he created. Lucas has enough love for his own creations that he puts what he thinks is best for the Star Wars universe and its characters before petty disputes with fans or any ego he might have (emphasis on the might; I haven't done any kind of in-depth research into the man, after all).

It's sad to think that throughout Marvel's history, and of my concerns the treatment of Lorna specifically, their characters and concepts haven't been so fortunate. I've been pretty silent about it, but most of the things I've read about Marvel's internal dynamics and rapport with fans has been bad. Someone quits Marvel with an angry but genuine letter, an editor includes it in an Iron Man comic to mock the guy that wrote it by having it come from Jarvis at a point in Jarvis' history when such a letter would mean next to nothing to Tony. Someone wants to promote Captain America as leader of the Avengers, they push for a story where Photon gets made out to be a female dog that sucks at being a leader to move Captain America into position. And while I have no specific cases that stick into my head, I do definitely recall hearing about some writers responding to particularly nasty feedback from a lone fan by tearing a character to shreds.

I've kept them unspoken, but all those things about Marvel's history and what I've heard about it since I started reading Marvel comics have been things that I kept in my mind this whole time. Since I started reading Lorna three years ago, I've been silently comparing "What has Marvel done" to "What is Marvel doing." And... I'm sorry to say, but after three years, I don't think Marvel as a whole is much different than they were 30-40 years ago. I'm still hearing stories about certain people at the company that will respond to criticism by punishing fans. I still hear about certain editors or writers forcing in a plot point or piece of dialogue to take a jab at current or former co-workers, or purposely trying to tear down one character to put one of their favorites on a pedestal. Those are things that make me not want to buy Marvel comics even if the comics are doing amazing things that I'm dying to read. Knowing certain things were done in the comics with hatred as the main impetus behind it hurts my ability to enjoy any of it.

Those are things George Lucas, as far as I've heard to date, has never done. I haven't heard of or seen him responding to fan criticism of, for example, Jar Jar Binks by taking it out on whoever the fans love most. In spite of any complaints people may have about Lucas' prequels, it can at least be said that he's a good man, and in the end, that means so much more than what people think of his work.

[The_Greatest_Username]

Now wouldn't this have a been a cool team that could've spun out of AvX.



You have Alex as the team leader, Colossus as the dumb brute, Psylocke as the ninja, Remy as the loner, and of course Lorna as the smart one.

[GoingGreen]

Who do the mysterious legs under Colossus belong to?

And would make for some interesting Love Triangle situations, but we've already been there with Iceman, so I don't know.

[.A²]

Who do the mysterious legs under Colossus belong to?

Magik. He's just her marionette. Danger knew that she was pulling the strings all along. This just confirms it.

[blanchett]

Not sure if people saw this but Lorna got a pretty cool mesh in Freedom Force the Third Reich. It was by a model/mesh maker AfghanAnt.

I'm also reading a book by Peter David at the moment about writing comic books. It gives an insight into the techniques that he uses. Basically with the Magneto thing from the last issue I think the reason he put that in is just because he's not going to have access to that character so he's trying to give the audience an explanation as to why Lorna isn't going to interact with him.

[The_Greatest_Username]

Interesting, what's the name of the book?

And would make for some interesting Love Triangle situations, but we've already been there with Iceman, so I don't know.

They could always do something fresh like Alex/Lorna/Remy.

I would also probably swap out Colossus for Namor. I think Lorna would mesh nicely with him.

[blanchett]

Interesting, what's the name of the book?

I've only started it but there's a really interesting page on when characters act out of character. His point is an interesting one. Basically he says that real people can act out of character why can't fictional ones? He also talks about devices to try and make out of character moments that a writer has to deal with acceptable to the audience.

[salarta]

Now wouldn't this have a been a cool team that could've spun out of AvX.



You have Alex as the team leader, Colossus as the dumb brute, Psylocke as the ninja, Remy as the loner, and of course Lorna as the smart one.

Would've been nice. Sadly, Marvel doesn't like to nurture untapped potential for veteran characters that haven't been whored out endlessly. They would rather radically change their core characters into acting like brand new ones or flat out create new characters and give those new characters everything that their unused veteran characters had going for them. It's pretty telling to me that like Polaris, Songbird was briefly a very popular character that I saw everywhere even as someone that wasn't reading the comics at all during Civil War, and now I haven't heard a thing about her. It's as if Marvel as a whole is allergic to the idea of using what they already have.

Of course, that attitude isn't one I support, which is why I own and watched the hell out of Justice League Unlimited but it took finding out Wolverine and the X-Men wasn't just more Wolverine wankery for me to watch it. And that was my attitude before I even knew Polaris existed and before I started reading any of Marvel's comics. Sure, I watched and own the Avengers film, but feature length films are a different animal from comic books, video games and cartoons. Spending time exclusively on the most well-known characters is expected there given the ratio of time it takes to release a film to the length of the film. The other three mediums provide so much more time to experience the world that they both can and should give some attention to characters that haven't been whored out ad nauseum.

I'm also reading a book by Peter David at the moment about writing comic books. It gives an insight into the techniques that he uses. Basically with the Magneto thing from the last issue I think the reason he put that in is just because he's not going to have access to that character so he's trying to give the audience an explanation as to why Lorna isn't going to interact with him.

That's a staple of all fiction, really, not just comic book writing. It's the same form of writing device where a character will briefly mention some seemingly useless object because the writer plans to give it a significant role later in the story, and if it wasn't prompted, the audience would feel betrayed and cheated and complain that something happened out of nowhere. As much as people say they don't want spoilers, they do at least one to have an opportunity to guess at what's going to happen.

Unfortunately, I don't know what specific scene you're referring to since I stopped reading X-Factor and the rest of Marvel's comics. That means I can't comment specifically on whatever happened in the scene you mentioned. If it's what I've heard where Lorna essentially is written as saying that she wants nothing to do with her father anymore, then I have to say there are multiple possible ways to prompt readers about Lorna not interacting with Magneto that do not require her to forsake her past decade of development in the process. I've seen too many people who, because they've never written fiction of any kind before, convince themselves that writers don't have options for what happens to characters they write when they actually have as many options as they can imagine that fit within the constraints set down by an editor, director, etc. "I want Reed Richards to act like a colossal tool" can come about from sympathetic means (someone he cares about is suffering, this is his coping mechanism) as easily as it can come from unsympathetic means (he gets so science-obsessed that he stops caring about other people).

I've only started it but there's a really interesting page on when characters act out of character. His point is an interesting one. Basically he says that real people can act out of character why can't fictional ones? He also talks about devices to try and make out of character moments that a writer has to deal with acceptable to the audience.

I'm probably risking something here by saying the next paragraph, but I think in this case it's worth the risk because the subject is more important than me or anything I care about. I have to argue two areas, one on real people "acting out of character" and the other on fictional ones. And of course, this is an opinion, not guaranteed fact.

I would guess that Peter David said many of the same things in his book when explaining what he was saying, but real people do not "act out of character." Real people will do things that are unexpected of them, but they only seem unexpected when you're not that person. Everything a person does, no matter how "out of character" it seems, has an origin and definite trail from somewhere. In life, we do not have the luxury of knowing every detail of that origin or trail of development. We don't even know all of ourselves, how can we know all of another person? All we have to go on, really, is a silhouette of the person. Even when dealing with psychological or biological disorder where a person seemingly behaves irrationally, there is an underlying cause, whether it is a specific incident in their life or a certain chemical to the brain. We can't do that with fictional characters because unlike with real people, the audience expects to know up-front what defines a character when forming bonds to the character. It's why so many superhero films start with the origin story of the superhero, it establishes what makes the character who they are so you have a stronger emotional connection. A fictional character acting out of character ends up feeling like a betrayal of the expectations the audience put into the character, and as a result, that feeling of being cheated makes the reader notice the writer in a bad way. A good rule of thumb I've always followed is that if you go into a story not knowing who the writer was, and your reaction is "Who wrote this story?" it's either really good or really bad writing.

[blanchett]

Unfortunately, I don't know what specific scene you're referring to since I stopped reading X-Factor and the rest of Marvel's comics. That means I can't comment specifically on whatever happened in the scene you mentioned. If it's what I've heard where Lorna essentially is written as saying that she wants nothing to do with her father anymore, then I have to say there are multiple possible ways to prompt readers about Lorna not interacting with Magneto that do not require her to forsake her past decade of development in the process. I've seen too many people who, because they've never written fiction of any kind before, convince themselves that writers don't have options for what happens to characters they write when they actually have as many options as they can imagine that fit within the constraints set down by an editor, director, etc. "I want Reed Richards to act like a colossal tool" can come about from sympathetic means (someone he cares about is suffering, this is his coping mechanism) as easily as it can come from unsympathetic means (he gets so science-obsessed that he stops caring about other people).

I'm going to be really blunt here but Salarta if you haven't read the books why are you commenting on how potentially bad this scene was if you haven't read it? Read X-Factor #245. See what you think of it and then comment. You do this frequently, talk about how awful something was and then say you haven't actually read it or even read the debate on a topic. For example, I've read the Walking Dead tv show isn't a patch on the video game but I haven't personally seen it. I don't read the spoilers about Walking Dead tv show get all annoyed and jump onto a forum feeling the need to slate it because I haven't actually seen the show.

Here's the part on out of character moments.

[salarta]

I'm going to be really blunt here but Salarta if you haven't read the books why are you commenting on how potentially bad this scene was if you haven't read it? Read X-Factor #245. See what you think of it and then comment. You do this frequently, talk about how awful something was and then say you haven't actually read it or even read the debate on a topic. For example, I've read the Walking Dead tv show isn't a patch on the video game but I haven't personally seen it. I don't read the spoilers about Walking Dead tv show get all annoyed and jump onto a forum feeling the need to slate it because I haven't actually seen the show.

I don't mind you being blunt, and if a person intends to do an analysis of a specific scene then I agree with you completely, they should not only have read the scene, but tried to understand the full context of that scene. Sometimes a single line of dialogue that seems to be horrible is actually perfectly fine when the context is considered.

That's different from responding to the basic, overall situation. You don't need to know who Lee Harvey Oswald was or what his motivations were to decide that his assassination of JFK was a bad thing. I also explicitly said I haven't read the scene in question precisely because I don't want to mislead anyone into thinking my comment comes from personally reading the whole issue when I didn't.

I also dislike the core concept that you have to be actively reading something to have a right of voicing an opinion for or against the direction that thing is taking things. In some cases, the opinions of people that AREN'T reading a book, and what they think is happening either by past reading or word of mouth, can be more important by simple virtue that there must be something taking place that either is not generating enough interest in reading the book or is actively deterring readership. This is true for all mediums everywhere, sometimes it's poor marketing, sometimes the writer is horrible (e.g. Motomu Toriyama at Squeenix), etc.

Here's the part on out of character moments.

Peter David makes a very good point I had not really thought of, that in truth you never know exactly how you will react when you get put in a certain situation. However, there is still some root cause that would lead a man like in his example to behave differently than Peter David proposes, and you would be able to expect that kind of reaction if you had any real understanding of said person in his example. Using a hypothetical example of a person to argue how the real world works is also a little questionable, but I'm sure I'm not one to talk at all and I've probably said something like it or worse. Ultimately, the issue goes back to what I mentioned before: the audience expects to deeply understand a character as part of building a personal, emotional connection, and if they feel like it's coming out of left field then they feel betrayed. There's a reason these things are kneejerk reactions and so heavily ingrained into people to where it's practically an unwritten law. People didn't consciously decide to treat fictional characters differently from real people, they're simply hard-wired to do so.

Comic book characters tend to be even worse for that because there's a widespread perception of characters operating in firmly defined tropes. Superman wouldn't kill because he's the definition of good. Of course, characters like Lorna were doing a damn good job a decade ago of trying to bring along true character development rather than a bizarre Frankenstein of "characters that never change" and "characters that turn into completely different characters at the drop of a hat," but as I've said before, Marvel doesn't seem to be open to genuine change, only temporary change that is swiftly undone and forced back to an older template within 10 years. It's happened to Lorna, it's happened to Peter Parker, etc.

Peter's solution sounds like it's a fine thing to do if you're absolutely required to make a character act out of character with very limited opportunity to elaborate. It's a quick and dirty way for the writer to say "Yes, I know this goes against what you expect from the character but just go with it, I'm trying to tell a story here." Otherwise, the real best solution is to actually show the progress a character makes to reach a point where they are doing something that previously would have been seen as out of character. I have a feeling I will regret actually giving that opinion down the road, but there it is.

You used Walking Dead as an example, and I think in some ways that's a good example when it comes to character development. A character known for being a delicate type doesn't wake up one day acting like a hardass in that universe, you actually get to see the events that gradually change who they are. You get to see Andrea get tough because of her sister's death and subsequently efforts to toughen herself up through determined training, likewise you get to see Rick go from highly conscientious and empathetic to the gritty realist person he is now through three seasons of him putting up with crap from zombies and people alike, especially Shane. EDIT: And let's not forget, in Walking Dead you don't see Shane just up and become a psycho out of nowhere, he develops into one over the course of several episodes.

[The_Greatest_Username]

Would've been nice. Sadly, Marvel doesn't like to nurture untapped potential for veteran characters that haven't been whored out endlessly. They would rather radically change their core characters into acting like brand new ones or flat out create new characters and give those new characters everything that their unused veteran characters had going for them. It's pretty telling to me that like Polaris, Songbird was briefly a very popular character that I saw everywhere even as someone that wasn't reading the comics at all during Civil War, and now I haven't heard a thing about her. It's as if Marvel as a whole is allergic to the idea of using what they already have.

I think it'll just take time for Polaris to get built up as a "big-name" character. Most non-A-list characters get used by writers simply because they read a story about the character and really enjoy it. Part of Lorna's problem (at least IMO) is that there's really no "Polaris story" that writers seem to want to pull from for the time being. New X-Men #132 for example inspired Chuck Austen to write Polaris for more than she might've been worth to some writers at the time and his take on the character in turn inspired Peter Milligan to keep going with her. Granted he took the character in a different direction, she was still a main player for the X-Men and a noteworthy character.

Here's the part on out of character moments.

That's pretty insightful really. Going foward I would like to see the situation of Lorna's characterization addressed from X-Factor #245. Personally I'm not too bothered whether she will or will not talk to Magneto, I only disliked her statements regarding Cyclops and the mutant situation. Given her history I would think she would be extremely sympathetic towards Cyclops and a lot less trusting of "normal" people. That being said, this could all be explained by her dislike of Scott Summers (what you've said a while back) which I'm hoping PAD will explain it as.

[jmc247]

That's pretty insightful really. Going foward I would like to see the situation of Lorna's characterization addressed from X-Factor #245. Personally I'm not too bothered whether she will or will not talk to Magneto, I only disliked her statements regarding Cyclops and the mutant situation. Given her history I would think she would be extremely sympathetic towards Cyclops and a lot less trusting of "normal" people. That being said, this could all be explained by her dislike of Scott Summers (what you've said a while back) which I'm hoping PAD will explain it as.

Yes, the statement about Magneto though certainly harsher then I think it needed to be to get the point across was not my biggest issue either. Nor do I view it as vital that she talks to Magneto in the next year or two. But, the statements about Scott and mutant issues were the biggest issue I had and the two were obviously interrelated in what she was saying. We will see what it means long term, but I obviously have the same hope regarding what it meant.