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salarta · 1 year

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Polaris' Biggest Obstacle: Jordan D. White

You've seen me complain about how the X-Men comics office treats Polaris/Lorna Dane for a while.

You've seen me point out how important being a survivor of the Genoshan genocide, one who had to relive those final moments constantly until the X-Men found her in Genosha's ruins, is to Lorna as a character.

You've watched as the X-Men comics office refused, and refuses, to acknowledge this essential part of her character history.

This problem has existed for over 15 years now. It's not new. But what is new, is that Lorna fans have been making its importance very clear for several years now. The X-Men comics have been addressing Genosha more and more since 2019, while excluding Polaris, and there's exactly one person to blame for this.

That person is current X-Men comics editor Jordan D. White. He's been deliberately undermining Polaris whenever he has his hand in anything involving her, based on his own biases against the character.

This isn't an accusation based on nothing. I have receipts.

Let me first give you a little background on this man. I've always said you need to know what you're fighting to figure out how to deal with it. We don't need to dive very deep right now. Just the essentials.

Like most editors at Marvel, he got his start as an assistant editor in the mid-00s. He worked his way up that chain, working as an editor for several books until eventually becoming senior editor of the X-Men comics in 2018. However, it wasn't until during COVID that read the original run of X-Men comics. That includes Lorna's introductory issues of X-Men #49 - #50.

Before I delve any further into the history lesson, let me take a detour. Into what he thinks of Polaris.

I was, quite frankly, not planning on ever pointing this out publicly. I intended to keep it to myself because he was replying to me, and it felt wrong to use his willingness to talk with me against him.

But things have changed. He's shown he has no respect for Polaris or any fans of her, and gives zero fucks about the impact of his actions in this regard. So I will likewise exhibit zero fucks in using this. I've been holding on to this for years. And now it's coming out.

In 2018, the year he took over as senior editor of the X-Men comics, Jordan White responded to tweets I was making that complained about how the comics were treating Lorna. First, he replied to one I had written directly to him. But then he found and replied to one of my tweets where I had not tagged him.

This is the exchange. It was a typical tweet for me. I said Lorna is underused, underrated, and deserves way more than Marvel gives her.

He didn't like that.

Below, are screencaps of the most critical bits.

At the time, I made a critical mistake: I let myself believe he actually meant any of this. I let myself think that since he was willing to talk with me, that must mean he's being honest. It must mean he's trying to be considerate, and understand where I'm coming from. It must mean he really does care, but he has a lot to juggle.

I was fucking wrong. This was him covering his ass. Every step of the way. He's made it more apparent with every year he's been an editor.

This is where I start to take his lies apart.

Let's go back now. To his history.

Jordan White did several comics before he become X-Men senior editor. Guess which X-Men comics he did before 2018.

At least as early as 2011, White was an assistant editor of Peter David's long second X-Factor run. White was also assistant editor for Lorna's origin issue, X-Factor #243. However, he didn't have much power yet - because he was still just an assistant. He was still under Daniel Ketchum, and sometimes working alongside other editors. However, that changed toward the end of that second X-Factor run. By the end, he was an editor.

Now here's the million dollar prize for you all.

After that run ended, Marvel announced a new X-Factor. This run, All-New X-Factor, would be Polaris very first time running a team as its intended leader. She had been a leader on prior occasions, from 90s X-Factor when Havok was gone to her time on Genosha.

Guess who served as editor for All-New X-Factor.

Come on. Guess.

That's right. You guessed it. The main asshole himself: Jordan D. White.

You might be thinking to yourself: wait a second, if this is Polaris' time to shine as leader, then doesn't him serving as editor for this book mean he was actually in support of Lorna? That he was trying to give her a shot?

Oh how naive. How sweetly, sweetly naive. The problem, dear reader, is that you're assuming Peter David went at this project with good intentions all around.

He didn't. He royally fucked up the book. He killed it. He destroyed every ounce of possible real win Lorna could have gotten out of this book. If All-New X-Factor had succeeded, with REAL editorial precision and care, it could have continued on. And Polaris would be in a much, much better place today.

To understand this, you have to understand how he fucked up the book.

The book and its whole concept actually started out very well. Lorna formed the team under Serval Industries. She recruited Gambit. Pietro joined under the company's guidance. So far so good.

Then... we get to the rest of the book.

Here's Lorna depicted as so randomly unhinged that she's about ready to slaughter a cat for scratching her.

Here's Gambit written with the POV of Lorna being shittily unhinged and unfit for leadership, not listening to or working with her teammates, just doing shit.

Here's Gambit acting like the actual leader of the team, Lorna clearly not wanting Danger to join but ending up having to accept her anyway cause Gambit wants her.

Here's Lorna trying to give the team some orders, only for Gambit to be written as single-handedly deciding what she, the team leader wants to do, must be stopped.

Here's yet another case of Gambit written as "putting his foot down" on Lorna, who's supposed to be the team leader, and... wait, what? Gambit gets to do this and Lorna DOESN'T rearrange his face or chew him out, in direct contradiction to how she was written with the cat and with Danger in prior issues?

And lastly, here's Gambit making the offer to Cypher and Warlock for them to join X-Factor, with Lorna just backing him up.

This is supposed to be Lorna's team. She's supposed to be the leader.

Why the fuck is she being depicted as if she wouldn't know how to lead her own ass to water, let alone lead a team? Why is Gambit being presented as if he's moreso the leader than her?

Oh. That's right.

But wait. There's mooooore! We have a bonus round of White dickery.

Jordan White around on this book as editor until All-New X-Factor #14 - the issue where Wanda showed up to interact with Lorna shortly before the Axis retcon, and the point at which Marvel announced they had cancelled ANXF.

When the issue starts up, for a moment there it looks like it just might have a shot of having Lorna and Wanda work out any issues they have concerning M-Day when Wanda had depowered many mutants including Lorna.

For a moment there, we were about to get some actual discussion and development! Something tangible! They could've just got through this, came to an understanding, and that's a wrap.

But then, on the very next page...

A... a renaissance faire?

They're going to a renaissance faire?

They're going to a renaissance faire.

They have real issues to work through and they're going to a renaissance faire instead. What the fuck.

After this issue, the remaining 6 issues got handed off to a different editor to finish it up. The damage had been done. He had "successfully" ruined and killed Lorna first and to date only chance she's ever had, in over 50 years, to lead a team book of her own.

At the time ANXF was coming out, Peter David provided interviews where he talked up how excited he was to write Gambit. He also talked about how he thought Danger would be ANXF's break-out star. I'm not saying any of that is true or false. I'm not in his head, I don't know what he was thinking.

But to me, it seems very, very odd for a writer to take a character he had written at various points across two decades, give her an opportunity to stand on a pedestal as a book's intended team leader for the first time, and then fuck her up royally to promote other characters.

No. I think what likely happened, behind the scenes, is that Jordan White absolutely abhorred the concept of Polaris leading a team of her own and getting out from under the shadow of "Havok's girlfriend."

According to Jordan D. White, X-Men senior editor and self-proclaimed expert on Polaris' viability for meaningful use (despite the fact he knows dick all about her in any real way), Lorna doesn't "deserve" such opportunities. According to him, Lorna doesn't have fan demand, editorial interest, or writer interest for her to become a star in the X-Men comics, and so doesn't deserve any of the good and fair treatment so many other characters got and get all the time.

A view of his that was shut down quite readily with her winning the X-Men vote to be on the main team in 2020. Which, quite honestly, I'm surprised he actually honored instead of lying through his teeth to claim she lost. Maybe there was too much oversight for him to get away with that.

But the X-Men vote matter will come up in a future post. If it's needed. I have more receipts in that vein to present if Jordan White forces me to put them out there.

#polaris #lorna dane #x-men #marvel #jordan d white #bias #editorial bias #editorial mandates #scarlet witch #wanda maximoff #x-factor #all-new x-factor #editorial dickhood #magnus family

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