On the issue of Lorna's powers I wrote this up as a response to those questioning why Lorna has such shifts in personality and characterization... from being ultra manic to the point of feeling she can do or say anything and she is above other people. To her feeling totally worthless and depressed and needing and needing a man to give keep her from completely falling apart like she did when Alex dissapeared.
I have just about every Polaris comic 616 and otherwise ever put out and can say that like with Magneto there is no clear consistent characterization, personality and philosophy for the character. She has been used in very different roles with completely different personalities by writers over the years. We know the real reason Lorna characterization, personality and philosophy sways so massively. The same is the case for Magneto in that you have writers that...
A. Write the character to fit their plot.
B. Don't care about the character so they regress that character to the characterization that comes easiest for them to write. In Lorna's case the useless girl behind Havok. It adds to Havok's character in that he gets to be the 'leader' with his girlfriend right beside him to respond to anything he says or does. But, in the long run that position is poison for Lorna's character as she isn't written as a character in her own right. In that position she is written as simply Alex's overly emotional girlfriend.
C. They have a set view on how that character should be depicted and push that view. In this case you have writers that both care and don't care about the character in question, but have their own vision of the character and how they should be depicted regardless of how the character was depicted in the past.
Now Claremont many years ago created a potential rational in canon for Magneto's huge variations in characterization and it works for Lorna as well. It was even used in DK's Offical Marvel Encyclopedia to explain the personality changes that Lorna goes through. That the massive channeling of electromagnetic power imbalances the nervous system and acts alot like a amphetamine on the user. Heavy use for long periods can lead to mania or megalomania. The same is true by the way of powerful amphetamines. But, when Lorna stops using she crashes and can go into a long term depressed state where she feels quite bad and starts thinking and acting like she is worthless and a failure.
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Conversely, when Lorna is using a great deal of power consistently she acts very self assured, smart and pro-active like 2004 Polaris or Exiles Polaris. But, when she uses way too much power for way too long it can send her into megalomania with Silver Age Magneto type thinking that she and her race are above ordinary humans 'that they are just like ants' as she has in the past called them.
The moral to this story is there isn't a great deal of character consistency with Polaris (and Magneto), but there is actually an in canon rational that makes a fair bit of sense to explain their wild swings in characterization.
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