The stretch from Zaladane to the Muir Island Saga is where Lorna's history gets especially easy to mix up. Several different things happen to her in quick succession, and the di…

The stretch from Zaladane to the Muir Island Saga is where Lorna's history gets especially easy to mix up. Several different things happen to her in quick succession, and the difference between them explains why the whole ordeal is so much worse than a simple change of powers. Zaladane captures Lorna in Uncanny X-Men #249 and uses a black lotus to keep her subdued. She also claims to be Lorna's sister. That family claim is another complication in a life where other people have already used her uncertainty about her origins against her. In #250, Zaladane uses a machine to transfer Lorna's magnetic abilities into herself. The process also ends Malice's hold. Lorna gets free of the possessing entity while losing the power that has defined most of her superhero life. Then her body starts changing. She becomes larger, stronger, and much harder to injure. She can trade blows with Colossus during the escape, although that scene should not be stretched into an exact, permanent strength ranking. The important fact is that she is discovering a completely different set of physical abilities in the middle of another crisis. Moira examines her in #254 and confirms that Malice is gone. Moira also reasons that the power transfer points to a biological relationship between Lorna and Zaladane. That is the evidence available here; it does not provide a complete family history. Lorna's new abilities develop into more than strength and a tougher body. Negative emotions are involved, and the effect runs in a horrible circle: the emotions around her feed her altered state while her presence makes those emotions worse. She has no comfortable period in which to figure this out. The freighter in #253 is one of the nastiest parts of the whole stretch. Lorna is trying to reach help when the crew becomes increasingly violent and possessive toward her. Men argue over her as if she is property. The ship is being destroyed in a storm, she no longer has the magnetic abilities she knows how to use, and she does not yet understand why everyone around her is changing. Banshee answers her distress call and rescues her. Even that rescue carries the damage from Malice. Moira initially questions whether Lorna can be trusted after what her possessed body has done. Lorna has to convince old friends that it really is her asking for help. Then the Reavers attack Muir Island. In #255, Pretty Boy weakens her with a neurotoxin and tries to use his filaments to rewrite her mind. Banshee cuts the connection before Pretty Boy can finish. That belongs in her history of violations and attempted control, but it should not be counted as another long, successful possession. Her increased physical durability does not protect her from every way somebody can hurt or control her. By #257, Lorna is beginning to recognize that she is connected to the emotional wrongness around the island. Before she can get that warning to the others, Legion captures her. #258 identifies the threatening personality as Jack Wayne, who wants to exploit the situation for himself. The Shadow King's involvement develops from there. Rolling all of those scenes together as “Malice again” loses the actual chain of events. By #269, the Shadow King is using Lorna as his nexus. That word can sound abstract, but what he is doing is fairly direct: he makes her the link between the physical world and the astral plane and uses her altered abilities to strengthen his reach. X-Factor #69 explains the cycle. Hatred and prejudice are being intensified, and the negative psychic energy feeds the Shadow King. Lorna is caught at the center of it. The same woman who came to Muir Island for help has become part of the machinery that makes the island dangerous. It also creates a terrible rescue problem. The heroes realize that breaking the connection could stop him, but they do not know how to do it without killing her. Bobby is confronted with the possibility that saving everyone might mean sacrificing somebody he has known and cared about since the original team. Lorna is still a person inside this situation. In Uncanny #280 she argues with the Shadow King and tries to reach David. He threatens her and hits her. She is conscious of what is happening, while he uses her captivity and her power against everyone trying to help. Calling her his willing ally would be completely wrong. The actual rescue is worth getting right too. Forge uses his scrambler on the controlled Psylocke and forces her psychic knife into Lorna, short-circuiting the nexus. It works: Lorna survives, the connection is broken, and her enlarged form recedes. Her magnetic powers are back by the time she enters the new X-Factor arrangement. So how many times has she been controlled by this point? There are four major stretches to keep track of when discussing her psychic exploitation: Mesmero, Erik the Red, Malice, and the Muir Island situation. They should not be treated as four identical possessions. Mesmero combines hypnosis with manipulation of her identity. Erik brainwashes her into serving his plans. Malice is the sustained, literal occupation of her body by another entity. Muir Island involves captivity, psychic domination, and the use of Lorna as a nexus, with the Legion/Jack Wayne stage leading into the Shadow King's larger operation. There are additional attacks around those big arcs: Zaladane's chemical subjugation, Pretty Boy's interrupted attempt to rewrite her, and Proteus's attack without a completed possession of Lorna. A count that mixes every one of those together needs to say what it is counting. For the powers themselves, the main progression is easier to follow. Her magnetism is awakened in the original Mesmero story. Zaladane later steals it, after which Lorna develops the enlarged, super-strong, resistant body and the negative-emotion effects. The Muir Island resolution ends that altered phase and restores the familiar magnetic power set. Malice taking control never required Lorna to stop being magnetic; possession and power loss happen at different stages. The stories leave some of the precise biology of the new powers unresolved. There is also the fact that Zaladane dies shortly before Lorna's magnetic abilities return. The safe conclusion is the sequence shown on the page, rather than pretending the comics give a perfectly worked-out scientific explanation for every step. By X-Factor #75, she has her own voice and her magnetic abilities again, and she is operating with a team. That does not make all the earlier experiences disappear. It makes the ordinary things worth paying attention to: getting to choose what she does, talking to people as herself, being trusted with responsibility, and having a future that somebody else has not already decided for her. Lorna has spent enough of this history being used. Any real look at her has to leave room for what she wants to do when she gets herself back.