I don’t know yet, but do know that Claremont was definitely going somewhere with her connection to Zaladane.
However, while Lorna possibly does have ties with Magneto, what with Zaladane’s ability to absorb Magneto’s powers in Uncanny X-Men #275 I don’t think the connection is as obvious as Austen made it out to be.
Had Claremont been allowed to play out his projected Neo epic, he might finally have revealed the mystery behind Zaladane’s claim that she is Lorna Dane’s sister!
Moira MacTaggart later claimed that for the power-switching procedure to work (cf. Uncanny X-Men #249-50), Zala and Lorna must have highly-related genetic structures.
However, while both have the same surname, sadly Lorna was adopted as a child and Dane was the name of her adoptive parents, so there must be more to it!
This is where I would posit the Neo as providing the “final solution.”
Readers of Claremont’s stories with these characters will recall power-switching was an ability attributed to leaders of their Warclan.
Did the fact that Zala initially showed up in the Savage Land suggest that Zala was once a chieftain of one such Warclan of the Neo, or at least her parents were, and both she and Lorna possessed the same ability due to this heritage?
As for how Lorna ended up with the Danes, perhaps she was originally a Neo child that they adopted.
From Uncanny X-Men #52 we know that Lorna was adopted by her aunt, so had her and Zala’s uncle and aunt earlier taken up permanent residence in our dimension, and upon the death of Lorna and Zala’s parents through still unknown circumstances, Lorna ended up in their care while Zala ended up in the Savage Land to fend for herself, perhaps explaining the bitterness she holds towards Lorna, a reversal of the origin of Kevin Plunder and his brother, Parnival.
I will admit that I’m not particularly fond of the idea of Magnus as Lorna’s father, but if the sisters are of Neo origin, it might explain why it was the Savage Land of all locations that the Master of Magnetism chose to build his base of operations.
It might make further sense as to why, upon arriving at their fortress, Magneto commands the Neo to serve in his army, and why Domina submits to his demands.
Did Magneto perhaps set up base in the Savage Land, knowing the dimensional walls there were thin, and clues had led him to believe that Magda had fled to their dimension after giving birth to Wanda and Pietro?
Or was Zaladane perhaps a clone of Lorna Dane and both were created in a lab by none other than Mister Sinister in his early attempts to create a clone of Jean Grey before he created Madelyne Pryor?
Zaladane, for some reason, did not have any mutant genes, but Lorna Dane did possess the mutant genes which were also responsible for her green hair.
While Zaladane claims to be a Mutate she could have perpetuated this lie to serve her purpose of gaining leadership over the Savage Land Mutates.
Did Sinister engineer Lorna Dane to be adopted, like he did with Alex Summers? How interesting that the pair became a couple considering how their early fates were so similar.
What makes this even more likely is the suggestion that Lorna Dane’s parents were killed in a plane crash.
Recall in Classic X-Men #42 Mr. Sinister orchestrated a similar fate for Rick and Trish Bogart, the couple pegged to adopt young Scott Summers, their bodies lying in the wreck of the plane, undiscovered, somewhere in the mountains.
As for those who point to Zaladane’s attempting to absorb Magneto’s powers in Uncanny X-Men #275 as an indication that she was intended as his daughter, I’d suggest she was only able to draw his life energy and powers unto herself as a result of earlier absorbing Lorna’s powers and genetic signature in the earlier Uncanny X-Men #250.
I HATED the whole storyline of Zaladane being Lorna Dane’s sister, based only on the fact that both have names that end with “dane.” I thought Claremont was really grasping at straws there. It was just a dumb idea. Zaladane (not “Zala Dane”) had nothing to do with the X-Men or Lorna when Gerry Conway named her. Arnold Drake apparently named Lorna Dane and was long gone from Marvel by the time Zaladane was created, so no connection between the characters was intended, obviously. For Claremont to say, “Gee, two “dane” girls. They must be sisters,” despite the fact that Lorna was adopted, just seemed like lazy writing. Of course, it’s been said that Claremont never bothered to read the original X-Men run, so maybe he didn’t know Lorna was supposed to have been adopted.
It was certainly very convoluted I agree but can we be sure Conway didn’t name Zala without intending a connection to Lorna? Otherwise why choose that as her name?
Claremont did actually bother to read the original X-Men too. Arguments have claimed that he only read as far back as Thomas & Adams, but he actually shows knowledge early in his run of having read Drake & Steranko.
Anything is possible, I just find it highly unlikely. Maybe if her name was “Zala Dane” instead of “Zaladane,” or if she had green hair too (or purple or magenta or any other freaky color). Anyway, when Conway created Zaladane, ‘X-Men’ had been cancelled, and wasn’t even in reprints yet. Why would she have any connection to a minor character from a failed franchise? Zaladane only showed up in ‘X-Men’ several years later because they wanted to wrap up the unfinished storyline from Ka-Zar’s cancelled title.
Clearly, Chris Claremont was familiar with the entire history of the X-Men by the time he wrote “Elegy” in #138. But it’s also obvious that he didn’t care about the pre-Neal Adams issues. (We should remember that Claremont was working at Marvel during the Thomas/Adams run on ‘X-Men’ and even contributed to the climax of the Sentinels story, where they fly off into the sun. So he had a personal connection to those issues.) There’s so much history from the early years that Claremont never did anything with. The Vanisher, Unus the Untouchable, Lucifer, the Ogre, Ted Roberts, and even Fred Duncan never factored into Claremont’s stories. He just ignored it all. (He used Lorna and Sunfire occasionally, both of whom appeared during Neal Adams’ time on the book.) Even Jamie Madrox (from ‘Giant-Size Fantastic Four’ #4) was never more than a background character during Claremont’s tenure. He wasn’t interested in them. So, even if Claremont remembered that Lorna Dane had been adopted, I doubt it mattered to him if he contradicted some old Arnold Drake story.
Maybe Conway had hopes to get the job of revitalising the X-Men, since you’ll recall the Savage Land and its Mutates were after all developed in the X-title.
Re: Madrox, while Claremont might have not exploited him as a character much, he was actually the writer who created Jamie so he can’t not have been interested in him for the reasons you state.
And the Drake stories were going to factor in more importantly, but you could see ?editorial interference? in those issues between his use of Eric and Mesmero’s later stories with Byrne. Something was afoot.
Any chance you focus your energy into more worthwhile and perhaps money making ventures instead of being a comic book geek online? Same goes for the guys (yes, all guys like Zak from Enter the Story and Tony fro The Wastebasket) in your blogroll.
Maybe one day you’ll realize how many hours you wasted in your life writing about stuff that doesn’t matter.
Here’s hoping you wake up one day.
Am I wrong?
Hey Jessica,
Hmmm. Money making ventures. Quelle horreur, YOU ARE SO WRONG!
I work full-time and earn a salary here in Australia upwards of $94K per year so already focus much worthwhile energy into making money, but realise there’s much more to life than focusing all my energy into doing so, and therefore contribute a significant part of my down-time in my week volunteering in my community, as I know Zak, Tony and many of my erstwhile comrades do too.
This is therefore our relaxation time, and you’ll note from my, and guest posters, that we don’t focus that many hours in our lives writing about “comic book stuff”, which you’d have realised if you’d managed to read the posts properly and noticed the amount of time passing between each post.
It sounds like your own energy could be better spent reading information more thoroughly before making sweeping judgements and perhaps thinking of helping others in your local community instead of “bullying” people online.
Oh, and interesting persona you’ve taken on. I suspect you have some of the most bourgeois character conflicts imaginable and your personality developments have amounted to your getting a new hairdo or wearing designer clothing. I used to know people who had similar personality conflicts, BACK IN HIGH SCHOOL, and every last one of them was an imagination-starved, middle-class joiner who naïvely assumed that changing their appearance was the gateway to a fascinating new personality. It’s the sort of empty gesture that leads people to suspect television as being the culprit, and more often than not they’re absolutely correct.
Well done on wasting precious moments of your life “commenting” on stuff you claim doesn’t matter;)
Sorry to hear you’re in the position of needing to obtain income wasting many hours in your life attempting to scam money out of people online.
Perhaps if you’d read more at school, instead of harassing individuals who did, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.
Here’s hoping you wake up one day.
Am I wrong?