Lorna Dane had been born with green hair, which her foster parents and then she herself always kept dyed brown so that she would not be thought of as being “different.” Dane’s hair color was the only out ward sign of her unusual genetic structure. She has the latent genetic potential for magnetic powers, but certain genetic factors were absent which would have allowed her to exercise these powers. In the normal course of events, Dane would never have been able to use these powers. However, the intervention of Samuel “Starr” Saxon, the master roboticist whose brain patterns were later preserved in the Machinesmith, altered the normal course of events. Saxon had constructed an android duplicate of Magneto, the mutant with great magnetic powers who was then believed to be dead, and a small army of androids with strange powers called the Demi-Men. Saxon’s plans were to use these androids as his means of accumulating vast wealth and power, while deceiving the world into believing them to be examples of evil mutants, who had become objects of wide spread fear.

Saxon decided that he needed some actual mutants to help him lead the android army while he himself remained behind the scenes, giving directions through the Magneto robot. First, Saxon had the robot Magneto recruit Mesmero to serve as second-in-command. Then, Saxon decided that a mutant who was a natural source of vast magnetic power would be useful in dealing with his metal robot army. From sources still unrevealed, Saxon acquired a “psycho-generator,” which has some features in common with Charles Xavier’s Cerebro machine. Mesmero used the psycho-generator to summon mutants in North America with latent powers. The nearest such mutant with latent magnetic powers, Lorna Dane found herself compelled to travel to San Francisco, the city where Mesmero was. Mesmero and his androids captured her and brought her to their desert headquarters, where they placed her inside a “genetic stimulator,” which altered her genetic structure so as to allow her to exercise her previously latent powers. Meanwhile, Mesmero used his hypnotic powers upon her to alter her personality so that she would sympathize with the bogus Magneto and his cause. She was told that she was the daughter of Magneto and that she had inherited her powers from him.

Shortly afterward, however, Mesmero dropped his control over Dane, overconfidently assuming that she would obey her supposed father no matter what happened. On the contrary, after the X-man named lceman revealed to her that Magneto was not her father and told her about the plane crash and her adoption, Lorna Dane joined the X-men in battling “Magneto.” Mesmero and the Magneto robot escaped, the Demi-Men were destroyed, and Saxon, his plans ruined, had to hire himself out as an assassin who used androids to kill.

For a time Dane was romantically inclined toward Robert Drake, the Iceman, but eventually she fell in love with Alexander Summers, who is also known as Havok. Neither Dane nor Summers wished to lead lives as adventurers, but they discovered that they had a mutual interest in geophysics. Hence, they are now both doing doctoral research in that subject in the Diablo mountain range in California. Since they now spend most of their time away from public view, Dane does not bother to dye her hair. Neither Dane (who eventually took the code-name Polaris) nor Summers has ever been a full-time X-Man, but they are willing to help the X-Men in emergency situations, and have done so in the past.

Lorna received her current costume, which is of Shl’ar design, when her mind came under the domination of the Shl’ar intelligence agent Davan Shakari, who served D’ken, the now-deposed emperor of the Shl’ar Galaxy. Charles Xavier finally freed her from Shakari’s control.

Polaris recently joined the Marauders. How sincere or long lasting this connection may be is as yet unknown.