Doctor Polaris

48 years ago - Neil Emerson is born.

30 years ago - 18-year-old Neil attends college.

27 years ago - 21-year-old Neil earns his Bachelor's Degree, begins his post-grad work.

25 years ago - 23-year-old Neil earns a Master's Degree in Quantum Mechanics.

22 years ago - 26-year-old Neil earns his Doctorate in Quantum Mechanics.

18 years ago - 30-year-old Neil's experiments in Quantum Mechanics lead him to discover Abin Sur's ship, where he steals the magnetron, an alien weapon that allows him to control magnetism. Succumbing to his own lust for power, he attacks his co workers. Hal Jordan battles & defeats him. He is separated from the magnetron and sent to prison.

16 years ago - 32-year-old Neil escapes from prison and recovers the magnetron. Even more power-mad, he holds the entire world hostage. When Hal Jordan stops him and he is returned to prison, he begins his experiments in earnest to recreate the alien weapon.

10 years ago - 38-year-old Neil is finally successful in unlocking the powers of the magnetron. He escapes Earth, and begins absorbing Oan energy, internalizing his control of magnetism, & battling the Green Lantern Corps. He is placed in a coma by the Guardians of Oa.

6 years ago - 42-year-old Neil escapes Oan imprisonment & builds his asteroid base over earth, secretly continuing to absorb power.

4 years ago - 44-year-old Neil's asteroid base is discovered by the Justice League. They work with Kyle Rayner to defeat him returning him to prison on Earth.

1 year ago - 47-year-old Neil is freed from prison by Gorilla Grodd to join the Legion of Doom.

There are a lot of comic book creations that might never really have stood out as standalone characters, but who thrive in groups. Examples include Wonder Girl in the Teen Titans, Cyclops in the X-Men, Martian Manhunter in the Justice League, and so on. These are beloved characters, but for whatever reason their history is always linked to their teams. For villains, this is more because certain characters pop more as an IDEA than as a story-driving threat. Doctor Polaris is one of the best examples of this. There's never been any sort of interesting mythology for the character, but his appearance on the battlefield is always game-changing. This is because he is considered to be DC's answer to one of the best bad-guys in Marvel's catalog.

So can we take this guy that's generally understood to be riding another character's coat-tails and expand him into something we can build a narrative around?

Doctor Polaris' Comic History

Doctor Polaris appeared for the first time in 1963 in the pages of Green Lantern Vol 2 #21, making him one of the earliest enemies faced by then-new character Hal Jordan, one of the many creations of series masterminds John Broome & Gil Kane. While the series was loaded with innovative sci-fi concepts, Polaris was more reminiscent of the characters John was creating over in the Flash with Carmine Infantino; villains who were able to access all sorts of reality-warping powers simply because they 'experimented with it'; rather than things like 'cold' or 'mirrors' or 'tops'... in his case it was magnetism. Just like those Flash baddies, he achieved this miracle of science and then immediately used it to rob banks and whatever.

As the years went on and Doctor Polaris continued to appear there was regular references to him having an alternate evil personality, ANOTHER idea that regularly came up in comics of the era by these creators. If anything, what makes Doctor Polaris stand out is the fact that there was NEVER an attempt to modernize his story. I don't have an explanation for this, but my best guess is that, as far as design was concerned, the character seemed fine. He looked cool, he had cool powers. Even with his weird origins, he worked... and of course, he reminded people of Magneto.

Our Doctor Polaris Story

First of all, he needs a functional origin story. We've established that Abin Sur's ship carries several alien artifacts, so we can absolutely make Neil Emerson a quantum physicist whose work allowed him to use an alien device. If we think of him as a man driven by his own lust for power, then he can evolve over his career, slowly internalizing the powers of his alien device, growing in capability. He would expand from threatening Hal Jordan to the Green Lantern Corps, to the entire Justice League. By the time he is invited to join the Legion of Doom he has grown into the frightening cosmic despot that comics so often depict him to be.

Rather than try to remove the comparisons to Magneto, we decided to steer headlong into them. There are other characters that wield magnetism (Magenta comes to mind) but they aren't regularly described as "DC's Magneto". Emerson's obsession with his own power is a far more sinister motivation than Magneto's mutant-first agenda, but he can still carry himself with that same distance from humanity. We've even co-opted the idea of his asteroid headquarters as a way to establish his singular-ness. This is a character concept that establishes him as a terrifying presence in DC's villainous pantheon.

Doctor Polaris's Costume & Future

There really hasn't ever been a BAD Doctor Polaris costume... just costumes that were very much the product of their era. He's a character that is largely defined by his own evolution, and because of that I'm actually in favor of all of them being in play at once point or another. His appearances post 52 have featured a great new helmet and shoulder spikes, and I really like that as his newest look.

Doctor Polaris's place in the conceptual space of comics has shifted to mirror Magneto more and more over the years, and our new story and motivation will allow him to fill that role even more effectively. This makes him a fantastic foil for Green Lantern, but as the story evolves he's going to inevitably grow into a much larger threat. He's currently one of the most dangerous members of the Legion of Doom, and as that team threatens the new Watchtower, sorting out just how they handle him is going to be a huge part of that story. Emerson has grown to a level of power that makes him far beyond human, and as we move into the future he's going to represent a fantastic threat that whole story arcs and be built around.

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