Who's This? A magnetic madman.
The facts: A Green Lantern villain created by John Broome and Gil Kane, Doctor Polaris, made his first appearance in GL #21 (August 1963). He was a magnetically-powered villain with a split personality, the evil side of scientist Neal Emerson, scoring many appearances in Green Lantern, but also fighting Wally West, Damage, the Ray, the Power Company and others. In other words, he graduated to "utility villain". Underworld Unleashed did away with the Neal personality, and Polaris later joined Lex Luthor's Secret Society of Super-Villains, an era that ended with him being killed and returning as a zombie in Blackest Night.
How you could have heard of him: Rebirth has him alive again as a member of Max Lord's supervillain team intent on killing Amanda Waller. He's also appeared in several cartoon shows (JLU, B&B and DC Nation Shorts).
Example story: Green Lantern #135 (December 1980) "Doctor Polaris Conquers the Universe!" by Marv Wolfman and Joe Staton
Well, THERE'S a statement! To catch us up... Dr. Polaris has stolen Hal's power ring and battery and Hal needs them back to rescue Carol Ferris from some other threat. He and Tom Kamalku are slumming it in the crowd assembled to hear Polaris' address, though maybe all those folks should run on home, right? Except they can't because he's using the power ring to control their minds so he can, uhm, hold on, release "the magnetic impulses that flow through every man's mind". Hal and Tom are immune to this thanks to Hal's connection to the ring, but this is the sort of thing that's been failsafed out of existence in modern GL comics. As part of the crowd's enforced worship, the poor victims are forced to hear Polaris' origin story.
His persona as "Magnetic Messiah" seems inspired by Magneto, taken to extremes. Polaris is all-seeing, all-powerful, all-able to rip a jacket off a guy (I presume he's doing it with the ring unless Hal is wearing a "full metal jacket") and make him lose concentration.
Speaking of strange fashions: Hal is wearing the GL uniform under there, but there's no green, no GL logo and no mask (so he wears giant sunglasses)... if the ring creates the uniform, why does it exist at all? And if it exists, why is it incomplete? But I suppose that's neither here nor there, back to Doc Polaris' bid for world domination. RING-ASSISTED world domination. For a guy who thinks of magnetism as his personal God, he sure uses the Oan weapon a heck of a lot.
He's not even imaginative enough to think up his own constructs - fists, fly swatters, fans, they're all out of Hal's playbook. Only when Hal uses the yellow impurity against him does he finally turn to good ol' magnetism. Finally!
This is a problem for me. If you're going to throw magnetism around, I don't think you should be allowed to bowl over heroes unless they're wearing metal armor. At least say something about the iron in their blood or something! Because snatching meteors from space is an outrageous use of the power, so I'd believe he could use the body's minerals in such a way. Hal should be dead as rocks rain down on him from space, but Polaris himself throws up a green energy shield around him at the last second. Proving his superiority without the need to kill? Or should we start suspecting some other intelligence at work? (Marv had two to choose from - Neal Emerson and the ring itself - but nah. Dude's just crazy.) So what happens when he gets a boost from all the worship-turned-magnetic? He stops paying attention, that's what.
But he's still managed to blow a hole into the universe's infrastructure - his "magnetic nirvana", Einstein's "magnetic glue", Marv Wolfman's half-understood reading of a piece in Scientific American! - and he's on the cusp of destroying everything. So Hal pushes him into the wormhole and they have a special effects fight in there.
I'm just waiting for the reveal that Polaris got slipped some LSD and none of this is real. Whatever he's doing to that thing, it's made him more powerful. Or at least, taller. He's become a giant. Hal goes for the time-honored tactic of overloading the villain in the hopes of blowing him up.
And yeah, he's ripped apart, putting an end to this threat to physics itself. He'll be back, of course, not that I care. In fact, I NEVER cared about Doctor Polaris. It's almost interesting that the issue at hand plays on "magnetic personality", especially in the context of his being magnetism's prophet, but the science is all over the place, which is should never be for a villain that's physics-based.
Who's Next? A short head shrinker.
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