- Name: Emma Frost
- Code Names: The White Queen
- First Appearance: X-Men #129 (Jan ’80)
- Powers: Telepathy, Organic Diamond Form
- Teams Affiliation: X-Men, Hellfire Club, Generation X
About
Ambition is a powerful force. The desire to control your own destiny and get what you want drives many lives. Ambition isn’t good or evil, ambition is just a quality in a person that can influence how passionately they make a choice. It is the bug in your ear telling you that you can be more, that you are right. Unchecked ambition can be dangerous. Many a good man were ruined by overreaching, ambition can corrupt a good soul. The X-Men are a group of people with different desires, goals, and ambitions all joining together and none exemplified that spirit more than Emma Frost.
Still to this day, Emma Frost’s past is shrouded in half-truths, conflicting reports, and outright lies. She was born the brunette baby girl of industrialist Winston Frost in Boston. Her older brother Christian was close to her until he began experimenting with heroin. Her cunning sister Adrienne belittled and manipulated Emma to ensure she never lost her spot as daddy’s favorite. Her younger sister Cordelia just wanted to rebel against her aristocratic family. Winston bequeathed the family fortune to Emma but she refused, preferring to find her own way. Her father did not approve of this and sent Emma to the Essex Clinic, an institution that caters to privileged clients with mental illness. Winston knew his daughter had been hearing voices, he remembered the wheelchair bound man trying to enroll Emma in some private school for special students, one that wasn’t good enough for a Frost. To refuse this gift? Something must have been wrong with Emma.
They kept Emma sedated, but it didn’t matter. Her psychic gifts had been growing and she would no longer tolerate the abuse she faced in the clinic. She broke herself out, burnt the place to the ground, and began to face life on her own. She discovered the Hellfire Club, something she remembered her father being a member of, and decided to build her life there. She died her hair blonde, affected a posh accent, and joined the club as a dancer. She caught the eye of a high ranking official in the Club, a mutant named Sebastian Shaw. She gave him what he desired and he made her a queen. She soon gained control over her family company and became the White Queen of the Hellfire Club. In the Inner Circle, Emma, Shaw, and others decided to control the destiny of the mutant race and place themselves as rulers.
The Hellfire Club tapped into the X-Men’s mutant tracking device, Cerebro, and used it to discover a young mutant named Kitty Pryde. Emma traveled to Chicago to recruit the child to the Hellfire Club’s Massachusetts Academy, a school for gifted youngsters, knowing that the X-Men would be close behind. She used the opportunity to capture the X-Men, but Kitty escaped only to return with the remaining X-Men. The White Queen’s mental powers were strong, but she had never felt power like the Phoenix before. The fiery talons scorched her mind and Emma Frost was left comatose by the hands of Jean Grey.
When Emma recovered, she was determined to gain the power she thought she deserved. To that end, she took an idea from Xavier and corrupted it to her own ends. The Massachusetts Academy had a substantial population of mutant youths and Emma thought to mold them as her Hellions. These students often battled Xavier’s New Mutants and were used as a corrupt perversion of the X-Men. Emma went as far as to gaslight a young girl named Firestar into becoming a personal assassin for the Hellfire Club. She was a ruthless instructor, but deep down she cared about these young minds. When the time traveling terrorist Trevor Fitzroy unleashed his sentinels on them, Emma’s world was crushed. She saw her students butchered in front of her for sport. She saw an ambitious upstart with no morals destroy the world she had created. She saw the flaw in her life’s work and then, she saw nothing.
Emma awoke in the basement of the Xavier Institute. How many months had passed? Why did she feel so powerless? She latched onto the first mind she could find, that of Iceman’s and ran for freedom. The X-Men were shocked by the ease that she used Bobby’s abilities, even in ways they never dreamed of. She soon remembered the death of her Hellions and came back to the Institute. She was determined that no more students would die and proposed an alliance with the X-Men. She was given the opportunity to make good on that promise when the Phalanx captured the X-Men, leaving only Emma, Banshee, Sabretooth, and Jubilee at the mansion. They rescued the X-Men and the other teenage mutants that the Phalanx had captured and Emma realized something. These young mutants needed a teacher and she needed a second chance.
Emma revamped the Massachusetts Academy into a new school for gifted youngsters and, alongside Banshee, led the new Generation X students. The students were often unsure what Emma’s motive was, but they knew she was looking out for them. Emma’s significant funds eventually dried up when Frost Industries went through a rough path and she had to turn to her sister Adrienne for help. Adrienne forced the school to be opened to human students and forced Emma to make her co-headmistress of the school. Emma soon found that this was all a ploy by her sister to get revenge for some childhood unpleasantness but Adrienne took it too far. She planted bombs across the school so Emma would know, once again, what it felt like to lose her students. The Generation X stalwart, Synch was able to contain the blast at the cost of his own life. Emma found her sister, pulled out a gun, and calmly murdered her. She shut the school down and moved to the island of Genosha, hoping to find peace there.
Emma enjoyed teaching her class of telepaths on the mutant nation but soon devastation struck. Cassandra Nova sent a massive Sentinel to murder over sixteen million mutants living on Genosha. Thanks to the onset of a secondary mutant, the ability to transform into a diamond form, Emma survived. The X-Men found her in the rubble, still clutching the body of a fallen student named Negasonic Teenage Warhead. She decided to join the X-Men, determined that no mutant should see that genocide again. It was there she caught the eye of Scott Summers, whose marriage with Jean Grey had hit a rough patch. She was oddly attracted to this beaten down man and offered to help him through his marital issues. Their therapy sessions sparked a romance, and though they never touched their psychic affair was almost more stimulating for Emma.
They could have continued their tryst if Emma’s prized students, the Stepford Cuckoos, hadn’t wanted to hurt Emma after the death of their sister. They revealed Cyclops and Emma’s relationship to Jean Grey who lashed out with the full fury of the Phoenix. She drug Emma through every horrible memory, every repressed thought, every lie she told herself to make her feel better. It left Emma shattered inside. Things moved quickly for the X-Men after that. In a matter of days, Magneto (well, Xorn pretending to be Magneto pretending to be Xorn) destroyed the school, took over New York City, and killed Jean Grey. She saw the man she loved and reached out to him in a pure human moment. They could reopen the school, lead the new generation of mutants, and with her by his side, Cyclops could truly live.
With a new school came new faculty and Emma had someone in mind. She knew none would trust her alone and recruited Kitty Pryde, now all grown up, to be the conscience of the team. Once again, she turned her focus to teaching with her star pupils, Julian Keller and the new Hellions. While they respected her as a teammate, many among the X-Men questioned her loyalty to Xavier’s cause, but never her loyalty to her students. That guilt manifested thanks to a mental suggestion Cassandra Nova had long ago planted in Emma’s mind. Nova desired for Emma to destroy the X-Men and free herself but the people she had bonded with over her time as an X-Man saved her. Emma Frost had finally found a mutant family.
M-Day changed everything. The mutant race was reduced to less than 200 and the school faced an onslaught of threats. She knew the tiny number of mutants would make the school a target for violent hate groups and sent the depowered students away. She loaded them on buses home and focused on turning the few remaining students into warriors wearing X. That was only reinforced when the Purifiers destroyed the buses and all the students in them as they began their attack on the school. The X-Men stopped them but Emma only pushed herself harder. The teens at the school were no longer kids anymore, their childhood had ended. They could either fight or die.
Emma and the whole mutant race were given that chance time and time again over the next few years. She stood by Cyclops through battle after battle, at points it seemed like she was the only mutant to have his ear. When Norman Osborn became America’s top cop he enlisted Emma for his Cabal, a group of leaders he tasked keep peace among the various faction of the world. He gave Emma her own team of X-Men and set them against Cyclops’ mutants in San Francisco. Osborn thought he had the mutants beat but Emma revealed her true colors. She was an X-Man and she stood with Cyclops. Emma double crossed Osborn, defeated his Dark Avengers and X-Men, and stood by Cyclops as they established a new mutant nation, Utopia.
The schism between Wolverine and Cyclops put Emma in a perilous position. Logan was restarting the school and he wanted Emma to teach again. But Emma believed in the work Scott was doing and promised to follow him to the bitter end. That bitter end came as the Phoenix Force returned to Earth and inhabited Cyclops, Colossus, Magik, Namor, and Emma. Slowly everyone was driven mad by the raw power of the Phoenix, everyone but Scott and Emma. As the world turned against them, the lovers dined on the astral plane where Emma made a dark confession. Emma and Namor had been having a psychic affair since they gained the powers of the Phoenix. This betrayal was too much for Cyclops to bear and he struck Emma down, taking the full power of the Phoenix Force for himself.
After the crisis ended Emma was placed into custody but was quickly broken out by Cyclops and his band of rebel X-Men. She knew their relationship was over, but she also believed that Cyclops and his mission was right. She followed him and helped him establish a training ground for another generation of mutants. They received a distress call from Muir Island and their team rushed to answer it. There they saw the bodies of Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, strewn across the facility as a cloud of Terrigen floated overhead. Cyclops pressed forward but Emma saw him getting weak. The leader she had followed for years crumbled to the ground and Emma wrapped him in her arms. As she held back tears she heard him speak “Don’t let it end, Emma!”
The loss of the man she loved, the symbol of mutant perseverance, weighed on Emma but it wasn’t just Scott. It was Empath and Roulette, Catseye, Bevatron, and Tarot, Jetstream and Beef, her fallen Hellions. It was Synch and Negasonic and sixteen million other mutants. It was Sophie and Esme. Wallflower, Rubbermaid, Icarus, Tag, Quill, Network, Dryad, DJ, Kidogo, Preview, Specter, and all the other mutants killed after M-Day. It was Jamie Madrox and, yes, it was Cyclops too. The mass of all those lost mutant lives lost crushed Emma, but just for a moment. She rose, stronger and more determined than ever. Only one thought was on her mind, “Don’t let it end.”
She used her psychic powers to make other believe that Scott Summers was still alive. Emma made him more than a man. She made him an idea, and ideas never die. She manipulated the X-Men into a war with the Inhumans, the source of the deadly Terrigen Mists. She was unwilling to watch her people be gassed so that some privileged aliens could get super powers. The mutant race rallied around Emma and developed a plan to destroy the Terrigen Mists once and for all. The time displaced version of Cyclops discovered Emma’s deception and revealed the true damage the Terrigen Mists were doing to the mutant race. The Inhumans queen Medusa took it upon herself to destroy the Mists and the mutant race turned on Emma. The White Queen was not satisfied with an end to the deaths, she wanted blood and revealed her secret weapon, Inhuman hunting Sentinels. She murdered hundreds of innocent Inhumans and escaped.
After the Hydra takeover of America, Steve Rogers offered a deal to mutant kind, California for staying out of his way. Emma installed herself as the secret ruler of New Tian, behind a mind controlled Xorn. She controlled a piece of the shattered Cosmic Cube which she used as leverage against Hydra. She faced foes on every side, even from her own race, but Emma stood tall. When Hydra broke their truce and stormed New Tian, Emma negotiated a ceasefire, not a surrender with one term. No mutant will kneel.
Must Read
Emma Frost has been in countless good stories and is always a dynamic player in them. Funny enough, her solo series is not one of them. The arc focusing on her in Astonishing X-Men is good, but that may be the weakest part of that run. Instead, I want to focus on an underrated issue the cuts to the diamond core of Emma, Inhumans Vs X-Men #0. While the event was poorly executed, and as an ending that is the worst Emma Frost story ever published, this issue understands Emma. It shows her determination, her cunning, her ambition, and her passion. This is an Emma who is going to do what she believes is right by any means necessary. It is a thrilling start that makes the horrific ending to this series all the worse. Pick it up and enjoy it, but maybe don’t read #6.
Ranking
Emma deserves to be Queen. She is one of the most complex and fascinating characters in the X-Men. The fact that you can never be sure if you can trust her adds an element of intrigue to every scene she is in. Every interaction with Emma is delightfully catty and she is a joy to read about. She just needs a costume that matches the class and elegance that she exudes. I don’t think she is as enjoyable as Cyclops, whose long and storied history cements him at the top. I do think she is a more interesting character than Shadowcat but she can’t match the fun of a well-written Nightcrawler. For that, Emma Grace Frost is the new number 3 in the Xavier Files.
Emma was requested by /u/realReel2Real and Hunter on Patreon among other. Thank you for the request. If you have a request for how about you send it below? If you want to cut to the front of the two-year long line, we have a Patreon you can support Xavier Files for just $1 to get a line cutting reward.
Make sure you check out my brand new podcast BATTLE OF THE ATOM. It’s where Bish & Jubez creator Adam Reck and I talk about every single X-Men story that ever existed and rank them from best to worst. Episode 2 is up and we have a bunch of fun. Make sure you subscribe on any of the following platforms (or others, I’m not picky) Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS.
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Next week it is all out Havok on the Xavier Files.
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Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
