Emma Frost
Salvador Larroca, artist

Emma Grace Frost, also known as the White Queen, is a comic book superheroine (and former supervillainess) in the Marvel Comics universe. She once fought against the X-Men as a member of the Hellfire Club, but later reformed and became a member of the superhero team. Created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, she first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (1979).

Character history

The Hellfire Club and Massachusetts Academy

Emma Frost first appeared as the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, a group of superhumans who dressed in 18th Century clothing and plotted world domination. Frost and the Club's agents captured several members of the X-Men. Frost engaged the Phoenix in a psychic battle, which she lost badly, but recovered.

During her time with the Hellfire Club, Frost also ran the Massachusetts Academy, a school for mutants which served as a counterpoint to that of X-Men founder Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Frost’s trainees became the supervillain team the Hellions and fought Xavier’s young students the New Mutants.

Death of the Hellions

In Uncanny X-Men #281 (1991), the time traveling mutant Trevor Fitzroy unleashed the mutant-hunting robots called the Sentinels on Frost and the Hellions. Frost was left in a coma by the attack and her students were killed.

The X-Men cared for the comatose Frost at their headquarters. Later, she awoke and possessed the body of the X-Man Iceman. She escaped the X-Men, but she was devastated when she discovered the deaths of her students and Xavier was able to coax her back into her own body.

Generation X

Xavier paired Frost with the X-Man Banshee to mentor the teenage mutant team Generation X at Frost’s Massachusetts Academy after the two had teamed up to stop the Phalanx. Banshee never fully trusted Frost, despite an undercurrent of sexual tension between the two, and even some of her students were skeptical of her.

After Frost’s business ventures took a bad turn, she turned to her estranged sister Adrienne for help. Adrienne, a psychometrist, offered financial assistance but demanded to be co-headmistress of the school in return. Adrienne secretly plotted against Emma and planted a bomb at the school, which killed Synch, one of Emma's students. Emma tracked down and murdered Adrienne and then returned to the Academy, growing increasingly distant from her students in an effort to hide her crime. This, combined with Banshee's increasing depression and drunkenness following the death of his long-time lover Moira MacTaggert, led the students to leave, disbanding Generation X.

X-Men

Afterwards, Frost traveled to the mutant haven island of Genosha. There, Frost ran and taught at a mutant school until a genocidal Sentinel attack killed most the island’s population. Frost survived only due to the sudden manifestation of her secondary mutation: the power to transform herself into a flexible, diamond-like substance that provides her near-invulnerability.

Frost then joined the X-Men and taught at Xavier’s newly-reopened school. She began to have a sexual telepathic relationship with the X-Man Cyclops who had became distant from his wife Jean Grey. She also started to look after and train a group of telepathic quintuplets known as the Stepford Cuckoos.

During a riot at the school, one of the Cuckoos was killed and the others left Emma, blaming her for the death. It was soon revealed that one of them, Esme, was responsible for the death. She had been working behind the scenes with Magneto (who would later be revealed to be an impostor of the man). After Esme turned on "Magneto" when he rejected her advances, she was killed by him. The three remaining Cuckoos have since returned to Emma.

Following Jean Grey's apparent death, Cyclops and Emma became lovers, despite the criticism from their teammates. The two took over the school after Professor Xavier stepped down, where Frost became co-headmaster with Cyclops and advisor to the new Hellions, one of the many "squads" which have been set up in the student body as part of reforms introduced by her and Cyclops.

Emma Frost series

Marvel launched an Emma Frost ongoing series in 2003; this series detailed Emma's early years, and was written by Karl Bollers. The earlier issues were drawn by Randy Green, who left after #6 and was replaced with Carlo Pagulayan for the remaining issues.

Emma Frost was reprinted in digest-sized collections in the Marvel Age imprint in bookstores. There are three collections in print.

• Marvel Age Emma Frost Vol. 1: Higher Learning collects issues #1-6 and revolves around Emma's conflicts with her family, especially her father.
• Marvel Age Emma Frost Vol. 2: Mind Games collects issues #7-12 and features Emma's first forays into criminal activity.
• Marvel Age Emma Frost Vol. 3: Bloom collects issues #13-18, in which Emma goes to college and befriends another telepath, Astrid Bloom, and learns to use her powers. This was the last trade, as Marvel cancelled Emma Frost at #18.

Powers and abilities

Emma Frost is a mutant, a human who is born with superhuman powers acquired through evolution. She is a powerful telepath and has some skill at creating electronic devices. Recently, she developed a secondary mutation: the ability to transform herself into a flexible, translucent diamond-like substance. When she is in this state, she supposedly cannot use her telepathic powers (although this limitation has been portrayed inconsistently by different writers).

Appearances in other media

Emma Frost has appeared in two television movies. The first, in 1989, was the animated Pryde of the X-Men, with Susan Silo as the voice of the White Queen. In a 1996 live-action television movie titled Generation X, Finola Hughes, with the help of a blonde wig, portrayed Emma Frost.

Emma is also playable in the role playing games X-Men Legends and X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse.

Prior to Bryan Singer's and screenwriter Dan Harris' decision to leave X-men 3, Sigourney Weaver was planed to play an empathic Emma Frost in X-Men 3. [1] (http://superherohype.com/news/x-mennews.php?id=1990)

External links

• UncannyXmen.net, Spotlight on Emma Frost (http://www.uncannyxmen.net/db/spotlight/showquestion.asp?faq=10&fldAuto=69).