Creating Emma Frost
Created by writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne during the celebrated “Dark Phoenix Saga,” Emma Frost is an iconic figure in X-Men history. She was created as the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, a group of hedonistic mutants who were inspired by an episode of the British TV series The Avengers. It’s not hard to spot the kinky fetish side to Emma Frost, which was fairly common in Claremont’s creations.
The first decade or so of Emma Frost’s publication history saw her used as a classic X-Men villain. She was set up as the antithesis of everything Charles Xavier stood for, using her telepathy to gather mutants and train them as her Hellions. The rivalry between the Hellions and the New Mutants became the stuff of X-Men legends, while Emma Frost herself regularly clashed with the X-Men. In one fantastic arc, she even did a psychic body-swap with Storm!
Personally, though, in my view. the most fascinating scenes featuring Emma Frost were in the Firestar miniseries. Drawing the character of Firestar into the mainstream Marvel Universe, this miniseries portrayed Emma as a temptress, trying to turn Firestar into her own personal weapon.
Generation X
In 1991, Marvel relaunched the X-Men titles – and Emma Frost’s life was dramatically changed. Her beloved Hellions were slaughtered by Sentinels, and Frost herself was left in a coma. When she eventually recovered, she was left traumatized by the deaths of her students, and we saw a side of Emma Frost that had never been developed before – the teacher, who genuinely cared for her students.
Three years later, Marvel began to bring this characteristic to the fore. The “Phalanx Covenant” event saw the techno-organic race known as the Phalanx striking out against the next generation of mutants, and Emma Frost became one of a handful of X-Men to work to rescue these young mutants. This launched Scott Lobdell’s popular Generation X comic, with Emma working as the headmistress of Xavier’s newest school.
Generation X was a fan-favorite book, deeply loved by X-Men fans. Over the course of the run, Emma Frost’s character and history were explored in depth; she never lost her edge, and yet readers were never in doubt about her love for the children. During the “Onslaught” era, Frost panicked for fear that her students would be caught up in the chaos of Xavier’s fall, and psychically manipulated them into fleeing to a secure location.
Emma Frost was no longer a villain. Now, she was a teacher.