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Hello everybody, and welcome to another great character spotlight in this week’s Marvel Snapshot! This week, and for the next few to come, I’ll be spotlighting a few of the characters from the upcoming X-Men: First Class movie. I’ve already gone through Magneto, Professor Xavier, and some others. Next up is Emma Frost! She was created by one of the best creative teams around (Chris Claremont and John Byrne).

Emma Frost was born in Boston Massachusetts to a wealthy, but cruel family. Her father was very domineering, and her mother addicted to drugs. She had two sisters and one brother. She was close to her brother, so when her father had him committed to a mental institution for attempting suicide, Emma refused her father’s invitation to run his company after getting out of school. During school is when Emma started to get headaches that eventually led to her awesome mental powers manifesting.
Emma decided to leave home and strike out on her own. Later, she ended up becoming a stripper at the Hellfire Club. She, along with Sebastian Shaw, usurped the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club, and then took it in a radical new direction. They saw what Charles Xavier was doing with recruiting young mutants, so naturally, they did the same. Emma was the headmistress of the Massachusetts Academy, and this was where she had her own group called the Hellions. Also during this time, she and the rest of the Hellfire Club attacked the X-Men. They actually succeeded in capturing them, but the X-Men broke loose and defeated them when Kitty Pryde intervened, and Phoenix put a beat down on Emma. As she developed her Hellions, they eventually got into a brawl with Xavier’s New Mutants. Emma later even coerced Magneto to join her in running the academy. Perhaps the thing that still haunts Emma to this day, though, is when her Hellions were slaughtered by Sentinels brought from the future by Trevor Fitzroy.

After this event, Emma eventually became one of the X-Men, and along with Banshee, ran the Academy and Generation X. Later, it’s brought to light that Emma killed her sister, and along with Moira McTaggert’s death, the team disbanded. When Emma was on Genosha, her secondary mutation manifested. She can now turn into a diamond form that is almost unbreakable. She is unable to use her telepathic powers in this form, though. She then went to Xavier’s school, and began to mentor the Stepford Cuckoos. This proved invaluable when they helped defeat Charles’s sister, Cassandra Nova. Emma then turned her “attention” to seducing Cyclops. Even with Jean still around, Emma began a relationship with him mentally. Jean was eventually made aware of this by the Stepford Cuckoos, who were angry with Emma due to the death of one of the sisters. Jean went berserk when she found out, and gave Emma a mental beating. Later, Emma was shot in her diamond form, and apparently killed. Jean, having realized Emma is really in love with Scott, used her Phoenix powers to reanimate Emma. We find out that one of the Stepford Cuckoos mind controlled another student to commit the crime.
A trip to Breakworld, the Superhuman Registration Act, Messiah Complex, Dark Reign, and so on; Emma has proven herself a valued member of the X-Men, and also a partner to Cyclops, as well. I personally think that Emma will certainly betray the team in the future, because she was too great a villain. As usual, checkout my recommended reading list, along with some great covers below. See you next week! (Click here for a look at the new Emma Frost.)
Recommended Reading
X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga HC (2010/1980)
New Mutants #69-75 (1983)
Uncanny X-Men #310-318 (1991)
X-Men: The Origin of Generation X – TPB (2001)
Grant Morrison’s New X-Men (2001)
Astonishing X-Men (2004)
X-Men: Phoenix Warsong – Tpb (2006)
X-Men: Phoenix Endsong – Tpb (2005)
Emma Frost Ultimate Collection TPB (2011/2003)






Billy Dunleavy
billy@comicattack.net