Emma Grace Frost is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in The Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), and was created by writer Chris Claremont and artist/co-writer John Byrne. Emma Frost, also known as the White Queen, has evolved from a supervillain and foe of the X-Men, to becoming more of an antivillain.
She is an urbane telepath with a well-noted, dry wit.
The character appears in many adaptations of the X-Men properties, such as video games, animated programs, and live-action films.
From her initial appearance as the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, Frost appeared as an X-Men villain over the years. Emma Frost was specifically inspired by Emma Peel, played by actress Diana Rigg, who famously dons a provocative corset, collar, and boots and becomes the "Queen of Sin".
Iconic corset, collar, and boots
Fictional character biography[]
Emma Frost was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to the wealthy Winston and Hazel Frost; she is the third of four children, which include her older brother, Christian Frost, her older sister Adrienne Frost and her younger sister Cordelia Frost. Winston is cold, ruthless, and domineering, often imposing impossibly high standards on his children, while Hazel abuses prescription drugs to cope with the tensions of her household.
Frost enrolls in Empire State University. There, she begins to learn about mutants for the first time and meets fellow telepath Astrid Bloom, who becomes her friend and mentor. Frost later learns that Astrid has been secretly manipulating events. Furious, she attacks Astrid telepathically and leaves her comatose. Frost is later invited to the Hellfire Club, an underground elite society. Unlike the other females in the Club, Emma is never uncomfortable with the strict dress code that require female members to wear lingerie at all times. She believes her revealing wardrobe to be one of many weapons in her arsenal, one that gives her an instant advantage over men.
The White Queen
Frost discovers the plans of Edward Buckman and Steven Lang to destroy all mutants. Alongside Sebastian Shaw, Lourdes Chantel, and Harry Leland, Frost battles Lang's Sentinels. Frost kills Buckman and the Council of the Chosen. Shaw and Frost stage a coup that sees them seize control of the Council of the Chosen, which they rename the Inner Circle. Shaw takes the title of Black King, and Frost becomes the new White Queen.
White Queen of the Hellfire Club[]
As White Queen of the Hellfire Club, Frost held many titles, one of which was Chairman of the Board and CEO of Frost International, which helps to fund the activities of the Lords Cardinal. Frost also becomes the Chairman of the Board of Trustees and headmistress of the Massachusetts Academy, a school for mutants which serves as a counterpoint to Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Frost and the Club's agents later attempted to recruit Kitty Pryde for the Massachusetts Academy, and capture (and personally torture) several members of the X-Men, including Storm, Colossus, Wolverine, and Phoenix. Frost engages Phoenix in a psychic battle in which she is overpowered and on the verge of being killed. Frost launches a last-minute attack that led the X-Men to believe she had committed suicide, though in truth, she was comatose and recovering from Phoenix's attack under the care of Sebastian Shaw.
Vs Pheonix
The Hellions[]
During her time with the Hellfire Club, Frost continues to run the Massachusetts Academy and mentors the mutant team known as the Hellions. Frost attempts to recruit several gifted youngsters to her cause: Firestar, Doug Ramsey and again Kitty Pryde, all of which result in altercations.Alongside the Hellions, Frost encounters the Hellions' rival team, Xavier's New Mutants, several times. When the New Mutants are later killed and resurrected by the Beyonder, they are left traumatized and withdrawn. Frost offers her assistance in telepathically restoring them to their former selves. She then coerces their headmaster Magneto into allowing them to join the Massachusetts Academy. With Shaw and Selene, Frost invites Magneto to join the Hellfire Club. Alongside the Hellfire Club, Frost battles the High Evolutionary's forces to rescue Magma, helps Magneto search for the New Mutants when they had gone missing, encounters the effects of the Inferno, and eventually forms an alliance with Selene and Magneto to oust Shaw from the inner circle.
The Hellions
Joining and leading the X-Men[]
Frost travels to the mutant haven island of Genosha, where she teaches at a mutant school until a genocidal Sentinel attack kills most of the island's inhabitants; Frost survives due to the sudden manifestation of her Diamond form: the power to change herself into a flexible, near-invulnerable, diamond-like substance. After being rescued Frost joins the X-Men and takes on a teaching position at Xavier Institute. As a member of the X-Men, Frost begins counselling Cyclops over his marriage with Jean however, this soon turns into a psychic, non-
Dressed up as the Pheonix
physical, sexual relationship.
Psychically humiliated by Pheonix
Jean catches Frost and Summers in bed together in their minds. In a rage, Jean unleashes her reignited Phoenix powers and psychically humiliates Frost. Afterward, Frost is found physically shattered in her diamond form. As Bishop and Sage investigate the crime, Jean uses her increasingly growing Phoenix powers to reassemble Frost's body, acknowledging that Frost has genuinely fallen in love with Scott. Revived, Frost is able to name her attempted murderer – Esme of the Stepford Cuckoos, who had mind-controlled fellow student Angel Salvadore into shooting Frost in her single flaw with a diamond bullet, under the direction of Xorn.
Upon Jean's death, Cyclops moves on with his life with Frost.
Moving in with Cyclops
Despite the criticism from their teammates and family members, Cyclops and Frost become lovers, and the two take over the school after Professor Xavier steps down; Frost becomes co-headmistress with Cyclops and adviser to a new team of Hellions. She develops an antagonistic relationship with fellow teacher Kitty Pryde and the alternate reality daughter of Jean and Cyclops, Rachel Grey, however, a truce is reached when Frost offers to help Rachel hone her telepathic abilities.
Secret Invasion[]
In the 2008 storyline, Frost is seen fighting the Skrulls in San Francisco during the invasion. There, the Skrulls set up a telepathy-blocking "wall" throughout the globe. Emma channels the Cuckoos' telepathy into her own using Cerebra in an attempt to locate the source of the psi-blockade but is left comatose. The Cuckoos tell Cyclops that Emma is dead, unaware that Emma's telepathic mind is continuing to battle the psychic team of Skrulls. Setting a series of traps through misdirection, Emma manages to break free and shut down the psi-blockade.
Dark Reign[]
In the 2008–2009 storyline, Frost, after waking from a vision about the is invited to join Norman Osborn's Cabal. At the meeting, it is revealed that she and Prince Namor share a romantic history. During her days as the White Queen, Sebastian Shaw sent Frost to convince Namor to join the Hellfire Club. Instead, Namor took her to his kingdom and they began a relationship. Believing Frost to have betrayed him for Namor, Shaw sent a reprogrammed sentinel to Atlantis, attacking the two and destroying the kingdom. When Namor confronted Shaw for his treachery, Sage took a telepathic hold of Frost, erasing her memories of Namor, who vowed revenge on Shaw. In the present, Frost reveals that after her initial battle with the Phoenix she pieced her memories of Namor back together. She makes a pact with him, seducing Shaw and using her telepathy to make Namor believe she has executed him, while secretly telepathically incapacitating Shaw. Per their deal, Namor vows to protect mutant-kind as his own people, while Frost, more determined to fill her role as a leader of mutant-kind, contacts Scott to have Shaw captured by the X-Men for "crimes against mutant-kind."Approaching him later in his cell, Frost reveals that she has captured Shaw for Namor and on the basis that the Sentinels he commissioned were ones later used by Cassandra Nova to destroy Genosha.
Dark X-Men[]
Emma Frost is appointed by Norman Osborn to lead his new team of "Dark X-Men."The team debuts to the public as the official "X-Men" maintaining high public approval through Osborn's careful media strategy. They oust the original X-Men, portraying them as a dangerous militia. Meanwhile, Emma discovers that Osborn is working with the Dark Beast, torturing apprehended mutants and feeding their powers into a machine that empowers Weapon Omega.Cyclops sends X-Force on a strategic evacuation of the mutant prisoners, resulting in a planned confrontation with the Dark X-Men. As the teams prepare to face off, Emma then reveals her role as a double agent, defeating the Dark X-Men with Namor's assistance. Upon learning of this, Norman orders his Dark Avengers and Dark X-Men led by Mystique to go after Emma, Namor, and Scott.
Diamond Form
Avengers vs. X-Men[]
Frost is one of the five X-Men taken over by the power of the Phoenix Force after it is fractured by Iron Man. During the final showdown against the Avengers and the X-Men, her portion of the Phoenix is violently taken by Cyclops. Frost is taken into custody by the Avengers and survives an assassination attempt by members of the Purifiers.
Pheonix form
All-New X-Men[]
Frost is rescued from prison by Cyclops and Magneto, but it is revealed that her time as a Phoenix has rendered her telepathy erratic at best.Despite her resentment of Cyclops' recent actions she consents to depart with him to resume his mission to protect mutants. Frost has trained in secret and obtained full control over her telepathy again.
Secrets
All-New, All-Different Marvel[]
Emma Frost is among a small team of X-Men that come into contact with the Terrigen mists at Muir Island, where they found Jamie Madrox dead on the facility grounds. Discovering that the Terrigen Mist cloud was toxic to mutants Scott and Emma formulate a plan to extinguish one of the Inhumans' Terrigen cloud. And while they are able to hold off the Inhumans just long enough to neutralize the green cloud, Cyclops is apparently killed by Black Bolt in self-defense. However at Scott's funeral, Alex is seen afar speaking to Emma that something does not make sense, leading to Emma filling Alex in on some unrevealed details. Black Bolt did not kill Cyclops, in fact, he never made it out of the facility at Muir Island, as he suffered an immediate reaction to the Terrigen mists, dying in Emma Frost's arms. Since then Emma had been projecting an illusion of him to everyone else as a means of declaring war against the Inhumans in Scott's name.
Inhumans vs. X-Men[]
Over the next eight months since Cyclops' death, Emma started to train and improving her time to turn into her diamond form. She also seems to be traumatized from the death of Scott and began to actually believe her own lie that Black Bolt was the one who actually killed him. Emma wasted no time and began to prepare for a war with the Inhumans by making alliances with various teams of X-Men, with the last being Storm's X-Haven. She declares war on the Inhumans when Beast reports that the Terrigen cloud will soon saturate and render earth as completely uninhabitable for mutants, believing that they have no time to attempt negotiation.
After the time-displaced younger Cyclops reveals that Emma faked his future self's death, Emma insists that she did what Cyclops would have chosen to do if he could, subsequently fleeing the battlefield with the aid of Havok after using reprogrammed sentinels to slaughter the Inhumans from Ennilux. She is later shown in a secret base donning a helmet that is a combination of Cyclops and Magneto's in preparation for her next move, as she is now wanted and on the run from both the Inhumans and X-Men for her actions since Cyclops' death.
Reception[]
Dr. Doom's fantasy
The character's sexualized depiction and often antagonistic personality are also frequently cited as her most recognizable and appealing character attributes. Within analysis of sexualized depictions of women in comics, Emma Frost is often described as an exception to criticisms of over-sexualization of female characters, despite her highly sexualized depiction, noting that her depiction is consistent with her characterization.
In other media[]
January Jones plays Emma Frost/White Queen in X-Men: First Class.
Emma Frost, as the White Queen, is a member of the Brotherhood of Mutants in the cartoon X-Men: Pryde of the X-men (1989).
Emma Frost (as the White Queen) is a boss in the video games The Uncanny X-Men (1989) (1989), and Konami's X-Men.(1992)
_Namor_McKenzie_(Earth-616)_Uncanny_X-Men_Vol_1_540.png){kind=link}
_%26_Scott_Summers_(Earth-616)_from_New_X-Men_Vol_1_139_001.png "Emma Frost (Earth-616) & Scott Summers (Earth-616) from New X-Men Vol 1 139 001.png (403 KB)")
