People’s History of the Marvel Universe Holiday Special: The (Mis)Education of Emma Frost
After this thread on X-Twitter, I was prompted to write down some thoughts I had after I made the dubious decision to not only read through all of the really questionably covered (see below) Emma Frost ongoing and track down Generation X -1 and X-Men: Origins Emma Frost to try to piece together her life story prior to appearing in Uncanny X-Men #129.
I liked Emma Frost based on Morrison’s New X-Men run only. To me the character and the issues with her flouting ethics and norms makes more sense at the time in the sense of Morrison’s French-inspired epater le bourgeosie approach to the X-Men’s stuffy nature (at the time) then it does to look at it normatively in overall serial continuity terms. So I’d say sanding off her rough edges would be needed.
I think the main appeal and charm that Emma has is that she’s a rare Marvel female character who gets to be a Wolverine style bad boy and has yet to get comeuppance or a dressing down for it. And I think the nature of the character is that she shouldn’t get a comeuppance. I mean female characters who do bad stuff are so rarely allowed to go unpunished, so that makes Emma Frost the equivalent of Becky Sharp.