Emma Frost

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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.

Related Topics:
Hellfire Club - 18th century - X-Men

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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.

Related Topics:
Charles Xavier - School for Gifted Youngsters - Hellions - New Mutants

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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.

Related Topics:
1991 - Time travel - Trevor Fitzroy - Robot - Sentinels - Coma

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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.

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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.

Related Topics:
Banshee - Teenage - Generation X - Phalanx

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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.

Related Topics:
Adrienne - Psychometrist - Synch - Depression - Drunkenness - Moira MacTaggert

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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.

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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.

Related Topics:
Cyclops - Jean Grey - Stepford Cuckoos

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During a riot at the school, one of the Cuckoos was killed and the others left Emma, blaming her for the death. Soon afterword, she was found, by her fellow X-Man Beast, in her diamond shape, totally shattered. It was soon revealed that one of the Cuckoos, Esme, was responsible. 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.

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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.

Related Topics:
Professor Xavier - Hellions

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Due to Emma's well refined telepathic abilities, she beat the alternate future daughter of Jean Grey and Cyclops, Rachel Summers, in a contest on the astral plane. She then rather peacefully offered Rachel the chance to help her refine her telepathic skills since there isn't anyone else to do it now. Rachel, though still wary, accepted the proposal. There has been no actual evidence of Rachel's training since.

Related Topics:
Jean Grey - Cyclops - Rachel Summers - Astral plane

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Emma's appearance in House of M seems to be fairly important to the plot. She has already shown her rather controversial opinion on the matter of Scarlet Witch, deciding to side with Wolverine on killing her. Emma was also the first X-man Wolverine contacted for help after the Scarlet Witch altered reality to create a world dominated by mutants.

Related Topics:
House of M - Scarlet Witch - Wolverine

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Loyalties

An ongoing subplot in Astonishing X-Men depicts Emma's unusually antagonistic relationship with Kitty Pryde and apparent domination of Scott Summers as possible evidence of disloyalty. Her secretive relationship with the surviving Stepford Cuckoos has also been presented as "evidence" of this, and accusations are frequently made by other characters having reason to distrust her motives. In issue #12 (August 2005), the question of Emma's "true loyalties" is brought into focus as Emma abandons the team during a fight to confer with a shadowy figure, revealed on the final page to be one of a group of four individuals watching from the shadows. The group contains Sebastian Shaw, Cassandra Nova, a girl who apparently died in Genosha and a cloaked unnidentified figure, who discuss among themselves Emma's impending betrayal of the team.

Related Topics:
Astonishing X-Men - Kitty Pryde - Scott Summers - Stepford Cuckoos - Sebastian Shaw - Cassandra Nova - Genosha

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