Marvel Comics has been on a roll with female-led X-Men titles, and a new one is out this week: Emma Frost: The White Queen #1. Set prior to Emma Frost being considered a good guy, writer Amy Chu aims to show how it wasn’t easy being the queen of the Hellfire Club. That’s due to the politics within, but also a mystery that could wind up getting her killed.
Emma Frost: The White Queen #1 is a good start at setting up Emma Frost as a kind of Hellfire Club manager. It sounds a bit boring, and the first half of this issue kind of is, but by the end, there’s a real nail-biter of a mystery for Emma Frost to resolve.
The story opens with a Buenos Aires Hellfire Club location holding a party. Emma is in charge, or at least she thinks she is, and is perfectly fine hearing the thoughts of guests who are bigots to the mutants out in the world. She’s not pure evil as she has been depicted in this era, but she is trying to keep things in control. That control starts to slip when a protester enters the Hellfire Club, but is promptly caged.
She looks fabulous.
Credit: Marvel
As Emma Frost navigates this party, key players are introduced, and it’s clear Emma Frost needs to watch her back. The politics of the Hellfire Club are intriguing, like the multiple locations and the infighting. These elements are set up for later, and while they’re kind of boring on the surface level, they should pay off eventually.
When the X-Men show up, Andrea Di Vito positively crushes it. Nightcrawler looks great, but a double-page splash of four of the X-Men entering the scene is poster-worthy. The size of Colossus is on point, the fastball special is great fun, and Wolverine’s shorty self is a delight. Storm is also awesome in every sense of the word. The X-Men practically steal the show in this book. That isn’t to say Emma Frost isn’t gorgeous, as Di Vito does her justice, it’s just that Emma Frost has little to do. She’s more of a company manager than a hero or a villain.
While the X-Men make a dramatic exit, this issue doesn’t serve up the greatest of cliffhanger pages. The situation is set, but the final panel isn’t all that exciting. I’ll be back for issue #2, but the balance of action, intrigue, and drama is off throughout the issue.
Emma Frost: The White Queen #1 lays the groundwork for a compelling character study, but gets bogged down in setup and sidelines its star in favor of flashier guest appearances. There is clear potential for future issues to delve deeper into Emma’s power and complexity if the focus shifts more firmly to her.
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