Profile: White Queen

Emma Frost, White Queen

First appearance: Uncanny X-Men #129, January 1980

History: she began as a member of the Hellfire Club, a gathering of mutants, and later became the leader of the Hellions, a kind of rival group to the New Mutants. After the Hellions were later slain by another gang of enemies, she talked the X-Men into accepting her as a member, became one of their closest allies, becoming one of the leaders of Generation X alongside Banshee. Her power is usually telepathy.

Current status: may still be hooked up with Cyclops.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: her personality depiction has been rather scattershot. She's been depicted as a vixen, a nutcase (and it was told at one time in GenX that she'd been in a mental institution), and even manipulative/exploitive. The writers/artists have sometimes even gone into the theater of the absurd with how she's depicted wearing almost slutty outfits.

What's wrong with how this is done? It seems like Marvel's powers are hell-bent on "normalizing" her very exploitive personality that she's been depicted with since the turn of the century. It's certainly not very appealing. She's even been made into Cyclops' paramour at Jean Grey's expense (and as of this writing, Jean may still be dead). Big problem is that she seems to be manipulating him, implying it's not a very authentic relationship.

In 2004, there was a miniseries telling (or rewriting) her background, and one of the problems with that was the covers, which were not only drawn by Greg Horn, a photo-realist artist with very stagnant talents, but also depicted her several times in that very questionable costume, making it a very discouraging and embarrassing product.

On top of all that, I'm not very impressed with how they've "developed" Frost in this decade gone by, and think it could use a very serious improvement.