Given its superficial covers, it would have been easy to dismiss this title as yet another X-book spinoff, a tits-and-ass book meant to milk another couple of bucks from the thousands of X-Men readers out there. Surprisingly, it's developed into quite the fascinating drama about family dysfunction. Bollers not only offers up a thoroughly accessible script, but one that focuses on the human capacity for emotional cruelty rather than the title character's emerging powers. While the art isn't necessarily to my tastes, the pencillers sets aside his cheesecake tendencies to tell the story clearly and with great emotion.
The Frost family returns from its vacation in Europe, and much to everyone's surprise, Christian finally flat-out refuses to follow his father's orders. He sets out to live his own life, and Emma's pride -- and healthy envy -- overflows. The elder Frost is willing to give up control over any of his children so easily, though. Meanwhile, Emma tries to connect with her mother over her father's indiscretions, and Emma's shocked to be met with little but denial and accusations.
Green tones down the T&A, and that reinforces the title character's tender age and remaining innocence quite nicely. The only time the art dwells on sexuality is in the depiction of Adrienne, and it's very much in keeping with her portrayal as a manipulative bitch. The title character's anger and grief is portrayed powerfully; one could argue it's even over the top. But what she's put through here is over the top, so it works.
And then are the Greg Horn covers. Hell, I'm sure there are those who look at this comic book and think the latest issue of Maxim has arrived. Sex sells, sure, but these covers are likely robbing the book of a segment of its potential readership: teenage girls. The cover says there's nothing for them to be found in the book, and that's just not the case, unfortunately.
Emma Frost is the antithesis of The Waltons. It's a rich family at war with itself. There's an entertaining, soap-opera quality to the story, but there's a tenderness to it as well. I love that the development of Emma's powers are a secondary concern in the story, a peripheral element that's used to great effect to weave exposition seamlessly into the dialogue.
The reason that Emma Frost makes for such compelling storytelling is that despite the extreme nature of the familial conflicts, it's not at all difficult to see oneself in the title character or her shattered older brother. Fortunately, few of us had to endure the sort of abuse the Frost patriarch doles out in this book, but we've all seen our parents as the villains in our own personal stories at one point or another. It's a natural part of adolscence, so Emma's anger, sadness and frustration are things we recognize in ourselves. The only difference is that her father really is the villain in her story, whereas for the rest of us, it was only a perception, a side effect of rebellion.
