THE CREATORS: Writer Karl Bollers, penciller Carlo Pagulayan and inker Dennis Crisostomo

THE FILL-IN ARTIST COUNT: Two.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2004: "Mind Games", in which Emma gets herself kidnapped and ends up with an awful lot of money; and "Bloom", with Emma at university.

Emma Frost staggered to December before being cancelled with the magic issue #18.  (Three trade paperbacks and you're out.)  So that's that question dealt with.

The cancellation was slightly surprising for other reasons, since Emma Frost was being gently shifted into the Marvel Age all-ages line.  Somebody must have finally noticed that the content was more of a teen drama than a superhero title, and that it might actually be marketable to the elusive manga audience.  Presumably it wasn't, given that the book soon got itself cancelled anyway, despite sales which were actually pretty good by the standards of that imprint. 

At least it meant that we got all-ages covers, sparing us more of the embarrassing nonsense from the first year.  Marvel even got Horn to go back and do a more sensible cover for the first arc, which could be used for the digest version.  Naturally enough, that cover then ended up being used on an issue of the monthly title as well, despite referring to events from a storyline that had finished months before.  Still, must have saved some dollars.

Originally, Emma Frost was to have featured a storyline called "Hellfire" in 2004; that seems to have been dropped somewhere along the line, and in fact, the book never got anywhere near addressing Emma's involvement with the Hellfire Club before coming to a premature end.  Consequently, it's unlikely to be remembered as anything more than a footnote in X-Men history.

But despite the oddity of the premise (an all ages book about the early years of a woman who goes on to become a villainous bondage queen?!), the book was surprisingly decent.  "Mind Games" was a perfectly enjoyable crime story, and while "Bloom" was perhaps a bit stretched to fill the six issues, it still had its points of interest. 

Bollers had an interesting take on the character, keeping her clearly sympathetic while quietly laying the groundwork for horrendous moral lapses to come.  It's actually a shame that he never got around to that part of the character's life, since I'd have been interested to see how he planned to deal with it.

I'm actually going to miss Emma Frost.  It's a strange little book, but one that told some enjoyable stories. There's a definite sense that the character was a square peg in a round hole, and trying to use Emma Frost of all people to reach the Marvel Age audience shows a remarkable overreliance on the back catalogue of characters in favour of common sense.  (Sean McKeever's Mary Jane was at least a more sensible fit for the genre.)  But precisely by being so odd, it was always a distinctive title, if nothing else.

See, it hasn't been so negative so far, now has it?  And now...

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