We're running a day late because I spent yesterday in Edinburgh house-hunting (Liberton is growing on me) before watching a friend of mine doing a Fringe show with Barry Cryer.  Strange day.  I could have sworn Barry Cryer was dead.  Maybe I was thinking of Willie Rushton.

Anyhow, we kick off this week with Emma Frost #2, and another godawful cover from Greg Horn that again bears no relationship whatsoever to the content of the comic.  Still, it would have made a fabulous soft rock album cover in 1984.

I'll ignore that, though, and move on to the contents.  We're still back in Emma's schooldays, at the Snow Valley School for Girls.  It occurs to me that it's a little odd they've chosen to use a new school rather than setting this part of her story in the Massachusetts Academy - which, after all, would provide a nice circularity when she eventually came back to take it over.  Anyhow, Emma is still covering for her emerging telepathic powers but, as you would expect, they come in handy when she's able to use them to cheat her way to a top mark in a test.

A fairly straightforward way to use her powers, but Bollers does steer it away from the really obvious results by having the results backfire on her - not only does nobody actually believe that she's capable of achieving an A+ mark, but she ends up discovering that her school would rather cover up the complaints than actually do anything about them, in order to avoid inflaming her father.  Bollers is starting to construct a rather murky set of morals here, where Emma's spent years trying to be nice and getting nowhere, only for her dodgier uses of telepathy to go unpunished. 

Given that this is the origin story of a supervillain who was clearly fairly successful, that's pretty much got to be the angle of this series - a cynical, resigned "Nice guys finish last."  It works because Emma's somewhat conflicted about that approach herself.  I'm still not entirely persuaded that there was a pressing need for this series, but Bollers is fulfilling the remit better than I'd expected.

As for the art, Randy Green's work remains perfectly okay without being all that striking.  There's something a little lacking in terms of personality, but the story is told clearly enough, and that's the main concern.  I'm not sure this is necessarily the best assignment for Green - it's a very talky book, which doesn't really play to his strengths - but he's doing fine with it.

Not bad at all.

Rating: B+

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