We kick off this week with Emma Frost, and a fabulous demonstration of range from cover artist Greg Horn.  He's found a new camera angle.  Well done, Greg.  One step at a time, that's the spirit.

Anyway, this is the penultimate part of "Higher Learning", and the general thrust is pretty much established by now.  Winston Frost makes his kids' lives a misery because he's a hypocritical control freak.  Emma and Christian - her token nice relative - rebel against the oppressive family rule, and get screwed over as a result.  Presumably we're heading for a big explosion of screaming next issue, in which Emma storms off and heads to New York, there to get involved in the Hellfire Club.

Most of the tension here isn't really about Emma.  It's Christian's story which gets most of the attention here, since he's actually trying to escape the family influence.  More to the point, he's allowed to fail, which helps to give Emma a motivation to run away from home altogether.  Bollers is also finally giving some attention to Emma's sister Adrienne, although she's still been marginalised a bit in the story so far.  I can only assume Adrienne is being set up for a storyline down the line, since her role in this story is a bit awkward - she gets more or less ignored for four issues and then finally does something important.

Six months is really a little long for this opening storyline, and inevitably there's a degree of predictability here.  In fairness, though, there are a couple of minor twists thrown in that manage to liven things up, even if the end point is never really in doubt.

Basically, it's the sort of issue that we've come to expect from Emma Frost - not fantastic, but certainly solid.  It's a real shame about those covers, which can only serve to alienate the natural audience for these stories while attracting readers who'll hate the book.  The actual content is perfectly sound.

Rating: B+

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