Every installment of this feature is about odd comic book plot points that were rarely (sometimes NEVER!) mentioned again after they were first introduced.

Today, based on some comments from reader Michael, we take a look at how some of Emma Frost's worse deeds have been somewhat glossed over...

Emma Frost was part of the Hellfire Club, and also ran her own school for mutants called the Massachusetts Academy. The elite members of her school were her own sort of strike force called the Hellions. In Uncanny X-Men #281 (by Whilce Portacio, Jim Lee, John Byrne and Art Thibert), her students were attacked and most of them killed and Emma Frost was also seemingly killed...





In reality, she was just in a deep coma. The X-Men took her in and kept her under observation and she ultimately recovered. They then entrusted her to a whole new generation of young mutants, along with the X-Man Banshee. Professor X explains it to Banshee in this bit from Uncanny X-Men #318 by Scott Lobdell and Roger Cruz...



That eventually fell apart and Emma went to teach in Genosha, where then watched her students murdered by Sentinels AGAIN in New X-Men #115 (by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Tim Townsend)...







She joined up with the X-Men the next issue...



And eventually she became the co-head of the school in Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men, alongside Cyclops, who she began a romantic relationship with...





Whedon had Kitty Pryde have a problem with Emma, but eventually even Kitty grew to respect Emma.

And that's all fair enough, of course, but the issue, as Michael so nicely pointed out, is that in order to accept Emma as a hero, we have to gloss over some rather major stuff. Go to the next page to see some of Emma's worst actions that are more or less glossed over to make her work as a hero...

She actually murdered her own sister, Adrienne Frost, but that was after Adrienne conspired to tear Generation X apart, including leading to the death of Synch, so this event actually HAS been referenced a few times since, since it is seen as "justified"...



No, what we're talking about here is what she did in her very first fight against the X-Men in X-Men #129 (by John Byrne, Chris Claremont and Terry Austin), where she sent Hellfire Club agents after the X-Men...







She just murdered those dudes! For NO reason! She captured the X-Men, like, ten seconds after those guys "failed" and yet she MURDERS them for their failure? Holy crap, that's messed up!

Michael also noted the messed up stuff Emma does to Firestar in the Firestar mini-series, as we see in Firestar #2 (by Tom DeFalco, Mary Wilshire and Bob Wiacek), that Emma is trying to break Angelica Jones down to turn her into an assassin...





And some of her plans involve killing a horse to make Angelica think that SHE did it...







That's some twisted stuff right there.

So yeah, it's just interesting to note the things you have to gloss over to make Emma Frost work as a hero. It's not a BAD thing, as whatever, you just gloss over this stuff. It's no big deal, but it's still interesting to see how it is done.

Thanks, Michael! If anyone else has a suggestion for a comic book pot that has been pretty much forgotten since it happened, drop me a line at either brianc@cbr.com or bcronin@comicbookresources.com!