Emma Frost went from being a member of the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club to mutant First Lady to one of the most important mutants on Krakoa, and she's looked fabulous the whole way, especially if you ask her. Since joining the X-Men in Grant Morrison's seminal New X-Men run, she's become an integral part of the franchise and has mostly left her villainous ways behind (we'll disregard all of that stuff she did during Inhumans Vs X-Men, because regardless of what Marvel tried to make fans believe, the Inhumans were the bad guys of that whole situation).
She's been through a lot of changes over the years and not all of them make sense. This list is going to run down some of those.
10 Her Secondary Mutation Makes No Sense
Emma Frost is a very powerful telepath. She's more powerful than Psylocke but less powerful than Jean Grey. She's been using her mental powers for years for her aggrandizement, to help the Inner Circle as of the Hellfire Club, and as an X-Man.
Grant Morrison introduced the concept of secondary mutations in his run and gave Emma the ability to turn into a diamond form. Now, this almost makes sense in a way, because Emma is all about beautiful things, but it doesn't seem like a secondary mutation that a telepath would have. Most other secondary mutations followed from the mutant's powers, but Emma's was completely different.
9 Her Job In Genosha
Magneto was given control of the nation of Genosha and made it into a homeland for mutants, one that wouldn't last long. Before the island's destruction at the hand of Cassandra Nova's Mega Sentinels, Emma Frost, former White Queen of the Hellfire Club and Headmistress of the Massachusetts Academy was teaching a telepathy class.
She wasn't in charge of the school or anything like that, just teaching a telepathy class. It seems completely out of character for Emma to be merely teaching a class, especially when she's so used to being in charge.
8 The Whole Stripper Thing
After Emma left her family, she used her telepathic powers to survive, eventually becoming a stripper- well, sort of. She mostly just used her telepathy to make people think she was stripping, also changing her appearance so she would look more voluptuous than she actually was (she would later get surgery to match the look she made people see during this time).
However, why would she even do that? She already knew how to use her telepathy powers to control minds, so why isn't she just walking into banks and taking whatever she wanted?
7 In Fact, Her Whole Early Origin Is A Mess
There are two different stories about the early years of Emma Frost- in one, she leaves her family and uses her powers to survive, before becoming a stripper at the Hellfire Club, where her use of her powers on clients gets the attention of the Inner Circle. The other is after leaving her family, she falls in love with a man called Troy, helps him with his mob problems, uses money made from that to go to university, and then joins the Hellfire Club.
In both of these, she ends up killing the old members of the Inner Circle with Sebastian Shaw's help, but the divergence is weird. It's doubly weird when one realizes that both of these origins were being told at around the same time in the early '00s, the former in Morrison's New X-Men and the latter in Emma Frost. Marvel editorial wasn't doing their job at all.
6 Her Relationship With Tony Stark
In Civil War, Tony Stark came to Emma and tried to get her and the X-Men on the side of Superhero Registration Act. Emma said the mutants were going to abstain from the whole thing because they were in enough trouble as it was after the Decimation, and besides, these types of things always ended poorly for mutants. It was also revealed to readers that she and Tony Stark had a sexual relationship.
This relationship brings up a few questions- first, when was it, and second, since she was almost definitely in the Hellfire Club at the time, why didn't she and Shaw use it to their advantage? It's not out of the realm of possibility that Emma was attracted to Stark, but Shaw and she were always working whatever angles they could back then.
5 Why She Even Joined The Hellfire Club In The First Place
When she was younger, Emma wanted to be a teacher, but her domineering father blackmailed her out of it. She would leave her family behind and eventually join the Hellfire Club, where she would become all evil and power-hungry, as well as wanting to be a teacher.
However, Emma knew about her powers way before she left home and beyond, Emma was a very smart girl. She had been through a lot in her early life because of her terrible family life. Her joining the Hellfire Club instead of just using her powers to get through school and become a teacher seems like a complete 180 for her.
4 Joining Norman Osborn's Cabal
After the Skrull invasion, Norman Osborn was put in charge of the Superhero Initiative. He formed a secret group of like-minded people to help him run the whole thing - Loki, Doctor Doom, Namor, the Hood, and Emma Frost. Most of these people had been antagonistic towards the heroes at some point in their careers, but Emma seems like a strange choice.
At the time, she was completely on the side of angels, helping Cyclops lead mutants. She had been asked earlier by Tony Stark, her former lover, to help out and said no, so why would she suddenly say yes to Norman Osborn, a man no one should trust?
3 Almost Siding With Wolverine
The slim remainder of mutantkind was split down the middle by the conflict between Wolverine and Cyclops that resulted from the book Schism. The two men's ideological clash caused some mutants to accompany Wolverine back to Westchester, where he restarted the school (naming it after Jean Grey to twist the knife) while the rest stayed at Utopia.
It was revealed that Emma almost went with Wolverine, not because she thought Cyclops was wrong, but just to teach. She would have left the love of her life to go and be under the leadership of someone who actively didn't like her just to do what she could do on Utopia anyway? Her even considering that makes no sense.
2 That She Still Trusts Sebastian Shaw At All
Right now, Emma serves as one of the main trade ministers for Krakoa. For some reason, Frost stuck her neck out to get Sebastian Shaw a place on Council. Now, yes, the two had spent years working together and knew each other rather well... which should be why Frost wouldn't trust him at all.
While it sometimes makes sense for one to keep their enemies close, Shaw has been playing Frost hard in the pages of Marauders, with his schemes always a couple of steps ahead of hers. Emma should know that Shaw is not to be trusted and will always scheme for more power, so putting him in charge of anything and actually vouching for him was a huge mistake.
1 For A Teacher, She Doesn't Mind Putting Her Students In Danger
Emma likes to say her passion is teaching (even if some of her actions don't really support this), but when it comes right down to it, she's kind of a bad teacher in a lot of ways. However, one of the biggest ways she's a bad teacher is her lack of concern for her students' welfare.
Sure, Emma talks about how much she cares about her students and their lives, but she constantly allows them into situations where their lives are in danger. That's not something a good teacher does.