Mutants struggling to find their place in the Marvel Universe generally have to choose between the compassion of X-Men founder Charles Xavier or the righteous anger of his friend-turned-foe Magneto, but Emma Frost doesn’t see those two things as irreconcilable. For years, the telepathic mutant and school teacher has operated by a moral code that blends Xavier’s idealism with the ruthless pragmatism of Magneto. That belief system has made her a fan-favorite character and led to her fighting against and alongside the X-Men on a number of occasions.

This week, readers will get a chance to see Frost in action on her own in the one-shot X-Men Black: Emma Frost by writer Leah Williams and artist Chris Bachalo, which focuses on what makes the title character tick and how far she’ll go to achieve her goals. CBR spoke with Williams and Bachalo about their sense of Emma, what they love about her and the role her former X-Men teammate, Rogue, plays in the story.

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CBR: So, Leah, you got a chance to briefly write Emma Frost in a short story, but from what I've read you're a huge fan of the character. What are some of your favorite aspects of Emma? And Chris, Emma seems like a character you especially enjoyed drawing. What's it like coming back to her? What makes her such an appealing character to draw?

Chris Bachalo: Going to be honest on this and say that she hasn’t been an easy character to draw over the years -- and I’ve spent a lot of time with her going back to Generation X, then with Uncanny with Brian Bendis and now on the short I worked on with Leah.

I’ve always enjoyed her look, her costume. That’s something that’s fun to be creative with. In the opening of this X-Men Black episode, Leah called for Emma to be wearing an expensive dress -- to contrast the location that the episode is taking place in. But I kind of took a nostalgic turn and put her in a combination of her original costume and the punkish, Punisher-inspired costume that Brian and I put her in, I think, in Uncanny #16. Knowing what the story was about, I thought it might work to put her in slightly more dangerous, aggressive gear that would, maybe, intimate what her character is up to and echo where she came from.

EXCLUSIVE: Art from X-Men Black - Emma Frost

It’s that aspect of her character that I enjoy. The costumes. I think the part that I sometimes have a tough time with is who she really is. What is she about? What does she want? I’ve always seen her as a very smart and powerful character, but she always seems to be compromised by the men around her, from her days in the Hellfire Club and then with the X-men.

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I debated on taking this issue on, as I was concerned about the deadline, but when I read Leah’s script I tossed responsibility aside and took it on. Leah wrote one of the best Frost stories I’ve ever read. It has only two scenes, but she confidently portrays an Emma Frost I’ve always wanted to see more of, an Emma that knows exactly what she wants and how to get it. She’s manipulative, conniving, conspiring and dangerous -- everything I think that Emma is all about. Not a woman you’d want to date, but one that you want to spend time with -- at a safe distance. She knows exactly where she is going and, over the course of the issue, she arrives at her destination. Her and Leah's closing sentiment on grief is especially powerful.

Leah Williams: I am a huge Emma Frost fan, and unremitting Emma apologist. She’s someone I view as an avenging angel because her experiences have helped her become radically compassionate -- she has what I describe as a “brutal heart,” which is my favorite aspect of her. She’s guarded and emotionally armored, but it’s because she cares about the world and leaving it in a better state than it was handed to her in, to the point of self-harm. She’s also exceptionally cunning in how she goes about accomplishing her goals -- I don’t see her as manipulative or conniving, but as someone who views how to get from point A to point B with the shortest possible distance. It’s tactical, not cruel. She doesn’t appreciate bureaucracy or other obstructions when people are dying. So, she’s just like, “F**k it, I’ll do it myself” and hopes that people will understand her intentions once she’s accomplished what she meant to.

Working on this, and being such an Emma fan, was terrifying. It’s the first time I could ever feel very keenly how being a fan of a character is just not enough to write them well, and it's because loving her so much puts the stakes dizzyingly high for me on a personal level. I have no emotional distance from her. I realized while working on this how being a fan can actually be a kind of a liability -- I just love her, full stop, and that can be a kind of blindness. I kept having a million and one ideas of what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go because I was so excited about working with her, and god bless the patience of Jordan D. White for humoring it all.

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One of the most interesting things about Emma is the perspective she has from the many roles she's played. She's a telepath, and she's also been a hero, a teacher and a supervillain. Is this a story where we'll see things from Emma's perspective?

Williams: She’s always going to be a school teacher at heart -- that’s all she’s ever wanted to be, since she was in high school. She’s always wanted to make the world a better place for mutant children, she’s just not gentle about how she plans on accomplishing that. She’s too impatient to tread carefully around the feelings of others. We do experience things through her POV, and to me that perspective is informed by Emma’s knowledge now, in my opinion, that opening just one school will never be enough again.

Who are some of the other supporting characters in your story?

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EXCLUSIVE: Art from X-Men Black - Emma Frost

Bachalo: I have not read Leah’s work up until this issue, but I really enjoyed her handling of the several X-Men characters that briefly appear in the opening. Especially Rogue. I've always seen her as the character introduced by Claremont and Golden back in Avengers Annual #10 (one of my all-time favorite issues). She’s tough, to the point and knows BS when she sees it. Leah really seems to get this.

Williams: That’s exactly what I love about Rogue. Getting to write other favorite X-men characters of mine was such a thrill, as if centering the focus on Emma wasn’t already exhilarating enough. Rogue is dear to my heart because we’re both from Mississippi, so I always think of something Claremont says about this upbringing that I would also apply to myself: “Not furiously sophisticated.” Rogue is incredibly smart, but unlike Emma she has a warm personality and never uses that intelligence as a way to be dismissive or impatient with others. I love the contrast of warm/cold that their personalities have together. In general, I am longing for more positive female interactions between the other X-ladies and Emma because I feel like once they get her -- once they can train their eye to see from her POV and understand how she operates, I think they’d all start to be ride or die for each other.

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One of the great things about these X-Men Black one-shots is they allow you to take deep dives into your focus character. How did it feel to get a chance to do that with Emma?

Williams: I’ve always said that Emma is as complex and nuanced as Magneto and deserves to be elevated as such. I feel like I wrote a breathless love letter to Emma wherein I unabashedly gush at all the potential for her power and spirit. She’s incredibly strong, and not afraid to get her hands dirty. She does it because she can already see the world as a better place and is not going to rest on her laurels waiting for everyone to catch up.

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Bachalo: In the times that I’ve spent with Emma Frost, she’s always felt like a VP -- to Banshee in Generation X and Scott in Uncanny X-Men. Here it was nice to see her define herself -- to find her in a role where she has a preconceived, clear agenda -- and doesn’t need anyone’s approval to do it. It was very satisfying to see where she ends up and how she got there.

Williams: I completely agree with what Chris said. It was immensely cathartic to write her like this. I wrote the last page in tears because of what she was finally saying, and how it was always something I longed for her to say and the unbelievable fact that I was the one helping her say it.

Chris, what can you tell about your artistic approach to this issue? How does it compare to some of your recent Marvel work?

EXCLUSIVE: Art from X-Men Black - Emma Frost

Bachalo: I’d say that it’s a similar approach that I took with the Uncanny work I did with Brian. Similar in layout, pacing and style. I was originally on with colors, but due to the aforementioned deadline we brought in some ambitious colorists to help get it in. As much as I could, I wanted the color palette of the book to reflect Emma’s colors, to be as stark and white as possible, with very little color other than white, grays and a compliment of Hellfire red. I put in a very subtle nod to the direction the story is going with a red rose about midway through. It might have been nice to have a little more time on this, to make the art in the book perfect in every way, but I think the final came out reasonably well. I’m very proud of it, especially of Leah’s story.

Finally, as we discussed, Emma is a character who can and has played a lot of roles. She's also had an ongoing series before and has a lot of fans. If those fans respond to this story, would you be interested in telling more stories with Emma? Do you know where you'd want to take her next?

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Bachalo: I don’t know the plans Marvel has for Emma beyond X-Men Black, but if Leah was on board I’d be happy to consider. I’d really like to see where she would take this. I bet it would be very good.

Williams: I have a million and one ideas of where to go with Emma. Sometimes these story ideas grip me so much that they keep me awake at night and I have to, like, lob a pitch to Jordan to exorcise them from my system and function again. I do know there are more plans with her already, but I will keep my fingers crossed that someday I could get to work with her and Chris Bachalo again because each on their own would have been a dream come true for me, let alone the fact that it happened together.