Originally Posted by
RachelGrey
I think this is why Emma Frost tends to be so popular. Sure the sex symbol thing is part of it, but I feel like the modern writers have done a good job of taming down her costume in the modern area to be more about high fashion. But the biggest part of Emma is that she has always been the pragmatist who stands in the middle between Charles and Eric. Just knowing Emma's history we all know that if pressed, she is much like Wolverine in that she will kill to protect her students. Emma started out as a more generic villain, but that has been flushed out over the years by several writers, include Claremont who went out of their way to make her more of an anti-hero. After Emma's second coma and return after the death of the Hellions, she has been an anti-hero ever since. Since the early 1990's Emma was completely separated from the Hellfire Club and she only returned to it in X-Men Black: Emma Frost, but what did Emma do after she took over from Sebastian, she legitimized the organization to support mutant rights through business investments and building school. On the day Emma was captured by the O.N.E. she was holding a business meeting with rich investors to build a new school for the gifted to replace the Xavier school that had been decimated by so many attacks.
I think writers enjoy using Emma Frost because she has a lot of attitude and it's fun to write someone like her. She cares about her students and can be a very good teacher, but at the same time she is ruthless at business, and absolutely ruthless in defending mutant rights and protecting mutant children. Does anyone have any doubt at all that if Emma Frost had been on the ship with Kate Pryde, she would have died to save Kate and stop Sebastian. Emma has shown that she is willing to throw her life down to protect people she cares about. In Genosha she tried to shield the children from the blast with her own body.
I liked how in Captain Marvel: The End, we never truly knew why Emma stayed in Diamond form until after she rescued Illyana, then we found out it was because Emma couldn't take all the loss of attachments, and because Magneto made her promise to stay alive to guide the survivors.