I’m not really up on all things X-Men so can someone bring me up to speed?
What caused Emma to have a change of heart and become an X-Man after being their adversary for so long?
Spoilers from the beginnings of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run (around #114 or 115):
Cassandra Nova, a new enemy, launched a nuclear strike on the island nation of Genosha, a safe haven for mutants where Emma was a teacher. Everyone on the island died except Emma, who developed a “secondary mutation” to turn her body as hard and indestructable as a living diamond. When the X-Men intervened, she went with them, and hung around long enough to help out against Nova. All of this should be collected in the “E Is For Extinction” TPB, and the first New X-Men hardcover, which I recommend highly except for horrible art by Frank Quitely and Igor Kordey.
Oh crap! Can a mod fix my spoiler?
I believe it was shortly after Emma’s hellions died at the hands of sentinels from the future. This was shortly before Bishop joined the X-Men and right after the Shadow Kind/Muir Isle saga.
Anyway, the hellions are slaughtered in the sentinel attack. Emma Frost appears to be gravely injured and Jean Grey is thought to be killed (again :rolleyes: ) Turns out she just used her telepathy to shunt her brain into Emma’s body ( :rolleyes: :rolleyes: ) Emma shunted her brain into Iceman’s body and floated around there for a while.
Long and :rolleyes: story short, they get their bodies straightened out and Prof. X offers Emma a chance to teach a new group of students with the help of Banshee. This starts the Generation X comic and begins the rehabilitation of Emma Frost.
Oh, Lou, whatever will we do with you?
I think both answers are right. Generation X brough Emma into the fold while Morrison’s run on New X-Men made her an integral part of the team. Everyone should read New X-Men, it’s brilliant.
–Cliffy
I think Emma started working with the X-Men (that is, Banshee, Jubilee, and Sabretooth, the only ones who hadn’t been replaced by techno-organic imposters) during the Phalanx Covenant storyline, when Joe Madureira started doing the illustrations regularly. That was the storyline that led up to the introduction of the Generation X series.
I can’t believe I remember all that. I remember thinking that Madureira’s art wasn’t nearly as atrocious as his initial two-issue stint in UXM. In fact at first I failed to recognize it was the same artist.
Anyway I really enjoy the character. She’s been one of my favorite villains-turned-“good” in the last twelve years or so, which makes me wonder just when she’s going to turn evil again.
While I think you’re wrong about the Frank Quitely art being horrible, the Igor Kordey art is utterly putrid on such a cosmic level that it makes up for it. I have no idea what anyone was thinking, allowing him anywhere near the X-Men in the first place and then letting him stay on it for so long.
I’ve never been a huge Kordey fan, but his work is usually much better than it was on New X-Men. Quitely is very slow, and Marvel knew that, but they wanted a monthly schedule on new X-Men (actually, they wanted 18 a year). So their solution to Quitely’s slow pace? To simply hope he could draw faster. When this didn’t happen, Marvel hired Kordey as fill-in and because the looming deadlines and the last-minute fix, he had something like a week to pencil each issue. Most pencillers take roughly a day per page, so obviously this work wasn’t going to be up to standard. But Marvel wanted to maintain the deadline, so that’s what they told Kordey to do.
It was a big mistake for Kordey, actually. After getting good notices for his work on Cable, which nobody read, Kordey was seen pencilling crap on a hugely successful property. Although Marvel tried to put him on some other stuff, it never worked, at least in part because of the horrible reputation he’d developed on NXM, so even though he could be a successful penciller, he can’t get any work now.
–Cliffy
To be fair, since Quitely blew his deadlines so badly (what else is new?), Kordey was called in at a last-minute replacement. He was forced to draw at a ridiculous pace, something like 22 pages in 24 hours, which is why it looks so rushed and sloppy. Kordey is capable of much better work (his run on Cable/Soldier X with writer David Tischman, for example), but he will always be thought of negatively because he filled in for fan-favorite Quitely (and another fan favorite, Ethan Van Sciver, also picked up the slack on those New X-Men issues).
Personally, I think Quitely is the most overrated artist ever. I’ll happily take Rob Liefeld at his no-eyeballs/no-feet worst over Quitely. The man got me to sell off my Authority volume 1 singles, which was no small feat.
Curses, Cliffy beat me to the explanation! Might be that “great minds thinking alike” thing in action, except for the fact that he likes Frank Quitely…
I think it was less a case of Quitely blowing his deadlines than Marvel being unrealistic about them, even though Quitely warned them ahead of time.
I didn’t like Quitely at first. Now I know better. 
–Cliffy
I wasn’t aware that Kordey was so rushed. Although, frankly, his New X-Men work was so awful that I don’t really have any desire to seek out his other stuff and possibly revise my opinion of him. IIRC, he’s doing a variant cover for the new Angel series.
It really is a shame, because that awful artwork really, really lowers my opinion of Morrison’s run as a whole.
I was wondering if there would be some Liefeld bashing in this thread, as I do with every other comic thread.
Not that I’m sticking up for him, mind you. I’d start a thread every other day on how much Liefeld sucks if it wouldn’t get me banned.
I seem to recall my biggest problem with Kordey’s work was the over-inking. It looked like it was glopped on indelicately. I don’t remember who was responsible for inking though (or do they just do that with computers now?)
But I also seem to remember that there were some really striking panels in some of the X-Men comics he illustrated, notably of Phoenix.
That Liefeld piece is just scary. Overall I was not a fan of Quitely’s work. Everyone looked like funny-limbed dolls to me. And like their heads were gonna pop off.
I still think it’s ugly, but it least it’s not just plain bad like his X-Men art was.
[Sean Connery]WE ARE BROTHERS![/Sean Connery]
What? Who is this dark-haired, wingless chap in the “Angel” comic? That’s definitely not Warren!
Oh, maybe he’s a literal angel, come from heaven to fight evil. Or he’s Hispanic, & it’s “An-hell.” It’s not a Marvel series.
Just reading about this in an X-Men thread threw me.
(seriously, I thought they’d ended the Buffyverse comix…)
He looks like he is going to puke.
New Angel series (that takes place after season 5!) and Spike one-shot (written by Peter David, yay!) coming from IDW comics this summer. I’m looking forward to them (although the Spike comic is listed as being $7.50 for a 48 page comic - not so sure about that one).