The X-Men has introduced readers to the best female superheroes in the Marvel Universe (sorry, Scarlet Witch and Carol fans, but you know it’s true). The mutant side of things has been very fruitful for superheroines, and one of the best of them has proven to be Emma Frost. She first appeared as the villainous White Queen, playing a key role in “The Dark Phoenix Saga”, and has since been fleshed out into a fully realized character. She’s become one of the most important members of the X-Men, and her powers have put her among the greatest psychics in the Marvel Universe. However, her powers were eventually revealed to be more than anyone expected.
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New X-Men changed the X-Men in the years to come. Frost was one of the big addition to the team’s mythos, but she wasn’t the only one. Superstar writer Grant Morrison introduced the idea of “secondary mutations” and it was all because of Emma. Morrison wanted to use Colossus in their book, but he was killed off to cure the Legacy Virus. So, the Scottish scribe gave Emma a power that would redefine her: transforming her skin to diamond and gaining super strength. The White Queen was one of the X-Men’s most powerful female villains, and this new power made her even better. However, 2006 would see her get a third power, one that has been almost completely forgotten.
Emma Frost’s Third Power Made Her a More “Realistic” Psychic
2006 was a big year for the X-Men. House of M had ended the year before, destroying the vast majority of the mutant race. The X-Mansion had become a reservation for the remaining mutants, “guarded” by the Sentinels of the Office of National Emergency. Cyclops and Emma were the leaders of the mutant race, and Wolverine was getting a new focus on his origin, thanks to regaining his memories at the end of House of M, and got a second ongoing book, Wolverine Origins. The early issues of that comic dealt with his history with Nuke, a Weapon Plus supersoldier, and the Murasama Blade, which could kill him.
Issues #3 and #4 featured Nuke and Captain America, and in the issue #4, Emma had a precognitive dream that helped Wolverine in his quest to figure out where to go next. This is a very interesting change to the character. Telepaths in the Marvel Universe have a laundry list of amazing powers, but precognition isn’t usually one of them. In the real world, when you hear the word “psychic”, you think about the people who say they can see the future, but in comics, the word has always referred to anyone with mental powers. Wolverine Origins writer Daniel Way seemingly wanted to combine the two and used Emma to do it.
Wolverine Origins was somewhat popular, but Emma’s new power didn’t really catch on. There’s an honestly simple reason for this: people who read Wolverine books and people who read X-Men books don’t have as much overlap as you’d think. Plenty of X-fans don’t read Wolvie’s solo books and honestly kind of hate that he’s popular when their favorites that appeared in one issue and were never seen again aren’t (this is a thing on the X-Men subreddit). So, there’s a good chance that most fans of Emma have no idea that she was given this power.
Emma Frost has had forgotten powers before. In the “Onslaught” tie-in issues of Generation X, she used a power that she called “psionic lightning”, which allowed her to use the electrical energy that runs the brain offensively against her foes, even using it to cause a lightning strike in a rain storm. Like many heroes, Emma’s powers have changed a lot over the years, with cool additions to her repertoire sometimes forgotten. It would be great to see this power again, but it remains to be seen if we ever get another glimpse of precog Emma.
What do you think about Emma Frost’s precog powers? Leave a comment in comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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