It occurred to me randomly last week, as things often do, that Emma Frost has been what could be loosely considered a good guy since Generation X was going back in the mid-90s. So it's been 25 years.
Setting aside how old that makes me feel, villains becoming heroes isn't that unusual. Especially among the X-Men. But what's strange about it to me is that she's stayed on that side. I don't know the ratio, but it feels like a lot of villains ultimately backslide. Spider-Man's had several enemies who turned good over the years, but some of them went back to being villains. Sandman, Puma, Rocket Racer (if he's in money trouble). The Black Cat, obviously, and she actually backslide to the point she became a bigger villain than she was originally. (Crime boss is worse than high-class thief, right?) Venom, if you assume that the symbiote ever really changed.
Hawkeye turned good and stayed that way. Quicksilver goes back-and-forth. Scarlet Witch, I don't know if she ever really went back to being evil. People (writers) just keep fucking with her brain.
Fabian Nicieza rehabilitated Baron Zemo, then Ed Brubaker shifted Zemo right back in just a fraction of the time that Emma's spent with the X-Men. Deadpool shifts across a smaller range. He's rarely ever fully a hero, but also rarely been a full villain after his earliest days. Advantage of being a mercenary, I guess. Taskmater's only a hero if you pay him. Elektra? I'm not sure how to define her.
Mystique is always a villain, because she's always going to betray you. Juggernaut drifts back and forth, seemingly depending on how weak he feels (if he feels weak, time to break bad). Moonstone is occasionally heroic, but I think mostly she's just self-interested. Songbird seems to have stuck as a hero (being in Avengers Forever may have helped).
Magneto and Namor basically treat the whole concept like Homer Simpson jumping between America and Australia.
"Now I'm a villain! Now I'm a hero! Villain! Hero! Villain! Hero!" *gets punched in the face*
Although I imagine both of those guys would insist they are staying true to their goals and beliefs. Only their methods change, or it's all in the eyes of the beholder which they are. Which, maybe, until you hit the entire planet with an EMP and kill I don't know how many people in the plane crashes and various failures of hospital equipment. Doom is probably the same, in that his goal is always the same no matter what course of action he takes. Quicksilver would probably argue the same, but really, he just keeps having mental breakdowns.
Emma's had a few occasions where it looks like she switched sides. Whedon's X-Men run, the time when she joined Norman Osborn's Bad Guys Illuminati. It always turns out she acting as a mole, and she's still loyal to the X-Men. Which strikes me as strange, considering when she was in the Hellfire Club she seemed just as much into the manipulating, maneuvering and backstabbing as Shaw and all those other putzes. Wouldn't really expect loyalty to be a defining characteristic for her.
1 comment:
Interesting readd
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