Marvel Legends - BLACK QUEEN(S)!

Marvel Legends Hellfire Club Box Set - Jean Grey & Selene - Hasbro 2021

I won't lie and say that I completely understand the Jean Grey storyline in the early 80s. From my understanding, after Jean became Phoenix, Mastermind began manipulating her.. wanting revenge on Jean and the X-Men for a previous altercation. Under his influence, she became the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. But eventually she recovers her memories and snaps, becoming Dark Phoenix. And within a few months we meet Madelyne Pryor and things get infinitely more complex. The Hellfire Club is a wealthy secret society with wicked intentions to manipulate world events for their benefit. The men dress in 18th century formalwear, and the women dress like dominatrixes. All the members of the inner circle have chess-themed titles and the roster involved is dizzying. The wikipedia page seriously gave me a headache. I miss when it was just Emma Frost, Magneto, Sebastian Shaw, and Tessa, plus the occasional Bishop like Donald Pierce. But Jean's recruitment was welcome and iconic development.

Marvel Legends - WHITE QUEEN!

Marvel Legends Hellfire Club Box Set - Emma Frost White Queen - Hasbro 2021

Emma Frost is the first female villain I encountered in Marvel Comics. In the early days of New Mutants, she was the headmistress of the nearby Massachusetts Academy where the Xavier kids would have flirty mixers followed by predictable mutant battles. Emma's young team was called the Hellions and each member had a powerset that directly paralleled the Xavier kids, and I always love that simple-yet-effective story dynamic. But the funny thing was that I really didn't like Emma in this era. I didn't became a fan until Generation X in 1994. In this comic, she and Banshee were a co-headmasters of a new young team. She was no longer the one-note villain, but rather a conflicted woman trying to balance her nurturing and aggressive sides. Maybe she was always a multi-faceted character, but it was never so obvious until she was trying to be good. I was nervous we would never get a Legends figure of a dominatrix-looking character like this, but thankfully I was wrong. Let's check out Emma below!

Marvel Legends - FIRESTAR!

Marvel Legends - Fan Channel Exclusive - Firestar & Ms. Lion - Hasbro 2021

Every so often I get an action figure that I have been dreaming of for decades... and it actually meets the extremely high expectations that have built up over those years. As a kid watching Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, I was instantly enamored with Firestar. I even naively expected there to be a Secret Wars figure of her. But alas, forty years later she finally gets the quality figure she deserves. When Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends was being developed, the creators liked the idea of a Fire-and-Ice dichotomy. The classic Marvel elementals, Iceman and Human Torch, were the obvious choice. However, the rights to the Human Torch were tied-up in a never-produced television pilot and he was unavailable. (This is the same legal red tape that led to the creation of H.E.R.B.I.E. in lieu of Johnny Storm in the 1978 Fantastic Four show). So the creators took the general design of Mary Jane and paired them with Human Torch's powers to create Firestar. And little nerdy me thanks his lucky stars for that.

Marvel Legends - STEPFORD CUCKOOS!

Marvel Legends - X-Men: Stepford Cuckoos - Walgreens Exc - Hasbro 2020

The Stepford Cuckoos debuted at a time when I wasn't really into any mutant books. I re-entered the genre with Phoenix: Endsong in 2005 and I was both intrigued and confused by these creepy newcomers. Their origins are sci-fi gold. While Emma Frost was lying in a coma after the Sentinel battle that killed all of her Hellions, over a thousand eggs were collected from her body and used to clone the original 5 Stepford Cuckoos: Esme, Irma (Mindee), Phoebe, Celeste, and Sophie. They are identical, they have powerful psychic powers, and they can operate with a hive mind. Esme and Sophie had been killed earlier on, leaving the three we commonly see in comics today (plus a potential thousand more living in psychically-blocked anonymity). They all have natural blonde hair like their genetic mother, but at one point Phoebe dyed her hair red and Irma dyed her hair black/brown. They all eventually reverted to their blonde roots, but it makes sense for this figure to give us the different hair options.

Marvel Legends - EMMA FROST!

X-Men Legends - Emma Frost (Marvel NOW!) - Walgreens Exclusive - Hasbro 2019

Until this Summer's X-Men reboot it had been years since I picked up a mutant comic. So when I see this Marvel NOW black-suited Emma Frost I really don't get the reference. With a name like Emma Frost (aka the White Queen), anything but her signature white garb seems odd. However, I actually really dig this figure (even though I eventually want a more classic version). The black look is very striking, and when paired with the classic bob-haircut alternate head, she's unmistakably Emma.. yet somehow even more wicked. Recently I've been obsessed with re-reading collected volumes of my favorite old comics and coincidentally Emma Frost is a major player in a ton of them: New Mutants, Generation X, and the titular Emma Frost series from 2003. I'm literally reading all of these titles in rotation right now, so this figure came at the perfect time. She's a little scarce in Walgreens right now, but if Sue Storm, Medusa, and Magik are any indication, she will be flooding the market before long. Let's check out Emma below!

Character Spotlight: BLACK QUEEN (JEAN GREY)!

Your Favorite Brainwashed Dark Mistress of the Hellfire Club

Jean Grey seems to be the guinea pig for character transformations in the X-Men continuum.  She's been alive, dead, possessed, reincarnated, cloned, and everything in-between.  The impressive thing is that each new chapter in her dramatic life tends to create a wholly new character.  In the early 1980s and in the midst of the Dark Phoenix Saga, Jean was possessed by Mastermind and took on the role of the Black Queen in the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club (a clandestine group of evil mutants who liked to dress in inappropriate period costume).  The members were named after chess pieces.  The White Queen obviously being Emma Frost, the Black King being Sebastian Shaw, the White King being Magneto, and Donald Pierce being the White Bishop, just to name a few notable members over the years.  This possession of Jean Grey didn't last very long, but it definitely made an impact on the comic community and we've seen a small amount of merchandise released as a result.  Let's check them out below!