Emma Frost: The White Queen # 4 // Review
Emma is on the run. One of the most secretive organizations on the planet has completely disavowed. Any connection with her. She's become persona non-grata with an organization where she had been a member of the inner circle. So naturally, she's going to be a little bit out of sorts. And like so many others who are out of sorts, she's going to Las Vegas. What she is going to find there isn't just a lot of cheesy steak jacks and people losing money. She's going to find something altogether more dangerous in Emma Frost: The White Queen # 4. Writer Amy Chu continues a deeply enjoyable series with artist Andrea DiVito and colorist Antonio Fabela.
The woman working the door at the Hellfire Club Las Vegas is reluctant to allow Emma entry. It's not like she doesn't belong there. And the woman in charge of the club would agree as much. But she doesn't necessarily wipe the fact that Emma actually has a right to be there. So there's going to be some issue with her well-being. After all, the owner of the club has control of a great many things. Emma is just something of a stranger there. Strangers aren't necessarily safe in the Hellfire Club.
Chu plays a bit with expectations in interesting directions. The initial encounter with someone from Emma's past puts an interesting spin on the traditional law of superhuman Marvel Mutants. A trip to Las Vegas feels like an interesting choice at this particular moment in the series. But it makes a lot of sense. Chu has Emma in a rather dangerous position right now. So she's going to be a bit desperate. She's going to look gorgeous as hell as she does so. She is, after all, perfectly poised in any sort of a situation.
DiVito has an approach to the artwork that feels very wide open and flashy at the same time. Even when Emma ends up in the desert outside Las Vegas, there's a kind of a flashing us about it that really amplifies the whole feeling of the American southwest in general. Fabela’s colors are strikingly vivid throughout the issue. There's a strong sense of vivid visual reality about everything. And the action feels extremely strong. Through it all, am I continues to be very beautiful. In places, the rendering feels a bit sparse. But that's in-service to the fact that this is set in Las Vegas and there's going to be a big sort of a theatricality about everything that feels very tightly drawn.
It's been an enjoyable journey through the 1980s. Or at least the 1980s as aesthetic of the Marvel mutant series. And it's been really cool being able to hang out in places and spaces that aren't necessarily all that present or at least weren't all that present in Marvel comics in the 1980s. Chu seems to be trying to move away from anywhere that that might involve crossover that would be unwanted. She's been finding some interesting places for Emma to hang out as she tries to find her footing.
