Back to School Night Part II—The Massachusetts Academy

Pretty much every school has a rivalry with at least one other, whether it’s a manufactured one or because of some legitimate beef, especially when it comes to sports.

While I was a student at Fordham Preparatory High School in the Bronx, we shared a rivalry with the other two big name Jesuit schools in New York City, Xavier and Regis.

Apparently, it was important which one of us was the nerdiest of all the land.

In college, at Fordham University, I don’t really recall any true rivalries, particularly with regards to athletics, which may or may not have had everything to do with the fact that the Helen Keller School could likely have beaten us in most every sporting competition known to man.

Spoiler Alert: It had EVERYthing to do with that.

So, really, I get rivalries, I do.  I understand why Michigan State and Ohio State seemingly cannot coexist in the same region and having grown up as a Yankee fan, I accept it as fact that outside of Aerosmith and Eliza Dushku, no good can come out of the Boston area.

For years it seemed that Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters didn’t share quite the same experience with interschool rivalries.  Sure, you can say their rivalry was with a human race that wanted to round them up and kill them if you want to get all dark about it, but it just wasn’t quite the same as no longer being the only mutant academy option available to the masses.

Massachusetts native or not, I’d sell both kidneys for this woman.
Maybe even yours, too.

Although it didn’t appear until Uncanny X-Men #151, the Massachusetts Academy run by Emma Frost, with connections, naturally, to the Hellfire Club—because those folks are all about instructing and nurturing our youth—quickly became an important part of the X-Men universe and presented another obstacle to Xavier’s goal of guiding and safeguarding young mutants.

While his mission statement was one of integration with humanity, and violence being a last resort, Emma’s school focused more on why mutants were inherently superior and should be treated as such.

There’s no way a teenage boy was listening to a single word she said.

When Kitty Pryde was first introduced along with Emma Frost around the time of the Dark Phoenix Saga, her parents were entertaining offers from both schools and when the Prydes became disenfranchised with Xavier’s school after discovering she had accompanied them on an X-Men mission, Kitty wound up enrolled temporarily at Emma’s place, which went about as well as could be expected.

In other words, she was nearly killed, there was mass mayhem, and it was an all around nightmare.  So, pretty much, high school.

To reiterate, her parents’ problem was that she went on a mission with
the team, and NOT that she was a barely dressed 13 year old obsessed
with an older Russian Communist.

The Massachusetts Academy didn’t have the same bevy of toys and gadgets that Xavier’s had, but that didn’t stop Emma from training her own team known as the Hellions.  Over the years, the Hellions engaged in a classic rivalry with the New Mutants and this would last up until Uncanny X-Men #281 when the Hellions were killed by Sentinels, a classic way to get out of a rivalry if I’ve ever seen one.

That same fight left Emma in a coma and unbeknownst to the X-Men, her mind took refuge inside of Iceman, eventually coming back into her own body around Uncanny X-Men #314.  Naturally, news of the deaths of her former students didn’t go over too well, but it was enough to soften her overall demeanor and ally herself with the X-Men, albeit quite reluctantly.

During the Phalanx Covenant, Emma was among the few mutants not captured by the Phalanx and joined forces with Banshee, Jubilee and Sabretooth to rescue the next generation of mutants before they could be assimilated by the Phalanx collective.

“Hey, kids, why settle for getting killed by techno-aliens when you can
come to a school with a nearly 100% mortality rate?”

During the final battle with the Phalanx, Clarice Ferguson AKA Blink was killed and Emma saw an opportunity to be a teacher once more, reopening the Massachusetts Academy with Banshee to instruct the surviving young mutants, now called Generation X, in a way much more in line with the tolerance that Xavier strove for.

The Massachusetts Academy got upgrades similar to those at Xavier’s school and served as the home and headquarters of Generation X until Emma’s sister, Adrienne, took partial control and opened it up to humans as part of a larger plot to destroy it altogether.  After her machinations resulted in Sync being killed, the school was shut down and the student body migrated to the other mutant teams or just went their own ways in Generation X #75.

That left Xavier’s the only school once again until its destruction pushed the X-Men out to the West Coast, but after the events of Schism, Wolverine decided that it was high time young mutants had a choice once more and so next week we’ll return to Westchester once again…

The Jean Grey Institute: We Haven’t Been Totally Blown Up Yet…Kind Of.