Wolverine and Jubilee #1...

[fajrdrako]

Remember Jubilee? She used to be a great kid. Turned up back in 1989 in X-Men as a smart'n'sassy Los Angeles teen mutant 'mall rat', which confused me a little because I'd never heard the term before. She teamed up with Wolverine a lot and they had some wild adventured, Batman and Robin style.



Of course I remember Jubilee well: I named a budgie after her. But the latest appearance of Jubilee, in Wolverine and Jubilee #1, had me alarmed. It isn't the same old Jubilee I knew and loved.

At least they're doing something with her.

Now Jubilee is a vampire, and everything's changed. She has a joint comic with Wolvie (instead of just appearing in his). She no longer has her old mutant superpowers, which were on the lame side, anyway. She no longer chews gum. Drinks blood, instead - or wants to.

So she's turned into an angry, sulky teen - with good reason for her attitude. I was delighted to see how well arist Phil Noto handles the body language and facial expressions of a girl who's depressed and out of sorts:





I also loved the way writer Kathryn Immonen handles the dialogue. Rockslide (Santo Vaccaro) tries to befriend her while she's pressing weights:

Rockslide: Can I talk? Would that be distracting? We don't have to talk.
Jubilee: ...You? Me talk to you?
Rockslide: Yeah. Only if you want.
Jubilee: No offense, but we really don't have much in common. And you don't wanna talk to me. I'm bad company. God, I feel like I'm a million years old.
Rockslide: Jubilee, I'm made of rock. So I actually am a million years old.

Wolverine quite rightly blames his hormones.

Emma Frost tries to help with talk, too. At least she has more authority:



I liked the way Noto draws Emma:



And for added eye candy, we get a half-dressed Wolverine:



And Emma, helpful and smart, hasn't lost her trademark snarkiness:

Jubilee: I'm just... I'm just having a really hard time trying to be nice to people.
Emma Frost: Well, I know what that's like.

Pixie tries to help Jubilee by being all perky and friendly, and she only succeeds in driving Jubilee away - to a bar in San Francisco.



She daydreams about her past:



And then meets a glamorous vampire who offers her another kind of help. But Wolvie intervenes. "It's time to do this my way."

Did I like this comic? I certainly did. With a few reservations...

1. My main problem is that now she's angst-ridden, guilty, dangerous to herself and others, and self-loathing, there's nothing much to choose between Jubilee and X-23 except the claws - and Jubilee has fangs to fit the bill. Two dark-haired troubled teen girls with auburn hair and a connection to Wolverine. I can't think of any way they're particularly different: one is an assassin, the other is a vampire, but the situation is similar.
   
   The odd thing is that Kathryn Immonen caught my attention and sympathy for Jubilee in a way Marjorie M. Liu has not done - yet - with X-23. And I love Marjorie Liu's writing on other things, like Daken: Dark Wolverine, and her own novels.
   
   It also raised another question I've been wondering about: why is Wolverine so concerned about Jubilee, when he does not appear to be concerned about X-23? Jubilee is his friend, yes, but X-23 is the closest he has to a daughter. And Jubilee is the one he devotes time to, though the two girls are equally troubled.
   
   I can think of explanations for this, but as far as I know, Marvel hasn't explained.¹
   
   
2. Phil Noto's art, though good, seemed inconsistent throughout the comic, and I wondered if he had different inkers. Apparently not - no inker is credited, so it seems he inked his own work.
   
   Sometimes the art reminds me of Alex Maleev. This is not a bad thing.
   
   Good layouts, too. I particularly liked page 8, which id divided into six equal panels, alternating Rockslide talking to Jubilee, and Jubilee talking to Rockslide.
   
   
3. I liked the settings - Jubilee's holding cell, the X-Men's gym, Emma's office, outdoors on Utopia Island, a San Franciso Bar, the port of Oakland. Deftly done.
   
   
4. Whatever it is that does it, the team of Kathryn Immonen and Phil Noto together do great characterization.
   
   
5. I didn't much like any of the covers. Was this comic rushed against deadline or something?
   

¹ And then there's Amiko, Logan's foster daughter, whom he seldom saw. But she was less problematic.