Fighting off her vampire urges isn’t easy for Jubilee, especially when she’s got Wolverine’s blood coursing through her.
What They Say:
Jubilee is about as far away from the ideal X-Man as it is possible for a 17-year-old minty fresh vampire to be. While the X-Men try to find a way to give her as normal a life as is inhumanly feasible, her decidedly abnormal vampire cravings will not be denied. Between that and her newfound powers, she’s winning the fights but not the popularity contests among most of the other X-Kids. Most…but not all. And just when Jubilee starts to think that there is no place for her anywhere, a group of vampire women make her an offer she can’t refuse. It seems like the perfect solution…unless Wolverine has anything to say about it!
The Review:
It’s been probably close to fifteen years since I last read a story involving Jubilee and about as long since I read a Wolverine book. Picking this new series up felt right though when it came across my reader as it reminded me of a series that sticks with me strongly some twenty-five years later, with Wolverine & Kitty Pryde. That was a defining series for her that turned her into a strong character and expanded on Wolverine quite a lot as well with his ties to Japan and the kinds of things he used to control his inner beast. There’s been a lot of changes over the years within the X-books of the Marvel Universe that I’ve missed, but this series does a nice job with its opening page to highlight the basics of both Wolverine and Jubilee as well as glossing over some key points about M-Day and the like that at least helps establish the setting a little.
Some of it is… a little hard to swallow. The whole M-Day event is an interesting way of thinning out the ranks of the mutants and offering up plenty of character drama to unfold from it. The whole vampire arc with Xarus makes me cringe a bit just because it seems like going a bit too much on top of an already problematic situation. With Jubilee infected, it does seem reminiscent of what Kitty Pryde went through in a psychological manner way back in the day. The vampire in her is being controlled by small blood transfusions from Logan but it’s good for only so long. She’s frustrated, angry and wanting out of the cage they have her in and Logan is fine with that since he intends to make sure she can control herself. And he has a lot of incentive to do so overall considering their history, his distaste of vampires and the fact that she stinks of him with his blood in her.
Jubliee’s not having an easy time of it and it’s little surprise considering the way everyone is hovering over her to different degrees. Santo is too concerned, Armor wants to boot her out of there by starting a fight and Pixie is all about playing with her. There’s an interesting exchange Jubiliee has with a vampire she meets up with at a bar where she talks about how the mutants are basically trying to help in their own way, but by making her fit into their mold, which is exemplified by how Emma Frost talks about setting Jubilee up for college. With Jubilee being something different now, vampires have a very different way of going through life and she wants Jubilee to realize that. It’s an interesting approach to nudging Jubilee in the direction she wants and one that will slowly grow to feel right to her because of her new nature. This kind of back and forth dominates the book as her vampire nature comes out here and there, but more just her general anger at the world. It makes for an interesting setup and it starts to move towards the payoff at the end but falls short because it’s all saved for the next issue.
Digital Notes:
This digital edition of the book contains only the cover from the main run of it as the variant cover is not included, which I find to be an unfortunate omission.
In Summary:
Wolverine and Jubilee is pretty much character driven at this point as it focuses on what to do with Jubilee now that she’s a vampire that’s being sustained as “normal” because of Wolverine’s blood being transfused into her. She’s not as angsty as she could be considering her circumstances and the emotions coursing through her, especially some justified anger, even if it is misplaced. The book has plenty of places to go but it’s hard to say what it is it really wants to do at this point besides hopefully figuring out her place in the scheme of things so she can move forward from there. The bond she and Wolverine share has been there for quite a long time and this is just a new stage of it. With luck, Jubilee will come out of it for the better and able to stand on her own. With it being rather character driven with all the dialogue and back and forth, there’s a lot to like here but it needed some palpable tension as well which we didn’t get much of. There’s enough to like here, but it’s not compelling yet.
