Jubilee: Deadly Reunion #1 // Review
The X-Men have just returned from outer space. (Literally. They were out fighting Skrulls for a couple of weeks’ Earth time.) Jubilation Lee is exhausted. (Imagine being jet lagged from a two week work trip off-planet.) Suffice it to say, she’s kind of upset to find a shoeless Men In Black cosplayer hanging out in her room when she shows-up. The man in question has a lot of explaining to do ing Jubilee: Deadly Reunion #1. Writer Gene Luen Yang is joined by the art team of Michael YG and Yen Nitro in a solo-adventure with one of the X-Men’s most enduring characters to come out of the 1990s.
The gentleman in question seems to be certain that Jubilee should remember her. She might be a little apprehensive, but she becomes downright hostile when the gentleman in question draws some kind of exotic gun on her. That prompts the rest of the team to shoot up the stairs to help her out. The gentleman in question claims that he’s only there to talk. It would be a lot easier to believe him if he wasn’t firing at her with that weird gun. Then he says the one word that changes everything.
It’s a name that lets her know that the guy’s family. And so she’s off to help her cousin out on family business. Yang does a good job of pacing the issue from there. The initial misunderstanding-and-attack feels a bit weak, but it’s needed foreshadowing in order to show that there’s some kind of mystery wrapped-up in Jubilee’s cousin. It’s a fun sequence of events that shows quite a bit of momentum. Jubilee’s always fun in the team. It’s nice to see her on her own entirely dealing with something well outside the range of the usual Marvel settings.
The art team manages quite a balance. It can be tricky to juggle the distinct blend of action, drama and emotional engagement that make for a traditional Marvel X-Men comic book. All too often the action comes across vividly, but the drama feels stiff and disinteresting. Or the drama is amplifies and articulated wonderfully but the action feels a bit stiff. The art team on Jubilee does a good job of finding equal impact in every area of the script. The overall layout and framing of the action fits the script almost perfectly.
Jubilee: Deadly Reunion is a Marvel celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Chinese-American writer Yang tells a story about Korean-American character Jubilee who was popularized early on in the 1990s by Korean-American artist Jim Lee. It’s nice to see Marvel reaching outside of the bounds of traditional Marvel Unieverse that had been crafted largely by a bunch of caucasian New Yorkers in the ’60s and ’70s. It’s nice to see an infusion of other elements persisting as things progress into the 21st century. It’s not always a commercial hit, but it’s nice to see them trying for more of a cultural fusion.
