In contrast, we have Jubilee #1.  It's also a set-up issue, but at least there's a reasonable amount being set up.  It feels like a proper, complete chapter.

However, that's not to say it doesn't have its flaws.  They're just different flaws.

Jubilee is a Marvel Age book, and they've taken the rather bold step of labelling it as such.  I say "rather bold" because it's really the digest formats of Marvel Age titles that are aimed at the elusive new readers.  The single issues are more of a direct market product, and the direct market seems entirely disinterested in Marvel Age.  Perhaps the idea is to produce a genuine X-book under the Marvel Age banner and force existing readers to take the imprint more seriously, but it'd be a bit of a long shot.

Marvel Age titles are supposed to be aimed at bringing in new readers, and one of the obvious target markets is young girls.  For those of you who don't follow the industry side of things, this is basically where we stand: the old claim that kids don't read comics is not true.  They just don't read American comics.  Because they're not interested in them.  Instead, they read Japanese comics.  Manga sales have gone through the roof in mainstream bookstores in the USA over the last couple of years.

Comics finally made it back into that young, mainstream audience that they lost when they retreated into the direct market.  But the comics in question are Japanese, and Marvel and DC aren't invited.  So the question then becomes: how do they get into this new market of comics readers, who don't want their existing product, when simply copying the Japanese style would be an all-too-obvious exercise in cloning?

The result is comics like this - an attempt to take an existing Marvel property and whack it with a sledgehammer until it fits into a genre-shaped box which is thought to be marketable to that audience.  So Jubilee is packed off to Los Angeles to live with her hitherto-unknown Aunt Hope (who, to be fair, is clearly established as a long-lost relative who has only recently learned about her orphaned niece Jubilee).  Aunt Hope is rich, and in case you hadn't got the point, they've titled the story "The Fresh Princess of Bel-Air."  Jubilee goes to school where she befriends a geek (she could be your friend too!), crosses paths with a cheerleader bitch, develops a crush on a hunky guy, is treated unfairly by the nasty headmaster, and is defended by the sympathetic more junior schoolteacher.

We are talking high-school-by-numbers plotting here.  And that doesn't work.  It doesn't work because - however unfair this may seem - the potential audience for this story is already getting it elsewhere.  They won't suddenly develop an interest in American comics simply because an American comic is cloning a story they've read a thousand times before in a medium (or style) they actually like.  It isn't good enough to be okay, or even to be good in a well-established way.  You need to offer something distinctive.  There has to be a unique selling point.

Jubilee #1 is a perfectly competent and inoffensive comic, but there is nothing unique about it.  The best moment in the issue is the one hint of something less obvious lurking beneath the surface - a nice sight gag of Jubilee on the phone to Aunt Hope, blithely oblivious to the fact that Hope is cheerfully polishing a sniper rifle.  It leaves open the possibility of the book going in a less obvious direction later on.

But for the moment, this is the March of the Stock Characters in an overly familiar plot.  And while it's done well enough, for what it is, it's hard to believe new readers will be drawn in by this.

Rating: B-

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