Jubilee is now being rather sheepishly marketed as a six-issue miniseries.  You wonder who Marvel think they're kidding, when titles suddenly become miniseries four issues in.  Sales on this title have been little short of disastrous, and if it was down to the direct market, it would certainly be heading for the axe in early course.

But of course, Jubilee is a Marvel Age book, which would normally mean that it wasn't dependent on direct market sales to the same extent.  The fact that Marvel has pulled the plug after only six issues is intriguing.  With a general shake-up of the Marvel Age imprint underway, one wonders whether Marvel are having a rethink about its direction.

Anyhow, that leaves us a lame-duck Jubilee title with another few issues to run.  Aside from last issue's faintly embarrassing after-school special, it hasn't been too bad.  But it hasn't really clicked.

Robert Kirkman has chosen to push Jubilee's powers and superhero career firmly to the background.  There's a token fight in this issue, but it lasts three panels.  Instead, we've got Jubilee at school, doing stock high school plots.  (Current subplot: who will take her to the dance?)  The usual way these books work is to play up the contrast between the high school stories and the larger-than-life superhero stories.  But Jubilee doesn't have any of that; she just does high school stories.  Instead, her aunt seems to be off appearing in spy stories behind the scenes, to which Jubilee remains joyfully oblivious.

You get the distinct impression that there's a much more entertaining story about Jubilee's aunt, waiting to be told - and no doubt Kirkman will get to it soon enough.  But for the moment we've got an entire issue of Jubilee looking for a stolen car, and meeting a bad-boy mutant who's the obvious love interest.  It all seems a bit muted - Jubilee ought to be about energy and exuberance, and instead she's doing reluctant charity work and hanging out with the school geek.  Which would be fine if she did cool stuff too, but...

The book is perfectly readable, but it doesn't really capture what makes Jubilee work as a character.  Possibly that's because she isn't really a lead character - she works as a comic-relief sidekick or ensemble member, who livens up other people's stories.  Given her own title, she just wants to go to the mall and listen to music, and it simply isn't that interesting.

Rating: B-

back | continue