Celineness

Colossus :) 
 
Ohhhhh...okay Jim Lee then.

Like this, with Jubilee invisible at the top, Emma Frost invisible at the bottom and a laaaaaaarge gap between Storm and Cyclops. Like, Grand Canyon sized (just my opinion).
 
Rogue
Wolverine
Beast 
Jean Grey  
Nightcrawler 
Iceman 
Colossus     
Angel
Storm
Cyclops

The M Squad, obviously! :)

I also like his style but as I grew older I could see what people meant by saying he writes "goofy" dialogue that you could never realistically fit into the action being depicted. I still like his work, but he (or possibly the artist he worked with) earned a black mark for not showing Jubes in issue #10. I think Forever is not at all what he planned to do with the X-Men back in the day - some of it is sure, but quite a few plot twists here and there feel more like teasing attacks on the continuity set up by later writers, just for lulz. He also hasn't been consistent with what did/didn't happen in the past, leaving some readers confused and giving his haters ammunition to criticise.
 
I've read about half of the issues and the annual and think it's an interesting and fun story.

 SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Well, I picked up the comic today. Okay, more like 20 copies of it but hey, you gotta show your support right?

I think I have to give this a 7/10. I can see what people were saying about the bad side of Kathryn Immonen's writing. She seems to be in charge here because she can write teenage females, or at least a montage or simile of what a generic teenage female is. You know, Chris Claremont gets a lot of bad press these days but if there's one good thing he can do, it's write a goofy "speech" on behalf of a character and capture both their voice and perspective. I think that's the main thing lacking from this issue. Jubilee is at best written as Scully to Wolverine's Mulder, at worst she's back to being a plot device.

I still think this is the most fun game to play regarding "Jubilee" these days: look at the pairs of words below and decide which one best describes Jubilee. Then do it again to best describe Jubilee since New Warriors (with the Girl Comics story exception):

Perky vs. Sullen
Paranoid vs. Cheerful
Taciturn vs. Sarcastic
Short vs. Verbose
Funny vs. Scary
Wolvie vs. Wolverine
Pump up the Jam! vs. Ugh
Eat this weirdo! vs. DIE!

Finally, answer this question. If someone in the X-Men randomly said "yay!", would Jubilee say (a) "yay!" or (b) "......".

See? It's a fun game.

So yeah. In this issue, Jubilee’s transition from one end of the personality spectrum to the other is solidified as she proceeds to play the part written years ago for “Wolverine’s younger, vampire sister”, a script sitting on a dusty shelf at Marvel for over 20 years.

Suspending disbelief, we learn Jubilee has all the vampire bells and whistles. She runs as fast as ten fast men and can lift big, polite (and strangely bullied to the point where you wonder whether Immonen has a real chip on her shoulder about young guys) rock men plus will go all feral and evil if she doesn't receive daily dialysis from Wolverine.

Emma Frost's reaction is well, predictable if your of the view that the White Queen is still an evil psychopath mind-controlling Scott Summers, but puzzling if you think otherwise. It's like she feels personally threatened by Jubilee. I like how this and Cyclop's ineffectual leadership turn Wolvie into the good cop. And so, Jubilee is "released" from her cell and allowed to mingle with all the other potentially dangerous abnormal people, who despite all the prejudice levelled at them for being "mutants", proceed to treat Jubilee in exactly the way they're treated by the rest of humanity because she's a "vampire" now.

At least it's Armor who's dropped in as the voice of disapproval. Someone with any history with Jubilee would make the argument scene even more ridiculous.

Jubes is sent to see Emma, who decides the best counselling tactic is to focus on Jubilee's "errors in judgement" and how she (apparently!) did lots of very bad things while with Xarus. Really? For all I saw, she stood around showing off her new black costume, held in thrall by her vampire "master". I think if this had been Storm, the X-Men would be more “oh no, you were mind-controlled, you aren’t responsible for anything you did”. With Jubes, things are a little different.

Sheesh. I don’t know how the X-Men (especially Cyclops) can even look Jubilee in the eye without falling to their knees in shame. I mean, it was him that fired Jubilee, right? Because she needed a mental break from the team? Damn, that sure went well, didn’t it? Yep, Jubes sure had a nice relaxing time away from the surrogate family who abandoned her for her own good.

So then Jubilee single-handedly undoes the questionable work of the first six issues of the new X-Men book, where vampirism was shoehorned into an analogy with mutation. Apparently they aren’t the same thing after all, nothing good can come of being a vampire despite several examples to the contrary. Emma remains aloof, despite her years of running Generation X. Jubilee states that everyone hates her, which is pretty bang-on-the-mark if you ask me (with the exception of Wolverine) and then we discover that the entire purpose of her “talk” is apparently to introduce Jubilee 2.0, played by Pixie. Jubilee continues to be played by whichever humour-deficient Skrull it was who never go the memo after the invasion collapsed (bless him/her!), and very quickly attempts to do a rather lot of harm to Pixie despite telling Wolverine earlier that she definitely wouldn’t do that.

Jubilee hates teleporters. Seriously, is this just random anger or is there a backstory to this attitude? I can’t recall her ever having a really bad time with any teleporting villain. It would have been funnier if Jubes had been paired with someone who had M’s powers, or perhaps Shadowcat. More fan service potential.

Having almost squashed Pixie, Jubes runs away. Oh, but not before undermining the one truly powerful moment in her vampiric transformation in X-Men, which I think was the scene where she watched the Sun go down at the end of issue 1. No matter how much I disliked the whole Jubilee=Vampire thing, that single panel at least gave everything some emotional depth. But nevermind, that’s all gone now since Wolvie’s transfusions allow her to see the end of a sunset, oh well.

We find Jubilee in a bar, mulling over how she used to be portrayed far more accurately by the writers of the 90s, wondering how the hell everything has come to this, when she’s quietly disturbed by EVIL VAMPIRE LADY. Who’s dialogue makes tenuous sense (variation versus deviation? Huh?). Evil lady tempts Jubes away from the bar with thinly-veiled homoeroticism and a little taste of blood. Damn, Jubes really *has* lost any measurable quantity of willpower now. Where in the past she’d be the one to snap out of an enchantment to “help the others”, here she’s down to the mental integrity of someone like Rogue, or Tigra from Thundercats.

Cue another totally unjustified bullying session of “poor rock man” (what is it with that? I felt nothing but sympathy for that guy the whole way through this book!) and yadda yadda Wolvie discovers Jubes in a Box o’Corpses.

Wolvie growls. Or roars. Whatever it is, it’s not a gasp. Is he devolving again or is Jubes' predicament some kinda long-unfulfilled wish? We’ll need to check his computer for photo-shopped Jubilee gore-porn...

But yeah, guess what. She didn’t do it! Strangely, Wolvie seems to not believe her. This is where Claremont would write a well-timed “I know kid, I know. But we need to get you outta here”. Instead, he confiscates/destroys her shiny new necklace (? at the very least, that thing could be clue to whoever set Jubes up!) and injects her with “vampire-knockout stuff”.

From now on, we’re going to be doing things his way. Maybe it’s me, but I have a feeling those last two pages are lifted directly from the decades-old “vampire sister” story that Jubilee is now air-dropped into here. Maybe just me.

So that’s it. Not really much insight into Jubilee’s real mental state (I would KILL for an old-fashioned yellow box or thought bubble over her head just once in this mini-series!) and Wolvie is treating her more like an unstable clone who’s downloaded Jubilee’s memories than the real deal. It’s actually fun to see him as a father figure but I can’t help comparing his actions here with Jubes to his view of Psylocke back when Betsy was transformed into Lady Mandarin.

In summary, the comic is a lot more fun if you imagine the whole thing is a stage-play that Cyclops has ordered Jubilee and Wolverine to reluctantly act through because ol’ one eye is now taking orders from Disney, but without that it’s pretty much more of the same “Nu Jube” bleakness that has infected her characterisation for the past five years. I don’t think I’ve seen a single comment on any internet forum where someone has responded positively to the whole Jubilee=Vampire plot line (at best, people have reserved judgement for this mini-series) and the vast majority are crying out for a “back to basics” approach where the Jubester shrugs off the undead-ness and regains her powers.

I’m tempted to say it would be a good thing for her to actually die at the end of this series then return sometime soon in X-23 in a big supporting role alongside Logan. Meh, if One More Day and Wonder Woman’s new costume are possible, then anything is possible. Someone tell the Scarlet Witch to say “No more vampires...some more fireworks, pls”, or something. That would work.

 Think of Batman Inc. as the set up to a massive new trauma in Bruce's life. Pride comes before a fall. At some point in the next couple of years, a big villain like the Joker (or perhaps someone new) will start killing off every single international Batman. It will be a big deal and over the course of a few months, gradually each "light" will go out around the world until only Bruce is left and is forced to confront whoever's responsible. 
 
Batman Inc. makes Bruce too sane, just like he's too sane in the recent movies. Bruce isn't sane - he acts because of a distant all-consuming memory of his parent's death.
 
The Batman concept only works properly with Bruce as Batman. Although it works on the common criminals, it's not the cape or concept that the real big villains fear, it's Bruce's unique character and everything that comes with it. When they see Bruce they see someone just as terrifying as them, but standing on the other side of the good/evil line. An army or policeforce of Batmen, where each dead bat is replaced by a new one, is laughable and not scary at all to the average supervillain. The concept cheapens Batman and in the past has been correctly portrayed (in "elseworlds" stories about the future) to cheapen him. THe important villains don't fear Batman - they fear THE Batman. Only THE Batman can sneak up on Superman or outsmart the Joker, the others are just cannon fodder.

Jubilee should do some temporal/dimensional hopping around and find Abcissa. She could strike a deal to free Abcissa from an alternate Mojoverse in exchange for taking a sample of Abcissa's blood to create a cure for the vampirism.
 
Jubilee should return to normal, the change offering a good excuse to restore her powers. She doesn't have legions of fans but those of us that do love her are particularly devoted and very vocal. I buy 10 copies of any Marvel comic she appears in then give the spares away to friends.
 

 

I don't care who is messing with her, I just want the madness of her elseworlds street-punk origin story to end. Costume variation is fine, but no pants or jacket please.
 
If this really is practice for a live action movie then DC needs to remember how disastrous the "street" Catwoman film was and learn from that mistake.

Zatanna's popularity took a huge and unnecessary hit when she was written to mind-wipe Catwoman. Once that weird retcon is removed from continuity she'll regain a bunch of Batman/Catwoman fans who haven't touched anything she's appeared in since the wipe.

That picture of her disgarding the stupid new costume brought a tear to my eye! It's fantastic.

The only thing wrong with it is that she should be disgarding her skin as well - the costume is only a small part of the current problem. The person who has been occupying the Wonder Woman comic since #601 is an inferior fake, a pale shadow of the real Wonder Woman. Her actions, choices and backstory are just all wrong.
 
I stopped reading after issue 600, was immensely happy when JMS quit the title and now am just watching the monthly previews until I see something like "next Wonder Woman - the Gods come to their senses and restore Diana to normal, who then comes to *her* senses and burns her ridiculous outfit".
 
The only long-lasting tragedy of this horrible car crash will be that Diana's 50th anniversary will forever be tainted by what's happened here. If DC lives to a time when Wonder Woman achieves issue 1,200 (doubtful), this whole issue 600 fiasco will be remembered as a huge gimmicky mistake and be referenced/parodied as the fail that it is.