Wolverine and Jubilee #1

 It has been a long time since I have read an X-Men book. So Wolverine and Jubilee had something to prove to me. After the basic Marvel recap page (which tells us that Wolverine is an angry dude with metal claws and Jubilee is a girl who had mutant powers and lost them, not that it matters because she is a vampire right now) we open to find Jubilee in a white room rightly a little pissed and attacking a windowed wall. 

Side note: This is the first time in ages that I’ve seen normal Jubilee so seeing her in clothing that isn’t her 90’s costume is bloody weird.

After some scienceing between Cyclops, Emma Frost and Dr Rao Wolverine convinces them to cut Jubilee some slack and let her adapt instead of locking her up. Sadly she almost gets into a fight in the gym (which for an island of mutants is very small) then attacks her long time friend Pixie and promtly decides to do a runner. At a bar she is seduced by a woman who puts something red in her glass (its blood) and is later found by Wolverine and Rockslide in a shipping container full of dead guys.
 
If there is one great thing to be said about this issue it is that it doesn’t go overboard on the self hate. It would of been really easy of Kathryn Immonen to focus the story on Jubilee’s selfloathing instead the book points out that for every nay-say-er like Emma Frost and stupid Asian girl with glowy armor there is a person that trusts her like Rockslide and Wolverine. Also the book reminds us that Wolverine cares for Jubilee by having his first face to face interaction be with her. This is a simple technique but it makes the ending feel more reassuring because of his paternal relationship with Jubilee.

The second thing of note are is the way that the book has been coloured, there is a lack of blending between the highlights which means that the book looks sickly. This fits really well with Jubilee’s plight because of the whole being a Vampire thing and that being like a sickness. That is a bit of a stretch on my part because I’ve never seen any of Phil Noto’s other work but it fits right.
Overall I was surprised at how easy it was for me to pick up and understand what the hell was going on in the book part of that is because of Marvel’s info dump, but it is mostly because of the books focus on Jubilee’s character and not just yet another brick in the story of the X-Men.