Jubilee (character)

• 1. Introduction

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  "Actually, my name is Jubilee! 'Cause with me, every day's a celebration!" With that line, Jubilation Lee announced herself to readers in The Uncanny X-Men #244, dated May 1989. Marvel Comics writer Chris Claremont and artist Marc Silvestri created her. She belongs to the mutants, a human subspecies born with extraordinary abilities, and her gift is a spray of bright, explosive light. Yet that cheerful catchphrase was not entirely new. Where had readers heard it before? How does a teenager who begins the story hiding from security guards become a character who is still being written and animated decades later? And what happens to a young hero when a comic-book universe takes away her powers, her family, and even her humanity?

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• 2. Before Jubilee

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  Three years before Silvestri drew her, a different girl spoke almost the same words in The New Mutants Annual #2, published in 1986. Her name was Darla of the Fat Boys. Claremont had warped her, mentally and biologically, and she wielded powers identical to the later Jubilee's. She introduced herself as "Jubilee! Whose every move is a celebration!" By the end of that story Darla was returned to normal. No in-story link between the two characters was ever established.

  Jubilation Lee herself was born in Beverly Hills, California, the daughter of two prosperous Chinese immigrants. She was a gifted gymnast, and people believed she could compete in the Olympic Games. That life ended when two hitmen, Reno and Molokai, murdered her parents.

  An orphanage took her in, but she ran away and hid in the Hollywood Mall, stealing food to eat. The power that defined her arrived while mall security chased her. Panic made her fire a huge flash of light in a back alley, which disoriented the guards and let her slip away. She called these blasts "fireworks." Soon she realized that she could earn money by putting on shows for shoppers.

  The mall's security staff tried to shut down her performances and failed. They then hired the M-Squad, a company of professional mutant hunters. Four X-Men, Dazzler, Psylocke, Rogue, and Storm, rescued her. Curious about her rescuers, Jubilee followed them to a portal and stepped through to their hidden base in the Australian Outback.

  She had never heard of the X-Men and had no idea how they might treat a stranger. So she stayed out of sight, stole food, and borrowed clothes from several team members to assemble a patchwork costume. A cybernetic dog attacked her, and she blew it up. That was the first time she learned her powers could do real harm, although a later retcon gives her an earlier outburst of similar scale. Soon afterward, a captive was dragged through the same caverns where she hid, and the captive was the X-Man Wolverine.

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• 3. Wolverine's Sidekick

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  A group called the Reavers terrified Jubilee, yet she could not walk away from someone suffering at their hands. During a pause in the torture, she helped Wolverine back to her hiding place and nursed him. The Reavers eventually hunted the pair down. They fled to Madripoor, where they fought the Mandarin and the Hand. Jubilee held her own against the Hand. When she, Wolverine, and Psylocke were taken prisoner, she blew up part of the Mandarin's castle.

  Travel did not suit her. On Wolverine's missions around the world she missed American food and comforts. She fought alongside him against Hardcase and the Harriers, met the Black Widow, and joined a rescue of kidnapped New Mutants from Genosha. Over her protests, Wolverine put her in charge of Boom Boom and Rictor. The three survived on the streets of an island nation until they found the other X-Men. Later adventures took her to the Shi'ar empire, where the Warskrulls captured her and the Shadow King briefly controlled her.

  Professor Xavier greeted her at the X-Mansion with open arms. Wolverine and Jubilee grew into something like father and daughter, and fans came to call her his unofficial sidekick. She joined the X-Men Blue Team and fought Omega Red, the Shi'ar, the Skrulls, and the Brood. In print, she was a regular in The Uncanny X-Men through issue #280 in September 1991 and a staple of the new X-Men series. She also starred beside Wolverine in issues #40-75 of his second solo series, from 1991 to 1993.

  The team gave her small, warm moments. She rode piggyback on Beast, who loved to leap. When Professor Xavier briefly regained the use of his legs, she took him rollerblading. She talked with Shadowcat, who had been Wolverine's sidekick before her, and bonded with the younger Illyana Rasputin. When Illyana died, Jubilee mourned with the team, and Jean Grey felt the loss most deeply.

  One adventure dropped her halfway through a time portal, where she watched hitmen arrive at her family home. For the first time she knew their names and faces, and she set out to kill them. Wolverine talked her out of it. Shortly after, he left the X-Men without offering to take her along. He left only a note, and it repeated that she should stay with Professor Xavier and never go off alone again.

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• 4. Generation X

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  Jubilee did go off, but not alone. After the Phalanx Covenant storyline in 1994, the teenager transferred to a trainee squad called Generation X. She starred in all 75 issues of its series, which ran from 1994 to 2001. Banshee and Emma Frost led the team. The first students were Jubilee, Husk, Synch, M, and Skin, and Chamber, Penance, Mondo, and Gaia joined later. Three young wards also lived there: Artie Maddicks, Leech, and, for a time, Franklin Richards.

  Banshee and Emma taught ordinary school subjects as well as combat and field skills. Wolverine and Beast sometimes visited as guest instructors. Jubilee used her X-Men experience to outwit her team's enemies, and the archrival Emplate fell to her more than once. When he drained her powers, she mocked him until he lost his temper and blasted himself with her own energy. In their final clash she destroyed Proudstar Hall to stop him. Iceman's ice shield saved her teammates from the explosion.

  Bastion kidnapped her at the Massachusetts Academy during Operation: Zero Tolerance. She resisted his mental probes for a long time and hid vital secrets about the X-Men. Her first escape worked until she stopped to give CPR to a guard she had hurt, and she was recaptured. A second escape came with help from Bastion's assistant, Daria. In the desert, a Prime Sentinel attacked, and she blasted its vision receptors. Wolverine rescued her at the last moment.

  The team's deepest story for her came when she learned that her parents' real killer was Hunter Brawn. She planned an operation and tracked him down with her friends. Her powers surged to enormous levels, but she chose not to kill him. Instead she destroyed his warehouse and left him for the police.

  When Generation X broke up, she moved to Los Angeles with Skin to try acting. Casting directors offered her only stereotypical Asian roles. When her agent tried to seduce her, she hit him with a heavy energy blast. She also joined Banshee's militaristic X-Corps with Husk and M, and in Paris she stopped an uprising by blinding hostile attackers. Those issues appeared in The Uncanny X-Men #403-406 in 2002 and again in #423-437 in 2003-2004.

  Grief followed. The Church of Humanity kidnapped Jubilee, Skin, Magma, and other mutants and crucified them on the lawn of the X-Mansion. Angel's healing blood saved most of them, but Skin could not be saved and died. A gravekeeper refused to bury a mutant in his cemetery, so Skin was cremated, and Jubilee received the ashes. Cyclops later benched her for a mental break. An aunt named Hope then adopted her and took her to Los Angeles, where Jubilee attended Payton Noble High School and became a peer advisor. Hope turned out to be an assassin, and a violent explosion apparently killed her. Her cybernetic nature was revealed later, and Jubilee returned to the X-Mansion.

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• 5. Wondra and the Vampire

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  On M-Day, the reality-altering power of the Scarlet Witch stripped Jubilee of her mutant abilities. The Decimation storyline of 2005 swept up many mutants, and her loss was confirmed in House of M: The Day After #1 in January 2006. She sank into deep depression and drifted through several jobs. Then she ran a halfway house in Queens, New York, for depowered mutants. Omega Red kidnapped her and flew her to Berlin as a hostage, where she was badly beaten. Wolverine traded his freedom to S.H.I.E.L.D. for her safety.

  Her next identity was Wondra, the second-in-command of a new New Warriors team in issues #1-20 of the fourth series, from 2007 to 2009. Night Thrasher supplied technology that gave her superhuman strength. She could hoist a freight train's engine over her head. Her suit also gave her limited invulnerability and let her fly on hover discs. Wondra took her duties seriously, acting like a drill sergeant. She distrusted Night Thrasher, uncovered evidence of ignoble motives, and eventually left the team to former members of the Initiative. In San Francisco she met young mutants who told her about Utopia, the island home for mutants. She affirmed her identity as a mutant but refused to move there.

  In 2010, during the Curse of the Mutants storyline, a vampire suicide bomber infected many people with an engineered virus. Cyclops had sent Pixie to check on Jubilee, and she caught it. The virus slowly turned her into a vampire, and sunlight grew harder to bear. Wolverine fed her some of his blood, and his healing factor kept her from becoming savage. Rockslide, who had a crush on her, followed her to Siberia to save her from a vampire cult.

  Then she went to meet Xarus, who bit her. He wanted to lure the X-Men, especially Wolverine, into a trap. Jubilee became a full vampire and temporarily turned Wolverine too. She became friends with X-23, who helped her control the urge to kill, while Jubilee taught Laura how to be a "normal" girl. A group called the Forgiven, who had learned to live without blood and walk in daylight, later took her in as a student. Her vampire years ran through X-Men vol. 3 #1 in July 2010 until issue #27 in April 2012. Kathryn Immonen and artist Phil Noto followed up with Wolverine and Jubilee in 2011.

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• 6. Mother and Teacher

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  In a 2013 storyline, Jubilee came back to the X-Men carrying an orphaned baby infected with Arkea. She named him Shogo. During the Battle of the Atom event, the team's visitor from the future, Sentinel X, turned out to be Shogo fully grown. After her future self died and the Brotherhood of Mutants lost, mother and son spent time together. Storm then told Jubilee that the adoption papers had gone through, which made her legally his mother. She also appeared in the all-female X-Men series, issues #1-25 from 2013 to 2015, and in Patsy Walker, a.k.a. Hellcat! in 2016.

  In the second Generation X series, she returned as the adult mentor to a new group of teenagers. She also became a teacher at the renamed Xavier Institute. Her students were the ones judged unsuited to become X-Men or ambassadors to humanity: Quentin Quire, Bling!, Nature Girl, Eye-Boy, Morph, and Nathaniel Carver.

  Monet fell under the influence of her brother Emplate and attacked the school. In the fight, she took the medallion that protected Jubilee from sunlight. Quentin Quire then gave up his shard of the Phoenix Force to save Jubilee. It cured her vampirism and restored her mutant powers.

  When Professor X established the Krakoan Era, Jubilee joined a new Excalibur alongside Betsy Braddock, Captain Britain, Rogue, Gambit, and Apocalypse. Their first assignment was Otherworld, which a magical gate had linked to Krakoa.

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• 7. Fireworks

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  Jubilee's "fireworks" are pyrotechnic energy plasmoids that form in her hands. They obey her mind, go where she aims them, take shapes, and explode on command. They range from harmless colored sparkles that blind a target for a moment to a blast that can smash objects. She can also reabsorb the energy safely. Her most frightening trick is a precise burst inside a human brain that mimics a massive stroke.

  Emma Frost, while training Generation X, said Jubilee had untapped ability to detonate matter at a subatomic level. In theory that equals a nuclear fusion bomb. Emma called her potential unlimited, and said she was one of the most powerful mutants she had ever met. The warning had a basis in history. During the Acts of Vengeance storyline, Jubilee believed Wolverine was dead and destroyed the Mandarin's mansion in a huge explosion. That moment shaped her fear of ever killing someone.

  In X-Terminators, she delivered on Emma's prediction with an Atom Bomb attack that wrecked the Collector's spaceship. The blast also vaporized her clothes and every hair on her body. Her Age of Apocalypse counterpart was far less restrained and used her full ability freely.

  She also resists telepathy, which can make her effectively invisible to telepaths. She has used this to hide from telepathic scans and Sentinel mind probes. As a vampire, she gained superhuman strength and speed and could turn into vapor, along with the usual weaknesses.

  Her ordinary skills matter too. She is an in-line skater with above-average hand-to-hand ability, partly learned in Los Angeles County Juvenile Hall and refined by Wolverine. She also shows leadership. One issue of the Wolverine series stated that she has dyscalculia.

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• 8. Beyond the Page

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  Alternate universes have remade Jubilee in many shapes. In Wolverine (vol. 2) #52-53, a timeline version called Abscissa convinced Mojo to allow the Big Crunch and became his servant. In Age of Apocalypse she belongs to Gambit's X-Ternals and can detonate objects at the molecular level. In Days of Future Past she shares the ruins of Hollywood with her lover Synch. In the 2015 Secret Wars tie-in Runaways, she leads a gang called the Night Witches at the Victor von Doom Institute for Gifted Youths. In the Amalgam Comics universe, Sparrow is a composite of Jubilee and Robin.

  The animated series X-Men: The Animated Series, which ran from 1992 to 1997, gave her the widest audience. Alyson Court voiced her. This version lived with a foster family before Cyclops recruited her, and she bonded with Gambit and Wolverine. Holly Chou voices her in X-Men '97, which began in 2024. In its episode "Motendo," Court returns as Abscissa, a digital replica of Jubilee built by Mojo. Heather McComb portrayed her in the live-action Generation X. In X-Men: Evolution, Chiara Zanni voiced her as a member of the junior New Mutants.

  On film, Katrina Florece played her in a cameo in X-Men in 2000. Kea Wong played her in X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand. Lana Condor portrayed her in X-Men: Apocalypse, though most of her scenes were cut and later appeared as deleted scenes. In video games she appears in X-Men Legends, voiced by Danica McKellar, and in Marvel Snap.

  Andy Quach of MovieWeb called her "most storied Asian heroes in all comic book history," and she is regarded as one of the most prominent Asian American superheroes. Lists have ranked her 25th in Entertainment Weekly's ranking of X-Men and 28th in BuzzFeed's. CBR.com placed her 9th among Marvel's smartest sidekicks. Her 2004 solo series opened as the 80th-best-selling comic of September 2004, according to Diamond Comic Distributors. Wolverine and Jubilee #1 sold out in 2011. Greg McElhatton of CBR.com praised its "pleasant set-up" and complained only that it was a mini-series, hoping for more.

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