ADVANCED REVIEW: Marvel’s Voices: Identity #1: Jubilee in “That One Thing”

There are few, if any, things not to love in the tender story about grief and family that Christina Strain, author of the Jubilee-centric Generation X (2017) run, carefully presents to us here. Even within its few pages, and leaning on anecdotal storytelling and Jason Loo’s detailed visual elements, what is laid out here feels sincere, cozy and an amazing addition to Lee’s lore. Having in mind how traumatizing and devastating was the death of Jubilation’s parents, the choice to put this story through sweet everyday lens is more than successful in adding an emotional piece that might not be “vital” to canon but it’s vital for understanding Jubilee’s relationship with her current family.

The visuals that accompany it don’t waste any time in depicting details in food, environments, signifiers of the  Chinese American upbringing of Jubilation, but always putting the emotions of the characters in the center. And there’s one thing that I instantly loved about Loo’s art and the way it showcases what’s delivered on the script: Jubilation is definitely depicted and fully understood as an adult woman in the present, in a way that is well contrasted with the flashbacks of her childhood and the relationship with her parents. With her and other Asian or Asian American characters, artists tend to infantilize their looks in what feels sometimes like looking perpetually younger than they are, but here, in everything from the clothes to the facial expressions to the reflection she makes on her life, you can see how Jubilee resembles and remembers her young self but it’s very clearly a grown woman, and distinctly so. All of that fits right there with the theme of a story about her growth and her understanding of family that it’s just, the best possible for the few pages that we got.