Jubilee: Deadly Reunion #1: Culture in Crisis

Jubilee has been in need of a solo comic for quite some time, and while this may be a one-off special for the Marvel Voices line, it’s essentially the next best thing. Gene Yuen Lang (Shang Chi) takes this opportunity to tell both a thought-provoking story about the positives and negatives of cultural identity and an even better story about Jubilee’s character strengths and flaws.

The issue’s central theme and arc are all tied to Agent Decibel, Jubilee’s estranged cousin from her childhood. Decibel is introduced to us right away with a bit of an odd personality that makes him memorable quickly. As the issue’s story unfolds, he is continually given more context, all of which serves to strengthen his ties to Jubilee both on a backstory level and on a thematic level that brings the issue full circle.

Jubilee herself has always been one of the lonelier mutants, even among some of the more melancholy X crowds across the various X-Men titles. So, when Jubilee finds out her brand-new cousin is also a mutant, it triggers a deep character moment for her, which leads into the issue’s central theme.

For a Marvel Voices comic, which is about putting the spotlight on historically underrepresented cultural groups in comics, the issue takes its role seriously enough to do more than simply celebrate the positives of Asian American and Pacific Islander cultures outright. Instead, the issue places a pretty heavy critique on the burdens that can be caused by the expectations that stem from cultural identity and shows how those burdens are often societal and psychological rather than an integral element of an individual culture.

The art has a modern polish with a clean panel arrangement, which makes for crisp page turns and cinematic action. There are some really solid extra details like a promotional sign of Shang Chi in San Francisco’s Chinatown or all the smaller signs and items inside a small convenience store. Technology seems to have a bit of an extra pop effect, as the techno-organic virus has consistent fractal patterns, and items like Agent Decibel’s sound gun have extremely neat line work and look like more than an extension of a character.

Color is a very important element to any comic that would prominently feature Jubilee. Yen Nitro does not disappoint on that front, as their colors drench the page in different tones that shift with the story and the scene. A day of investigating is characterized by its brightness and the warmth of daylight, while a fight inside an experimental tech company becomes darker and more electric.

An interesting color technique is employed in the issue’s few flashback panels where the characters are drawn in a drab grayscale tone while their environment is in bright colors that contrast against them, touching back on the issue’s theme of loneliness caused by being different. To play around so much with color risks distracting from the issue’s pacing, but Yen Nitro keeps the colors focused on the scene’s visual identity, which ends up smoothing the pacing overall.