Characters / Marvel Comics: Jubilee

Jubilation Lee / Jubilee

X-Man. Mom. Vampire?

Nationality: American, Krakoan

Species: Human mutant, former Vampire

First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #244 (May 1989)

"I feel like I'm drowning in my own blood and I'm terrified to open my mouth because I don't know whether I'm going to breathe or drink. And I'm looking at everyone through an inch of glass. Like they all know exactly where the line is between them and me."

— Jubilee, Wolverine and Jubilee #1

Jubilation Lee, best known as Jubilee, is a Marvel Comics mutant-turned-vampire-turned-mutant superheroine that usually associated with X-Men and its members. She was introduced into Marvel Universe in Uncanny X-Men #244 (May 1989). She was created by Chris Claremont and Marc Silvestri.

Jubilee started out as a peppy Chinese-American teenager who, following the death of her parents, discovered her mutant power of creating energy blasts from her fingers and was eventually welcomed by the X-Men. She was intended to do for the new fans of the 1990s what Kitty Pryde did in the 1980s — serve as a viewpoint character for teenagers. As such, she became Wolverine's kid sidekick, and spent several years following him around, swinging between sarcastic mockery of his '90s Anti-Hero excesses and mortal terror expressed through Totally Radical dialogue. Then she got transferred to the junior team, Generation X, where over time she became the Genius Ditz team strategist.

When Generation X got cancelled, it all went a bit south for Jubilee; after her own series failed to attract a significant readership and was swiftly retooled into a limited series, she was sidelined, then depowered.

She returned for a spell in the (non X-Men) New Warriors reboot with Powered Armor, an enormous rack, and her first proper Code Name: Wondra.

After New Warriors got cancelled, Jubilee drifted back towards the X-books, was turned into a vampire during the Curse of the Mutants storyline, and adopted a baby to become the X-Men's first teenaged vampire single mom superhero.

She worked as the personal assistant/shenanigan-enabler of the title character in Patsy Walker, a.k.a. Hellcat!, but left the role to lead a team in Generation X (2017). At the end of that title, she was cured of her vampirism by a Phoenix Force-powered Quentin Quire and regained her original mutant power set.

As of 2023 she is a former member of Excalibur (2019) and starred in X-Terminators (2022). She was revealed as one of the new X-Men at the Hellfire Gala... right before she was killed by Nimrod during Orchis' surprise attack. However, she would not stay dead for long, joining the rest of her team for an adventure across timelines in Dead X-Men.

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Jubilee provides examples of:

A-H

• A-Cup Angst: She has had this throughout her history, but she has gotten bigger as she grew up. In Generation X, which focused on the younger and less well-known of Xavier's students, her modest figure was used to contrast her against the model-esque Monet St. Croix. Sometimes Kitty Pryde takes this role, too. But much like Swift above, when Jubilee transitioned into the New Warriors relaunch, she lost her mutant powers, but gained two cup sizes in the bargain. (Granted, she was 13-14 for most of her comic history.) Entertainingly lampshaded◊ in Uncanny X-Men #268 — Jubilee is listening in to a conversation between Wolverine and the more commonly-endowed Psylocke and Black Widow. She glances up at the two women in their skintight costumes, peers down her vest to see how she matches up, and then drops her head in her hands with a frustrated expression.
• Action Mom: In X-Men (2013), Jubilee becomes one after adopting a baby which she names Shogo.
• Adoptive Peer Parent: Jubilee becomes one after she finds and adopts an abandoned baby she names Shogo. This despite only being 17, and thanks to being turned into a vampire she'll be the same age even as her kid grows up. This eventually becomes a non-issue when she is turned back into a human.
• All Love Is Unrequited:
  • Jubilee wanted Synch in Generation X, he wanted Monet (and thinks of Jubilee as a friend).
  • She turns Skin down when he asks her out, saying she didn't want to ruin the friendship. Then the two are crucified. Skin doesn't make it.
• Ambiguously Bi: She has had mostly male love interests, but is also very close with X-23, including some blatantly sexual overtones during the period where Jubilee was turned into a vampire and bit Laura. She was also remarkably unfazed after being kissed on the mouth by Bling!, one of her female students. In the 2013 X-Men series, Jubilee recalled the first time she saw Storm, Dazzler, Psylocke and Rogue back when she was a child, and claimed this was her mental reaction:
  Jubilee: ...Total rock stars. I wanted to have all their babies.
• Arch-Enemy: Hunter Brawn, the man who killed her parents.
• Asian Airhead: While not stupid, she suffers dyscalculia, averting the "Asians as math geniuses" stereotype.
• Atomic Superpower: Jubilee can detonate matter at a subatomic level. Since she is a pacifist she usually settles for using her powers in a more harmless manner — but give her a big enough target, with no risk of collateral damage? Dear Collector, say goodbye to your city-sized starship.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Jubilee stole Kitty's position as this in the 90s (since Kitty was Put on a Bus to England). Jubilee was very immature compared to her older teammates and often got special treatment i.e. coddled by Jean, Storm, and Rogue as well as being frequently rescued by Wolverine and Gambit. Unlike Kitty, Jubilee has never truly outgrown this trope (despite several attempts), still being treated like this in Excalibur (2019) despite being a mother herself.
• Badass Longcoat: Jubilee has a yellow one.
• Batman Gambit: Comic Book/Jubilee was actually able to pull off one of these in an early issue of Generation X, the first time the team dealt with Emplate, the demonic mutant brother of the M-Twins, who could feed off the genetic material of other mutants and assimilate their abilities. Emplate managed to capture and subdue the entire team (even Emma Frost, believe it or not) and had them at his mercy. So Jubilee suddenly decides to spend the time insulting him. (The best one? She parodies David Letterman with "The Top Ten Reasons Emplate is a Loser", number one being that despite all he's doing, he's still not as annoying as his sister M.) After enduring one and a half issues of this, Emplate loses his temper, and uses his draining power on her, only to find out that Jubilee was trying to make him angry on purpose, because she has been known to lose control of her powers when she's angry. Because she succeeds in tricking Emplate into assimilating her powers when he's enraged, well, the results are explosive, and the team is able to fight back.
• Bash Brothers: After a rocky start, she and X-23 became close friends and have teamed up on multiple occasions.
• Bifauxnen:
  • In her very early appearances, she had short hair and a flat chest that she could be mistaken as an effeminate boy depending on the art.
  • On at least two occasions she was required to go undercover as a delivery boy. Since the other two women on the team were undercover as hot women in slinky dresses, she found this rather annoying.
  • In a side-story in Wolverine, she's fully mistaken for a boy by a tribe in the Savage Land and engaged to one of their princesses. In a slightly odd turn of events, the dinosaur-riding tribe who made the mistake actually had her half-way to the altar with a choice bride standing by before the misunderstanding could be cleared up.
• Betty and Veronica: For Synch's Affections she was the Betty, with Monet as the Veronica.
• Book Dumb: Jubilee isn't dumb per se, but her dyscalculia did her no favors academically.
• Boyish Short Hair: Ever since her debut she has had very short hair along with a punkish tomboy attitude especially back in the 90s. Though she does have a girly side. After using her powers at their max level in X-Terminators (2022), she's now bald.
• Bubblegum Popping: A signature of hers.
• Bratty Half-Pint: She was the epitome of this trope in the '92 animated series, being the Little Miss Snarker Kid-Appeal Character.
• Break the Cutie: She goes through a bit of this after being vampirized, as shown by the quote above.
• Captain Ethnic: Jubilee, the young X-Man of Chinese descent whose mutant power was to... shoot fireworks. On the other hand, she was Book Dumb and especially bad at math, so she definitely wasn't a stereotypical Asian-American.
• Character Development: The former Kid Sidekick would grow into more of a leader figure than Night Thrasher.
• Clothes Make the Superman: After losing her powers after the events of M-Day, she began to use a high-tech outfit gave her super strength.
• Comic-Book Time: Jubilee was about fifteen when she was introduced in 1989 and then spent the thirty years of real time that followed struggling to reach her late teens. By the time of the "Curse of the Mutants" arc, she had only been allowed to officially age two years (making her 17) despite having lived through a decent amount of MU history as a veteran member of the Claremont-era X-Men, and despite being a peer of the aforementioned Kitty, who can't be more then five years older then her and yet was a young adult at same time that Jubilee became a vampire in said arc without even leaving college age. The vampirism could've given her an out via no longer aging, but she was subsequently cured a few years later and now it's not really clear what age she's supposed to be. She seems to have been allowed to age up to adulthood, as she is now written pretty firmly as if she is in her early twenties, older then most of the 2000s era X-Men but slightly younger then people like Kitty or Spider-Man. How this works with her being a vampire for a couple years is anyone's guess.
• Common Knowledge: People who aren't familiar with Cypher usually cite Jubilee as the most useless X-Man, on the grounds that her powers are just sparkly lights and therefore useless. In fact, Jubilee's powers are devastatingly powerful — she's just extremely reluctant to use them to harm people. On the rare occasions where she's pushed to cut loose, large buildings tend to cease to exist. And then she stops to give first aid to her enemies. It's also been noted by Wolverine that she could easily set off a small explosion inside a person's skull; thus far she's only done this once, to a Prime Sentinel, but there are very few characters who could shrug off having their brain explode.
• Cool Big Sis: To X-23, although canonically she wasn't much older than Laura before she was turned into a vampire, she's nonetheless an experienced X-Man, and much like Gambit offers Laura support and help, particularly by trying to break her out of her shell and teaching her to enjoy life.
  • Many of the new mutants look up to her. Except for Surge. The relationship becomes ironic when many of them begin to catch up to her age — if not pass her as X-23^note and by extension the rest of the Academy X generation with whom she is peers did — because during her time as a vampire, her vampirism froze her at 17 years old.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: On the surface, she's a somewhat ditzy, very 90s mallrat, and especially for those who only know her from X-Men: The Animated Series her pafs come across as a joke. And it certainly helps that Jubilee never really learned to develop her powers to their full potential. But then you read why she didn't: Jubilee is capable of manipulating and detonating matter at the sub-atomic level, and once leveled The Mandarin's castle when she cut loose because she thought Wolverine had been hurt. And that still wasn't the full extent of her powers. Emma Frost more or less likened her to a walking fusion bomb. Keep in mind she manipulates plasma. As in the most pervasive state of matter in the universe. The sun is a big ball of plasma. It's what outer space is made of. And Jubilee can potentially control any of it.
  • In X-Terminators (2022) she finally cuts loose by turning herself into an atomic bomb◊ to get revenge on the Collector.
• Cursed with Awesome:
  • For 13 years she didn't have any mutant powers, but was instead a vampire which includes the typical powers of super strength, super speed, healing factor, the ability to turn into vapor, and being eternally 17. Of course she also had a thirst for human blood and could potentially have lost control one day and killed everyone around her. Plus all those silly vampire weaknesses.
  • Even her original powers, which she largely used just to create fireworks effects, would actually rank her as one of the most powerful mutants alive: she detonates matter on a subatomic level, and the resulting annihilation creates flashes of light as a side-effect. She's basically a walking Matter-To-Antimatter converter, and when she cut loose has destroyed a spaceship the size of a city. With enough focus, she could have destroyed large tracts of land, continents, planets... even star systems to upwards of galaxies, theoretically. Emma Frost even said Jubilee had the potential to be one of the single-most powerful mutants she'd ever encountered, and given that she's met Xavier, Magneto, Apocalypse, and Phoenix, that's saying something.
• Cute Little Fangs: Gets them after being turned into a vampire, which is often revealed when she smiles. This turns her into a Cute Monster Girl, especially when Sana Takeda draws her.
• Cute Monster Girl: After being turned into a vampire. Her appearances in X-23's solo title under artist Sana Takeda placed extra emphasis on the "cute".
• Daddy's Girl: Played with, as she is the most disrespectful towards Xavier and considered him "bald headed geek", Jubilee generally acts more like a Daddy's Girl with Wolverine whom she adores. Though Jubilee does warm up to the "Prof" and is delighted when he gives her rollerblades as a present.
• Dark Action Girl: Not by choice. Though still bubbly, her vampirism has given her a darker edge, and she's just as capable a killer as Laura. It's her own efforts to control these darker impulses that grant her such a close perspective on Laura's own troubles.
• Dark Is Not Evil: As noted above, She's supposed to be a violent and blood-thirsty killer due to her vampire affliction and has certainly evolved into a formidable killer who could sometimes be downright scary, but Jubilee is still the bubbly and adorable mall rat.
• Deadpan Snarker: While most of her abilities have been subject to many changes, one power she has always maintained is near-superhuman levels of sass. Whether it's mocking Wolverine's macho posturing, puncturing Xavier's pompousness, laughing in the face of frickin' Dracula himself, or engaging in an epic takedown of Emma Frost's attempts at moralising, you can always expect her to have a comeback.
• Demoted to Extra: Jubilee. Like many characters born in the '90s, from time to time since the early-2000s. Occasionally the character gets a sudden boon, especially after she became a vampire and adopted a kid, but otherwise isn't nearly as prominent as she once was. Averted in Excalibur (2019) where Jubilee is a central character, although she and her baby Shogo still get less focus than Rogue, Gambit, Psylocke, the Braddocks, and Apocalypse.
• Depending on the Artist: Jubilee is usually depicted as short, petite, and flat-chested. Under Paco Medina◊, however...
• Discard and Draw: Jubilee was one of the numerous Mutants who lost their power after M-Day. While serving with the New Warriors, she took on the name "Wondra" and used advanced technology that granted her super strength. She was turned into a vampire during the Curse of the Mutants storyline, granting her superhuman strength, speed, healing and the ability to turn into vapor. She has since cured of her vampirism, regaining her original powers in the process, when Quinton Quire used his Phoenix Shard to save Jubilee when M-Plate tried to kill her by tearing away a special medallion that protected her from the sun and tried to fry her.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: She once thought it was a good idea to taunt a pack of hungry dinosaurs from the safety of the far side of a forcefield wall. Then the flying dinosaur riders turned up...
• Dudley Do-Right Stops to Help: She broke off her escape from "Operation: Zero Tolerance" to give first aid to a villain she had accidentally injured. This led directly to her being recaptured for another round of torture.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: After she is crushed and badly injured by Nimrod's initial attack, her response is to snarl "@&$* you, machine" and attempt to attack him (sadly, this does nothing and he promptly finishes the job).
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Jubilee had an entirely different design in debut wearing a blue jacket, black shirt and blue skirt. It wasn’t until until issue #257 that she got her yellow trench coat that’s stuck with her decades as well as her shades, though the blue shorts and gloves wouldn’t come until later on when she joined the X-Men proper as they were green making her similar looking to Robin.
• Embarrassing First Name: She prefers to be called Jubilee.
• Even the Girls Want Her:
  • Brian Wood's run has a subplot where Bling!, one of the female students at the Jean Grey School, once tried to put the moves on Jubilee.
  • When Patsy Walker's magic sneezes put her in a Grandpa Munster costume, America Chavez immediately started checking her out.
• Everybody Hates Mathematics: Justified — turns out she has dyscalculia, the mathematical equivalent of dyslexia.
• Fan Nickname: Boobilie/Boobilee, Wondra Bra. The Decimation event making her lose her superpowers seemingly granted her the Most Common Superpower in exchange by the time she appeared in the latest New Warriors revamp as "Wondra", hence the name.
  • Vampilee—Vampire Jubilee, her post-Wondra status quo.
• Fashion Dissonance: She is easily one of the most unmistakably 90s characters of the team with her yellow trench coat being considered gloriously tacky nowadays. Thanks to her inclusion in the immensely popular X-Men: The Animated Series (despite only being a relatively new member in the comics at the time) she gained enough of fanbase to survive past the decade, although modern comics generally give her less garish outfits.
• Femme Fatalons: As a vampire, she has claws.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Gambit introduced Jubilee to X-23 thinking she could help Laura overcome her issues. Laura immediately attacked Jubilee thinking she was an enemy and was jealous of how Wolverine treated her. However, they eventually bonded over their shared issues with controlling their bloodlust.
• First-Name Ultimatum: Other characters tend to do this to her when they are getting frustrated with her behavior.
  Jubilee: Why does everyone say my name like it means "shut up"?
• Flight: She was able to fly when she was a vampire.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: As a vampire she suffered from bloodlust but has learned to cope with it.
• Genius Ditz: A lazy academic underachiever who serves as the team strategist.
  • "They probably know we're coming, right? So we gotta do what they think we won't do. They know we know where they are. We know they know we know that. So since they know we know what they probably know, we know what to do."
  • This is sometimes justified by saying she has dyscalculia, which would naturally make it difficult to succeed academically.
• Genki Girl: Although she can be serious when the situation calls for it, Jubilee's bubbly and carefree demeanor stands in stark contrast to Laura's stoicism.
• Girl's Night Out Episode:
  • In a 1989 Uncanny X-Men comic, the female X-Men, namely Storm, Psylocke, Dazzler, and Rogue (whose body is taken over by Ms. Marvel Carol Danvers]]' personality) all teleport for a day of shopping to a Los Angeles mall. Unbeknownst to them, a young mutant runaway named Jubilee follows them back through the portal to their hideout in Australia.
  • X-23 and Jubilee have one in the former's self-titled series by Marjorie Liu. Jubilee takes Laura out clubbing after her breakup with Hellion, and the night ends with Laura on a bloody rampage tearing apart a sex trafficking ring operated by members of her ex-pimp's former gang.
• Glory Days: Did you know she was an X-Man? She never let her Generation X teammates forget it.
• Good Parents: Jubilee, despite her enduring 90s punk attitude, is a loving adoptive mother to her human infant son Shogo and fiercely coddles him and fiercely kicks the ass of anyone who threatens him.
• Hand Blast: Jubilee can shoot pyrotechnic energy plasmoids, or "fireworks" as she calls them, from her hands.
• Having a Blast: Jubilee has the potential to detonate matter at a subatomic level, which in theory is the equivalent of a nuclear fusion bomb. The reason she doesn't use this power often because of her refusal to kill.
• Healing Factor: Before Wolverine lost his healing factor, Jubilee received a regular supply of Wolverine's blood to ingest which granted her certain immunities including Regenerative Healing Factor.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: What Jubilee's power set really is, on the very rare occasions when she cuts loose and used them to their full potential. See Person of Mass Destruction below.
• Hidden Depths: She actually turns out, surprisingly, to be a very good mother to Shogo.
• Honor Before Reason: She takes the superheroic code against killing to a foolish extreme in one story. While escaping from Operation: Zero Tolerance (who had been torturing her for days), she seriously injured one of the guards — and broke off her escape to perform CPR on him.
  Jubilee: You wanna go around killing people? That's your choice. But don't think for a fraction of a second you're gonna make a murderer outta me.
  • Jubilee may have justification for her stance. In an earlier issue of Wolverine, Logan talked her out of killing the thugs who murdered her parents, asking her if she'd like to sit up at night with him talking to all the people he'd killed himself. She took it to heart, and would view killing someone as a betrayal of Logan.

I-Z

• I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Jubilee would likely show nothing but hate for Xarus if he ever showed up again, seeing as he only converted her to use her as bait for Wolverine. (Currently, Xarus is presumed dead, but honestly, that's rarely anything but a minor inconvenience for the X-Men or their enemies.)
• Iconic Outfit: Her bright yellow trench coat and pink sunglasses.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Played straight in one issue of Wolverine's self-titled comic, when confronting Reno and Molokai, hitmen who had murdered Jubilee's parents. Jubilee settles for a Groin Attack on both of them.

  Wolverine: Heck, they killed your parents. It's a good killin', ain't it? Ain't it?
  Jubilee: You kill people! You've killed so many, and...
  Wolverine: Yeah. You wanna sit up some night with me and talk to all of 'em?

  • In a later issue of Generation X, Jubilee learns that the grandfather of one of her classmates ordered the killing of her parents, and goes after him. The rest of the team go after her, prepared to cite this trope at her, when they discover that she never intended to kill the guy.
  Synch: We were afraid that, hanging with Wolverine, you would have wanted to...
  Jubilee: You guys don't get it, do you? It's because of Wolverine that I won't kill.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Wolverine, being one of his many foster daughters.
• Kid-Appeal Character: Particularly in the 90s: young, fun-loving, sarcastic, one of Wolverine's many sidekicks, and (appropriately) known for wearing a lot of yellow.
• Kid Hero All Grown-Up: When Kitty Pryde grew up and became too old to tag along with Wolvie, Jubilee became his new sidekick. She eventually grew up and was replaced by either Armor or X-23, depending on the series.
• Kid Sidekick: She started out as a sidekick of Wolverine, before joining Generation X.
• Kryptonite-Proof Suit: When she became a vampire, she used a special medallion to protect her from the sun.
• "L" Is for "Dyslexia": She has dyscalculia.
• Lady Looks Like a Dude: She has been hit with this a few times over the years, much to her chagrin. Notable incidents include when she had to go undercover at a boat party with Psylocke and the Black Widow. They went as partygoers in slinky dresses; Jubilee was disguised as a delivery boy. A little while later, on a visit to the Savage Land, she encountered a local tribe of dinosaur riders; after she defeated one of them in combat, they welcomed her as a male warrior and attempted to marry her to one of their young women.
• The Lancer: To Night Thrasher, after she joined the New Warriors.
• Legacy Character: She is technically the second to have the name and the power set. She seems to be a "we wish we could use that character but can't, so let's make a new one" case: the first Jubilee was part of the Bratpack, a group of kids brainwashed, empowered, and turned into adults by Mojo. They haven't been seen since pulling the plug on the plan reverted them to normal kids and the de-aged Captain Britain (and some others) to his true adult self. Some time later, the X-Men encounter an unrelated girl in a mall with the same powers and code name, and she even introduces herself similarly. The original one, while using her 'fireworks' to attack, said her name was Jubilee, whose every move is a celebration. The more familiar one, while using her 'fireworks' to show off, said her name was Jubilee because with her, every day is a celebration.
  • The code name for the more familiar one is also justified in that her full name is Jubilation Lee, and Jubilee happens to be her nickname.
• Less Embarrassing Term: Jean Grey once asked Jubilee if she still has nightmares. Jubilee responds that nightmares are for babies; she has "traumatic evening episodes".
• Lethal Harmless Powers: She could do so much more with her power, but she's afraid of killing someone.
  • The first time she did cut loose with her powers (because she thought Wolverine was dead) she blew up half of The Mandarin's castle!
    "Did I just do that? And, like, do I want to do it again?"
  • She blows up Proudstar Hall in order to defeat Emplate.
  • Her powers tend to be more destructive when she's emotional and unable to focus and control her abilities as well as usual. She's used this to her advantage before. In Generation X, Emma Frost states that Jubes has the potential to detonate matter at a sub-atomic level, which she actually does in X-Terminators (2022), after being excited at finally having a big enough space to do it in.
• Little Miss Snarker: Anyone who can sass Emma Frost definitely qualifies as this.
• Look Behind You: She uses this trick to sire Wolverine in the X-Men story arc Curse of the Mutants.
• Mama Bear: When her adoptive son Shogo is threatened; while she can control her vampiric bloodlust most of the time, this proves nearly an exception, and Wolverine, of all people, has to reason with her. Do not take her son Shogo!◊
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Jubilee's foremost concern during Laura's solo series is getting her to lighten up and actually enjoy life. Whether that means dragging her out shopping at an expensive Paris boutique, hitting up the nightclubs in New York City, or base jumping sans-parachute off the Eifle Tower.
• Melting-Pot Nomenclature: Jubilation Lee (second-generation Chinese-American): English given name, Chinese family name.
• Most Common Superpower: A "superpower" that appeared◊ when she was drawn by Paco Medina in New Warriors. She was flat chested before. Given that averagely endowed X-23 received a similar makeover from Medina in New XMen, it verges on outright Author Appeal.
• The Münchausen: She expected her experience to give her more clout when she was transferred to Generation X. It didn't take long for her new companions to grow tired of it and refuse to hear anything starting with the words "When I was with the X-Men..."
• Murder by Mistake: Her parents were mistakenly killed by hitmen who had actually been sent after their neighbors, who were also named Lee. This was later retconned as merely being Jubilee's inference in an issue of Wolverine. A later issue of Generation X reveals that the murder of her parents was quite deliberate, with the grandfather of one of Jubilee's current classmates being responsible.
• Must Make Her Laugh: A gender-flipped version. She made it her mission to get Bishop to lighten up. Played straighter with X-23, with Jubilee out to get Laura to lighten up and start enjoying her life.
• Naïve Newcomer: She started as one.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: One Wolverine comic involves Jubilee going back in time. Her past self temporarily disappears.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: She has the dubious honor of reaching adulthood three times. When introduced she was fifteen-year-old in 1989, but aged down to thirteen when she was added to the cast of the Generation X title. When Generation X ended she reached adulthood, the first time, and moved out to Los Angeles to start a film career. She later joined X-Corps and The X-Men along with her former teammate, and best friend, Husk. Husk at the time was in a relationship with Angel with was a source of Squick for readers. Marvel tried to placate fans by stating that Husk was 18. However, as Husk was canonically two years older than Jubes, this knocked her down to sixteen. This was confirmed in her short-lived self-titled series in 2004. After M-Day she became an adult again as well as a political activist ^note  This wasn't outright stated, but heavily implied as minors can't rent an apartment, obtain a business license or operate a halfway house without being emancipated or parental consent. Part of the reason why she goes to live with her "aunt" in the 2004 series is she can't legally live on her own. However, this turn was widely hated and ignored by later writers. However, everything was ignored and in her 2011 miniseries was said to be seventeen. Making her a minor again...Sharp-eyed readers have observed that this means that, due to other screwing around with the continuity of the X-Men comics, Jubilee is now younger than Pixie, who was the youngest of the New X-Men when introduced in 2004. Furthermore, the subject of the 2011 miniseries was Jubilee having come to terms with her new vampirism and thus never aging again, even though under Marvel's officially-stated time system says she should have been 22.^note Marvel officially says that 3 years real time is 1 year in the Marvel Universe. In practice, this example is more of a rule than an exception. Despite her vampirism, the character did turn 18, but due to said vampirism, she continued to functionally still be a minor. However, her vampirism was eventually cured and she was allowed to age again, mostly so she could legally adopt Shogo. ^note  minors can't legally adopt in the United States. That said Vague Age is enforced as she should be in her mid-twenties, but as a result of being a vampire for a decade looks 18-19.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Jubilee and Laura realize they have much in common, with X-23 having to struggle with finding herself and the trigger scent and Jubilee struggling to control her newfound bloodlust. They get along really well though.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: She is pretty much always known by her nickname. Wolverine, who is basically her second dad, is the only one who’s called her by real name Jubilation and gotten away with it.
• One Super One Powerset: She was one of the many mutants depowered by the Decimation event in 2006, and lost her original power set of pyrotechnic energy blasts. She returned as a tech-based hero named Wondra who worked with the New Warriors, and then in 2010 she became (of all things) a Vampire in the Curse of the Mutants storyline that lasted a good eight years. Then, at the beginning of 2018, her original power set and mutant status were restored. Many here were happy with it, mainly because turning her into a vampire was mostly done to cash in on the Twilight fad more than anything else and it made little sense to keep her the same after said series faded from public consciousness.
• Only One Me Allowed Right Now: This happened to Jubilee in an issue of Wolverine. In her youth, there was an incident where she was in a car with her friends, who suddenly asked her why she momentarily disappeared into thin air. Not remembering doing so, she dismisses it as her friends acting crazy. Years later, she briefly falls into the time portal belonging to Gateway, appearing in her parents' house, at the exact same time she "disappeared" in her friends' car. It is explained that two of her couldn't exist at the same point in time, so her younger self simply vanished until the older version returned to the present.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Prior to getting her powers back Jubilee had the standard vampire package of fangs, nigh-uncontrollable bloodlust, eternal youth, superhuman strength, durability, and agility, the ability to transform into mist, and a strong aversion to sunlight.
• Outdated Outfit: Jubilee is the most extreme example of this that comes to mind. Although semi-possible as an outfit that a young girl would think is "cool" in the 1980s, the bright yellow trench coat and wrap-around sunglasses became just plain painful as the '90s continued. She did have a more modern costume during her time with the New Warriors.
• Out of Focus: Like many characters born in the '90s, from time to time since the early-2000s.
  • In the movies, it's the thing she's most known for, because every film, her fans get excited that she's actually going to do something (especially when she gets recast)... and it always always always turns out that that one shot from the trailer that made her look important is her only scene, as an extra who doesn't say or do anything. And then it turns out she was intended to do more but her scenes were deleted. (However, the scenes were just her getting to say a few lines to the leads, nothing that would involve her in the plot — expendable enough to be the first thing to hit the cutting room floor to bring down the runtime.)
  • She was a member of Excalibur for a while but her characterization seemed to mostly be her worrying over Shogo, and she's shown to be leaving the team the first chance she gets in the Knights of X storyline (and meanwhile Shogo gets a big chunk of the limelight).
• Parental Substitute: Logan is like a second father to her and it's so close that it's often easy to forget he's not her actual dad.
• Personality Powers: A cute, bubbly party girl with the ability to shoot fireworks (when she still had that power).
• Person of Mass Destruction: On the surface, her fireworks seem kind of useless, but then you remember she's generating plasma. Emma Frost once stated that should Jubilee exercise her powers to their fullest potential, she could detonate matter at the sub-atomic level, making Jubilee a walking fusion bomb. It was only Jubilee's own fear of hurting someone that led her to hold back and not utilize them to their full extent — and when she eventually found herself in a situation where collateral damage wasn't a concern, she was able to completely destroy the Collector's city-sized spaceship in a single nuclear-sized explosion.
• Plucky Girl: Life hasn't been kind to poor Jubilee yet she's arguably one of the most upbeat and optimistic X-Men in spite of it.
• Powered Armor: She started wearing powered armor to compensate for her lost abilities in New Warriors.
• Power Incontinence: She can lose control of her powers if she's angry. (In fact, she once used this to her advantage when she and the rest of Generation X were being held hostage by the mutant criminal Emplate. She insulted him to the point that he was so angry, he used his powers to drain a large portion of her life energy, gaining her powers in the process... which he could not control, because he was so angry. Suffice to say it turned the situation around.)
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Sabretooth once had Jubilee pinned and asked if she had any last words. Her response was too tiny to read, even with a magnifying glass...
  Sabretooth: Wussat? Ya gotta beg louder!
  Jubilee: Yu-yeah sure... I s-said... "EAT HOT PLASMA BURSTS"!
• Promotion to Parent: By virtue of finding an orphaned infant in Europe that she's now taking care of and names Shogo. She didn't even object to Sublime calling him her son and further issues show that she considers herself to be his mother.
• Race Lift: Infamously done in the 1996 Generation X film. Since neither the director nor the writer read the comics, they weren't aware Jubilee was Asian. As a result, they assumed she was white and cast a Caucasian actor for the role. Fans were not pleased.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: If she loses control of her bloodlust her eyes glow red.
• Re-Power: Jubilee, who originally had the power to produce explosive balls of light, gained super strength through advanced technology. After her stint as a New Warrior, Jubilee became a vampire and has now gained superstrength and other vampire powers.
• Rollerblade Good: In her early appearances, she was a mall rat who got around on rollerblades.
• Rummage Sale Reject: Jubilee's costumes, before she got depowered, were probably inspired by the anime look, but she's the comic-book example that jumps out as having WAY too many accessories. Her most infamous attire is a bright yellow trench coat, huge hot pink wrap-around glasses, large, round earrings with her name on them, and what looks like giant dishwashing gloves, and this was worn over shorts and a red shirt. Given that she debuted in The '80s... Word of God is that the outfit was deliberately designed to look like a Robin costume made out of actual clothing. Wonderfully Lampshaded in the Marvel vs DC Crossover: Robin appears out of nowhere in front of Jubilee and she just replies (paraphrasing) "Nice outfit." They end up as potential love interests before battling.
• Sarcastic Devotee: Towards Wolverine, for a while in the '90s.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: The usual sound effect for Jubilee's fireworks was "Paf." There was one occasion when she cast some of them to provide light in a dark area, saying, "Let me 'Paf' some light on the subject!"
• Ship Tease: She's had this with Chamber for a while, and the two became a couple in Generation X.
• Shout-Out: She originally wore the yellow trenchcoat with a red shirt and green shorts. Anyone who didn't think "Robin" never read classic Batman.
  • This was taken to the logical conclusion in the Amalgam Universe: she becomes Sparrow, sidekick to Dark Claw (Batman and Wolverine merged).
• Special Person, Normal Name: Jubilee's "codename" is actually just her childhood nickname. But then, when your parents named you "Jubilation", what can you do?
• Staking the Loved One: Defied in X-Men, where the team flat out rejected this as an option after Jubilee was turned, although Blade tried to convince them there wasn't any other. She handled herself okay until she was eventually cured.
• Status Quo Is God: It took thirteen years, but she finally got her original powers back and was cured of her vampirism by Quentin Quire in Generation X #86.
• Story-Breaker Power: Having long been theorized by Emma to be able to detonate matter at a subatomic level, Jubilee had always had the ability to effectively become a nuclear bomb but never used it due to the overwhelming damage it would cause to the surrounding area. She was finally able to use it in X-Terminators #5 when aboard a ship in isolated space with the only other occupant being The Collector, and Magik able to safely bring her back to Earth. The only damage it did to herself was burning off her clothes and hair.
• Street Urchin: After the murder of her parents. She spent a few years living on the streets of L.A., doing fireworks shows with her abilities, before being picked up by the X-Men when the X-women at the time (Dazzler, Rogue, Storm and Psylocke) went for a shopping spree in a L.A. mall.
• Super-Cute Superpowers: Her powers have been described as "sparkles" or "fireworks". When she gets good and pissed they can make explosions, making her an energy-blaster to rival Cyclops. They still look like cute fireworks.
• Supernaturally Young Parent: Finds and adopts a baby in Europe despite (permanently, due to being a vampire at the time) being 17.
• Sword over Head: Jubilee faced this choice after she hunted down the men who killed her parents. In a slight variation, Wolverine — the only witness — told her exactly how she could use her powers to make the deaths look like natural causes. She let them live, of course.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Jubilee is even more tomboyish than Rogue but she's more girly than she lets on, having some A-Cup Angst, and is pretty fashion conscious. Storm notes amused that despite her being bored at the wedding Jubilee was still suspiciously quick to line up for the aforementioned bouquet throwing and was very ticked off when Rogue "cheated".
• Totally Radical: In the 1980's and 1990's, She was guilty of this just about anytime she spoke. She even says "totally like radical" in Uncanny X-Men #247. It's so much worse in Generation X, where pretty much all the teens on the team were guilty of speaking this way.
• Vague Age: Jubilee's age has frankly been a roller-coaster due to her being a Replacement Goldfish for Kitty Pryde as Wolverine's Kid Sidekick. As a result, she inherited the editorial staff's unwillingness to age her and move her on from that role. When she was introduced she was 13 and seemed to bob between 13-15 depending on the artist. However, when she was placed in Generation X, she went Out of Focus and was separated from her role as a Wolverine's sidekick. This had the effect of freeing her from the editorial time vortex and she aged with the rest of the group. When the series ended her age varied depending on the book she was in. In back-up stories and in non Uncanny X-Men books she was written as an adult. However, during Chuck Austin's run in the early to mid 2000 she was 17-19. Jubilee was written to be twoish years younger than Husk, who was 19 during Austen's run but 13-15 during Generation X. However, in her 2005 solo series she was back down to 15. She seemed to hit mid-twenties right around when the editorial staff decided to mix vampires in with X-Men to capitalize on the popularity of Twilight. However, the editorial staff didn't know her age and decided for the 2010-2013 series that she was 17. As a result, she was either de-aged or aged up to seventeen, and stuck there until recently. Partly justified because she got turned into a vampire at age 17, and spent several years at that age; long enough for even the Academy X generation to pass her!^note All are roughly the same age as X-23, who is described as 20 years old as of 2018.
  • Finally, even other writers seemed to forget Vampires can't age, and as such so she seemed to age into adulthood again over the course of the 2010's. Only for later writers to drop her back down to 17, and subsequent writers treating her as an adult.
  • Current writers seemed to have recognized this error but can't seem to decide her age and some ether go with mid twenties like the rest of Generation X or have her still as a teenager. She is effectively like the Power Pack kids (either they are all still kids or all teenagers/adults) depending on what comic they are featured in.
• Vampire Refugee: Jubilee is the most recent example of the Trope, although Wolverine, Emma Frost, and Cyclops have not given up on the possibility that she can be cured. She's been cured.
• Vitriolic Best Buds:
  • She and Boom Boom did NOT get along when they had to work together in X-Tinction Agenda, barely being able to put their animosity aside. This has mellowed considerably and with the two becoming this. They now hang out as friends but still mock each other even when they are out in danger and fighting vampires in X-Terminators.
  • She and X-23 didn't get off on the right foot: when she first arrived in Paris, Laura actually almost took Jubilee's head off, reacting almost instinctively as if Jubilee was a threat, and was jealous of Logan's affectionate behaviour towards Jubilee in contrast to his standoffish attitude towards her. It took a little time for Laura to warm up to her.
• Walking Techbane: Happens in the '90s X-Men cartoon.
• Weakened by the Light: Downplayed. Thanks to the healing factor from Wolverine's blood she regularly ingests, Jubilee can withstand a small amount of sunlight every day. However, too much sunlight can be toxic to her much like other vampires.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?:
  • A very long-standing criticism of Jubilee is how silly and pointless her "fireworks" appear to be on the surface, especially when there are other seemingly far more powerful mutants on the team. Her ability to shoot firework-like plasmoids from her hands rarely ever proved useful. Sure, they kinda burned like fireworks, but at the most they were only good as a signal flare or as a quick distraction. Also, since birth, her brain has always generated a natural psionic shield, which made her naturally invisible to telepaths unless they knew exactly what to look for when searching for her. She eventually lost her firework powers as a result of the M-Day and left the X-Men. As a member of the New Warriors, she used Powered Armor to give her super strength. This made her rather useful and effective in combat, but she eventually gave that up just to move on with her life. She would later be infected by a virus that turned her into a vampire. This gave her all the strengths and weaknesses typical to vampires: Enhanced strength, agility, speed, stamina, reflexes, fangs and claws, and the ability to turn into mist. By regularly feeding off Wolverine's blood, she temporarily gained his healing factor and could withstand limited amounts of sunlight. Whether she can use her fireworks again, after the Scarlet Witch has been brought back from exile and started to rectify what she did, is yet to be seen, though.
    • Ironically enough, Jubilee's original powers were actually a subversion: she limited herself to only using the fireworks because her full power was far more destructive, and she feared hurting someone with it. And it's a good thing, too, because if she ever truly cut loose the results could be apocalyptic. Emma Frost once stated that had she ever utilized them to their full potential, she could detonate matter at the sub atomic level. This made Jubilee a walking fission bomb.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Jubilee was a particularly extreme example. Normally she's so firmly opposed to killing that she once abandoned an escape attempt — effectively giving herself up for another round of torture — in order to perform CPR on a random mook she had injured. Then during Marvel's Secret Invasion crossover, she was killing Skrulls without even blinking. It was pointed out in New Warriors that Jubilee's personality had radically shifted. Never got around to why before that one ended though.
• What the Hell, Hero?: To Donyell in New Warriors, who was a reckless leader who left some of his teammates behind fighting against the Machinesmith.
• Willfully Weak: She has the power to cause explosions. The main limitation on her powers is that she really doesn't want to harm anybody; as such, she mostly uses her powers to create flash-bang effects. Quite aside from her potential for mass destruction on a nuclear scale, it's been shown that, if she wanted to, she could set off a small explosion inside someone's skull; luckily, she really doesn't want to. She's only ever done this to a Prime Sentinel, but it can be safely assumed that most humans would not survive it.
• Your Head Asplode: How Nimrod kills her.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: One issue of Generation X had the old wives' tale quoted at the start before the team had a slasher movie marathon. The rest of the issue consists of Jubilee in a semi-lucid dream trying to wake up before combinations of movie killers and villains she'd faced in her adventures (ex. Sabretooth with Freddy Krueger's outfit) killed her teammates.
• You Fight Like a Cow: Can give Spidey a run for his money. In one issue of Generation X, she actually defeats Emplate entirely by taunting him.

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