Tomb of Apocalypse #1 Promises a Strong Jubliee Story
In the latest thinly veiled Marvel Rivals synergy book, Jubilee and Wolverine are dragged into a quest deep into the Tomb of Apocalypse, a mysterious ancient ruin filled with dark secrets and celestial technology. Racing mercenaries with an agenda of their own, the two X-Men will have to survive the tomb and its inhabitants, and recover Apocalypse’s technology first, but they may not be the only ones sent by the First Mutant to recover it.
Jubilee is a character that no one has known what to do with since the 90s. She’s been a vampire, had a kid, that kid has turned into a dragon, and then that’s all been abandoned. She’s the very definition of throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, and so far nothing has. The only time Jubilee has felt like she belonged was Christina Strain’s much too brief Generation X relaunch, which was nearly a decade ago at this point. Tomb of Apocalypse digs into this aspect of the character, with Jubilee feeling lost and purposeless, stuck as the perennial kid of the group, even with a bunch of literal children on her team.
Jubilee’s insecurity around her place on the X-Men is key to her characterisation in this book, which finds her uncertain, over-eager to prove herself, and overly headstrong as she charges into scenarios she’s not quite prepared for. It may not be the boldest take on the character, and it’s hard not to treat it as at least a little bit a criticism of Gail Simone’s Uncanny X-Men, in which Jubilee has done literally nothing in the past 30-something issues, but it certainly fits considering her recent treatment. I can only hope that whatever fate awaits Jubilee at the end of this book is something better than returning to the same X-Men team more self assured.
To Ashley Allen‘s credit, while Jubilee having to prove herself is familiar ground, she avoids the mistake of her having to prove herself to others. Joined on her quest by Wolverine, he has no doubts about Jubilee’s abilities and trusts her completely, more confused by her bullish behaviour than angry. Sure, he calls her “kid”, but only in the familial, endearing way that Wolverine does to all the kids he’s adopted over the years, which only serves to annoy Jubilee further. There’s no character better to bounce off of Jubilee as she goes through this journey of self discovery than Wolverine.
Despite strong characterisation of the protagonists, Tomb of Apocalypse struggles a little with its pacing. Despite the mysterious device mistakenly dragging Jubilee into the quest for Apocalypse tomb in the first few pages, we spend the majority of the issue in generic fights with nameless goons, later mentioned to be Hydra. The interesting part of the book is the tomb itself, but it just takes too long to get there. Back to Hydra, this lack of a clear antagonist undercuts the urgency of the situation and leaves the issue feeling a little underwhelming. Apocalypse himself is a little lacking in this issue too. Dominico Carbone does great work in this issue but his Apocalypse looks weirdly skinny which leaves him lacking his usual threatening aura. His dynamic with Jubilee is strange, lacking the familiarity they should have considering their time together on Krakoa as part of Excalibur.
While Tomb of Apocalypse promises to be a really strong, much needed Jubilee story, the first issue is a slow start with a lot of potential. With the addition of Rictor and Shatterstar, I have a lot of hope for this series delivering some strong character work, but the plot has yet to grab me and the pacing is a little too slow.
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