Warning! Spoilers for Excalibur #9 below!
The X-Men's Jubilee has been a lot of things: a mutant, a mallrat, a vampire, and most recently, a mother. Her mutant ability to create bright, firework-like explosions from her hands tends to be used as a distraction tactic while heavy hitters like Storm and Wolverine deal out actual damage. But Jubilee's power is far from harmless; she simply doesn't reach for the upper limits of her explosive potential. In the newly-released Excalibur #9, readers finally get to see just what happens when the colorful mutant lets loose -and the results are spectacular.
Jubilee is best known to many superhero fans from her time in the 1990s cartoon X-Men: The Animated Series. Jubilation Lee (Jubilee's full name, in the same creative space as Black Bolt of the Inhumans being born Blackagar Boltagon) was treated as a perky sidekick, even while her comics counterpart was a human flash grenade blasting bad guys into unconsciousness. Emma Frost revealed that Jubilee's light and sound powers could create nuclear fission if she pushed them enough, a judgment that left Jubilee wary of putting too much energy into her reactions. On the new mutant nation Krakoa, she lost in arena combat to Dazzler, a fight that would likely have gone differently if Jubilee had been pushed to fight seriously.
In Excalibur #9, Jubilee gets just that push. The X-Men's magic team makes passage to the Starlight Citadel, a floating castle in a magical dimension that once housed the Captain Britain Corps. Unfortunately for the new Captain Britain, a new order has taken up residency, and they consider her and her friends to be intruders. When Excalibur approaches the Citadel and makes camp nearby, the White Priestesses (as the new occupants call themselves) teleport in and attack. The first strike is a gigantic arrow made of moonlight which punctures the wing of Excalibur's dragon... a magical creature which happens to be Jubilee's son Shogo transformed by magic.
Jubilee is furious. She's taken her son to battle before, but this is the first time someone has been powerful enough to hurt him. When Jubilee wants to talk to her child in his dragon form, she asks the telepathic Captain Britain to relay messages to and from him. This time, the protective mother has one message for her ailing son: "Tell him not to look up at Mommy." Then she leaps into the air and creates a series of energy orbs that rain down like sorbet-tinted cluster bombs. The result shocks the rest of the team; it's extremely destructive but also unmistakably Jubilee's powers at work.
What does this mean for Jubilee and the rest of the team going forward? This may be the new normal for her, like Ricter's druidic connections. It may also be a brief lapse in Jubilee's restraint that she hopes never to require again. Either way, the White Priestesses know to fear her. If they go after her, they may come away with ringing ears... but if they harm her son, the last thing they'll see is a 90s-style yellow-orange color gradient.
Excalibur #9 is on sale from your local comics shop and digital providers now.