Jubilee is one of the X-Men characters that receives an unbelievable amount of hatred from fans, but I think she’s actually a decent character. There is much more to this character than her original dated costume and her lame super power.
Her back story is fairly unremarkable. Jubilee was just like any teenage girl in pop culture at the time; it was 1989 and meant that she would be spending all of her time at a shopping mall. After her affluent parents were murdered, she wound up on the streets and eventually found herself becoming involved with the X-Men once her powers surfaced.
It’s amazing really when you think about how brave a character she is. She pretty much threw herself into the X-Men, as that dangerous life style was instantly safer then being a mutant teenager on the run. I know she got some sort of inheritance from her parents, but that didn’t happen for a while (I wonder if that was ever resolved). And her power, which is pretty much to shoot off plasma fireworks around her isn’t necessarily the best thing to counteract someone in a fight. That said, Jubilee always gets herself involved in the action.
I also really like that over the last twenty years or so how Jubilee has grown as a character. She has matured and is much more than the bratty youngster palling around the X-Mansion. Some of her best scenes have been with Wolverine, who serves as a father figure to her. This sense of family is continued, as Jubilee has taken it upon herself to be a mentor to X-23, Wolverine’s teenaged female clone.
Her maturity has also been also shown in many different ways, including her leadership role in Generation X and how she has handled not only losing her powers as a result of M-Day but becoming a vampire.
Bet you didn’t think Jubilee was this cool? In closing, there’s one thing we can do…listen to this song that pays tribute to our favorite firework shooting X-Man. Take it away Katy!
Ridiculously Awesome 
Jubilee’s great. She joined the team by saving Wolverine from the Reavers, and dragged his ass around while he recovered from being crucified. She’s got a lot of courage. And she’s fun. And people mock her powers, but she’s blown up buildings when she’s let loose, and she could easily blow up someone’s head. She always held back because she didn’t really want to hurt anyone. Her powers only looked so weak because of how compassionate she was.
She was the Kitty Pryde of the ’90s, and while I’ll always prefer Kitty (despite actually growing up with Jubilee – I was very much a child of the ’90s), Jubilee’s still a great character.
And now she’s raising a baby, and being utterly wonderful. Brian Wood’s doing great work with her in X-Men.
Yeah…I always liked Kitty more.