WOLVERINE #74 – October 1993

Jubilee’s Revenge

Credits: Larry Hama (writer), Jim Fern (pencils), Art Nichols (inks), Pat Brosseau (letters), Marie Javins (colors)

Summary

Wolverine and Jubilee try to escape the Ant Hill, damaging one Sentinel in the process. Another Sentinel tries to protect what’s left of him before his own circuits overload. Jubilee senses that the Sentinel is afraid to die and can’t bring herself to kill it, even if it is a robot. Sentinel 3.14159, the robot brought to life by Spiral’s technology, is fascinated by Jubilee’s empathy for a robot. The Sentinel decides to stop his plan to ignite a solar flare and “create whole new algorithms” to study human emotions. He says this will take “2137.23 years”. Jubilee asks him to send them through Gateway’s warp to Los Angeles. She confronts her parents’ killers, but can’t bring herself to kill them.

Continuity Notes

Wolverine says that Jubilee can use her firecracker powers to kill someone by hitting them in the cerebral cortex and causing a stroke.

Review

It’s hard to say anything about this issue without first mentioning Jim Fern’s bizarre interpretation of Wolverine. His renditions of the Sentinels and Jubilee aren’t that great, either, but I can’t begin to describe how ugly his Wolverine is. If you think the cover’s horrible, the interiors are even worse. It’s hard to believe that this is the same artist who did a solid job on an earlier X-Factor issue, so I’ll chalk this up to either deadlines or bad inking. This is, what, the sixth issue of Wolverine with subpar artwork? It’s hard to believe that Marvel couldn’t have found better artists for one of their best-selling titles. All of these issues have been action-heavy stories that really need strong visuals to work, making this even more frustrating. I like the conversation between Wolverine and Jubilee on the last page, and it is nice to see at least one comic in this era preach against revenge and senseless death, but it’s not enough to save a weak issue.