Vampires: The Marvel Undead #1
Dec 2011
Marvel has had no shortage whatsoever of vampire characters and stories dating back at least forty years, including the late Gene Colan’s Tomb of Dracula series and the Blade series which spun out three very successful movies. The recent Curse of the Mutants Saga (2010-2011) brought vampires right back into the mainstream Marvel universe, so to tie all that together while capitalizing on popular culture’s vampire craze, Marvel published another Official Handbook! Containing reprinted entries from previous handbooks, new entries, new illustrations and some updates for major characters, this book has everything you’ve always wanted to know about Marvel’s vampires. Northstar appears in Jubilee’s entry in an inset to the main illustration.
At the very beginning of the Curse of the Mutants Saga, Jubilee became infected with a vampire pathogen, and has been a vampire ever since. Her entry is a single page character update and has a new illustration by Steve Kurth. Another image of her is inset into the upper right – taken from the cover of Nation X #2 which features Northstar in the background.
This cover art was originally published in the first issue of the Nation X anthology series as a preview, where we first saw the white belt version of Northstar’s costume. Nation X #2 contains an 8pp story by Tim Fish featuring Northstar and his then-boyfriend Kyle. At the time, that issue was framed as a light-hearted and playful look into Northstar’s relationship with Kyle but would later turn out to be a significant building block of an important narrative leading up to their eventual engagement (announced today, in fact!) and marriage in the Astonishing X-Men title.
Unfortunately, all you can see of Northstar in the little inset is his jaw and his shoulder blade, so here is a much better view taken from the original cover art of Nation X #2.
May 23, 2012 at 11:34 am |
Ah, this was actually VERY helpful! I have this comic, but couldn’t for the life of me figure out WHY. I guess I didn’t notice the Northstar appearance in that picture when i read through it. That explains a lot; thanx!