Previously on Wolverine and the X-Men, Logan has finally decided to be productive with his students instead of being away full time working with The Avengers, or on his lone adventures he is helping the faculty. His first job? Taking the ‘troubled’ students on a mini excursion to The Savage Land to do a team building exercise. Things go wrong and as Wolverine tries to catch up to them to prevent any actual problems from breaking out he’s attacked by his brother, Dog.

Yes, in the current origin story line Wolverine did have family. His family wasn’t Sabertooth or any of the random origin stories he’s had but a half brother named Dog who he thought had died over 100 years ago. Yes, his actual name was Dog.

This issue is really more of an origin story for Dog instead of working on whatever the students are up to. In fact the entire thing is a mixture of flashbacks to a narration of Dog to Wolverine on how we came to be where we are today.

Dog was treated as such by his father who was a drunk womanizer. Eventually through how he treated his son, he named him the same thing. Being the womanizer he was he ended up sleeping with the wife of the owner of the farmhouse he worked on. The child ended up being Wolverine who when he found out, killed both of his natural parents in a feral rage.

It appears that when Wolverine killed their father, Dog had vowed to teach him a lesson for his actions. He became a skilled hunter as it came natural to him and eventually heard of a wolf boy who was running around the countryside with claws coming out of his hands. Dog knew that this had to be his half brother and immediately set himself upon a quest to track down his sibling.

He even managed to find Wolverine but, things didn’t work out quite as he had planned. He thought he had tracked Wolverine to his lair and ended up stumbling into an abandoned mine that just happened to hold time diamonds! Yes time diamonds who take the owner through space and time to wherever they either want, or need to be. That’s how it and all of Dog’s advanced tech are explained. It also explains how he had a conversation with himself right before this entire ordeal began.

Interestingly enough, Dog isn’t completely cast as the villain in this issue. He tries to make good points that Wolverine’s body count is larger then almost anyone else’s on the planet. Mix in the view that he hasn’t found a future yet where Logan’s school is successful at anything short of ruining the lives of his students and he almost comes forth with a valid case for what he wants to do.

What could this crazy half brother of Wolverine actually want? Well to have the students become his so he can show them how to properly grow up. Clearly that’s going to be a great idea.

With the tale not being directly set in The Savage Land, it still maintained an interesting twist on Dog’s origin and I was really getting into this issue. Sadly I think we’re going to go back to my unhappiness of where this plot line is taking place next time around but for the meantime, this one was a fun read that I was drawn into in spite of myself.

Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Ramon Perez