Last time on ‘Wolverine and the X-Men’, we saw that Wolverine was deciding to take the worst of his class to the Savage Land to try to turn his troublemakers into a solid team. At the very least he was hoping he could either break them of some of their bad habits or get them in line. These students all have potential to be great leaders, or the next Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The teachers at the Jean Grey School would all like them to fall into the first category.

The problem is that Dog, Wolverine’s older time travelling brother, decided to show up and ruin the party. I’m not a huge fan of The Savage Land, and also not a huge fan of the current Wolverine history that includes Dog. But my #1 grudge against the current state of these comics is  Wolverine being in half of the Marvel comics currently out there. However, with all of that being said I am a fan of where this series is trying to go.

My only concern is the art. Despite my distaste for The Savage Land, they did an absolutely outstanding job of illustrating it in this story line so far. This issue? There just wasn’t as many animals or dinosaurs hanging out in the background scenes. They were drawing me into the Savage Land in a way that hadn’t been properly illustrated to me before and this issue seemed to skip past that.

Back to the story at hand. While Wolverine’s idea to forge these students into a better kids may have been successful for a few of them it really wasn’t going to work for the majority. With Dog intervening and forcing them all together to work as a team they will probably pull off doing just that – against him.

For testing purposes Dog decided to grab some cavemen, cowboys and robots from the future to force the students to fight for their lives. Apparently surviving against Dinosaurs wasn’t enough in the twisted mind of Dog.

During the fighting, Kid Apocalypse and Quinten have some great dialogue. While Apocalypse is clearly showing that nurture is winning in the nature vs nurture fight for his soul as Quinten delivers one of his best lines to date: “I’m shooting cowboys and robots with an laser shotgun. I’ve never felt more.. AMERICAN!” Ignoring the social commentary this could represent in itself the line is just hilarious.

While Wolverine has been trying to escape his trap all issue we see the students somewhat falling in line to working together. Until the remaining three sets of groups who are also trapped out of their time smack him upside their head.

This leads to Quinten antagonizing Dog about being jealous of Wolverine to the point that Dog loses his grip on his calmness. The last page of this issue shows something that almost never happens that we usually want to see happen. Quinten getting a fist to the face and apparently knocked out.

The build up of this story line so far I think will finally come to a few great moments next issue. Honestly the work they’ve done with Quinten in this issue alone is making him a character I’m enjoying following for one of the first times. This is a complete flip on how I thought I’d feel about this title with where it’s currently at.

Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Ramon Perez