Previously in Wolverine’s little Jean Grey Institute for Higher Learning, Logan decided to take his more troublesome students to the Savage Land. This was a training exercise to both see who could be saved and turned into a real X-men as well as who wasn’t going to make the cut. What a great idea, until things went horribly, horribly wrong with Wolverine’s time traveling brother arrives and trys to teach them his own way.

Wonderful.

This issue though brings us finally to the end of this story arc so we’re almost out of the Savage Land (my least favorite place in the Marvel Universe.)

After the last issue Dog finally snapped and clocked Quinten making it a high point issue just for that moment. This time around Quinten isn’t quite up to his normal pace as he’s a bit groggy from being knocked out.

Dog is suddenly attacked by everyone he had brought through time to train the kids with and oddly enough when Eye Boy becomes one of the more interesting characters somehow. He uses his ability to grow eyes and it develops for him to actually be able to see the situation on the whole and process everything, not just what he can see on the surface but at a whole new level. He uses the guns that Dog had given him and takes out all of the attackers.

With the attackers taken out Dog focuses back on the students and something quite amazing happens. Not in the way that Wolverine expected – the team comes together. It’s them against Dog and for the first time they know what it’s like to be on a team and apparently have a family. They stand together in a truly great scene with as Eye Boy psychoanalyzes all of them (and quite perfectly) in a way that should anger most of them but still that can’t stop them from being brought together. Every moment of them standing together is beautifully illustrated. It wasn’t clear how separate they were from one another until they were drawn truly together.

As he’s about to attack, Wolverine comes in and lets Dog just beat on him. He’s going to continue until one of the last of the people he time traveled with shoots at Dog and Quinten stops the bullet. He realizes that even with beating the kid that Quinten is doing the right thing. Wolverine has taught them properly and he’s been in the wrong this entire time. He time travels out of there and Wolverine takes his students home.

He’s clearly of the opinion that he’s not in the right on how he was treating his students but they’ve still done the right thing. One student though isn’t on the return plane and appears to have left to join a new Brotherhood. There’s been so many teases with the new Brotherhood and the fact that there’s a new Hellfire Club out there. It’s a grand return to some great classic concepts in the X-Men Universe and they are clearly doing things right by feeding us our nostalgia in such a great format!

With the future mutants of the X-Men finally coming together I cannot wait to see how this ends up!

Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Ramon Perez