Writer Jason Aaron
Artist Pepe Larraz
Color Artist Matt Milla
Letterer VC’s Clayton Cowles
I like how they got to work in what SHIELD stands for on the cover.
The Jean Grey School gets a set of twins as new students, Joseph and Josephine Bricklemoore. Such a horrible choice for names for twins, but I bet there are hundreds of twins named that these days.
Their first day, SHIELD shows up so they are quickly rushed inside. Also to note, the Jean Grey School is located at 1407 Graymalkin Lane, the same address as the old Xavier Institute.
Joseph is a grey mutant, with three heads, six arms and six legs. Josephine has a squid for a head. As the twins run inside, Broo starts their tour of the school. Hopefully this title does become the Jean Grey School title and Amazing X-Men becomes the adventure title. Though that can’t last too long as Wolverine and the X-Men is coming to an end in March or so.
Maria Hill and Agent Dazzler walk up to the front door, we see Krakoa in the background, I wish more artists would have more fun sneaking Krakoa into corners of panels. Wolverine, Rachel Grey, Storm, Beast, Iceman and Warbird are the presented faculty. Rachel and Logan are the dressed the most causally.
Hill makes some great references to why the X-Men are an extremely (X-Tremely? No) dangerous force. Also, great points about how SHIELD may have had sentinels but it was the dangerous and nuts future X-Men that triggered them.
Hill wants to have a fresh start and Logan wants SHIELD out of the Sentinel making game.
A bunch of jokes about punching and stabbing.
In private, Hill is mad at Dazzler, who still wants to be called Agent Blaire – Hill finally responds to that with a ‘shut up.’ Hill wants Dazzler to start being a proper liaison.
Broo gives some person history about his first day at the school. He mentions the Danger Room is really the entire school, and I like the continuation of the joke about, who hears that, their first reaction is, even the bathroom? Broo makes a claim that the Jean Grey School is the best school in the universe, and now that we read the Annual, we know this is a proven fact.
Eye Boy is a reporter for the Grey School Gazette. He also determines what makes the first page. We find out that the JGS soccer team beat the Latverian Academy. The odd thing, is that we see Shark Girl with a solid red ball, so I thought it was a kick ball team.
We find out that since Kitty broke up with Iceman, which is cool that she is still being referenced in this issue, Bobby has become a real terror of the school. Which is odd, as well, as we saw over in Astonishing X-Men, what can happen if Bobby’s rage isn’t kept in check. He starts dealing detentions for public displays of affection.
Wolverine uses Quentin Quire’s detention time to hack the SHIELD database to locate sentinel bases. I like that SHIELD figures this would happen eventually and placed some low bearing fruit, for this exact occasion. I like an opponent that knows that the good guys will eventually win so why not use that initial win to your own end game? It is a great strategy and I only really ever seen X-Men villains do this.
When we see that Dazzler had this entire plan working out, We also get an editor’s note (they’re back!!!) stating that Mystique is still Dazzler! At least Marvel hasn’t forgotten this! When we finally get the public reveal, I wonder where Alison has been held up this entire time? Hopefully she is being kept well.
We cut to the New Xavier School, and we see Magik! So I would have bought this issue regardless of the above Kitty reference.
Part of SHIELD’s plan is to leak the same information Wolverine got, to Cyclops’ team. Scott is way smarter than Logan, and decides to not take his entire team and will go by himself. Next issue promises to have a confrontation between Cyclops and Wolverine!
Issue ends with the twins being revealed to have fake powers. Also, they are double agents for Dazzique!
Shadow and Flame with Magik 