I want to give this 0 stars because of all the feels at the end but given the emotional impact of said feels, I have to go with my initial thoughts and give it 5 stars. ( )

Wolverine, on hiatus from the X-Men, is targeted for assassination, as it turns out, by the quasi-governmental agency that may have created him in the first place. Grievously wounded, he makes his way to Peter Parker's house, where Peter helps him while he heals. The assassins track Wolverine there, and the two escape to Hell's Kitchen, where Daredevil (as grim and Batman-like as I've ever seen him) takes a hand to avert the growing carnage. The splash page where he first confronts the assassins, by the way, (you'll know it when you see it) is one of the most impressive Daredevil renderings I've ever seen. Wolverine returns to the X-men to heal up and try to remember his past, but after his attempted murder of Cyclops to eliminate competition for Jean (something I wish Bendis had never come up with, by the way - it seems uncharacteristic), trust from the others is hard to come by. Angel makes his debut, and there is a most interesting exchange of views about the religious perceptions that his appearance evokes in others, and what that means for the X-Men. Hank McCoy, perhaps feeling the odd man out with Angel's attraction toward Storm, leaves the X-Men, and joins a new group of mutants that the President ( very Bush-like individual) puts together to distance himself from the X-Men, but retain good press toward mutants. On their debut to the world, the new group is attacked by a Sentinel, sent by a group of high-level government officials determined to take over the government and end the growing approachment toward mutants. In the attack, Hank McCoy is killed. Didn't see that coming. Finally (but in the middle of the book), there is a very well-done and disturbing stand-alone story about a teen-age boy who wakes up one day, and discovers that he is an uncontrolled mutant whose power is to destroy all life in his vicinity. He flees to a cave, alone, where Wolverine tracks him down, gives him a beer, talks to him a while... and then does what he must. It's a disturbing and ethically challenging story, one of the most intriguing I have read in comic books. What does one do in such a situation? Kind of like the old "If you could go back to Hitler's boyhood, would you kill him, an innocent then, and prevent WWII?" And this boy was never ever going to be evil; he was just a tragically uncontrollable weapon. ( )

collects ultimate x-men vol 7 Blockbuster and ultimate x-men vol. 8 new mutants
#34-45 ( )

comics