Wolverine #17 pg 4 (2011, Garney pencils, Aaron story) - Wolverine decides to open up school for Mutants

From the storyline of GOODBYE CHINATOWN pt 1, in the 2010 - 2012 series of Wolverine comes this pivotal page of Wolverine making the decision to re-open up the Xavier school for Mutants, which ultimately leads to Wolverine and the X-Men series (vol 1, 2011).

This was one of the leading new chapters of X history REGENESIS, after the Schism, where Cyclops decides to start training the young mutants for war in the West Coast, and Wolverine goes back to the East Coast to educate young mutants on how to co-exist peacefully in this new era.

This page features Wolverine tying up loose ends, his life and relationship with Melita Garner (a journalist) and deciding to open up the Xavier School in Westchester, renaming it the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. In the middle center left panel Wolverine states: “I’m gonna build a school. I’m gonna build it and run it”. This is such a huge departure from the loner (quite violent) character we’ve always known him to be. In the next panel, he states: “I’m not gonna loose any more kids”. It’s a huge character piece of history and a great page to add to my collection. There are some really gentle soft moments in this page as he also decides to end things with Melita and for each of them to go their own way, where she continues her journalism career here and he goes off to create a better peaceful place for mutankind elsewhere. There is also some great banter by the talented Aaron in the bottom right panel.

This pivotal character piece for Wolverine and a start to a new era of X-Men (during the twisted schism years), is a very X-citing page to add to my collection. The art and writing combo team of Garney and Aaron work perfectly to tell this new chapter in X-Men.