Back at the Avengers Tower, a groggy Peter Parker wakes up in his bed with a headache. His wife, Mary Jane, who is sitting nearby reading a magazine and drinking coffee, says he should try not getting hit in the head with mechanical octopus arms so much. He groggily agrees, and shuffles out of the room. He then makes his way to the main room and sits down at the large table where She-Hulk is complaining to Ms. Marvel, Falcon, and Luke Cage about how the last thing she remembers fighting in Genosha one minute, and then waking up in her bed the next. Luke and Carol agree, but Falcon doesn’t totally understand what they’re talking about. Luke turns to Peter to check on him, and asks if MJ remembers. She doesn’t. The Sentry and Spider-Woman are standing in the back and with Robert not knowing what everyone’s talking about, and Jessica feeling like she needs to scream. Iron Man walks in wondering who called this meeting as Peter wonders how they all got back there. Luke asks if Tony remembers, but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Peter finally loses it and begins to pound the table and scream. After he’s done, Carol asks if everything is back to normal, and a weak Dr. Strange hobbles into the room to tell them “Not quite.”

At Xavier’s school, Emma wakes up on the lawn outside, but it quickly woken up to cries coming from inside the school. She dashes inside to find Kitty crouching over a fallen Wind Dancer and saying that it’s the students. She begins to rant about what Wanda said, but Emma wants to know if she’s fine, which she is. Wallflower wants to know if Sophia is going to be alright, and Emma says she just fainted, but Laurie drops the revelation that her teammate lost her powers. Cyclops checks with Nightcrawler, who also doesn’t know how they all ended up back there. Colossus just wonders where they were. Scott reveals that he still has his powers, but he soon remembers Wolverine, and he and Kurt realize that if he lost his powers, the adamantium could kill him. The words are barely spoken before Nightcrawler begins teleporting all over the school, and finally finds Logan outside underneath the jet. When Kurt reaches him, he wakes up and says, “I remember. My whole life… I remember all of it.”

Back insides, everyone is still freaking out, asking tons of questions, and Emma quickly dashes off to Cerebra, and hooks up, but begins to cry when she gets a good look at what she came for. Scott and Beast have joined her now, and we see a giant glowing representation of the earth with a few glowing dots here and there, and she tells them this is how many mutants are left on the planet. They wonder if they’re dead, but Emma says no, they’re just not mutants anymore. Scott asks where Wanda is, but she can’t find her. Beast then gets scared and demands for Emma to find Xavier. She can only respond, “He’s not…”

Upstairs, Kurt is comforting Tag, who has also lost his powers. Kitty seems Dani hunched over in a corner, and she goes over and asks her if she remembers what happened yesterday with the House of M. Dani doesn’t even know what that is, and Kitty wonders why she doesn’t remember. Colossus begins to get a bit frustrated wondering just what they’re supposed to be remembering. Emma is no sooner back upstairs when Kitty begins to say something about half the school and a bunch of others begin to ask questions. Emma then telepathically forces them to all quiet down, saying she needs to figure out what happened. Did Wanda just delete the mutant gene from all the mutants she could reach? Or did she just repress it? Xavier would know. Then, a voice comes in saying he’s glad it’s not just him. Iceman, who is now in his human form again, says he thought it was just way hot in there. Cyclops is shocked that his long time teammate has been changed too.

Back with the Avengers, they are all suited up now and watching all of the numerous news broadcasts addressing the majority of the mutant population having lost their powers. They all seem to not know anything, but a government agenda and a virus have been ruled out. When one mentions the X-Men, Carol gets worried and Cap America asks Tony to turn up the volume on that one. It turns out to just be William Stryker spouting his old tales about how this is God’s will, and Steve says to just turn the moron off. Tony and he don’t know what to say, because they have no recollection of the previous day. Strange surmises that only those who were actually there remember due to Emma’s psychic defense and the spell he cast. Luke doesn’t feel so lucky and Spidey feels sick. Cap asks if he can locate Wanda, but Strange, almost angrily, says that he tried several times before he came there. He can’t find any sign of her. Tony asks if he’s alright, but Stephen says it’s his duty to protect the world from something like this happening, and he failed completely. Spidey asks if he has the ability to remove the memories, but even after he says he doesn’t, Peter still angrily demands he take them out of his head, but quickly apologizes. Luke wonders what they do now. Do they take this to the press? Tony wonders what they’ll tell them. To round up what’s left of mutants to stop it from happening again? He then gets some signal on his suit, and Jarvis comes over with the same news. The others wonder what it is, and he says that there is someone at the mansion.

At the ruins of what used to be the elegant Avengers Mansion, Iron Man leads them to where the signal came from. They find arrows sticking out of the walls, with some of them holding up Hawkeye’s costume. They also come across another arrow holding up the article about Clint’s death. Carol wonders what this means, and a small smile crosses Cap’s face.

In Genosha, which is back to being a country in ruin, we see a poor looking Magneto shuffling his way through the streets. When his foots comes across a fork, he holds his hand over it as if to use his powers on it, but nothing happens, and he collapses to his knees. A voice then demands to know where she is, and we see the Astonishing team of X-Men has arrived there. When he doesn’t answer, Cyclops blasts the ground in front of him and asks again, more demanding this time. When he’s still unfazed, Wolverine finally leaps on top of him with claws popped, and he finally says he doesn’t know. Wolverine then decides to taunt him over the fact that the old man lost his powers and Logan didn’t, as the others ask him where Xavier, Pietro, and Wanda are. The answer is the same to each question: He doesn’t know. Emma confirms that he is telling the truth, and Wolverine sees it as a reason not to keep him on this planet anymore. Kitty manages to finally remind everyone that he is not the one responsible for all this. Logan finally agrees and says that he deserves every second of his sapien life, and that when they find his kids, they’ll be sure to say hi for him.

As they leave, a voice welcomes Doctor Henry Pym to talk about the recent depowering of mutants. As he talks about what he thinks of the whole situation saying that it seems that they’ve witnessed the extinction of an entire species, we see the Scarlet Witch herself, Wanda Maximoff, wandering the streets of a European village with a big smile on her face and sharing pleasantries with passerby’s. Pym goes on, saying that all this breaks his heart, but there’s something people haven’t thought about yet. What is this going to do to our ecosystem? The way the entire planet reacts to the existence of those living on it has just changed, and it may not be ready to handle such a big change. As he is talking, the pictures begin to zoom out farther and farther from where Wanda is living. He wonders how many of the mutants who lost their abilities were able to control energy, or wield elements that affected the planet’s atmosphere. All that energy didn’t just disappear. Where did it go? It’s a law of physics that everyone knows. We now have a shot of the entire planet. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” So, what will be the reaction? And we see a big flash of energy on the horizon of the planet.

Review: I may not be looking forward to some of the stuff that is going to be happening with Decimation, but if there was any way to set it up, this was the way to do it. One thing that I think made Bendis the best choice for this series is the fact that he doesn’t over do things. There are several things throughout this issue in particular that are kind of understated, but it just makes them that much more powerful. Same thing goes for the infamous “No more mutants” quote from last issue. There’s a good deal of writers out there right now that would turn those three words into a page in a half before they got to the point. Some examples out of this would be “I remember”, “He’s not…”, “not you too”, and “Xavier would know.” Of course, there are some that are a big more explosive, but they also work perfectly. Spidey’s meltdowns, Wolverine confronting Magneto, and Kitty panicking over the students were great and totally in character.

And there’s also the unspoken moments that are just as if not more powerful. Who knew a fork could be so humanizing. That whole scene was some of the best stuff featuring Magneto in a long time. And the unspoken stuff with the scene hinting towards Hawkeye leaves just enough questions unanswered but gives you a nice warm fuzzy to make you ok with the situation.

Of course, I just loved Pym’s points at the end. Like I said in the last review, those powers and mutants can’t just “disappear”. Something is going to have to come out of it, and hopefully it will lead back to a good amount of them getting their powers back.

Now, one thing that I kinda didn’t like was the last shots with Wanda. It just felt so strange going through this whole issue with everyone, many favorite characters of many fans, going through hell, and then this last shot of her all happy. Anyone else feel like screaming “You bitch!” at her? It’s like, good god, feel some friggin remorse lady. If giving them their desires didn’t make them happy, what do you think taking away what little they did have would do? And I love the character to, so you know it had to be something rather large for me to say that.

Now, on to Hawkeye. Does this mean he’s alive? Is he still dead and this is his or Wanda’s way of saying goodbye or sorry respectively? Time will tell. It would seem weird that they would bring him back in the new She-Hulk book(if you’re not reading it, START) but not heavily promote it. That tells me that he’s not going to be sticking around after that arc, so I think that this is supposed to hint more to him coming back and possibly still alive.

And now with the big revelations surrounding Wolverine in this issue. I really only have one thing to say about it: It’s about friggin time! I know part of his whole allure is his mysterious past, but they can’t keep it a secret forever, and this provided them the perfect in-road to getting it started. Let’s just hope that Joe Q doesn’t decide that he needs his mysterious past back a few years down the road and says that everything he learns now is a big fake.

That kind of segues back into the depowering issue. So far, with this issue alone, we know that Magneto, Iceman, Tag, and Wind Dancer have all lost their powers. There’s some good shake-ups there, hopefully one to turn Iceman’s character back around, and those that people won’t really care about, Tag, I’m looking at you. Adding to all the other depowerings we know from previews, there are some controversial choices. We can also consider Wallflower and Dani as possibilities to have lost their powers as well. Same goes with Scarlet Witch. Now before you jump all over me and say that she did lose her powers, remember this. In the HOM world, no one could really locate her mutant powers, and everyone thought that she was just a regular human in that world. Yet, lo and behold, she still had all her powers. With all that she can do, is it really hard to believe that she can mask herself from all forms of detection? And what if she tried to remove her powers, but it is impossible for her to do so? That would add a bit of drama to whenever they do find her, and you know they will, and it leaves them with a bit of an out for when they repower characters, and you know they will. Not everyone will obviously get them back, but I think they should do something like give the ones who lost their powers the option to get them back. Would make for an ultimate conflicting choice. Get back what they’ve had for a good portion of their lives, or stay human and live a normal life from then on? Some good possibilities for character development there.

Now, with the art, Coipel really knocks the stuff out of the park. What I like is how he really captures the emotions with the characters. When they’re upset, they look it. When they’re happy, they look it. Going back to what I mentioned earlier, during the hints towards Hawkeye, that small smile on Cap’s face was just perfect. Small enough that if you’re just skimming through, you could easily miss it, but it’s there enough to let you know some of what he’s thinking. And like I said, when they’re upset or been through hell, they look it. The women’s hair doesn’t stay perfectly in place and the men don’t look like they’re trying to become the next GQ model. He’s got a bright future at Marvel.