Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

Dusting Off’s been fairly X-heavy of late, but with Ed Brubaker hastily moving pieces into place for Astonishing X-Men #25, it’s worth taking a look at the last time Warren Ellis was asked to bring something different to Marvel’s mutants. As part of the X-Men’s 2000 re-launch, Marvel hired Ellis to take control of three of the line’s under performing spin offs, and re-conceptualise them under the banner “Counter-X”. The writer took an extremely critical look at each of the titles, stripping them back to their unique storytelling elements. Ellis co-wrote eight issues of each book, before handing over to the series’ permanent writer, in this case a pre-DMZ Brian Wood.

Unsurprisingly, given its promotion as a jumping on-point for new readers, Ellis makes his all-new villain a key part of the issue, choosing to open with an introductory sequence in which Coffin, a “war-criminal for hire” demonstrates his abilities and viciousness. In creating this opponent, the writer has clearly focussed on what made this part of the X-franchise distinctive. Coffin is not interested in mutation, which only features in the story as the means by which Generation X are able to fight him. The “Warden” is a disciplinarian, running a sci-fi/ horror young-offenders institution for the culprits of thought crimes. No punches are pulled in establishing this setting, with the Columbine shootings explicitly mentioned in the dialogue. However, what should be an unforgivable lapse in taste is made much more acceptable by Steve Pugh’s restrained art, which is just as easily able to illustrate decades old cyborg-children as comical exchanges between Jubilee and Chamber. Wood’s scripting also impresses, with some extremely natural-sounding dialogue given to each of the teens. He also finally manages to blend the lighter and darker sides of Emma Frost’s personality, which had been only shown alternately since the character was brought over to the side of the angels.

In hindsight, what proves most striking about the issue is the ruthlessness shown to the comic’s previous incarnation. In a move somewhat ahead of its time, Generation X’s Academy had functioned as an actual school, well before either 20^th Century Fox or Grant Morrison applied the same approach to the X-Men themselves. Ellis clearly decided to strip the cast down to a skeleton crew of its iconic figures, with the titular generation reduced to its four most interesting members. We rejoin the students in an almost ruined academy, and dialogue makes it clear that some of the missing have died off-panel since the previous story. Although missing the high-concept driven approach that has characterised the writer’s more famous work, there isn’t a shortage of new ideas here, with the paradoxes of government illustrated in a throwaway line. Roots of Ellis’s current preoccupation with communication technology may also be glimpsed, with Paige discovering Coffin’s activities through newsgroups.

It’s almost disturbing how clinically Ellis cuts away vast parts of the book’s previous identity. The “superheroes-in-training” approach that has always characteristed books of this sort is discarded; leaving its cast attempting to find ways they can actually change the almost-real world they’ve been placed in. Deliberately confining himself to a tiny periphery of the X-universe, Ellis still manages to create a compelling story, making his forthcoming centre-stage role an even more intriguing prospect.