Tear Jerker / Ultimate X-Men (2001)

• Issue #41 of the is the second part of a series called "New Mutants". It breaks from the previous issue (which showed people in New York protesting against the Xavier School of Gifted Youngsters) by following a young teenager who wakes up one morning to find that no one is around. He goes downstairs, and his family is gone. He walks outside and there are people on his street, who spontaneously explode when he turns away. He goes to school, meets his friends, and then his friends vaporize in front of him. Frightened out of his mind, he runs into a cave. He is surprised to see Wolverine, who has been waiting for him. Logan gives the kid a can of beer, and explains to him over the last half of the issue that his mutant power has manifested itself when he hit puberty the night before: the ability to destroy organic matter. This is the final exchange of the book:
  Boy: So, like... (sniffles)... like one chromosome or whatever to the left, and I would'a maybe been one of the X-Men.
  Logan: Maybe.
  (silence)
  Logan: Finish your beer.
  Boy: Just do it.
  (the final shot of the book is Logan leaving the cave; the expression on his face says it all)
• Jean Grey having to commit her first murder as part of the Weapon X Program in a form of Sophie's choice that would have ended in the death of Cyclops or an Indian scientist who just tearfully poured his entire life story in front of her while begging for his life.
• Wolverine's own tragic backstory that he can't even remember due to Sabretooth destroying his file history and Weapon X mindwiping him so many times that the only things he has from his past are nightmares from years of being spent as a tortured lab rat and a wedding ring from a wife he can no longer remember.
• The Ultimatum Event is one long Trauma Conga Line and Tearjerker event. Many of the most loving and sweetest X-Men die pointless random deaths, with Jean Grey telepathically recalling themselves enjoying themselves in their last moments. Then Professor Xavier ends up murdered by Magneto and, as emphasized by Rogue in the page image when she finds Xavier dead, you realize things will never be the easy for mutantkind from this point on again. Even after all is said and done, Jean Grey ends up burying all of her dead teammates and destroys the mansion as a final farewell.
• The father of the married couple killing his daughter with a shotgun as a Mercy Kill to spare her the suffering she would face after finding out she was a mutant. It showed how terrible events had truly become for mutants to the point where just being born one was a death sentence.
• Reverend Stryker is a good deal more sympathetic then his bigoted mainstream counterpart. Despite being raised by an abusive father, he made it his personal goal to be a better, more tolerant person. Losing his family thanks to Magneto brought all that effort crashing down. He's also clearly suffering a crisis of faith and some form of traumatic mental illness as a result, with a hallucination of his father egging him on.
• The story of Dave, a hapless mall security guard with nothing going on for him in his hometown life who meets a beautiful woman named Karen Grant and becomes her boyfriend. Only later it's revealed Karen Grant is actually a disguised Jean Grey, who ends up tracked down by the Brotherhood after he mistakenly posts a picture of her online. He ends up dying by being disemboweled at the hands of Sabretooth, and spends his last moments in awe that for a short time his girlfriend was a world-saving superheroine, albeit sad she never told him out of fear he'd reject her.

---