The X-Men have over fifty years of history, but when a mutant hero misses out on that history, it takes a high school reunion to welcome them back. Since they learned how to resurrect dead mutants, the meaning of death has changed for the X-Men, making it more of a transition point than an ending. In X-Factor #5, the X-Men's homicide detective team helps out a returning mutant by bringing back Academy X.
X-Factor #5 is written by Leah Williams with art by David Baldeon, coloring by Israel Silva and lettering by Joe Caramagna. The newest version of X-Factor was created to help out the X-Men's "resurrection protocols" by confirming that lost mutants are really dead. Issue 5 is an epilogue to a story about X-Factor going to Mojoworld to learn the fate of Wind Dancer, aka Sofia Mantega, a young mutant who lost her powers. The only way to get them back was to be returned to life, but she had to die first, so she had herself publicly executed by a violent streaming show.
Wind Dancer was originally a part of New X-Men: Academy X, a Marvel Comics series that ran from 2004 to 2008. Since the New Mutants were all grown up, Academy X represented the next "next generation" of mutant heroes, a new class of teens learning to use their powers to help people. When Scarlet Witch depowered all mutants, the class lost most of its students, including some major characters like Wind Dancer.
When this New X-Men series ended, the remaining Academy X kids scattered to other comics. Some joined Young Avengers or the newer New Mutants and others drifted around as background characters. Sofia was one of the depowered mutants who kept fighting crime, taking on the name Renascence (meaning "rebirth") and using gadgets that included Doctor Octopus-style robot arms. But the team she was part of, the Civil War-era New Warriors, didn't last long, and she spent years in comic book limbo after that.
X-Factor #5 shows us the aftermath of Wind Dancer's resurrection as crowds of mutants gather to greet her after years of absence. But the first mutants she talks to are the Academy X team, who all gathered together to welcome her back, despite most of them not having interacted since that class ended. They even wear their old 2000s-era yellow school uniforms to the event, since that's what they wore the last time the class was together. (One of the team was unfortunately absent, probably since Rockslide's semi-alive fractured state would have been upsetting.)
Since the entire X-Men franchise was rebooted in the comics in 2019, everything's been different for mutants. Living on a psychic island, accepting their greatest enemies into the team, becoming immortal through cloning... until the recent X-Men #15, the actual X-Men team didn't even exist. The Academy X reunion is a moment of reader nostalgia and in-universe kindness, helping someone who's missed out on the upheaval adjust. In an era where mutants are treated more like weapons, technology, and magic spells than people, X-Factor shows that the X-Men can still be a kind of family.
X-Factor #5 is available now from Marvel Comics, Comixology, and local comics shops.