Marvel has never been afraid to expand the X-Men mythos by adding new members and spin-off teams. The Hellions are the newest team, and they seem quite fit to face the world of today.

The Hellions are actually a squad of students that are attending Academy X, which is the core of the New X-Men comics. They are made up of the outsiders at the school. They are taken under the wing of Emma Frost, former villain and evil lady White Queen from the Hellfire Club, who has mended her ways after her original Hellions (also villains) died in battle. Her guidance and their skills seem to be quite fruitful since the squad turns out to be the winners of an intra-school competition that is not unlike the House Cup competition in the Harry Potter books.

The team is made up of:

* Hellion, a.k.a. Julian Keller, is telekinetic.
* Dust, a.k.a. Sooraya Qadir, is a shy girl from Afghanistan who can turn herself into a living whirlwind of dust. She regularly dresses in a niqab, or veil.
* Mercury, a.k.a. Cessily Kincaid, a shapeshifter whose body is composed of non-toxic liquid mercury.
* Rockslide, a.k.a. Santo Vaccaro, able to manifest a physical body comprised of solid rock from the immediate environment and launch limbs at great velocity.
* Tag, a.k.a. Brian Cruz, could psionically "tag" a person so that bystanders are compelled to run away from the person.
* Wither, a.k.a. Kevin Ford, can destroy organic matter on touch. He accidentally killed his father when his powers manifested.

This volume, their first adventure under their own title, joins the team as they are heading out for their summer vacation with hopes of spending it with Hellion's wealthy family in California. They can't even get onto a plane before things get really interesting. Before long they find themselves in the middle of a situation where they could have their most cherished dreams ... for a price. When it comes time to pay that price, they learn what it really means to be heroes.

These characters are unique and very interesting and are involved with backgrounds and storylines, such as bioterrorism and the war in Afghanistan, that keep the Marvel Universe current. In some ways, they harken back to the second generation of X-Mean, which had Storm, Banshee, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Colossus at its core because of how the characters are troubled teens being cobbled together into an effective group of heroes.