3. Jason Aaron
Jason Aaron broke into comics after he won a Marvel talent search contest with an eight-page Wolverine story. He went on to write an acclaimed Wolverine story, Get Mystique, in Wolverine #62-65, and then followed this with a new Wolverine spin-off book, Wolverine: Weapon X and then became the writer of the relaunched Wolverine series. But X-Men: Schism is when he started directing his talents towards the team as a whole. Up until Schism, the remaining mutant population had been living on the remains of Asteroid M, called Utopia, in order to avoid the persecution of the government and Norman Osborn, who had become the Director of SHIELD and renamed it HAMMER (dont askseriously). Then a rift between Cyclops and Wolverine over what the X-Mens role should be led to a split. While Cyclops and his so-called Extinction Team remained on Utopia, Wolverine and a number of X-Men and students returned to New York and reopened the X-Mansion, this time called the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. Aaron showcases this team currently in the pages of Wolverine and the X-Men, and at twenty-seven issues, it may seem a bit premature to label him one of the best. But his work so far has been characterized by being fresh, yet still honoring the classics. Aaron already proved how well he understood Wolverine, but hes also managed to write intriguing versions of the Beast, Kitty Pryde, Storm, and his takes on the student body, represented by characters like Quentin Quire (a rebellious telepath), Broo (a nerdy version of the vicious Brood alien species), Genesis (a teenage clone of Apocalypse), and Kid Gladiator (hot tempered son of the Shiar character Gladiator). And if recent issues are any indication, Aaron has some interesting things in mind, such as possibly redeeming a terrible villain in the form of Azazel. One only hopes this will also lead to the resurrection of Nightcrawler