I don't think Logan meant to hurt Pablo, but I'm not sure that's going to matter to Pablo.
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I have to say, it is most gratifying to see Pablo being discussed like this. I was afraid, when I created him, that all the limitations I was putting on the character would prevent some (or all!) of you from finding a "hook". But that seems not to be the case!
For me, Pablo and Ashley feel like a good case study in how to introduce new characters into an ongoing cast. They're part of the story, sometimes getting focus, and we readers get to know them through what they do and how they react to what's going on around them.
It's a slow build up that gives us an emotional investment in seeing them more often.
Sort of like how we make friends with people, going from introduction to gradually learning about who that person is and enjoying time spent with them.
I'm all for seeing these young mutants becoming more central as the story continues.
Although these are very different circumstances, I find myself thinking back to that other time we saw a massive-but-incomplete memory download, and the interesting things that ensued. (Which reminds me ... in Elsewhen, there is no Kristoff-Doom, and the Baxter Building is still intact.)
The three premises that made the X-Men irresistible to me as super-team when I was a kid were:
1) their mission was targeted and well-defined: they rescue hunted mutants and train them (primarily) not to be a danger to themselves or others
2) they were hunted and hated for who they were and what they did, sometimes even by other heroes and teams (they weren't necessarily embraced, and it was always touch and go depending on the circumstances and the heroes)
3) their predicament wasn't event-based, it was simply manifest at puberty and somewhat hereditary. The latter I like because of the built-in appeal to comics' target audience: 'I feel like it's only happening to me/I feel persecuted for my awkward growth spurt or excess hair/I just wish I could belong/I'm curious about using my abilities/I wish they'd go away"
The potential for rotating characters like Pablo and Ashley once found to either stay with the group, just as students or as full members of the X-Men or not stay at all or to even become adversaries fits right into these three, so I am grateful.
Ah yes, very true, more ingenious use of the "atomic" age ...
I guess the fact that it was the consequences of heredity and outside the scope of their own actions is what appealed to me, no lab experiment or irradiated spider. We can all can relate to that: You have a big nose because your grandfather had a big nose, sorry you get teased for it ...
Roger Stern used to say that the early years of Marvel treated atomic radiation like magic. It was the automatic go-to plot device. Think of how many early (1960s) Marvel characters got their start from "radiation". The FF, the Hulk, Spider-Man, the X-Men (indirectly) and a flock of villains like Doctor Octopus, the Sandman, the Radioactive (!) Man.
I well remember one story in which Angel fought Iron Man. The justification was that Warren had flown over an exploding nuclear reactor, and the radiation messed with his mind, causing him to "choose" to become evil. (Sorry, I don't remember how that was resolved.)
DC wasn't much better. An issue of METAL MEN gave use a radioactive villain stomping thru Washington. At the end the city was "decontaminated". ("How?" asked Roger Stern. "Did they bury it in concrete for a thousand years??")
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