Dive Into The Glut Of Unnecessary Releases With Ruins Of Ravencroft: Sabretooth #1

Spinning out of Absolute Carnage, which, itself, was spun out of Venom, Frank Tieri, Angel Unzueta, Guillermo Sanna, and Rachelle Rosenberg bring us a horrific tale about the secrets of ~~Arkham~~ Ravencroft.

Zachary Jenkins: So there are no Dawn of X books this week, however this is this one-shot ostensibly about Sabretooth from aspiring street fighter Frank Tieri. Excited to talk about this one Nola?

Nola Pfau: Absolutely not!

ZJ: Well, we don’t have anything better to do so let’s get started.

It’s Stupid

ZJ: The weird thing about this book is that it’s a previously unseen story about how Sabretooth and Sinister were experimenting on Wolverine in an asylum back in 1909. It specifically takes place after the forgotten Origins II and is more interested in telling the boring back story of discount Arkham than adding to the mythos of the title character. It jumps between timelines, but neither parallel story is additive. There is no connective tissue save location.

The other weird thing about this book is that it is stupid.

NP: It’s so stupid! (Can I say that, or is Frank Tieri gonna try to fight me in a laundromat or something jk I will absolutely fight Frank Tieri)

It riffs on Arkham so heavily that it was “cursed from the start” or whatever, and has a stupid, misguided doctor demanding that it be built. The doctor’s last name is Kasady, you know, like the Carnage host. OoooOOOOOooOOOOOO. The history bits are honestly insufferable to read, just like the history bits about Arkham are. Are people actually interested in this kind of thing? It’s not exciting, it’s not new. People experimenting on Wolverine? Also not new! Mr. Sinister being vaguely menacing and manipulative where mutants are involved? That’s also here, and also been done before!

The modern half of the story is about Mr. Fantastic, Misty Knight, Kingpin and Man-Wolf fighting…demons or monsters, I guess? They’re just…there. There’s no reason why, or anything. Also, I can’t think of Man-Wolf without thinking of Manwich.

ZJ: At least artist Angel Unzueta does some neat monster designs for them to fight. Their art is easily the best part of this, but still, the modern part is very weird to me. I’m an astute enough reader to guess that there is some context from this that I’m missing, but as a stand alone unit of comics, it’s complete dreak. What qualifications does former astronaut and part time Man-Wolf, John Jameson have to reopen a mental health facility? Why are Mr. Fantastic and Misty Knight working alongside Kingpin? Having read Frank Tieri comics in the past, I’m willing to assume it’s just plain bad writing, but there’s other elements to it that rings real false.

It Sucks

ZJ: The stigmatization of mental health is a pressing issue that impacts countless families. The reestablishment of the Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane is not the step toward healing and rehabilitation that Reed Richards seems to think it will be. It follows a greater trend of treating mental health challenges as something incompatible with regular human existence. The residents are compared to monsters, the doctors treated like some ancient evil. It’s the nuance and excution I’d expect from the guy who microwaved a puppy and made “gay jokes” at The Punisher’s expense during his run on Wolverine.

NP: Yeah, there’s a reason that asylums aren’t a thing in real life anymore, and that’s because they were horrible places with little-to-no oversight. Reed, surely, is smart enough to know this, just like he’s smart enough to know that his doctorate isn’t a medical one, so why is he even making this move?

It’s just a poorly executed book. Like you said above, Zack, there’s no connective tissue, there’s nothing tying these supposedly interwoven stories together. As separate chapters, a lead story and a backup, they might have at least had a little more coherence, but that wouldn’t save them from being empty, useless fluff. They’re not even clever or funny! There’s a beat where they bring in a man claiming to be the Black Knight in 1909, and the coloration of his cape and cowl combined with the color of the straight jacket he’s in is a clear indication it’s meant to be a riff on Batman. HA! Batman! Being admitted to an asylum! HA! HA! RIGHT FOLKS, RIGHT????

ZJ: I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Guillermo Sanna’s art in the flashback sections. And by that I mean it’s workman like with very little worth commenting. It doesn’t sell horror, it sells mundane. Rachelle Rosenberg’s colors don’t add to the tension, they muddle the proceedings. It’s makes for a frustrating read when mediocre art is paired with bad writing.

I Hate It

ZJ: More than anything else, I hate that this book exists. It’s a stand alone, $5, one-shot, except that it’s the second in an ongoing story about Ravencroft. It’s a starring role for Sabretooth except he is nearly a non-factor in this story. If it didn’t say Sabretooth, I would assume it is Wolverine on the cover. It’s about an X-Men character run through the Spider-Man office. It’s the follow-up to an event, that will lead into another mini, that was all birthed from a distinct creative vision by a singular writer and artist. If anything, this book is a symbol of all of Marvel’s worst impulses. Taking a unique idea like Stegman & Cates’ Venom, and spinning books off until everything is commoditized and that spark of innovation is nothing but a memory. It’s the same way we get solicits where there are four books about Spider-Man’s old girlfriends, one about his old job, and one about the girlfriend of a spin-off of a villian who is just evil Spider-Man.

NP: Carnage is not a character that needs mythos or gravitas. He is a homicidal jerk who has been empowered by an alien goo monster. Nothing about that requires depth; he’s a bad person! He’s really hard to stop! He’s like Venom, but worse! He doesn’t need an ancestral background and a cursed family asylum. Similarly, Wolverine doesn’t need yet another story where someone is experimenting on him! We get it! HE HAD A ROUGH TIME. This comic could’ve been released in 1991 and it still would’ve all been done before.

ZJ: I can’t get over how this is pulling all the same high level plot threads as Arkham: A Serious House On A Serious Earth. It isn’t deconstructing them, it’s playing them straight! How is this the book you want to put out Marvel? How did this get approved? I swear, you could have just not. No one needed this comic. No one needed this mini-event. This trade will never move off the shelves. This is a waste of everyone’s time and effort.

Do better.

X-Traneous Thoughts

Guys, there is no Krakoan, no good jokes, nothing.
It’s stopped being fun ragging on this bad book.
Just don’t buy it. Please.
At least the good books are back next week.

In case you don’t get why we are so hard on Frank it is because he is still getting work after telling a comics critic

And by the way, you psuedo intellectual piece of s—, whenever you grow balls big enough to call me an a—— to my face, you let me know. We can do it at a con or in a parking lot but I’m either way, quite sure that you won’t.
A now deleted Tweet by Tieri

So, yeah, he’s getting very little sympathy for his bad comic from us.

Nola Pfau is Editor-in-Chief of WWAC and generally a bad influence.

Zachary Jenkins runs the Xavier Files Media Empire and is a co-host on the podcast Battle of the Atom. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of X-Men.

Zachary Jenkins

Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.