Wolverine and Sabretooth observe a longtime tradition in their rivalry as “Sabretooth War” begins in Wolverine #41, written by Benjamin Percy and Victor LaValle, drawn by Cory Smith and Geoff Shaw, inked in part by Oren Junior, colored by Alex Sinclair and lettered by Cory Petit.
Tony Thornley: Well, the climax of the Krakoan era of Wolverine is here, and I don’t think anyone’s going to be disappointed with this. It all ends with the ultimate showdown between Wolverine and Sabretooth in the kick-off to the TEN-part “Sabretooth War.”
And to chat about it with me, we have a new face at ComicsXF, Jake Murray!
Jake Murray: Thanks, Tony, it’s a pleasure to be here. Although after having finished that issue, I’m slightly questioning what I’ve let myself in for. This issue was absolutely brutal, and certainly staked the claim made on the cover to be “the most violent Wolverine story ever told.”
A Cunning Trap
Tony: There was so much talk at the beginning of Krakoa that HoXPoX were “two series that are one.” This is the inverse of that. This issue feels very distinctly like “one series that is two.” We have LaValle’s Sabretooth and Percy’s Wolverine. Honestly, it doesn’t feel like they’re writing their scenes together. This feels like a crossover — after plotting it together, LaValle is writing his Sabretooth “issues” and Percy his Wolverine.
Jake: Very much so, and invariably there are elements that coalesce quite naturally and others that feel a little forced. This issue’s function was primarily to reestablish Wolverine and Sabretooth as opposing archetypes and to reignite their eternal feud, so it’s natural that Percy and LaValle have their own space. LaValle continues to characterize Sabretooth as a cold and calculated killer, while the fall of Krakoa has Wolverine feeling more sentimental than usual. It’s curious though that both halves establish entirely separate emotional stakes, and both result in apparent deaths of people close to Wolverine.
Tony: Yeah, exactly, which we’ll get into in a minute. This issue opens with the Sabretooth side of the story, which is so interesting. I like this because it’s been a minute since Sabretooth & the Exiles.
Jake: The opening scenes pick up right where we left off with Creed as he charts his course of vengeance towards Krakoa. Just as we did in Sabretooth #1, we get a scene of Sabretooth acting out a fantasy of killing the X-Men. Where he previously awoke from his dream chained to an interrogation table, he is noticeably in control of the narrative here. He’s not just fantasizing, he’s practicing. LaValle establishes Sabretooth’s motivation as the primal need to be the alpha male, supplanting even a clone imitating Wolverine (Fauxgan?) as the “best there is” and to be the “top dog,” but this belies the cold and calculated approach he’s taking. It’s clear he’s been running simulations for a while, which makes the violence even more chilling.
Tony: This is a great distillation of Victor Creed as a villain. He’s cold, ruthless and bloodthirsty. Here, he’s recruited his variants to help pull off his plan, and doesn’t seem to want to even give anything else a chance to stop him. He has four trusted variants, and then all the rest of his army seem to be drones or mindless clones of some sort? That’s probably the part of this issue I understood the least, but their visual was still pretty chilling. That was one of the best executed moments by Shaw and Sinclair, though.
But Creed is so obsessed with his own revenge that when it comes time to spring his trap, he’s surprised to find Krakoa abandoned. This was a great touch to me, showing that he’s not just a sociopath, but an obsessed one. He couldn’t look up from his revenge just long enough to realize that the Krakoan nation had collapsed.
Jake: Absolutely. LaValle nails the balance of the primal and premeditated parts of Creed’s MO, and the Krakoa sequence is a great example of that. Rather than taking his vengeance straight to the Quiet Council, his plan was to maximize the damage within the cultural heart of the island, the Green Lagoon. When they spot Quentin Quire flying over, Sabretooth and his clones are practically howling at the moon. Speaking of Quentin, he became the first casualty of the Sabretooth War, dying for what feels like the 100th time in the Krakoan era. How did you feel this was handled?
Tony: Quentin dying is just a great gag at this point, and I love that it’s continued here. Whether our guess about the separation of writing duties is true, it’s fantastic continuity with the rest of the X-Force/Wolverine epic. It shows his overconfidence. He could easily deflect anything thrown at him but hasn’t learned that he needs to do it passively. Considering how much he’s died on Krakoa, that’s a little touch to show that his character progression still has a way to go.
And man, that page by Shaw? BRUTAL. I’m glad Sinclair didn’t go too bloody, because the look in Quire’s eyes alone will haunt me.
Jake: Horrific! That combined with the snarled “sweet moments like this make me happy we’re a family” is just sick, especially considering what happens in the second half of the issue.
An Unhappy Birthday
Jake: Where does this issue find Wolverine then? The last few issues of his solo title have seen him team up with his fellow big hitters in the Marvel Universe before reuniting with X-Force. On the eve of the Sabretooth War he’s feeling sentimental, as he ruminates on mortality, legacy and family.
The scenes between Logan and both Akihiro and Laura, which showed their very different responses to Logan’s attempted display of emotion, were both effective, and Cory Smith uses body language as a characterization device brilliantly. Logan performs the classic male bonding dance of emasculating Akihiro by throwing family dinner at his feet and threatening him with violence to create a sufficiently comfortable environment for them to nuzzle up to each other lovingly. His scene with Laura meanwhile is a waltz of evasive and closed off postures. Percy captures Logan’s emotional vulnerability really well here. He’s sweet without being effusive, retaining a little bit of distance while still expressing love. For example, measuring his pride for her by the number of asses she’s saved before building up the courage to pass the mantle in the event of his passing is a classic repressed dad move.
Tony: You know, you’re absolutely right, and these scenes were important for another reason. I’m not sure how familiar you are with the worst days of Logan’s life. Every one of his birthdays is an excuse for Sabretooth to slide into his life like an adamantium-tipped knife. That’s the day he killed Silver Fox, there are times that he’s shown up to just beat the hell out of him. Sabretooth making each of Logan’s birthdays the worst day of his life so far is a fantastic story beat.
Seeing Logan on edge because he knows what’s happened on each of his other birthdays, it’s a great way to get us ready for the carnage to come. It builds just the right amount of tension. Seeing Wolverine unsettled, almost scared, gets us ready in a similar mindset.
It wasn’t even right away that I realized why Logan was so on edge. The moment I did though, I knew stuff was about to go down in a much worse way than we were expecting.
Jake: The Silver Fox story is definitely the one that immediately sticks out in my mind. The sheer brutality of it carries so much weight for both fans and Logan himself. It’s appropriate therefore that it’s called out during Logan’s inner monologue in the form of a mental image because you’re absolutely right, there’s a certain amount of bracing required for what comes next.
I’m conflicted over Fang’s death. As I said earlier, I felt like the scene between Logan and Akihiro was elegantly done by Percy. It felt like a long overdue, healing reunion given the trauma they’ve both endured since Krakoa fell, but neither got the closure they were after. The death, and the manner of it, is shocking. Smith’s panel layout in the fight between Fang and Sabretooth is brilliant, with precise but not uniform slash marks as Akihiro’s disembodied scream pans into view, selling the horror while obscuring the exact nature of the violence. When we do get the reveal, it really hits.
Having said that, it’s very apparent that Percy set this in motion by bringing Akihiro into X-Force at the end of the last issue, meaning that his function in this story is to die to ratchet up the stakes for the lead character, which evokes the Silver Fox story in a way that makes me a little uncomfortable. Then again, with a cast of mutants possessing healing factors, no death can ever be taken as read.
Tony: Considering Akihiro is bi, yes, I get that completely. I don’t think Percy was going for that — I mean he could have used Laura instead, but he smartly avoided that. Unintentionally though, it does seem that he walked into an unfortunate trope.
That final page though? You’re right, the emotional stakes were established really well by Percy and LaValle. It made Smith, Junior and Sinclair’s work on the last page that much more of a gut punch. It was horror in a way that not enough comics are.
I love this statement that our CXF colleague Jude Jones sent me about his thoughts about the issue:
Jude Jones: On the very last page (super spoilers!), Sabretooth has disembodied Akihiro in the arctic snow, laying his disemboweled body parts out to spell “Happy Birthday” toward a confused and defeated Logan. This is a lot, yes. It’s also exactly what it needs to be, as it tells you everything you need to know about both the work as a whole and the character that’s been as conspicuously absent from the Krakoan Wolverine comics as Logan has (thankfully, for development reasons) been from Sabretooth’s.
The mix of hyperviolence and sardonic kitsch; the gore, covered with a sheen of (extremely) dark humor; the realism mixed with slightly washed out colors. For the uninitiated, this was the gist of Sabretooth — a great series of works that appear to be well integrated into Percy’s sci-fi spy thriller rubric.
Thus both the style of Victor LaValle’s comic AND the titular character have finally made it to their rival’s door.
May God have mercy on their souls.
Jake: And ours! We have nine more issues of this to come, and I personally can’t wait to see what manner of mayhem is due to be unleashed on the unsuspecting people of the North Pole.
Tony: From this issue, sure seems the cover tease of the most violent Wolverine story ever is gonna pay off, eh?
Stabby Statements
- I was a bit confused about the multiversal Sabreteeth, but I kind of loved that the issue just stated it as fact and moved on.
- Exiles Watch: Unfortunately the Exiles didn’t appear this issue, but as a reminder: The Exiles are currently on a huge ship protecting hundreds of mutant children having saved them from an Orchis medical detention facility. Nekra is in possession of the death seed, which is the lingering Chekhov’s gun from the previous series.
- Sabretooth’s “Do you ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” quote as he enters the empty council chamber on Krakoa is likely an allusion to Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols’ infamous quote about selling out and revolution not turning out to be as initially promised. Apt.
- Logan rudely walked out on Laura without opening the birthday gift she gave him. Any guesses on what’s in the box?
- Is the rest of the story going to take place over the next 24 hours?
- And now more Bonus Thoughts From Jude Jones!
- While reading Wolverine, I made the assumption that Percy is writing the bulk of the Logan dialogue and story points, while LaValle’s responsible for Sabretooth. This is most evident in Sabretooth’s plain talk, that’s sickly reminiscent of a sitcom dad: insulting others as he takes their advice and fashions it as his own, bad puns and corny one-liners, all while doing the most gruesome of acts. This is consistent with LaValle’s voice, and I’m interested to see how these voices will interact as the two invariably come to bloody blows.
- Both Geoff Shaw and Cory Smith/Oren Junior do an admirable job of illustrating and inking the gruesomeness — though I maybe like Shaw’s style more, the more detailed illustration and inking of Smith and Junor make that last page all the more, uh, enjoyable.
- Not present in this issue are any of the Exiles (Nekra, Oya, Madison (who may or may not be alive) or Melter), though I’m sure they’ll make an entrance eventually. I will say the amount of carnage in this issue is surprising — apparently killing two pretty prominent characters, as resurrection is (seemingly) off the board for the short term (as The Five are stuck in the White Hot Room) and the long term (X-Men: From the Ashes, in July!) I have my assumptions about what this means, but I won’t share them here.
- For in this case, with an issue as tight, interesting, vivid and intriguing as this, I’m content letting the storytellers take the lead and letting my imagination fall by the wayside.
- I have faith in their ability to tell a good story, as evidenced by an excellent first work. I’m all the more intrigued to see what the next chapter has in store.
- And one last fantastic closing thought from Jude:
- Speaking of the divine: LaValle’s first foray into mutantdom, the eponymous Sabretooth series, read like Dante’s Inferno, as Victor Creed freed himself — by any means necessary — from the belly of the literal beast. The sequel, with the “Exiles,” finds Victor crawling up from his entrapment by Orchis, facing the son who hates him as much as he hates, well, everything, to find success and communion with the only thing he’s consistently valued: himself (Well, multiversal versions of himself. Long story, but well worth a read).
- Now, we find Victor in a heaven of his own making, gorging on violence. We see him tearing through an alternate version of Cyclops, mirroring his dream of destruction from the first issue of Sabretooth. Just as that vision was a precursor to the limitless violence he wished to pursue, his murder(s) here (and testing of a version of himself that seems to be a Mystique-like shapeshifter) are a prelude to the destruction he’s about to cause.
- And of Logan? Mostly we see him do what he’s done maybe a bit too much during Percy’s run: think. Ruminate. State how things “just don’t feel right” before something not right happens. His X-Force compatriots are systematically picked off and neutered, with Logan none the wiser. His presence here is an all too common one for the chartered: perched up on a plateau of stability that’s violently, needlessly snatched from under his feet. Trauma is nothing new for the character; trauma and his (in)ability to deal with trauma define the character. Thus this issue, for Logan, simply serves as a means of establishing that even at the low point for mutantdom, Logan still has things he can — and will — lose.
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Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
Jake Murray
Jake Murray spends far too much time wondering if the New Mutants are OK. When he's not doing that, he can be found talking and writing about comics with anyone who will listen.
A proud New Orleanian living in the District of Columbia, Jude Jones is a professional thinker, amateur photographer, burgeoning runner and lover of Black culture, love and life. Magneto and Cyclops (and Killmonger) were right.
Find more of Jude’s writing here.
