Irredeemable
Sabretooth and the Narrative Possibilities of Pure Evil.
In the last few months of writing almost exclusively about the X-Men, I have become acquainted with several wonderful online communities. Online X-Men “discourse” can be frustrating and polarizing but for the most part fans of this brand are polite and kind and insanely enthusiastic about their favorite characters, creators, and storylines. I had a rudimentary understanding of “stan” culture and the X-men, with its cavalcade of characters spanning the six decades of publication, has no shortage of “stans.” I have a more in-depth article in me about this culture, its pitfalls, its blind spots, and the communities it builds both good and bad. All that said, one of the few difficulties I’ve had in integrating myself into these communities is my affection for Victor Creed.
Victor Creed is my favorite X-Men character. That feels obvious if you’ve read my work here on Medium, or had any conversation with me about the X-Men that has lasted longer than a few minutes. I’m not really interested—here at least—in debating or discussing the downsides to a character like Sabretooth. I think those are all evident. If you are sensitive to stories that depict sexual violence and gore and child murder then there are dozens of Sabretooth stories that could be quite triggering. All of that is true, and yet I find myself frequently championing Creed and his value to the X-line of comics as a whole.
In Kieron Gillen’s X-Men Origins: Sabretooth the long story of Victor and Logan’s past is told in a way that paints it like folklore. They don’t know why they fight anymore after years of resets and mind wipes and resurrections and death. All that's clear to either of them is that Victor enjoys causing pain, Logan claims he doesn’t, and the two are destined to do this forever; drawn to each other for better and worse.
In the best Sabretooth stories, this is how he’s positioned. An almost immortal universal evil who has no limits to what he can do and has no desires but what he wants. He’s not unique in his violence. Omega Red killed children as a serial killer, Mesmero is a rapist, Apocalypse and Cassandra Nova are genocidaires. Sabretooth’s novelty comes from his disposition. He’s not just a killer, he revels in killing. Not only that, he wants to push others to be as base as he is. He’s a mean ruthless son-of-a-bitch who thinks that the whole world is just as mean and ruthless as he is. He’s the measuring stick of evil. There are characters who have done worse, but none who have more darkness in their heart.
His position as pure evil, as someone who understands evil, an artist who paints with shades of black, makes the times when he’s correctly characterized the best parts of otherwise miserable books. In Frank Tieri’s Weapon-X—a dreadful book that you absolutely should never read—Sabretooth is oddly a source of comfort to the reader. This is a book about a concentration camp and the man who runs it. It is full of early 00’s edginess and the first book sees Mesmero—a character it will later ask us to sympathize with—force two women to make out for his amusement. This is played as the sexual assault that it is, but it’s also played as titillation. Trying to appeal to teen boys by showing a cool super-powered man who can get with two girls at the same time.
All of that is obviously crap; woefully problematic at best and deeply dehumanizing apologia for rape at worst. Weapon-X is full of things like this. It’s a deeply misogynistic book full of violence against women and characterizations of the women who get anything resembling a character arc that is insulting. Marrow, one of the survivors of the “Mutant Massacre” of her people the Morlocks, is a member of Weapon-X because she wants plastic surgery to make her more beautiful. There is nothing inherently wrong with a character wanting plastic surgery. It’s not a moral failing, but the way this desire is treated is full of mockery and disdain.
Enter Sabretooth. Sabretooth is also forced to join this team of edgy monsters only in his case we see his actions as monstrous. There is no winking when he assaults Aurora. In fact, this is one of the few times where the art shows restraint. We are never shown Aurora’s assault by Victor, we only see Wildchild watch it in horror. That is still deeply troubling, but in contrast to the rape that Mesmero commits, this attack is handled with more care for the character and the audience. Sabretooth’s evil is given proper weight.
Near the middle of the run, Sabretooth uses a moment of distraction to return and attack the team. He is confronted by Marrow in a sewer and he taunts her. He taunts her the way the “heroes” of this story have taunted her this entire time, only now we understand that he is wrong. Obviously, the people taunting her before were wrong by most people’s morality, but textually we aren’t supposed to question them.
Here, alone in a sewer, just like the one he slaughtered her people in, we see the arc in full context. Weapon-X is a miserable book full of nightmarish and nihilistic moments where no one wins and everything is awful. But for one moment we get a hero shot. Marrow, a woman from a sub-set of mutants shunned because of their physical deformities, who sold her soul to look more “normal” is here in a place that looks like that lost home and the devil is taunting her for her sins. And then something kind of amazing happens. In a book where the good guy never wins, Marrow kicks Creed off a waterfall seemingly to his death. It’s straight out of a monster movie, and Marrow—a literal final girl—is triumphant in a way we haven’t seen and won’t see again in this run. Creed is the kind of evil that puts other evil into perspective. He can stand in the sewers below a concentration camp and be the most threatening presence around.
This makes him the perfect foil for the stoic Wolverine. Logan’s story is one of a man who is “the best in the world” at causing violence and death coming to terms with his skills while trying to carve out a place in polite society. In many ways, the X-Men is a story—with exceptions like Utopia and Krakoa—of a marginal community trying to assimilate into polite society. The same polite society that demands certain behavior, that damns those who are different, that builds police forces that are dedicated to oppressing the other. Wolverine is a character from the wilderness who is desperate to fit into that society. Sabretooth as his foil represents that wilderness, its chaos, its freedom, and the forces of nature that have to be tamed in order for our world to function.
It is telling that in one of the stories that break from this assimilationist agenda, Krakoa, that in order to be taken seriously on the world stage the ONLY evil that is punished is Victor Creed. He represents chaos and they are agents of a new State. He must be set as an example. Creed must be cast out from heaven. Victor Lavalle—and then co-writer for the Sabretooth War Benjamin Percy—position Creed as a sort of Mutant Satan.
The entire arc of Sabretooth: The Adversary is one of Creed being cast out, his enlisting of mutants to his cause of rebellion against the gods who damned them, and their escape. It’s a story where Creed also almost exclusively says true critiques of the Krakoan establishment. What’s so brilliant about Lavalle’s Sabretooth trilogy is that the first part suckers you in to feel sympathy for Creed. By the second book, as he’s positioned against literal fascist Nazi doctors who want to cut him up, he’s a well-integrated member of The Exiles. The last-moment twist that when he was alone with the power of this Nazi ship he’d do what he’s always done feels obvious, but there is a real sense of betrayal. Lavalle has been so clear-eyed and humane in his writing of Creed that when he makes the obvious turn we’re not disappointed because he failed us, we’re disappointed that we were gullible enough to think he could.
Now that we’re most of the way through the last—and longest—installment of the Sabretooth trilogy we can see the bend of the arc. This enlightened Sabretooth says all the right things, he’s great at indoctrinating people to his side. He uses nostalgia and calls out the hypocrisies of the Quiet Counsel to convince other unwanted people that they should follow him. When presented with a future as a part of the kind of community that shunned him he rejects it without a second thought. In the end, the only real ally he can have is himself. He would have a world dominated by his will and his will alone.
I know what I am. That’s always been my super-power.
In his own words, Creed explains he is who he is. He can’t or won’t be changed. He knows who he is and that makes him powerful. While everyone else has to worry about how the world sees him, Creed doesn’t have those hang-ups. Because he acknowledges who he is, we know he’s not wrong when he calls X-Force hypocrites. They are by any standard the morally bankrupt violent wet work group of an island nation that put him in hell for a single murder. He’s now on a war path. To get back his lover/enemy/first victim, and to make the establishment who damned him to hell pay. Sabretooth Victor Creed is pure evil and the most dangerous thing someone like him can be is right.
