Review: Wolverine #41-#42 The Sabretooth War Parts 1 and 2 and Dead X-Men # 1
This week in X comics—two detours on the Fall of the House of X. The opening volleys of the Sarbetooth War are fired. Elsewhere and elsewhen, Rachel Summers gathers a new team of X-Men for a journey across the Moria-verse
Wolverine #41-#42 The Sabretooth War Part 1 and Part 2
Written by Benjamin Percy and Victor Lavalle, Penciled by Geoffrey Shaw and Cory Smith, Inked by Geoffrey Shaw and Oren Junior, and Colored by Alex Sinclair
At the dawn of Krakoa, Victor Creed—Wolverine’s long-time adversary—was sentenced to The Pit below the island. For the first few years, Victor was the only prisoner in Krakoa’s only prison. There he sat, off-panel but always used as a Sword of Damocles above our heroes should they err and break one of Krakoa’s laws. His vow of revenge was but the ramblings of a particularly brutal goon. Sabretooth has never been a planner. How could he possibly cause the kind of destruction and carnage he was screaming about before being swallowed by The Pit?
Benjamin Percy has done what few writers get to do in Marvel comics. At the end of this run of Wolverine, he will have written fifty X-Force comics and fifty Wolverine comics. one-hundred issues that start at the dawn of Krakoa and end here right before the Fall of the House of X. Percy’s stories are a little off on their own—X-Force being the Mutant CIA and Wolverine being a grouchy lone wolf sort of dictate that—but they have been one of the few constants in the world of X. It’s easy to forget how much has changed in the status quo over the last four years, but through it all—the war with the Eternals, the birth of Arrako, The murder of Scarlet Witch, Laura trapped in the vault, and so very many corpses of Logan scattered around the world—Percy has been telling a thoughtful and brutal story about the horror it is to be Wolverine.
In 2022 Victor Lavalle wrote his first Sabretooth mini-series—quick review: this series is REQUIRED READING—which chronicled the brute’s rise from mutant hell and positioned Victor—Sabretooth, not Lavalle—as a sort of Lucifer figure in Krakoa. Last year around this time Lavalle wrapped up the follow-up to that excellent series, Sabretooth and The Exiles, which followed Creed and a group of escaped Pit prisoners as they took down an Orchis Base and saved thousands of captured mutants. At the end of this series, we find Victor Creed with an army of alternate versions of himself preparing for a rampage against Krakoa. A data page describes a time that is yet to come called “The Sabretooth War” and the last page of the book promises Creed—and his new Sabretooth Army—will return.
We’ve been on this collision course since the very beginning of Krakoa. It was announced late last year that Lavalle would be co-writing the last ten issues of Wolverine with Percy—which are scheduled to ship twice a month until the end in Wolverine #50. It’s the culmination of Percy’s Wolverine and X-Force, it’s the third and final chapter of Lavalle’s Sabretooth Saga, and in many ways, it will have to serve as one of the last words on Krakoa. It’s fitting that the prisoner upon which the country built its foundation would finally get his say at its collapse.
Issue #41 begins with a sense of unease. Logan knows what day it is, a very special day that connects Victor and Wolverine, and since he spent time in the Pit due to Hank McCoy’s betrayal, he knows Victor is free. Logan batons down the hatches at the X-Force base in the Antarctic, but his preparedness isn’t enough. We see Creed come to the abandoned Krakoa and for a moment you almost feel bad for him. If Creed deserves any retribution, it’s against the Quiet Council. Creed kills and eats Quinton Quire, who investigates the Sabretooth army who are roaming around Krakoa, and from there, we watch the full-on assault that the hundreds of Creed copies—many of which are headless mindless machines made of Sabretooth meat—as they kill and slaughter men, women, and especially children. With the help of Aroura and Northstar, X-Force gets back in the fight. Creed is forced to retreat, but the damage is done. We are left on a cliffhanger and Logan—who has been brutalized beyond belief—may have just lost everyone still close to him.
In an interview with CBR.com, Percy and Lavalle promised that this would be “the most violent Wolverine story of all time” and so far they have delivered. The tone of these two comics is grim, but Percy, in particular, is a master of grim. Often in the mature rated X comics, grim and edgy can be a crutch. The authors know how to ride the line so that the book has a feeling of a great slasher, one that has not yet jumped into camp but still has kills and gore that will delight if that’s what you’re looking for.
Creed has never been more terrifying and clear-headed. This is a man with a plan and an army. The way he’s drawn here, by both Shaw and Smith, retains all the smug superiority of the Victor we see in Sabretooth and Sabretooth and the Exiles while imbuing him with much more menace. The dark inkwork on Laura’s fight with the Shapeshifter Creed adds to the mystery of what happens to her at the end of this fight. There are black open spaces where you can’t quite see who is lurking in the shadows. It creates tension and fear that our heroine is not going to be ok. Also amazing is the space work. The fights here could be messy and hard to follow—there are hundreds of Victor Creed bodies assaulting hundreds of refugees and the members of X-Force—but save for the fight between the Sabreteeth and Logan at the beginning of issue 42, all of the action is clear.
That is not to say the first scrum between Sabretooth’s army and Logan is bad. On the contrary, the mass of humanity slaughtering Wolverine and stringing him up by adamantium coils is nearly slapstick, but oh-so hopeless. The way he extricates himself from this situation is honestly difficult to look at. That leads me to my one criticism. If violence and gore are not what you come to comics for, I don’t encourage you to read this. Go read Sabretooth and the Exiles. It’s brutal as well, but the Exiles are fun and the social commentary is absolutely on point. So far this Wolverine story is more straightforward. That focus has allowed Percy and Lavalle to make good on their promise of “the most violent Wolverine story of all time.”
These two books work together to set the more grounded stakes for the Fall of X. If Orchis is a villain that the mutants didn’t take seriously enough, Creed is exactly that but on a more personal scale. It’s easy to fight the bigots. It is much harder to deal with an army of a man wrongly thrown into a pit to rot forever. If Lavalle’s other work with Creed is anything to go by, this series will reckon with that fundamental sin of the Krakoans.
The brightest moment of the book comes from The Beaubier twins taking the fight to Sabretooth, and Sage and Tom working together to treat all the Victors like a virus inside the dome. Creed is a notable violator of women. Aurora is one of his most famous victims. I’m hopeful to see her get her hands on Creed in a way that allows the character some catharsis. Though this is a horror story, she might not live long enough to get what she deserves.
VERDICT: Wolverine #41–42: The Sabretooth War Part 1 and Part 2 — Recommendation with Reservations
TW: Gore, blood, violence against women, violence against children, cannibalism
Dead X-Men # 1 “Earth Intruders”
Written by Steve Foxe, Penciled and Inked by Bernard Chang, Jonas Scharf, Vincenzo Carratu, and Colored by Frank Martin
Now for something completely different.
At the climax of this year’s Hellfire Gala, all of the members of the X-Men Vote—one of the most exciting fan votes in modern comics—were elected to the team. A team that would consist of Synch and Talon—holdovers from the year before—and including Cannonball, Dazzler, Jubilee, Frenzy, Prodigy, and Juggernaut. Juggernaut was the winner of the fan vote, but what a great idea for all of the contestants to make up the new team. For one beautiful panel, we had a very cool diverse team you couldn’t wait to read about. When the page turned Nimrod—the villainous self-replicating AI—literally crashed the party and turned the losers of the vote into viscera.
Since that time the Fall of X has ended resurrection protocol, kicked most of our mutants into the White Hot Room—the Phoenix’s realm outside of time and space—and put the stragglers unfortunate enough to stay on Earth into hiding. If there is one thing to criticize about Fall of X is that it all seemed to be spinning its wheels waiting for Fall of the House of X—the current era that includes Dead X-Men but NOT the Sabretooth war which is still firmly a part of Fall of X. Here we are off to the races and we get reveal after reveal.
Dead X-Men tells the story of the five losers of the Hellfire Gala vote—though in Cannon everyone won and Rachael Summers chose these five coincidentally—as they try to steal information from some of the dead branches of the Moira engine timelines that were created in last year’s crossover Sins of Sinister. It is a companion piece to Rise of the Powers of X and the actions our team takes here are meant to be the key to Xavier’s stated plan of removing Moira’s gift and killing her before Krakoa is ever formed.
We open with our heroes in a dead branch of time where Ilyanna Rasputina has ascended to the dark throne of Limbo and destroyed all life on Earth. This is a unique way to pay off one of the hanging portents from Destiny last year as we see Magik in her full Darkchild regalia. It’s a fun bit of business but Rachael has to shove our heroes into the next—and possibly last—remaining timeline. The plan: get Prodigy close enough to a living Moira so that he can absorb all she knows and the team can get back to Xavier with the perfect meeting place for his attack on Moira. The team succeeds but not before being saved by Abigail Brand’s X-Men and Sunspot’s Starjammers. In the end, Prodigy is badly injured by a M’kraan Crystal, and an insane Moira from this doomed timeline has assembled a weapon that she promises will give her the power to make sure that “Moira Always Wins”
This timeline has gone on a lot longer than many of the others they’ve investigated so we get to see fun alternate versions of Sunfire, Sunspot—doing his very best older Captain Kirk—Smasher, Warbird, and even a slightly more heroic Abigail Brand. Brand gets a lot of time to shine here as in this timeline her meddling has led directly to the fall of not just the mutants but all life on earth. Her last stand with the elderly mad Moira is a fitting end. She’s slippery though, so I’d be surprised if we don’t see more of her before this is all over.
The somewhat lofty and technical premise of the series is handled with aplomb by Foxe who is at his best making a very messy story streamlined and impactful. Just look to his work on Dark X-Men, one of the very best of that so-called wheel-spinning mini-series-laden era that was Fall of X. The team is unified and everyone has a role. In a data page conversation between—a never seen—Xavier and Rachael, Charles wonders about Rachael’s choices of team members for this mission. She taunts him a bit assuming that he would have put a Wolverine or a Psylocke—Rachael claims she didn’t choose Betsy because she’s safeish currently in Britain—on the team. It’s a great conversation between two leaders and serves to highlight that even though our heroes aren’t the strongest or flashiest members of the X-Men, they are X-Men all the same and that is going to have to be enough.
The art here is a cavalcade of striking team shots and clear crisp action. One such splash page shows Orbis Stellaris’ ascension and it’s a cool sci-fi all-is-lost moment that belies a much deeper world here in this dead timeline. Vincenzo Carratu who penciled and inked for the Amazing Iceman mini-series, Bernard Chang who did the Jean Grey mini, and Jonas Scharf who most recently worked on Foxe’s Dark X-Men are all credited as ink and pencil. If it takes the three of them to give us this issue, then the more the merrier.
VERDICT: Dead X-Men #1 —Read It!
One last note, this is one of my very favorite covers in a long time. The shot of our poor heroes of the Hellfire vote dragging themselves out of the grave—well all of them except Frenzy, but the composition is better without her—is an instant classic. This is Pere Perez's first X cover and he really makes the most of it.
