Sabretooth Special #1

Sabretooth Special #1
Writing: Fabian Nicieza
Art: Gary Frank

What Went Down: After escaping the X-Men in Uncanny #328, Sabretooth encounters current X-Force member, and former Morlock, Caliban. Sabretooth taunts Caliban, saying that X-Force won’t allow him to be himself. When Caliban hesitates, Creed electrocutes him with some nearby electrical wires.

We learn that the X-Men squad tasked to capture Sabretooth is made up of the five original X-Men. Jean scans the city telepathically, but for some reason Creed’s head wound now makes it harder for telepaths to find him. Cyclops and Iceman go to one of Sabretooth’s apartments to see if he shows up there. He does, and beats up the two X-Men before escaping. Iceman pursues, but he is forced to ice off Creed’s escape after Sabretooth takes a hostage.

Sabretooth escapes to a subway, but wouldn’t you know it, the Beast coincidentally happens to be on board. So they fight as well. As Sabretooth is about to kill Beast Cyclops shows up in the nick of time, so Creed runs away again.

This time Archangel catches up to him and grabs him off the ground, believing that Creed will have nowhere to go in the air. Sabretooth damages one of Warren’s wings, causing both of them to fall, but Iceman manages to save Warren with some ice. While Iceman takes Archangel to the hospital, the rest of the X-Men continue the search.

Jean manages to pick up some thoughts from Sabretooth, and learns that he is trying to get to Boston to kill the Generation X kids. She finds him, and knocks him around with her telekinesis. Cyclops blasts him, but he gets faked out and pulled through a window. The X-Men give him a lecture on why it is important to be good as they fight him, all the while asking Sabretooth what he wants and why he is doing this. Jean gets a hold of him telekinetically, and Cyclops realizes that the thing Sabretooth wants is his own death. Jean drops Creed, and Cyclops has to shoot him in the head to stop him from hurting some cops.

Creed seems to die, but we all know that isn’t going to last. Val Cooper packs him up so that he can join X-Factor. Cyclops tells his friends that it’s sad that Sabretooth technically won since he got what he wanted.

How It Was: Fabian Nicieza returns to the X-Men for this special one-shot, with its shiny cover and lack of advertisements. Yes, this is the same format that the Age of Apocalypse one-shots had, except this doesn’t feel nearly as epic an event as those did. This feels like a genuine attempt at a cash grab since all of the gimmicks feel completely unnecessary. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have no ads, but this comic is definitely not worth five bucks.

This isn’t to say that this comic is bad;  this just doesn’t really feel like that pivotal of an event for the X-Men. Nicieza does manage to present a really neat portrait of Sabretooth. Instead of revealing Sabretooth’s motivations, Nicieza leaves them up in the air and this actually works to some degree. It’s also frustrating to have months and months of set up be brushed aside as "Creed was faking it" for unknown reasons. What is neat to see is all the other characters guessing at his motivations: he’s angry, he’s enjoying his freedom, he’s planning revenge, or maybe he wants to die. The whole idea of the book seems to be that nobody knows what Sabretooth wants, including himself, and there is kind of an interesting idea in that which doesn’t get fully explored here.

The original X-Men are an odd choice for the stars of this one-shot. Surely characters like Wolverine, Gambit, and Bishop have closer ties to Sabretooth and thus would have been more interesting to bring into conflict with him. I guess that Nicieza was looking for X-Men to combat Creed’s philosophies as well as his body. But I really like the dynamic he has with Jean Grey where, like Wolverine, he respects her because she is willing to do what is necessary to him because she hates him as much as Logan does. And the scene where Archangel gets his wing broken is pretty shocking, but unfortunately leads to months of him complaining about how much his wing hurts. There’s a little too much sermonizing from the X-Men on the importance of control and knowing one’s purpose, but that’s them taking the high ground; it would be weird if these particular X-Men were only throwing insults back at him.

The real problem with the plot is that it’s trying to set up Sabretooth as this psychopathic killer that needs to be captured before he can kill hundreds of people, but then he never kills anybody. He has plenty of opportunities with the X-Men, Caliban, police officers, various hostages and random people, but he always lets them go. This probably has to do with the Comics Code, but it really cuts the drama to have a violent killer who forgoes every opportunity he has to kill.

The end is completely anti-climactic since we all know that Sabretooth can heal himself, so why even go through the motions of pretending he’s dead? And the fact that the telepaths can’t track him, but can read his mind just enough for plot convenience is a little contrived. But this is still a pretty good chase scene for a character that did play a significant role in the X-Men for a time. The plot isn’t exactly revolutionary, and this probably didn’t need to be double-sized, but it does get the job done with some decent action.

C+

Uncanny X-Men #328

Uncanny X-Men #328
Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Joe Madureira

What Went Down: Professor X has decided that Sabretooth is a lost cause, so he and the X-Men are getting ready to turn Creed over to Valerie Cooper of X-Factor. Xavier is happy that he tried, even though we never saw it on panel. Jean shows Bishop and Cyclops that Sabretooth was faking his rehabilitation by demonstrating that the serene forest scene that he had been spending time in looked like a creepy haunted wood with dead carcasses through Sabretooth’s mental perspective. Bishop thinks they should kill Creed, but Cyclops argues that they can’t kill everyone who disagrees with their beliefs. Bishop brings up the repressed memories of the Age of Apocalypse that he has been seeing and expresses frustration that Xavier is too busy to help him. Scott and Jean reflect on their own experiences with time compression from The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix.

Sabretooth continues to argue with Xavier, trying to get Charles to admit he is jealous of Creed’s freedom. Val Cooper interrupts to check in. Jean and Cyclops try to comfort Xavier about his guilt for failing, but Xavier brushes them off.

Boomer from X-Force shows up in Sabretooth’s cell. She is angry that Sabretooth was faking his injuries because she felt a connection with him when she was helping to rehabilitate him. Psylocke watches silently, while conveying support that Tabitha is standing up for herself. Sabretooth manages to anger Boomer, causing her to blow up his restraints. Once free, Creed is about to kill the girl, but Psylocke intervenes and a big fight begins. Psylocke tries to end the fight with her psychic knife, but it turns out that the injury to his brain that Wolverine gave him now makes Creed immune to telepathy. So Sabretooth ends up gutting Psylocke. The other X-Men respond, but it is too late; Sabretooth has escaped.

How It Was: So despite saving the Gen X kids during the Phalanx saga, and being a hero in Age of Apocalypse, and the head wound that seemingly made him gentler, Lobdell decides to write Sabretooth back into being a villain. There’s nothing wrong with this except for the fact that it’s such an anti-climax after a plot line that has lasted for almost three years. Xavier’s change of heart feels very sudden, and although there are legitimate reasons for turning Creed over, it’s hard not to feel like Xavier is just giving up since we never actually saw him try to help the villain. I guess you could write it off as foreshadowing of some kind for Onslaught.

It’s also surprising to see that X-Force is still living at the mansion, but this goes on for many more months. I like the interaction between Boomer and Sabretooth, although the point he gets her to overreact on seems to be Cannonball learning about her past as a villain, which he is already aware of. Psylocke gets some nice moments to shine, since she hasn’t had anything to do in about half a year.

Sorry to say, but the art really lets this issue down, as it is definitely not Joe Mad’s best work. Sabretooth is drawn with ridiculous proportions this issue; I’m talking like Strong Guy from X-Factor proportions. He looks like he has an absurd amount of muscles this issue. Also, the main dramatic crux of the issue, Psylocke getting mortally wounded, doesn’t have the impact it could’ve since Psylocke is essentially drawn with her eyes closed. This isn’t really the artist’s fault so much as the Comics Code Authority of the time, but it still reduces the effectiveness of what should be a fairly shocking event; the artist just isn’t allowed to properly show what happened to her.

This is actually an okay set up to a couple of stories that are not so great. While I admire Lobdell for trying to put some of the focus back on Psylocke, the results of the upcoming story end up complicating her even more while delivering a mediocre story. Still I guess this issue does have some unexpected moments, at least if you can manage to ignore the cover.

B-

Uncanny X-Men #327

Uncanny X-Men #327
Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Roger Cruz

What Went Down: A group of South American orphans discover the unconscious body of Magneto. The children are scared away when he wakes up, but Magneto is met by an attractive nun with a shotgun. Reacting with his powers, Magneto pushes the gun away, and then falls unconscious again.

When he next wakes up, Magneto is tied to a bed. The woman introduces herself as Sister Maria, offers Magneto food, and unties him. We learn that Magneto has amnesia, and when he shaves his beard we also discover that he has de-aged to his twenties; even he comments on how wrong this feels.

Not knowing his true identity, one of the children names him Joseph. Sister Maria has an old issue of Time with the X-Men on the cover, so she is aware that he might be a mutant. Joseph tries to share a romantic moment with Sister Maria, but she is committed to her faith.

A month later, Joseph is busy fixing a tractor with his powers when a man named Colonel Ramos approaches. All of the children explain that he is a jerk, and possibly corrupt. A week later, Joseph finds the barn on fire. He catches up to the Colonel and threatens the man with his powers to find out where Sister Maria and the children are.

In a basement, Sister Maria comforts the children. After they hear a commotion, Joseph opens the door. Unfortunately, he killed many men to get to the children, and this causes all of them to be frightened of him. Joseph leaves the next day. Sister Maria gives him the issue of Time, suggesting that he search out the X-Men.

In the end we learn that Sister Maria was recounting the story to a priest. She claims that she suspected that Joseph was Magneto and wonders if she did the right thing. The father reassures her that all they can do is pray and hope for the best.

How It Was: Scott Lobdell keeps switching it up with the unexpected formats. This issue we get a single self-contained story: no subplots, no recaps of other stories. There aren’t even any X-Men in this story; it’s just catching up with Magneto from beginning to end. The big twist of the story is that Magneto is now Joseph: a younger Magneto without his tragic past. Lobdell is obviously taking on the “nature vs nurture” debate by exploring what Magneto might be like if he didn’t have all the emotional baggage from suffering through the Holocaust.

And that’s a pretty interesting direction to go as far as giving Magneto a second chance after all the bad things he’s done. Inevitably though, it leads to the same reoccurring character beats of Joseph feeling guilty for being a former villain and frustrated by his amnesia and its cause. Although it seems like Scott Lobdell is really pushing the fact that Joseph is the true Magneto, Joseph’s origin eventually turns out to be a generic clone story, which is really disappointing.

As for the story itself, it’s a stock plot of an amnesiac finding family among strangers, but it still works rather well. Yes, Joseph doesn’t have a full personality yet, and Sister Maria is a little too “perfect” as far as looks and personality.  Really Maria and the children are more of a plot device, and the point of the story is to show that Joseph can potentially become good or evil. The best part of course is Joseph’s return to darkness where he tortures the Colonel and murders all of the children’s captors. It’s a shame that later Joseph issues didn’t play up the will he/won’t he turn evil aspect as much; Joseph stays pretty benevolent and guilt ridden for the most part during his career as an X-Man.

The twist that Joseph is younger than Magneto does add some mystery and speculation to the character, but the twist itself is mostly superficial. Joseph’s control over his powers seems absolute even though he should be a novice, and most artists just draw him as Magneto with long hair, so there is no real differentiation other than his personality. Normally this would be too big of a tangent to take away from the main X-Men storylines, but at this point, with Age of Apocalypse just ended and Onslaught still being worked out, this is the perfect time for this story. And unlike the similar Adam-X aside in X-Men #39, this character actually turns out to have an impact on the book for a significant amount of time. It’s not exactly redefining the genre, but it is one of the more competent efforts during this era in X-Men.

B