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[covers by Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer and Frank Martin Jr.]

Horror novelist Victor LaValle’s 5-issue Sabretooth miniseries continues to be a surprisingly deep meditation on the ruthlessness of the carceral state and character study of not just the title character but the five mutants who are his fellow inmates, four of whom have been generally overlooked (like Nekra) or not well served (Oya); Third Eye, on the other hand, is a fascinating LaValle creation, whose backstory starts to clarify with just a few evocative details in issue #4. I say the quality of this story is surprising, given Sabretooth’s nature as a two-dimensional psycho killer whose history of racialized sexual predation Marvel of course doesn’t really want to deal with. That he is now simply to be depicted as a stone-cold murderer from a childhood of trauma and nothing more problematic, author LaValle is doing top-shelf work that speaks to the modern moment, but in a way that won’t become dated – as it’s only our contemporary culture that’s finally waking up to the crimes of its forebears and the continued structural brutalities the mainstream has largely been blind to or just willfully denied.

This is not your crusty uncle’s ’90s Sabretooth title that’s just about cheap shocks and sex that puts women in the shadow of Marvel’s creepiest yet bizarrely widely beloved sexual predator.

[Read more…] about Sabretooth #3-4 in Review! Laying Down the Gauntlet – Any Takers?