A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans
[cover by Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer and Frank Martin Jr.]
Here it is, folks—the finale of one of the most provocative Marvel titles in recent years. But does it fully deliver on the promise of its narrative? We’ll get to that below.
Needless to say, though, the artistry of Leonard Kirk and Rain Beredo deliver with crisp, beautiful storytelling.
Per usual with these Destiny of X reviews: Spoilers ahoy!
[Read more…] about Sabretooth Finale in Review! All Hell Breaks Loose?
[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?
[cover by Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer, Frank Martin Jr.]
There are just so many damn devils in paradise.
And in Sabretooth #2, we see their potential for mayhem multiply—while the mini remains at a slow burn that is pitch-perfect for the gradual but compelling unfolding of its mysteries. The motivating circumstances for each character, except perhaps Sabretooth himself, are as yet not entirely clear, and La Valle is an expert at keeping us hooked and wanting to know more.
[Sabretooth #1 Michael Suayan variant cover; X-Men: Schism #5; Shanna, the She-Devil #5]
This is the follow-up to my last piece, which looked at Sabretooth’s currently relevant history in relation to both certain of the Councilmembers and the stark fact of him being a remorseless sexual predator who nonetheless has a large fan base that just doesn’t care and/or is surprisingly (willfully?) unaware (Marvel is, of course, also culpable here in not wanting to address the issue, undoubtedly for commercial reasons). This time, however, we’ll address what a wonderful creative team we have on this book that will surely tackle some of Sabretooth’s problematic aspects while probably steering clear of his violent misogyny. But we’ll also look at two of the surprise characters that show up at the end of Sabretooth #1, and after researching one of them, I have begun to wonder if brilliant writer Victor LaValle does have in mind a way of at least obliquely addressing some of Creed’s hateful treatment of women*.
In fact, I plan to do a third piece, appendix style, to give Nekra and Oya a deeper look that should be relevant not just to the Sabretooth mini but their depiction in the modern era going forward. Neither has been very well developed. One has been a problematic caricature for fifty years, while the other has fared much better by comparison but has still not been handled well, a Nigerian adolescent girl schooled by fundamentalist missionaries and written almost exclusively by white men (most especially Jason Aaron, who rarely does that well with female characters period). But at the end of this article, we’ll briefly cover what each of these characters potentially bring to Victor LaValle and Leonard Kirk’s Sabretooth. [Read more…] about “Accept That You’re a Monster” – Sabretooth #1 Part 2.