SABRETOOTH SPECIAL#1 – January 1996

In the Red Zone

Credits: Fabian Nicieza (writer), Gary Frank (penciler), Jon Holdredge w/Mark McKenna (inkers), Dana Moreshead & Electric Crayon (colors), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (lettering)

Summary

Caliban tracks Sabretooth down in the sewers, but Sabretooth manages to knock him unconscious and escape. Phoenix tries to telepathically locate Sabretooth, but can’t. Cyclops and Iceman investigate one of his old safe houses while Beast and Archangel position themselves around the city. Sabretooth returns home while Cyclops and Iceman are there. He jumps out of the window and takes a hostage on the street, forcing Iceman to let him escape on the subway. Beast confronts him on the subway train, but Sabretooth manages to escape again. Archangel spots him and tries to capture him, but Sabretooth rips open one of his wings instead. Cyclops orders Iceman to take Archangel to the hospital, while Jean senses that the police have discovered a train ticket for Boston in the remains of Sabretooth’s clothing. The X-Men discern that Sabretooth is headed for Xavier’s school in Massachusetts to kill the younger students. Cyclops, Phoenix, and Beast catch him at the train station. When Sabretooth sees the brigade of police nearby, he antagonizes them into shooting him repeatedly. Val Cooper takes his apparently dead body away, as Cyclops laments that Sabretooth ended up getting exactly what he wanted.

Continuity Note

According to Professor Xavier, Sabretooth can’t be located telepathically ever since his healing factor repaired his brain damage and removed his need for a psychic “glow”. I don’t know if that’s been kept consistent over the years, but this explanation doesn’t make any sense to me.

Gimmicks

This issue has a wraparound chromium cover and is forty-eight pages with no ads. The cover price is $4.95, a dollar more than X-Men Alpha, which had the same format a year earlier. I could be wrong, but I think this was the last chromium X-book.

I Love the ‘90s

Sabretooth refers to X-Force as the “MTV slacker group”. Phoenix stations herself on top of the World Trade Center. Beast admits that he enjoys The Richard Bay Show. “Veruca Salt” appears as graphiti on the subway.

Approved By The Comics Code Authority

Sabretooth says “sucks” at one point, which is a word Joe Quesada later claimed the Code had a problem with.

Review

I’m not quite sure what the point of this comic is, outside of Marvel just saying, “Hey, we haven’t done a big, expensive chromium cover comic in a few months”. Maybe the idea was that after so many months of having Sabretooth live in the mansion, there should be a giant “X-Men vs. Sabretooth” comic to end the storyline. The story isn’t that bad, even though the plot mechanics get on my nerves. Gary Frank delivers a solid art job throughout the issue, but his clean, smooth style seems like an odd choice for a Sabretooth special. Nicieza uses the story as a vehicle for Sabretooth’s sadistic point of view, emphasizing again and again that he has no desire to change and that he likes what he is. It’s a legitimate avenue to take, but it starts to get old after awhile since the story mainly consists of Sabretooth having brief confrontations with each of the X-Men and then running away.

For no internally logical reason, only the original X-Men are sent after Sabretooth. I get that Nicieza wants to pit the original team against a creature so nasty he couldn’t have existed in the Silver Age, but hardly any of these characters really have any unique perspective to bring to the conflict. And the mechanics required to keep the story going for almost fifty pages are also silly. Not only can’t Phoenix mentally track him because Sabretooth’s suddenly developed some defense against telepathy, but in the end she can’t even keep him afloat with her telekinesis because she’s “too tired”. Cyclops hits him point blank with his optic blasts more than once and it barely has any effect. The idea that all five of these X-Men would have such a hard time capturing Sabretooth is silly. Four out of the five of them could just attack him from a distance, since Beast is the only one that can’t fire some type of projectile. Given Iceman’s recent power-up, it’s hard to believe that he couldn’t have just frozen Sabretooth at some point in the story. I don’t usually complain about the way characters use their powers in a fight scene, but this is ridiculous.

The story does have its moments, though, as Sabretooth has a few interesting exchanges with Archangel and Phoenix. Archangel talks about suppressing his own dark desires to kill Sabretooth, which is the first acknowledgment of his own internal conflicts in a long time. The idea that Sabretooth is constantly pushing the X-Men to cross their own moral boundaries also works well. The story’s central idea, that Sabretooth is really a coward because he’s unwilling to fight against any of his urges and see if he ever could change, is fine but it’s repeated so often it starts to wear on you. Overall, the story has its moments but it’s obviously padded to fit into the double-sized format, and some of the plot elements don’t hold up to much scrutiny.