Marvel’s Sabretooth War Is the “Most Violent Wolverine Story Ever Told”

Snikt! That’s the sound of the claws coming out in Sabretooth War, a 10-part epic coming to the pages of writer Benjamin Percy’s ongoing run of Wolverine (2020). Billed by Marvel Comics as “the definitive Wolverine and Sabretooth story” and “the most violent Wolverine story ever told,” Sabretooth War begins in January’s Wolverine #41 and culminates in the landmark Wolverine issue #50 — just ahead of the metal-clawed mutant’s 50th anniversary in 2024. Wolverine: Sabretooth War will ship bi-monthly when issue #41 hits shelves on January 10th, 2024. 

Co-written by Percy and Victor LaVelle (Sabretooth & the Exiles) with Wolverine-led chapters illustrated by Cory Smith (Ghost Rider) and Sabretooth-led chapters by Geoffrey Shaw (X-Men: Days of Future Past – Doomsday), the 10-issue storyline will explore the decades-long Wolverine vs. Sabretooth feud amid the Fall of X mutant massacre and will “shed new light on their dark history with shocking revelations behind their undying hatred for each other,” according to Marvel. “It’s a wardecades in the making and it kicks off when Sabretooth revives a deadlytradition — with some of Logan’s loved ones in the crossfire. Only thistime, he has an entire army behind him. Get ready for the showdown to end all showdowns: Wolverine vs.Sabretooth! It’s been years since these heavy hitters have crossed pathsin the Marvel Universe, but as Krakoafalls, so rises Sabretooth — and he’s out for revenge!  They threw VictorCreed in the Pit, but he’s free and, wielding an army of Sabretooths,will prove once and for all why he is Logan’s ultimate nemesis.”

“Sabretooth is the definition of big bad — one of the nastiest,cruelest, scariest villains in the 616 and Wolverine’s greatestnemesis,” Percy told Marvel.com. “Which is exactly why we haven’t allowedtheir stories to intersect — during this age of Krakoa — until now. Thetension has built up painfully, and now these two savage titans aregoing to claw and slash their way into each other’s lives again in whatwill be the most violent Wolverine story in Marvel history.”

“I’m geeked I get to continue the story of Sabretooth that I began inthat first mini-series back in 2021,” LaValle added. “Even morethrilled to tell it in tandem with my friend Ben Percy, who knows how tothrill and terrify with the best of them. We plan to make this avisceral story of two lifelong enemies coming to their most violent endsand I’m excited to get the blood flowing.”

WOLVERINE #41 –Part 1 of “Sabretooth War”
Written by BENJAMIN PERCY & VICTOR LAVALLE
Art by CORY SMITH & GEOFF SHAW
Cover by LEINIL FRANCIS YU
On Sale 1/10

Sabretooth War: Sabretooth’s X-Men History, Explained

After he was fatally decapitated by the mutant sorceress Magik in War of the Realms: Uncanny X-Men #3, the resurrected Sabretooth returned in House of X #3 as a prisoner of Project Achilles: a superhuman super-maximum security prison built to house the “worst of the worst.” When the White Queen Emma Frost arranged Sabretooth’s release to the living island Krakoa, the Quiet Council of the mutant-ruled nation-state judged the feral killer for violating the 2nd law of mutantdom: “Kill no man.” Sabretooth swore revenge on the Council and their bloodlines as Charles Xavier sentenced him to his fate: an eternal stasis deep inside the Pit of Krakoa.

Exiled into the pit as the first mutant subject to Krakoa’s form of capital punishment, Sabretooth went on a mental killing spree before his mind splintered into the Feral Council: the Captain, the Boy, and the Beast. As Creed the King, he created and ruled over Krakoa’s Hell, a wicked dominion warped and dominated by Victor Creed’s will in Sabretooth (2022) #1.

Discovering he could manifest his consciousness throughout the island, Sabretooth haunted Krakoa and was eventually released from the Pit but ended up in purgatory — as a prisoner of Station Six and the anti-mutant Orchis Corporation. But the precognative mutant known as Destiny saw Sabretooth’s fated future: as the wheelchair-bound leader of the Exiles.

An escaped Victor Creed returned in Sabretooth & the Exiles #1, where he formed a tense alliance with Krakoa’s Exiles: Oya, Toad, Third Eye, Nekra, Madison Jeffries, Melter, Nanny, and Orphan-Maker. That series pit Sabretooth against his resurrected son, Graydon Creed, who had been traversing the multiverse and killing Sabretooths. The plot unleashed a multiversal Sabretooth army: the Captain America-like Sabretooth of Earth-203, the Sentinel of Rough Justice; the manicured Sabretooth of Earth-12, the baddest of bad boy celebrities; and a female warrior, the Savage Sabretooth of Earth-1912. Graydon created his own army using the beheaded and zombified bodies of Sabretooth variants, who then fell under Sabretooth’s commands.

Sabretooth & the Exiles #5 ended with Sabretooth leading his team to Krakoa for an old friend’s birthday — and it was that issue that first warned of the coming Sabretooth War.  

Wolverine #41: Sabretooth War Part 1 is on sale January 10th, 2024.