Sabretooth: Mary Shelley Overdrive (Marvel 2002)
Writer: Dan Jolley
Artists: Randy Gentile, JD Mettler, Greg Scott
Format: Four issue mini-series. I love mini-serieses, because usually whoever is writing them has a specific story they're trying to tell. They're self-contained, connected with the main storylines of the ongoing lines, but not usually required reading to understand the main lines or requiring reading of the main lines to understand the mini-series. Familiarity is sufficient, and where familiarity fails, Wikipedia takes up the slack.
Basic Premise: After finishing up a 'go here, kill these people' job of his own, Victor Creed wanders into someone else's attempted assassination job. The Russian-named semi-professionals try to kill him so they will have no living witnesses to what they did. Fair enough. Sabretooth, however, reacts about as well as can be expected to people trying to kill him. The fight ends with him rescuing the assassination target out of spite, and the two of them escaping.
Now, however, Victor's curiosity is piqued. Who were those guys with the gear? Why are they trying to kill this woman? Why are they still trying to kill this woman and him?
Really, there are better ways to get Victor Creed off your case than trying to kill him. Repeatedly. Even if emptying a couple of clips from high-powered military rifles/machine-guns into him seems like fun.
Expanded Premise: Bonnie, the woman Victor Creed rescued, turns out to have been a lab assistant at a very unethical and illegal biological research laboratory. So unethical and illegal, in fact, that the principal scientists acquired and cored a bunch of Russian special operatives, then installed their minds into those nice new bodies. They're now very difficult to kill, which explains why Victor slashing one several times across the face just ended up with 'interesting new scar patterns' rather than 'raw meat'.
Why are they trying to kill Bonnie? Because Bonnie accidentally got infected with a bio-engineered plague. She's a ticking time-bomb, and when the plague comes out of dormancy, the world is going to lose a significant chunk of people. (You know, if I were bio-engineering deadly plagues, she'd be infecting people even while it's not showing any symptoms in her body. Just sayin'.)
Unfortunately for the scientists, between the time of rescuing Bonnie and when the next attempt on Victor's life was made, Bonnie threw herself at Victor. Saving her life and generally being amazing deserves some hot sex, and Victor's not going to say no to that.
And then the killers show up while Victor's in his afterglow. Yeah, way to go, guys. Bonnie takes out a guy herself, Victor deals with the rest, Bonnie gets the getaway car, Victor falls out a window into it... Victor approvingly notes her taking out the guy with a shotgun blast to the face.
They head off to another one of Creed's safehouses, and we meet Ruth. Ruth keeps girls around for Victor, as well as providing him with the food he likes, a comfortable room to stay in, and working television. She's known him for years and years, but she also doesn't know him much beyond the surface. Ruth is all kinds of awesome.
Victor and Bonnie are a bit schmoopy with each other. They'll generally continue to be so for the rest of the mini. Victor leaves her there to keep her safe while he goes off to get some answers and then kill a lot of people. Because he's Sabretooth, and that's how he deals with his problems. (You have to admit, if you're both as skilled as he is and as uncaring about other humans, killing people does usually solve more problems than it causes.)
There are many explosions and deaths. This is a Sabretooth mini-series.
One thing it's important to remember is that this mini-series only covers one single, blood-soaked night, which helps explain why Victor and Bonnie are falling so hard for each other. It's not just sex, either, though that's no doubt a big part of it. But for Bonnie, Victor keeps rescuing and protecting for her. He won't, literally can't, die for her, but he can sure as hell kill for her. For Victor, he has a woman who admires and adores him as her rescuer, who is willing and able to kill other people herself if her life is on the line, and who is responding to him as if he's a good man instead of an amoral/psychopathic killer.
Art: Realistic in style, fairly gritty. I know it takes place at night, but the artist could do with less of the solid black shadows. With the amount they're used, they start to obscure rather than enhance. Otherwise, the coloring is pretty damn spectacular, especially for a night piece. There are a few action panels where I'm not exactly sure what Creed or the other guys have just done, but thankfully the vast majority of the action panels are understandable.
There are no glaringly obvious anatomy mistakes, and everyone is depicted with realistic builds. Creed is damn fine with his shirt off without being a super-muscular action-hero.
Violence: It's a Sabretooth mini-series.
Sex: Yes. Non-graphic sex between Victor and Bonnie, implied past sexual encounters between Victor and other people.
Highlights: - Victor startling at Bonnie being sexually aggressive towards him.
- Victor Creed with his shirt off and his hair pulled back. He has elf ears! He's amazingly sexy, too. (Your mileage may vary; sexiness is in the eye of the beholder and all that.)
- While there is an obligatory "filthy mutant", that's from the guy who Victor is trying to reduce to raw meat. I'd be calling him a filthy mutant at that point, too. Thing is, there really doesn't seem to be a lot of mutant-hating going on in this mini, and pretty much everyone seems to know Creed is a mutant.
- Victor Creed may have his amazing claws of slicing and dicing, but he's not at all bothered by using guns. In fact, he seems to be a good shot with them.
- Victor breaking a knife with his teeth.
- Victor being a bit stunned that Bonnie wants to run away with him. God, he's adorable like this. (I may have a skewed definition of 'adorable'.)
- "See, Creed's got stealth written all over him."
"Guy that big? You serious?"
"Bet your ass. Used to be special forces... now he's a professional assassin... plus, y'know, he's got the whole mutant thing."
- Creed with cleavers.
- Against untrained idiots, Creed goes through them like a hot scimitar through butter. Against someone who actually knows what they're doing, Creed has a harder time of it.
- "Where do you want him?"
"Um, nail him to the wall."
- Creed on a motorcycle.
- Bonnie killing a man with common household implements. I can totally see why Victor is all over this woman.
- Creed in a business suit.
- Actually pretty much the last four pages of the last comic is all highlight for me, since both the climax and denoument of the story are amazing.
Overall: The story is effective and well-done. It fits Victor Creed well. This is obviously one of his saner stages in life, but he goes through those in Marvel comics. The fact that this is one single night, and neither Victor nor Bonnie are really given a lot of time to emotionally deal with what they're going through makes the romance effective and believable. The violence is as high and vicious as should be expected for Sabretooth doing what he does best. The plot is tight, and if the bad guys are occassionally behaving in ways I think are dumb, it's not as if they're holding an Idiot Ball. They're making realistic mistakes, rather than "omigod, did your brain get eaten by mercury?" mistakes.
Artists: Randy Gentile, JD Mettler, Greg Scott
Format: Four issue mini-series. I love mini-serieses, because usually whoever is writing them has a specific story they're trying to tell. They're self-contained, connected with the main storylines of the ongoing lines, but not usually required reading to understand the main lines or requiring reading of the main lines to understand the mini-series. Familiarity is sufficient, and where familiarity fails, Wikipedia takes up the slack.
Basic Premise: After finishing up a 'go here, kill these people' job of his own, Victor Creed wanders into someone else's attempted assassination job. The Russian-named semi-professionals try to kill him so they will have no living witnesses to what they did. Fair enough. Sabretooth, however, reacts about as well as can be expected to people trying to kill him. The fight ends with him rescuing the assassination target out of spite, and the two of them escaping.
Now, however, Victor's curiosity is piqued. Who were those guys with the gear? Why are they trying to kill this woman? Why are they still trying to kill this woman and him?
Really, there are better ways to get Victor Creed off your case than trying to kill him. Repeatedly. Even if emptying a couple of clips from high-powered military rifles/machine-guns into him seems like fun.
Expanded Premise: Bonnie, the woman Victor Creed rescued, turns out to have been a lab assistant at a very unethical and illegal biological research laboratory. So unethical and illegal, in fact, that the principal scientists acquired and cored a bunch of Russian special operatives, then installed their minds into those nice new bodies. They're now very difficult to kill, which explains why Victor slashing one several times across the face just ended up with 'interesting new scar patterns' rather than 'raw meat'.
Why are they trying to kill Bonnie? Because Bonnie accidentally got infected with a bio-engineered plague. She's a ticking time-bomb, and when the plague comes out of dormancy, the world is going to lose a significant chunk of people. (You know, if I were bio-engineering deadly plagues, she'd be infecting people even while it's not showing any symptoms in her body. Just sayin'.)
Unfortunately for the scientists, between the time of rescuing Bonnie and when the next attempt on Victor's life was made, Bonnie threw herself at Victor. Saving her life and generally being amazing deserves some hot sex, and Victor's not going to say no to that.
And then the killers show up while Victor's in his afterglow. Yeah, way to go, guys. Bonnie takes out a guy herself, Victor deals with the rest, Bonnie gets the getaway car, Victor falls out a window into it... Victor approvingly notes her taking out the guy with a shotgun blast to the face.
They head off to another one of Creed's safehouses, and we meet Ruth. Ruth keeps girls around for Victor, as well as providing him with the food he likes, a comfortable room to stay in, and working television. She's known him for years and years, but she also doesn't know him much beyond the surface. Ruth is all kinds of awesome.
Victor and Bonnie are a bit schmoopy with each other. They'll generally continue to be so for the rest of the mini. Victor leaves her there to keep her safe while he goes off to get some answers and then kill a lot of people. Because he's Sabretooth, and that's how he deals with his problems. (You have to admit, if you're both as skilled as he is and as uncaring about other humans, killing people does usually solve more problems than it causes.)
There are many explosions and deaths. This is a Sabretooth mini-series.
One thing it's important to remember is that this mini-series only covers one single, blood-soaked night, which helps explain why Victor and Bonnie are falling so hard for each other. It's not just sex, either, though that's no doubt a big part of it. But for Bonnie, Victor keeps rescuing and protecting for her. He won't, literally can't, die for her, but he can sure as hell kill for her. For Victor, he has a woman who admires and adores him as her rescuer, who is willing and able to kill other people herself if her life is on the line, and who is responding to him as if he's a good man instead of an amoral/psychopathic killer.
Art: Realistic in style, fairly gritty. I know it takes place at night, but the artist could do with less of the solid black shadows. With the amount they're used, they start to obscure rather than enhance. Otherwise, the coloring is pretty damn spectacular, especially for a night piece. There are a few action panels where I'm not exactly sure what Creed or the other guys have just done, but thankfully the vast majority of the action panels are understandable.
There are no glaringly obvious anatomy mistakes, and everyone is depicted with realistic builds. Creed is damn fine with his shirt off without being a super-muscular action-hero.
Violence: It's a Sabretooth mini-series.
Sex: Yes. Non-graphic sex between Victor and Bonnie, implied past sexual encounters between Victor and other people.
Highlights: - Victor startling at Bonnie being sexually aggressive towards him.
- Victor Creed with his shirt off and his hair pulled back. He has elf ears! He's amazingly sexy, too. (Your mileage may vary; sexiness is in the eye of the beholder and all that.)
- While there is an obligatory "filthy mutant", that's from the guy who Victor is trying to reduce to raw meat. I'd be calling him a filthy mutant at that point, too. Thing is, there really doesn't seem to be a lot of mutant-hating going on in this mini, and pretty much everyone seems to know Creed is a mutant.
- Victor Creed may have his amazing claws of slicing and dicing, but he's not at all bothered by using guns. In fact, he seems to be a good shot with them.
- Victor breaking a knife with his teeth.
- Victor being a bit stunned that Bonnie wants to run away with him. God, he's adorable like this. (I may have a skewed definition of 'adorable'.)
- "See, Creed's got stealth written all over him."
"Guy that big? You serious?"
"Bet your ass. Used to be special forces... now he's a professional assassin... plus, y'know, he's got the whole mutant thing."
- Creed with cleavers.
- Against untrained idiots, Creed goes through them like a hot scimitar through butter. Against someone who actually knows what they're doing, Creed has a harder time of it.
- "Where do you want him?"
"Um, nail him to the wall."
- Creed on a motorcycle.
- Bonnie killing a man with common household implements. I can totally see why Victor is all over this woman.
- Creed in a business suit.
- Actually pretty much the last four pages of the last comic is all highlight for me, since both the climax and denoument of the story are amazing.
Overall: The story is effective and well-done. It fits Victor Creed well. This is obviously one of his saner stages in life, but he goes through those in Marvel comics. The fact that this is one single night, and neither Victor nor Bonnie are really given a lot of time to emotionally deal with what they're going through makes the romance effective and believable. The violence is as high and vicious as should be expected for Sabretooth doing what he does best. The plot is tight, and if the bad guys are occassionally behaving in ways I think are dumb, it's not as if they're holding an Idiot Ball. They're making realistic mistakes, rather than "omigod, did your brain get eaten by mercury?" mistakes.