Good news - Sabretooth #1 exceeded my expectations.

Admittedly, that's partly because my expectations for this book were extraordinarily low.  I'm pretty cynical about anyone doing a Sabretooth miniseries, as he's a character who was overexposed into oblivion years ago.  And the creative team of Daniel Way and Bart Sears didn't exactly inspire optimism, after Way's alarmingly boring Venom series and Sears' retina-shredding work on Captain America & The Falcon.

Fortunately, both guys comfortably exceed my expectations of them.  Daniel Way may be reusing the "killer on the loose in the Arctic" set-up from Venom, but this time the plot is much tighter.  I'm still sceptical about whether it was necessary to spend quite this much time setting up Sabretooth, but at least we get off to a reasonably paced start. 

That's not the only idea recognisable from earlier Daniel Way stories, mind you.  This is yet another story told from the point of view of an innocent third party, a device that he's previously used in Wolverine and Venom.  But it's a fair enough approach for this character.  Telling the story from Sabretooth's perspective and asking the audience to identify with him is dodgy; it tends to end up defanging the character.  He retains a lot more menace this way, even if he's really the villain in somebody else's story.

As for Bart Sears, thank god, he finally seems to have abandoned the excessive contortions and impenetrable storytelling that's characterised his recent work.  His Sabretooth is still absurdly overmuscled, but the overall storytelling is infinitely clearer.  You can actually read this.  That's a major step forward.

All that being said, the book is more notable for exceeding expectations than for actually being particularly good.  It's above average, but as with so many recent Marvel books, it doesn't provide a clear answer to the question: Why are they publishing this?

Rating: B

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