Sabretooth & The Exiles

Sabretooth by Victor LaValle

by Victor LaValle, Leonard Kirk (Artist), Rain Beredo (Colorist)

Sabretooth takes his destiny into his own clawed hands, after escaping the Krakoan pit in which he was imprisoned!

The powers that be condemned Victor Creed to the pit for breaking the rules of Krakoa. But now he's free -- and ready to show the world you can't keep a bad man down -- even as his fellow Exiles from Krakoa speed along in hot pursuit! But will they find common ground with Sabretooth...or will their next encounter be their last? Victor LaValle and Leonard Kirk return for this unforgettable installment in the chronicles of one of Marveldom's most vicious mutants!

COLLECTING: Sabretooth & The Exiles (2022) 1-5

Genres: Comics, X Men, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Comic Book, Science Fiction

144 pages, Paperback

Published January 30, 2024

About the author

Victor LaValle is the author of the short story collection Slapboxing with Jesus, four novels, The Ecstatic, Big Machine, The Devil in Silver, and The Changeling and two novellas, Lucretia and the Kroons and The Ballad of Black Tom. He is also the creator and writer of a comic book Victor LaValle's DESTROYER.

He has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Whiting Writers' Award, a United States Artists Ford Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Shirley Jackson Award, an American Book Award, and the key to Southeast Queens.

He was raised in Queens, New York. He now lives in Washington Heights with his wife and kids. He teaches at Columbia University.

He can be kind of hard to reach, but he still loves you.

Reviews

[johnny ♡ · Rating 2 out of 5]

pretty mid

[Dakota Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sabretooth and his Exiles are out of the Pit and into a conflict with Orchis! Namely, Dr. Barrington, a mad scientist who has been kidnapping and killing mutants in an effort to create her own mutant army. Unlike the previous, closed-room Sabretooth book, this globe-trotting adventure is very gogogo with almost no time for character moments. And there are a lot of characters here - too many to care about.

Nanny and Orphan-maker naturally steal the show. Sabretooth is honestly the least interesting character here, a very neutered anti-hero at this point. He eventually finds a small group of multiversal Sabreteeth that'll probably play a part in some future mini-series but did nothing for me in this volume. Barrington doesn't serve as much of a threat and Sabretooth isn't a compelling lead character. Ultimately, a fairly dull read, which is disappointing after the first Sabretooth volume caught my attention.

[Dakota · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some fun moments but overall this story was a little too messy for me. Still excited to read the next volume. Issue 5 opened up some interesting doors for the next story

[Matthew Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one had some good moments and some okay moments. I just never really was engulfed in this one, but I did think the read and what was going on was interesting.

[Alex Sarll]

The name is misleading; either this is volume 2 of the same creators' Sabretooth, or that was volume 1 of this. But this globetrotting adventure lacks the focus of that prison drama, the tone often struggling to cohere. Very comics failings - like setting up a mystery enemy, revealing them as someone many of the readers will never have heard of at the end of the penultimate issue, and expecting that to land - sit alongside lapses into the didactic, like supposedly but not convincingly in-character lectures on medical ethics in the data pages. Still, Hellions veterans Nanny and Orphan-Maker save any scene they're in, which I believe is very odd for people who first encountered them back in the day.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another interesting chapter about Victor and his band of misfits. While everyone reluctantly agrees to work together in the circumstances they are given, it's still a mixed bag. Lavalle peppers in a lot of twisted medical history lessons that shows the non white populare has been abused by the medical fields as a parallel for the Orchis' experiments, which while both cruel, feel almost tacted on cuz of who he is as a writer. The actual plot resolves quickly, and leaves some dangling threads for the alleged third and final part. Solid, but nothing special.

[André Habet · Rating 5 out of 5]

So cool and radical. In my dreams, Vita Ayala and LaValle would have 5 more years to play with/against Krakoa.

[Bekka · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up to 4.
Definitely a fun one to read, if a little all over the place in points. But the Exiles and Sabretooth have a very interesting concept to them, and I'm excited to see more.
TW for mentions of real-world human experimentation (specifically operations on Black female slaves without anaesthesia, Brazillian women with the pill, Native children being kidnapped by the US government and the phrase 'kill the Native, save the child'), experimentation on characters, dehumanisation of a minority (eg, they're mutants, they're not human so they don't feel pain), violence, blood, dead bodies, xenophobia

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not good at all. Everything that was slightly interesting in the previous Sabretooth series is missing here. Sabretooth runs afoul of Dr. Barrington and Orchis but its too cartoony stupid to be believed. There are so many dumb choices made by the characters and writer. There is a twist that could have been intriguing but its immediately ruined. The ending, if it can be called that sets up something I don't think I or others were asking for. Leonard Kirk does some really nice work on the art side though. Overall, just a dumb story. Plain and simple.

[Jerome Livsey-Herd · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. The first 4 issues were pretty good but that last issue was so random. I feel like the first 4 issues were leading to something but then that last issue was basically just a lead in to Sabertooth War in the Wolverine Series. I have so many questions like what's gonna happen with Orphan Maker, Nanny, and the of the Exiles?

[Dennis · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's better than the last LaValle's book but still not great. I have read this mainly for Nanny and Orphan-Makerm who are my favs from Zeb's Hellions run.

[Bertazzo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The end is a mess.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

i was so sad that hellions was over and then boom. another team of criminals lead by an awful guy who i only like because he's funny. life finds a way........

[Emmett Spain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Messier than the superior Sabretooth: The Adversary which preceded it, this was nonetheless entertaining and had some cool moments. Great art and colours.

[Adam Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars.
You'd think it would be rare in the X-Books for find someone as fucked up as Sabretooth, but you'd be wrong! Still, the character has grown much over the years and proven that he can handle his own title.
Highlights:
- Picking up from where we left off on his last mini-series, Sabretooth has been captured and is being experimented on by Orchis. The Exiles have escaped the Pit of Krakoa and go to get him back.
- Sabretooth is implanted with a device that slows his healing factor enough to hold him back from doing anything major.
- Once rescued, they develop a plan to take out Doctor Barrington and her bodyguard, "The Creation"
- We do get a redesign of Orphan-Maker's costume when he takes off his mask to show Barrington and almost destroys the world, prompting a fix from Nanny
- Over the course of the Volume, we see events involving the team take out 3 Orchis sites, though many (in my opinion) seemed to go down easier than normal.
- By the end of the Volume, Sabretooth has left the Exiles again, now on a team of multiversal Victor Creeds, all searching for the architect of most of the chaos, Graydon Creed.

Very interesting take on an unconventional team.
Looking forward to seeing what comes next for both teams.
Recommend.

[Tyler Jenkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a decent read. I don’t care much for any of the characters really except maybe Nanny and Orphan Maker. But the story as of now just makes no sense to be told. What purpose does it have to the wider X-Men story at the moment? The same can be said for the Deadpool story but it was at least funny and cool. This didn’t have much action and again I just couldn’t connect with the characters because I don’t know them or care about them.

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Continues to show what the X-Men can be & do when untethered from Krakoa.

[Subham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a little messy and not as good as the first one but still does its job and shows how dangerous Sabretooth can be and he does become so by the end and you see some interesting things like how he is being experimented on, his escape, the exiles team forming and searching for him and when they do, fighting against Dr. Barrington and her mad creation, lets call it Barrington's monster and is a fun face off, helping Creed escape and their mission whatever it turns out to be.

The parts I liked are how evil Dr Barrington is and you see the metacommentary of experimentation on the people in history and treatment of mutants and the parallels being drawn and its interesting and you feel bad for Creed too and then the crew coming together, an adventure in Astral plane and they build up this threat of Orphan-Maker and it could have been explosive but they never really go there and taking down prison cells and helping the other prisoner mutants escape which was nice, some fun convos by Nanny here.

Then the sudden twist with Graydon creed and multiversal Sabretooths was a bit much and feels super rushed and feels like the writer wanted to get it all out and it kinda becomes like "what happened there" and I feel it could have used 1-2 issues more to flesh out the motivations of Graydon a bit more, like if you haven't read past series or issues with him, you will remain confused like me, but oh well comics and the speed of it is albeit confusing.

But still cool to see Sabreooth get a multiversal counterpart team which is happening a lot btw in marvel universe and sometimes become a bit boring then, but still will be fun to see their interactions going forward and hoping they shed some background story for these variants, and yeah they want him to be a hero by the end but say he will become the worst villain because next "Sabretooth war" arc but oh well.

Overall good story and had some good metacommentary and the team that formed had a lot of potential but it gives due to some members only and in some areas there were sudden twists and turns and events should have happened across 1-2 issues more for it to feel better, but it sets up a lot of nice ends even for Dr Barrington and what happens with the exiles from here will be interesting to see.

[Michael Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picking up right where Victor LaValle's first Sabretooth miniseries ended, Sabretooth & the Exiles is a heck of a lot of fun. Between these two minis, LaValle has helped bridge the gap between Sabretooth's imprisonment inside The Pitt on Krakoa, from way back in Hickman's House of X/Powers of X and current events up through X Lives/X Deaths of Wolverine, teasing the coming end of the Krakoan Era.

LaValle has done an interesting job highlighting some of the cracks within Krakoan society and the views on Xavier's mutant utopia from a marginalized point of view, where traditional X-Men stories work best. Between these two miniseries, he's done an excellent job exploring the politics and ethics of incarceration, and the way the marginalized are used and abused in order to advance the roles of the political majority. This book, in particular, looks at the role of medical science and the ways it has historically been intertwined with racism. There's some truly tragic real-life history shoring up the backbone of Sabretooth's very violent war against Orchis - you know, the kind that's probably gonna end up with this series being banned in Florida and have right-wing extremist groups like Moms for Liberty frothing at the mouth. So, extra bonus points for that! Mutant hater and Orchis scientist Dr. Barrington is a truly awful character, but one that lights up the page for each panel she appears in, and is the kind of villain I hope we see more of, if only in the hopes that she can get even more of her just desserts.

Sabretooth & The Exiles also helps pave the way for the Sabretooth War event in Benjamin Percy's Wolverine book, and the final pages here do a lovely job teasing what's to come.

[Michael Church · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to be more surprised by this than I was. I’m not really sure what the point of this story is, especially compared to the last arc, other than to set up the future Sabretooth War.

It continues some of the discussions about there not being a place for certain mutants on Krakoa, but that feels like a gross oversimplification. There’s a huge difference between Sabretooth and the rest of these characters. Yet he’s the one that gets random moments hinting at some sort of redemption in this arc (though it never comes to fruition, thankfully). There’s last book ended with Nekra and the team wanting to eliminate Sabretooth, yet they team up almost immediately upon finding him.

Like I said, I don’t see what the goal was for any character besides Sabretooth. Maybe there was a new status quo in mind for Nanny and Orphanmaker. There were tiny glimpses of something for Oya and Toad. Maybe Oya’s is paying off in the new From the Ashes era, where she’s going by Temper, but I haven’t read any of that yet. Third Eye does a lot, but doesn’t go anywhere, and the same for Madison Jeffries and Nekra. Melter bonds with Orphanmaker for a split second and doesn’t do much else.

I do think having a series about mutants running counter to Krakoa’s ideals could have been interesting, and this was a decent cast to use. It had some Hellions vibes in the sense that I would’ve never thrown these 8 together and they started to have some decent chemistry that I didn’t expect. In the end, this run is just too short to accomplish anything other than some hollow critiques of the idea of Krakoa without actually making any meaningful arguments (even against the grossly misaligned and corrupt penal system).

[Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost knocked another star off for using the 'Exiles' name without a connection to the original team...

Um. Anyway...
As a stand alone piece, this is average at best. You really need to have read the previous Sabretooth series with his time in Krakoa's Pit for this to make sense. Too much is assumed and carried over from previous books. A few blocks of text to explain the characters doesn't do much to clear up the story. There is too much hope that people will continue on with this new chapter of the story. They even lay groundwork for another piece of the story after this one. By then, everyone will have forgotten why/how they were sent on this adventure.

Short version? Creed broke free from Krakoa's Pit. The other people that were placed there were given a Krakoan seed and tasked with finding Sabretooth. Meanwhile, Sabretooth is found by Orchis and they experiment on him Department H style (ohhhhhh..the memories). Teamups, upgrades, and villain reveals all follow. *dun dun dunnnnnnn*

The other thing that isn't mentioned or addressed is the fact that Nanny and Orphan Maker were 'bad' resurrections (similar to Rockslide) there personalities and temperments aren't what they used to be. At least they have ....yet another chance to change Orphan-Maker's armor and have it less like a rebranded Iron Man outfit.

(Personally, I'm waiting for this whole storyline to be mega-bundled in one omnibus)
-------
Bonus: Textual history bits about minorities/disadvantaged being tested on is a sad FACT
Bonus Bonus: When did Toad revert back to his jester costume?

[Clint · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
This limited series has a neat team of less popular mutants, and I love any excuse to spend more time with the comic pairing of Nanny and Orphan-Maker again after Hellions ended. The short issue count combined with the design pages that Krakoa series include combined with the decompressed pace of modern comics leads to feeling a bit rushed without a lot happening, but I enjoy the design pages and the pace overall so I’m really just wishing this series got more issues to explore a promising team dynamic.

LaValle’s main aims seem to be setting up the future Sabretooth War plot line while also sharing a lot of real American history about the Mengele-like human experimentation that was performed on enslaved, imprisoned, or indigenous people. He succeeds at both, and I thought the latter detail helped distinguish these issues.

“What happens to the ones left out of the dream?”

“You can do anything to people the world ignores”

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sabretooth vs. Orchis. I had high hopes, even after finishing the first issue, but it was gradually pulled down by poor writing from LaValle.

The biggest problem is that Sabretooth doesn't really seem in characters. he's too ... mild. But maybe it's just that no one has much character all. Which is a pity because the cast is pretty strong. This could have been The Hellions 2, but instead it's a four-color mess that would have been embarrassing even before Krakoa raised the quality of the X-Comics.

The rest of the problem is that none of this is believable. Orchis has thousands of mutants held captive? Sabretooth cares enough to free them? Some lady scientist has control over five major Orchis bases and is so incompetent that she destroys them all?

This is Bronze Age writing at best, and not the good stuff.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

A couple of small lapses in the storytelling, combined with some occasionally sketchy artwork, and this earns 4 stars. Otherwise, a strong 5-star book. LaValle is one of the few novelists I've come across who actually knows how to write a comic and this is a good one, focused on Sabretooth, escaped from The Pit on Krakoa, along with a motley crew of other mutant "exiles." They come up against a rogue Orchis scientist, Dr. Barrington, who's been running her own off-the-books experiments with mutants in the service of a General Contractor (or do the G. C. initials stand for someone else?). Throw in a bunch of Sabretooths from all corners of the multiverse, and you've got a heck of a mess. Thankfully, LaValle has it all under control, though I'd hate to be that certain someone (Wolverine?) with a birthday coming up.

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This follow-up to last year's Sabretooth mini-series brings he and his new comrades into conflict with Orchis in an explosive way, and one that sets the stage for the upcoming Sabretooth War over in Wolverine as well.

I love these little books made up of characters you barely know or care about, that then take said characters and make you know and care about them in five issues or less. Nanny and Orphan Maker continue their winning streak after Hellions, and I never thought I'd ever care much about Nekra or Madison Jeffries, but here we are. And of course, Sabretooth remains the star of the show, carving his way to victory the only way he knows how.

Another nice surprise from the X-side of the Marvel Universe.

[Christian Zamora-Dahmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It had its moments but it wasn’t really good. Out of the Exiles, only Nanny and the Orphan Maker had any development, and made a little memorable stance. The rest of them were just there, babbling some nonsense, being completely interchangeable by any other character. And then there was Sabretooth —definitely not a fave, with a role that ended up being so self-complacent…
The baddie had some interesting concepts attached to her, but she ended being completely sidelined by this ending that just came out of nowhere.
I’m not following any further Exiles series, unless there’s a different writer on board.

[ANTHONY FLORES · Rating 3 out of 5]

La historia comienza luego del juicio que tuvo Sabretooth en Krakoa por Charles y los tipos de las cortes.

Este dudcito es liberado del abismo donde fue desterrado por la Dra. Barrington. Él no está bien con seguir ordenes de ella y se revela y junto con otros exiliados que conoció en el abismo trataran de derrotar a la Doctora y de salvar a los mutantes que tienen como rehenes.

Una buena historia sin desmantelar lo que se vio hace rato en Powers y House of X. Un comic recomendado ya que en nada se viene Sabretooth war que ha de ser un revoloteo de gente queriendo destruir a todos en la isla.

[Joey Nardinelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Saw the reviews for this and while I think it’s well better than its Goodreads average (at 3.23), I didn’t feel like there was enough here to push my rating up more. I didn’t feel any real connection to any of the Exiles, and while the Sabertooth arch is pretty compelling and has a really bizarre ending, it just feels like a lot of wheel spinning with Fall of X looming on the other side of this. There are some solid moments of violence in this too, which given the subject matter seems like it could be more abundant while also not being gratuitous. Scientific experimentation as torture seems pretty dark so suddenly having a group of kids in the narrative really felt odd.

[FrontalNerdaty · Rating 3 out of 5]

After the surprisingly good Sabretooth series that lead in to this, Sabretooth & The Exiles is a bit of a let down.
After escaping Kraków’s ‘dungeon’ Victor is captured again but this time it doesn’t look as hopeful. The Quiet Council despatch a team, referred to as the Exiles, to capture him again. From then on not much happens. We meet an evil human doctor experimenting on mutants and she crosses with Victor. Victor’s son pops up and it ends with Sabretooth stating he’s going after Wolverine. Kind of a let down.

3/5

[Nate Deprey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked The Ballad of Black Tom and was interested what LaValle would do with my beloved mutants even if Sabretooth is the Joker of the Marvel Universe (not a compliment.) This mostly really worked for me. Drawing parallels between medical experimentation on people of color and the mutant metaphor added a richness to this story and somehow made the most despicable character in the Marvel universe briefly someone I could root for.