Weapon X vols. 4 & 5

Writers Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente have some interesting ideas about what to do with Sabretooth in these volumes.  They start with having him lead the team on a mission to Russia that has the feral one tangling with none other than Omega Red.  He actually manages to strike up a bond with the psychotic Russian mutant, and that’s just one of the surprises vol. 4 has to offer.  I’d say more, but “Russian Revolution” is a fun ride that ends in a place that I didn’t expect it to and is all the better for it. That’s more thanks to the strong character work from the writers, with their handling of Sabretooth providing some of the best material he’s had in quite some time.  Yildray Cinar and Ricardo Lopez Ortiz also provide solid artwork for this volume, even if their respective styles are the definition of “wildly incompatible.”

Sabretooth’s leadership of Weapon X comes into its own in the following volume, “Weapon X-Force,” just in time for the series to be cancelled.  Even though it didn’t have a “color” name, “Weapon X” was caught up in the “Great Color Cull of 2018” to make way for the new “X-Force” series. Quite abruptly too as the ending feels rushed given what Pak and Van Lente were setting up here.  It revolves around a genuinely bonkers twist regarding longtime X-villain Reverend Stryker that has Sabretooth and the rest of the team actually fearing for their souls and trying to stage a pre-emptive strike on Hell as a result. If only the story was able to work itself up to the level of craziness that last sentence implied it had.  All of this builds up to a rushed conclusion which suggests a more feral future for Sabretooth and not much else. Which is really disappointing for a series that I found to be surprisingly entertaining until now.