My weekly X-Men guide updates continue as I revisit one of the guides I rebuilt in 2022! Does that make this update too easy? Well, that is sorta the point of getting everything back on schedule again, but don’t worry – there’s a reason my band’s motto used to be “Make It Harder.” That’s why today I not only have an update to my Guide to X-Force, but also an update to my Guide to Sabretooth exclusively for Patrons of CK!
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Of this pair of X-Guides, it’s Sabretooth who has seen more recent collected edition action.
Sabretooth scored his own solo series from Victor LaValle, Leonard Kirk, & Rain Beredo at the start of 2022. Many X-Fans named it as their favorite of the year, though I was a bit cooler on it (perhaps because I have such major favorites already from both LaValle and Kirk).
The series added an interesting dimension to Krakoa and spun off immediately into a second mini from the same creative team, Sabretooth and the Exiles. That second series just wrapped up last week (and which featured the beloved Nanny and Orphanmaker from Zeb Wells’ Hellions.)
That means a pair of new collections to add to the Sabretooth guide! However, I originally built this guide several months before the revelation of House of X. That means I had a string of Sabretooth appearances to add, both in the run-up to his villainous turn in House of X as well as the many flashback and recton stories told afterward while he was a captive of the Quiet Council in the present day.
My Guide to Sabretooth is one of my “every appearance summarized” style of solo character guides. If you’ve ever been curious about Sabretooth’s complete history and how he transformed from brutal villain to occasional hero, my guide will ensure you catch every key story.
Meanwhile, in the X-Force Guide we have exactly the news you’d expect from what has become a reliable co-flagship to the main “X-Men” title over the past 15 years. There’s a newly announced trade of Benjamin Percy’s series taking us through issue #47, plus a newly-announced Epic Collection. The Epic, Assault on Graymalkin (Epic Vol. 3), covers a set of already-well-collected issues leading up to X-Force’s participation in Fatal Attraction in issue #25.
I’ve just re-read these issues to the 9YO as part of our ongoing X-Men read, and I am surprised to report that Nicieza’s X-Force may have been the best X-Men ongoing in that period with Peter David newly-departed from X-Factor! The characters all feel distinct from each other with their own unique motivations (which we can’t say for either X-Men flagship) and the artwork is consistently on-model and strong (which Excalibur struggled with after Davis’s departure).
Luckily, you don’t have to wait until December to re-read the issues on your own. Since they’ve already been collected in omnibus, they’re already on Marvel Unlimited – and the guide has a link to get you there.
Stay tuned next week as I continue my mission to update all of my X-Guides to the present day!
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