i'm not sure what goes here

The Sabretooth War is one of the worst events Marvel has put out in many years, and the whole thing is down to Marvel's stubborn inability to recognize that Victor Creed is a D list villain at best, viable only as a personal nemesis to Logan. He is a fine villain when used in that role, but cannot function as a credible solo antagonist to the X-Men as a team under any circumstance.

In theory, we even had a good set-up for a story that played around his limitations. Krakoa is occupied. The X-Men are scattered. Logan had been left rescuing defenseless mutants without any support. Their chosen safe haven is in a geographically isolated location at the mercy of inclement weather. This could have been a fine monster-in-the-house story with only Logan left to protect everyone from a hidden Victor Creed. If having a dozen duplicates of Victor along for the ride was an absolute necessity, we could even keep Laura and Akihiro and make it a family story.

Instead, they waited too long to do this plot. In present day, the X-Men are already reestablished, and are already defending the safe house. Instead of Logan on his own, Colossus is there. Colossus is there! I don't care how many different Sabretooths Benjamin Percy wants to cram the book with. It doesn't matter. Colossus is made of steel. Victor Creed's superpower is having very sharp fingernails. It's ridiculous! All they can do is get uselessly slaughtered because Victor Creed should never, under any circumstance, be used as a villain for the X-Men and this is the kind of hole you dig for yourself as an author when you ignore that.

Worse, Northstar and Aurora, Marvel's versions of the Flash, have a guest appearance. There's no rationale for them to not just light speed their way through the house, knocking everyone out as they go, and saving everyone before any serious danger can develop. Instead, Benjamin Percy (and Victor LaValle...?) call for page after page of gratuitous gore porn as Victor and company slaughter wave after wave of helpless children, while the X-Men very slowly fight their way from room to room. This arc is already being rightfully compared to Wolverine: Enemy of the State. Both stories have a lazy habit of just throwing out more and more bodies--both villain and victim--in an effort to build cheap tension. But as with Enemy of the State, all it does is make the book a chore to read.

This book is scheduled to run for 10 issues in total. There is no obvious justification for it to have not ended in Sabretooth's crushing, humiliating, loss within the first five pages. We wouldn't miss out on anything, except for some pictures of mutilated children that I don't think anyone wanted to see in the first place.

I feel bad for Victor LaValle, the continuation of whose Sabretooth Trilogy was sacrificed for whatever this mess is.

I don't think that it's innately incorrect for Logan to want to give Maverick every possible benefit of the doubt, and be reluctant to start anything with a friend.

However! At many times in the past (many times!), he has been completely open to contemplating the murder of his other friends, students, and loved ones, without worrying all that much about it. Sometimes because he's afraid, and thinks it's too dangerous not to. But there have also been occasions where it's framed as just more expedient for Logan to kill a friend than for him to not kill them. Off the top of my head, the list of people that Logan has decided it might just be too much trouble for him to let live, has included:

Jean Grey (there are entire, extremely gross, issues dedicated just to Logan deciding Jean needs to die),

Cyclops (there is an entire series by Brain Bendis where his only characterization is wanting to kill Scott, for making him sad, no matter the cost),

Rachel Summers,

Shadowcat (three times!),

Karma,

Bishop,

Hope Summers,

and Daken (his son).

This is a very deeply ingrained aspect of his character, that has featured in his core stories over four decades of publication. But Maverick of all people is going to be where he draws his line? It could conceivably work as a new development, a moment of character growth, but I can't think of anywhere in recent creative runs where that growth could have actually been established. With a minor character that could slide, to a degree, but this is Wolverine! He's the lead in two books!  

Does anyone else feel like Marvel announcing “Dead Man Logan”--the story of Wolverine dying, for sale right in the middle of publishing a storyline about bringing Logan back from the dead--is a really strange decision?

I remain intensely creeped out by the entire fanon narrative of “Wolverine and his daughters,” and pray that his resurrection arc just doesn’t go there. Particularly as it is applied to Hisako Ichiki and Kitty Pryde, who are not his children, and already have their own families. Or Laura Kinney, whose biological relationship to Logan was used to justify Cyclops retaining her as an assassin. Obviously there’s still an important connection between Laura and Logan to continue to explore, but she doesn’t need him as a parental influence, after he spent years doing nothing to actually help her.

By the way, I’ve been thinking about the Earth-65 versions of Wolverine and Shadowcat, and I’m fairly sure that fan consensus--that Logan is in the role of Earth-65 Wolverine and Kitty is in the role of Earth-65 Laura--is wrong on this one (though the collected edition is out in three weeks and I’m prepared to feel foolish when the character biographies are available).

[x] - Source

That history reminds me far more of Ogun, or even Romulus, than of what we know of Wolverine. I don’t really see any evidence that Logan had claws and a healing factor prior to joining Weapon X, either, and added to the fact that his longevity is clearly supernatural in origin--and considering that no one had ever called him Wolverine before Gwen gave him the name--I’d take this to mean he just isn’t a mutant in this setting.

Which would also explain why he was dying, before Kitty was brought to Weapon X to save him. Adamantium poisoning was most likely killing him, in the absence of a healing factor. It seems more likely to me that Kitty was just born with a different mutation in this universe, and that it was adapted and transferred to Wolverine--otherwise, why does she have claws? She’s already on an electronic leash to keep her from doing whatever she wants, why go and make her even more difficult to manage?

So, worst of all worlds with Gold’s use of Omega Red. Everyone predictably forgets that they have superpowers, so that they can be dispensed with right away, so that the least viable member of the team can best him in a duel. At least the arc was short.

So maybe Marc Guggenheim just wanted to tell a mafia story. Okay, but why the Russian mob? In particular, why use a new family connection to bring them into the story? Why does Piotr Rasputin need to be further bogged down with new ties to organized crime? He's the normal one. Piotr is the audience viewpoint character--he's an art student who grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere. The worst thing he ever had to worry about was the tractor acting up. And then one day his brother goes missing in space, he gains superpowers, his sister is abducted by the devil, etc. Insane things happened all around him after his adventure begins, but prior to that he was just a normal guy who had never had his blinders pulled off before meeting Xavier.

In contrast, the series lead right now is Kitty Pryde, whose family laundered money for the bouryokudan. Another character with extensive past ties to Japanese organized crime is Logan, who married the head of a rival syndicate. He still has a daughter from that marriage that, because of time travel, he hasn't seen in decades and could stand to spend some time with. But okay, I think there's significant signaling that we're getting Ogun as a major villain somewhere down the line, so maybe you don't want to do a Japan arc at this juncture. What about Ororo, then? She has organized crime ties from her time in Cairo. Or the other X-Men who aren't part of the main cast? Sam was a mob enforcer. Xi'an's evil uncle ran a drug smuggling empire in Madripoor and Los Angeles. There is a huge existing field to dig into, if you want X-Men crime stories.

Why are they presenting this as a new status quo? Storm, Wolverine, Phoenix, Ariel, Nightcrawler, Colossus is the neutral/default form of the 80s team.  And Kitty’s been a teacher at least four times already (Xavier school, Utopia, Jean Grey School, New Xavier School--and maybe UChicago as a grad student, it’s not clear), on top of having already been the leader of this particular team.

I don’t get it. I know you can’t just put out a statement that you’re giving up and starting over again, but this is clearly in part a nostalgia cash-in, and part return to a formula that worked. Why does every single thing this company does have to be framed as a wild ride we’d better all hang on for.