WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Ruins of Ravencroft: Sabretooth #1 by Frank Tieri, Angel Unzueta, Guillermo Sanna, Rachelle Rosenberg and Travis Lanham, on sale now.
Victor Creed is no stranger to violence. The savage Sabertooth is most famous for his deep-seated hatred and yearly bouts with Wolverine. Much like his famous rival, Creed is nearly immortal, thanks to a healing factor that's not as strong as Wolverine.
All of this makes him into a brutal and formidable foe who makes up for what he lacks in tact with sheer strength savagery wanton bloodlust. While he usually keeps his attention on Logan with laser-like focus, Ruins of Ravencroft: Sabertooth #1 reveals that he killed Claudia Russell, the ancestor of another savage Marvel hero, Werewolf by Night.
Marvel's Ruins of Ravencroft series has focused on the fallout of Absolute Carnage, specifically the destruction and reconstruction of the Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane, which has been absolutely destroyed. As construction workers and an unlikely group of Marvel heroes digs through Ravencroft's rubble, they discover a journal that's filled with details about Ravencroft's dark history. Below the main institution, Ravencroft had a secret research wing that was filled with all kinds of horrors.
In Ruins of Ravencroft: Sabertooth, we get some more insight into the institution's history, with a particular focus on the sadistic Doctor Essex in the early 1900s, before he became the X-Men villain Mister Sinister. One of his patients is Logan, who has been accused of a series of bloody Jack the Ripper-esque murders. To study Wolverine's healing factor, Essex has lobotomized the future X-Man and cut his arm off for good measure.
At this point, it's revealed that Creed worked as an orderly at Ravencroft and was secretly in league with Essex, hoping to torture Wolverine for his own reasons. But, as the man who will become Wolverine is lying helplessly, Ravecroft's Doctor Claudia Russel intervenes and frees Logan. In the ensuing fight with Sabretooth, Claudia reveals that she is a werewolf, transforms and holds her own against Sabertooth in her transformed state.
In the end, Sabertooth is able to overcome her with the help of Essex, who arrives just in time to inject Claudia with something ominous and green that renders her unconscious. After she "tenders her resignation" that mysterious note, we see that Sabertooth and Essex have dissected her and are experimenting with her corpse in the bowels of the facility.
Even though that incident happened over a century ago, the still-alive Sabretooth and Essex could end up having to face the repercussions of their crimes in the modern day.
As her name and transformation strongly suggest, Claudia was an ancestor of Jack Russell, Marvel's Werewolf by Night. Since that savage antihero may be joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe soon, a rivalry with two of the X-Men's most famous villains could be a quick way to raise the supernatural hero's profile, even though a new Werewolf by Night will be introduced soon.
Unlike most werewolves, Jack and Claudia Russell are both parts of a long line of lycanthropes that are a little bit different. While they still transform into werewolves under a full moon, they can also trigger their transformations at will whenever they like. Still, a full moon turned Claudia into the werewolf who committed the string of murders that Logan was committed for in The Ruins of Ravencroft: Sabertooth. But like the angrier versions of the Hulk, this all made Claudia something of an antihero who carried the burden of less-than-savory acts while still apparently trying to be a decent person.
While there's no guarantee that Jack Russell and Victor Creed are destined to fight, these two beastly Marvel characters have a good reason to scrap now. While Ruins 0f Ravencroft has uncovered everything from the Headless Horseman Ghost Rider to a cult worshipping Knull the symbiote god long before Absolute Carnage, the terrifying, savage legacy of Ravencroft is really only just becoming apparent across the Marvel Universe.