WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Ruins of Ravencroft: Sabretooth #1, by Frank Tieri, Angel Unzueta, Guillermo Sanna, Rachelle Rosenberg and VC’s Travis Lanham, on sale now.
Sabretooth and Wolverine might have spilled more of each other’s blood than any other two characters in the Marvel Universe. Thanks to the mutant healing factors, these two savage mutants have been tearing each other apart for well over a century. Even though Logan and Victor Creed have both found themselves on the same side more than once, the endless war between these two is never truly over; it only has lulls.
Like much of Logan’s life, the true origins of his rivalry with Sabretooth were kept mysterious for years. When Logan and Sabretooth had their first modern fight during the “Mutant Massacre,” the enemies alluded to their unexplained long-standing rivalry. While the details of that history have been partially filled in through his various adventures, Marvel just revealed a key moment in his history with Sabretooth in a surprising venue.
During Carnage’s massive attack on the Marvel Universe in Absolute Carnage, Deadpool destroyed the Ravencroft Institute, where some of Marvel’s most dangerous supervillains received treatment under maximum security.
In Ruins of Ravencroft: Sabretooth #1, an unlikely group including the Fantastic Four’s Mr. Fantastic and Wilson Fisk, former Kingpin and current Mayor of New York City, are watching over the expedited reconstruction process. In addition to finding a secret underground research wing filled with monstrous experiments, they also discovered the journal of Jonas Ravencroft, the institution’s founder.
As the journal’s numerous revelations about Ravencroft’s history are detailed, the issue strongly suggests that Wolverine and Sabretooth had their first fight there in 1909, even if Logan doesn’t remember it.
After finding Logan near the scene of a grizzly murder, Victor Creed committed him to Ravencroft, where the future Sabretooth worked as an orderly under Doctor Nathaniel Essex, the future Mister Sinister. After Logan went through an unseen lobotomy, Creed introduces himself to a non-responsive Logan and declares his plans to avenge his brother and sister.
Although Logan hadn't officially met Creed by this point, he got to know his siblings, Clara and Saul, in Kieron Gillen and Andy Kubert’s Origin II. In that miniseries, Logan was kidnapped by Essex who wanted to study his mutant abilities, but the two Creed siblings helped him escape. When Saul turned on Logan, the future X-Man killed him, which shattered his relationship with Clara. At the end of that miniseries, Clara told Victor about what happened, lighting the spark of Sabretooth’s grudge with Logan.
Although Victor’s dialogue here suggests that Logan may have killed Clara, her final fate has never been revealed. Before Sabretooth can take his revenge, Essex tells him to stop and cuts one of Logan’s arms off for research.
Horrified by Essex’s continued twisted experiments, the kindly Doctor Claudia Russell tries to free Logan when the pair are stopped by Sabretooth. In the quick ensuing battle, Sabretooth knocks a barely functioning, one-armed Logan down.
However, Logan quickly recovers, seemingly operating on pure instinct, and pops his claws into Creed’s head. When this dazes Creed, Russell tells Logan to run away and continues her ill-fated fight against Sabretooth after turning into a werewolf.
Even though Logan’s brain was already starting to heal after his lobotomy, it doesn’t seem like he remembered this incident after he ran into the night. While there are possibly contradictory details about how Logan’s next encounter with Creed played out, Wolverine didn’t seem to recognize Sabretooth in any of them.
As Wolverine recalls in Jeph Loeb and Simon Bianchi’s Wolverine #52, he first saw Creed when he was in the middle of a killing spree in Japan at some point in the distant past. Although they have an extremely bloody fight, Logan doesn’t seem to mind fighting alongside Creed in a barroom brawl a few years later in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Sabretooth, by Gillen and Dan Panosian.
While Logan and Creed’s memories are both notoriously unreliable, Creed seemed at least somewhat familiar with Logan, if not abundantly aware of his identity, in both of these encounters. During their battle in Japan, Creed called Logan “runt,” his old nickname for his brother Saul, which he also used in Ruins of Ravencroft.
Shortly after their barroom brawl, Sabretooth slaughtered Silver Fox, Wolverine’s partner, on Logan’s birthday, as established in Chris Claremont and John Buscema’s Wolverine #10. By the time this happened in the early 1910s, both Creed and Logan were familiar with each other, and their lifelong rivalry was truly underway.
From the Canadian wilderness to the halls of the Ravencroft Institute and their time in the Weapon X Program, Wolverine and Sabretooth have always mirrored each other’s worst, most savage qualities. While their brief encounter at Ravencroft wasn’t their most memorable fight, it was a dark omen of what the future had in store for those two mutants. Even if Ravencroft has been torn down and rebuilt many times, the rivalry between Sabretooth and Wolverine that erupted there will stand forever.