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Nearly a decade after creating the character for Iron Fist, Claremont brings Sabretooth into the X-Men universe directly in order to provide a pivotal contrasting character to Logan, one that enriches the ongoing development of Wolverine’s character. #xmen @WolverSteve 1/9
By this point in X-Men continuity, Claremont had largely completed Wolverine’s arc of redemption - through both UXM and through the Wolverine mini-series. Logan goes from reveling in his primal urges and anger to conscientiously controlling them. 2/9
But Sabretooth’s arrival on the scene presents what’s referred to in psychology as “the shadow self,” a personification of everything that you see as negative about yourself – all the things you seek to repress. 3/9
Superhero comics are famous for using this concept to build villains. The majority of superheroes have a prominent nemesis who personifies the “path not taken” for them, the being they could be if they turned to the dark side, so to speak. 4/9
Sabretooth is violent, opportunistic, ignoble, indulgent, and largely irrational. As such, he confronts Logan with all the things that Logan had only recently defeated from his own conscious being. He offers destruction, but also temptation. 5/9
Most directly, Wolverine’s encounters with Sabretooth consistently involve drawing Logan into the primitive side (something Sabretooth seems to relish). Just as the Joker longs to drive Batman to insanity, Sabretooth seeks to turn Logan, and sometimes succeeds. 6/9
Thus, when Wolverine acts rationally in his first on-panel encounter with Sabretooth, collapsing the tunnel to deny the fight and save Healer, Logan is defeating his nemesis in both the literal and ideological sense - beating both Creed and Logan's own internal temptations. 7/9
If we push further with the psychology reading, we need to engage with the fact that Sabretooth was meant to be Logan’s father and the bizarre ways that the concept of legacy and inheritance contribute to the symbolism at play. 8/9
This is all to say that Creed is more than just a stabby guy to oppose the X-Men’s stabby guy; he serves as a potent and important foil character for Logan – advancing Claremont’s exploration of Wolverine’s most fundamental and evolving attributes. 9/9
