Sabretooth is one of Wolverine’s most notorious villains, and his mutant powers have let him keep up with Marvel’s most famous X-Man.
Sabretooth is one of the most sadistic and imposing villains in the Marvel Universe. While he’s usually causing mayhem for Wolverine or the X-Men, he is considered an extreme threat by many more of Earth’s heroes. One of the things that makes Victor Creed such a troubling foe is that he has abilities that allow him to endure, improve and pursue just about any enemy.
Where Wolverine usually needs to be in his patented berzerker rage to become a true killing machine, Sabretooth has no such caveat. Oftentimes, Creed delights in the cruelty and mayhem his abilities allow him to indulge in. Though Victor Creed may look and act like a rabid animal, there is more to him than meets the eye. From his surprising intellect to his enhancements through several genetic experiments, Sabretooth’s body is a story spanning decades. Now, we’re taking a closer look at what exactly makes up the fascinating anatomy of this monstrous mutant.
HIS ADAMANTIUM
Like his arch-nemesis Wolverine, Sabretooth occasionally enjoys the advantages and disadvantages that come with having an adamantium skeleton. The incredibly resilient metal has been grafted onto Creed’s bones, affording him immense durability and enhanced protection of his vital organs.
Creed first sported the rare metal when interrupting Wolverine’s marriage to Viper, and he seriously wounded Kitty Pryde before being defeated by Logan. For his failure, his adamantium was stripped from him by Apocalypse, but would be later re-implanted by a revived Weapon X project. Like other individuals with adamantium inside of them, Creed suffers from a slow and gradual poisoning from the rare metal battling against his healing factor.
HIS REGENERATIVE CELLS
In the Marvel Universe, healing factors aren’t too uncommon among mutants and come in a wide variety of forms. From Creed’s natural regenerative cellular repair to Archangel’s blood having healing properties, all of these healing abilities have different effectiveness. Sabretooth’s natural healing abilities were formidable but were greatly accelerated thanks to Weapon X experimentation.
As a result, Creed enjoys greater stamina, durability and decreased aging, as well as immunity to most poisons — save adamantium poisoning which is only suppressed by his healing, not cured. Creed has used his healing factor to survive everything from the loss of limbs to surviving catastrophic plane crashes while fighting Wolverine. Like Login, his healing factor can be suppressed by the notorious Muramasa blade.
HIS SENSES
As part of his natural mutant powers, Sabretooth’s senses are elevated, making him an incredible tracker. It was revealed in the pages of Chris Claremont and John Buscema’s Wolverine #10 that he hunts down Wolverine every year on his birthday — no matter where the X-Man is — to try and kill him. His vision is enhanced to a level that allows him to see in the dark, as well as in infra-red. His hearing has great amplitude and under the right conditions can pick up quiet noises from 200 feet away.
The most interesting part of his enhanced senses is his taste, which allows him to define granular aspects of a taste palette within food. His sense of touch, however, appears to be rather normal. His hunting ability resulted in a mysterious past with Kraven the Hunter, which caused friction when the duo were drafted into Nick Fury’s Avengers 1959 team together. Although, his enhanced senses can also be a disadvantage, able to be manipulated by certain sound frequencies and trigger scents, similar to the one used on X-23.
HIS STRENGTH
On top of all of his more specialized abilities, Sabretooth boasts incredible strength. He is often seen holding his own against physically imposing enemies and is able to throw the likes of Wolverine around despite the weight of Logan’s Skeleton. In addition to his raw animalistic strength, Creed’s physical prowess and muscle structure has been enhanced not once, but twice.
The first enhancement came from genetic experimentation at the hands of his own son Graydon Creed, operating as Tribune, in Larry Hama and Mark Texeira’s Sabretooth. The second augmentation to his strength came from Weapon X, the same organization responsible for his adamantium augmentations. The tandem of his enhanced strength and durable skeleton allows Sabretooth to perform amazing feats of strength and endurance.
HIS BRAIN
While many would think Sabretooth is a savage beast, he’s far from a simple mindless killer. At one point, he was the most prominent crime kingpin in Asia. He managed to infiltrate The Hand and remove their Japanese branch’s figurehead, replacing them as the so-called Invisible King of Asia.
When his brain is damaged, it can be repaired via his healing factor, but it can have varying side effects. In some instances, damage and repair to Creed’s brain has resulted in a loss of memory. In one favorable instance, after Wolverine punctured his frontal lobe, Sabretooth found he was immune to psionic attacks, like those deployed by Psylocke, for a short while. This immunity has since worn off, however. Like many heroes and villains, Creed’s morality was inverted during the AXIS event, and he was transformed into a more heroic, and relatively less brutal figure for several years.
