Sabretooth & the Exiles #3: Even Science Lies To Us

“The story of questionable medical personnel being allowed to practice on Indigenous populations is long.”

Sabretooth & the Exiles #3 is a fascinating issue, visually, narratively, and in every detail of the way it connects its themes to its characters, widens the vision, and even plays with your expectations with a plot twist ending that seems to say “this story is more complex (and entertaining) than you can even imagine.” Leonard Kirk and Rain Beredo shine in many different registers in an issue that mixes psychedelic imagery (that astral plane is delightful), otherworldly visuals (even to a Lovecraftian extent), bloody fights, and even a mysterious horror edge to it. All of it is navigated wonderfully by Victor LaValle’s always impressive, always-encompassing script, where even the data pages reveal the other real-life topics this book is connected to. 

Suppose there’s anything different one could ask of this story: the pacing could be an issue since every issue seems to work as a set-up for an Orchis experiment camp’s escape. That repetition doesn’t help the story as much as it makes it seem like constantly trying to get someplace. There are a lot of overarching themes tied together here, and eugenics appears to be the theme that runs through the series. Still, sometimes it’s difficult to see where the creative team will tie back all the threads and if it can manage to comment on the eugenics inherent to capitalist science in such a practical way as Sabretooth did on the prison industrial complex and what’s more important, to do so without losing the grip of a thrilling story. I have high hopes, though, as the execution is so entertaining and varied that sometimes you forget there’s an end to the journey.