While Sabretooth has a reputation for being the most brutally violent mutant in the entire Marvel Universe, one X-Men hero proves to be even more savage during a time in history when the world had entered its darkest era–and no, that hero is not Wolverine.
Victor Creed aka Sabretooth is a mutant who shares a number of abilities with Wolverine, including a healing factor, heightened senses akin to those of an animal, and razor-sharp claws (which look different, but are equally deadly). Because of their similarities, both Sabretooth and Wolverine found themselves in the Weapon X program where they were conditioned to kill on command while also being forced to undergo cruel experimentation. While Wolverine hated being used as a weapon, Sabretooth absolutely loved it and didn’t even require any mind-wiping like Logan did, as he voluntarily killed whoever the organization needed dead. The time spent with Weapon X turned Wolverine into a bloodthirsty killer, but he was a reluctant one who quickly softened and became a hero alongside the other mutants in the X-Men after he was free of Weapon X’s control. Sabretooth, on the other hand, arguably only got worse and more violent after he left Weapon X to pursue a life of crime–and those crimes were almost always bloody. For this reason, Sabretooth has Wolverine beat for the most savage between them–though the same cannot be said for another lethal contender.
In X-Men: Alpha #1 by Scott Lobdell, Mark Waid, Roger Cruz, and Steve Epting (which marks the first chapter of the Age of Apocalypse), a lone stranger in a desolate world walks amid the chaos and destruction of a now ruined city, when he comes across a little girl who is all alone, crying for help. When this cloaked figure offers his assistance, an army of cybernetically-enhanced enforcement officers (called Infinites) appear and threaten to kill both of them right there on the spot–that is, until the X-Men arrive to save the day. In this altered reality, the X-Men is composed of a number of familiar faces like Iceman, Storm, Nightcrawler, Morph, and Rogue with the addition of a few other mutants who wouldn’t normally be associated with the heroic mutant team, including Magneto, Quicksilver, and Sabretooth. Once the fighting broke out between the X-Men and the Infinites, the entire comic exploded into splash pages of violence–and only one is the most violent of them all: Rogue.
X-Men’s Rogue is More Savage than Sabretooth
During the fight, a new addition to the X-Men mythos, Blink, is observing her fellow heroes, and she comments on the fact that Sabretooth is acting as savage as ever, but that Rogue is acting even more so. This is a big statement given Sabretooth’s history (which is generally still intact since this timeline skewed after Sabretooth and Wolverine’s time with Weapon X), but is also one that is totally believable. Upon her introduction in the prime Earth-616 timeline, Rogue was a villain who nearly killed Captain Marvel (Ms. Marvel at the time) and then used her powers to cripple the Avengers, effectively taking down some of the heaviest hitters in Marvel Comics single-handedly. While Rogue eventually found redemption, she proved right from the start that she was not someone to be messed with–and in a world so war-torn as Age of Apocalypse, it is more than reasonable to assume that Rogue became even more ruthless in battle, and Blink’s commentary proves it.
Rogue has the strength of Captain Marvel, has history as an accomplished supervillain, and outshines the most bloodthirsty X-Men villain alive during a battle in a post-apocalyptic world–proving that she (not Wolverine) is more savage than Sabretooth.