SABRETOOTH

In 1959, on direct orders from President Eisenhower, Nick Fury quietly assembled a black-ops team under the codename of the Avengers Initiative. His first recruit, fished out of Madripoor, was Victor Creed — the feral mutant the world would know as Sabretooth. The assignment was unglamorous and deniable: hunt down Nazi war criminals who had escaped justice after the war. The story surfaced as a flashback in New Avengers Vol. 2 #10–13 (2011) and was expanded in Avengers 1959 #1–5 (2011).

Creed was not even the roster's only predator. Fury also signed up Kraven the Hunter, who had crossed paths with Creed in Africa and shot him on sight when they met again — the two had to be talked into working the same mission. Around them stood Atlantean princess Namora, soldier of fortune Dominic Fortune, immortal monster-hunter Ulysses Bloodstone, the first Silver Sable, the Blonde Phantom and Dum Dum Dugan. Their first target was an impostor Red Skull raising a Fourth Reich in Helsingborg, Sweden.

Creed performed exactly as advertised, which was the problem. After the team stormed the Swedish base and captured the false Skull, Sabretooth beheaded the prisoner before Fury could interrogate him — then stayed on the team anyway, fighting the conspiracy called ICON across the South China Sea, Madripoor, Wakanda and Washington. When the mission ended, Fury disbanded the squad on good terms, every member received a government pardon, and Creed rode out of the story on a train to Los Angeles beside Fortune and the Blonde Phantom: an Avenger, briefly, with the paperwork to prove it.