Origin
Posing as German spy Leni Zauber, Mystique seduced freelance assassin Victor Creed (aka Sabretooth) while he was in Germany on a mission. Mystique later gave birth to a normal human child, whom she named Graydon. She gave him up for adoption, yet still kept an eye on him. After finding out that his parents where both mutants and abandoned him, he became resentful of all mutants. As an adult he formed an evil group called the Friends of Humanity that dedicated itself to opposing mutant civil rights by committing acts of terrorism against peaceful mutants and mutant sympathizers, and using the acts of violent mutants such as Magneto to rally support for their cause.
Creation
Graydon Creed was created by Scott Lobdell and Brandon Peterson and first appeared in Uncanny X-Men issue 299 (1993). However, like the villain Holocaust, his character design first appeared in Stryfe’s Strike File issue 1 (1993).
Major Story Arcs
Death Hunt
Graydon set his sights on his parents and outfitted in an armored suit and calling himself Tribune, had his father beaten and captured by a group of hired soldiers and ninjas from The Hand. While holding his father captive, Graydon had a bomb implanted within Sabretooth while he was unconscious and told him it would be detonated within 48 hours if he failed to assassinate the mutant Mystique.
Sabretooth and his friend Birdy soon discovered the reason Tribune wanted Mystique dead and why he chose Sabretooth to do it: because Sabretooth and Mystique were his parents. Sabretooth confronted Graydon and after the two fought, Sabretooth forcibly had the bomb within him removed before it exploded. Sabretooth was disgusted with his ordinary, boring and weak son and refused to believe he was actually his son. Graydon responded by stabbing Birdy repeatedly in cold blood to punish his father (as Birdy was one of the few calming influences in his life). As Graydon mocked his father for no longer being able to control his rage through Birdy, Sabretooth finally saw a bit of himself in his son and left reminding Graydon to watch his back because he will be keeping an eye on him.
Child’s Play
Graydon joined the Upstarts and took part in the Gamesmaster‘s contest in which to win a contestant had to kill the most mutants. Graydon was eventually defeated by the New Warriors and forced to betray the Upstarts when they threatened to reveal to the world that he is the son of two mutants.
Operation Zero Tolerance
Graydon however soon changed tactics and started a political career. He soon became a well known and beloved speaker, mostly because of his anti-mutant policies. Eventually, Graydon took a sweep to become the next president of the United States of America. At a rally for Graydon’s hopeful presidential candidacy, an assassin shot and killed him. A panicking crowd resulted in the fact that the shooter could run of without getting caught. It was later revealed that the shooter was his own mother Mystique who had sworn to kill him after his part in the brutal attack on Trevor Chase, the grandson of her lover Destiny. Graydon’s legacy of hate however remained for many others took his place in their war against mutantkind.
Necrosha
Graydon Creed was revived by Bastion whom used the techno-organic entity known as Magus. He soon returned to the public and spoke to them, saying that he was in hiding along with the other people that Bastion revived. Cyclops had him on a list of people that X-Force should go after and assassinate.
Second Coming
The revived Graydon tried to get Kavita Rao to recreate her cure which cures mutants of their X-Gene but he was unsuccessful and soon laid to rest once more during Bastion’s campaign against the last newborn mutant, Hope Summers.
Among the Living Once More
Graydon has ended up in a hospital in Hell where he’s in constant pain & screaming for it to stop. It is there that he meets his father, Victor again. Surprised to see his son, he asks Graydon what’s wrong with him. He looks great. “Lies” Graydon yelled to his father. Everyone tells him he’s fine, but he’s not. He then lashes out at Sabretooth, stating that he exists because of him & now he’s been left to suffer for it.
Feeling guilty, Victor takes Graydon from the hospital with plans of bringing him back home after he’s destroyed Stryker’s soul and returns with his Weapon X-Force team. Sabretooth lays Graydon in a safe spot while he & his team continue the assault on Stryker. Through a fierce battle, Sabretooth is killed by Mentallo & used as Stryker’s final resurrection sacrifice. Victor reenters Hell, decapitates Stryker, and instead uses his sacrifice to resurrected Graydon.
The confused Graydon begins to wake up as he enters through a portal back to the world of the living, now alive again thanks to his father who calls out that he told him he’d get him out..
Powers and Abilities
Graydon Creed possesses no superhuman powers but is a charismatic and intelligent man, hindered somewhat by his bigotry, he is still a highly influential and well-connected figure. He has basic military training but only modest hand-to-hand combat skills. As Tribune, he wore an armored battlesuit which gave him much greater strength.
Alternate Earths
Earth-295 (Age of Apocalypse)
Graydon Creed is a human survivor of Apocalypse‘s reign where his relationship with his parents is just as complicated with his father having served as one of Apocalypse’s Hounds in the past. A self-loathing Graydon is a member of the X-Terminated and the Human Resistance, Graydon goes by the name ‘Horror Show’ and is capable and loyal soldier and seen as a something of a “demolitions expert”.
Outside of battle, Graydon was a womanizer and had an apparent alcohol problem. When he wasn’t in the field he would more often than not get incredibly inebriated beyond the point of any usefulness. His rampant alcoholism was known by his team-mates and the X-Terminated’s leader Prophet who regularly sidelined Graydon from active missions when he was found in a drunken state.
Not long after Weapon X became Weapon Omega, Apocalypse’s successor, Graydon helped the X-Terminated battle against Keeper Murdock and Omega’s Hounds and protect the controversial writer Harper Simmons from Omega’s forces. Upon the X-Terminated finding one of Henry McCoy‘s abandoned labs, they encountered Prelate Summers and several of Omega’s followers. In the subsequent battle, Graydon’s team-mate Deadeye was captured and Graydon and fellow X-Terminated member Goodnight regrouped and attacked her prisoner transport before Deadeye could be interrogated by the Shadow King.
Later, Graydon and the X-Terminated launched an assault on another of McCoy’s labs to stop McCoy and Sugar Man from reviving many of the dead X-Men to serve Weapon Omega. As Sugar Man attempted to escape, Graydon attacked him, overpowered him and even successfully kidnapped the mutant, making him a prisoner of the X-Terminated.
Upon meeting Jean Grey, Graydon was instantly attracted to her and over time began to confide in her about the nature of his drinking. Brought on by his own serious depression on account of the nature of his mutant parents and fears that he himself could one day discover he is a mutant as well as his relationship with his father. Graydon was also drinking to try and forget about Sabretooth’s past crimes as a servant of Apocalypse. Graydon began to clean up his act to please Jean, who was likewise growing more and more attracted to Graydon.
At the insistence of Jean, Graydon agreed to meet with his father (who had been depowered and was now held by the Human Resistance) but constantly came up with excuses to avoid confronting him. Eventually, Graydon got incredibly drunk and went down to the prison cells where Sabretooth was being held and began to berate and insult his father for his past crimes and for being such a poor father. The verbal abuse quickly turned to physical as Graydon beat his father for the anguish he had caused and confessed to his father his constant fear he might one day discover he is a mutant.
After having confronted his father, Graydon’s attitude and personality improved and he entered a relationship with Jean. Graydon seemingly had made some degree of peace, and likewise found some inner-peace, from confronting his father. After a date with Jean which went incredibly well, things turned sour when Jean insisted Graydon continue to see his father. Angered by Jean’s apparent obsession with rekindling the two, Graydon stormed off under the impression Jean was just using him to help his father.
When the X-Terminated launched an attack against Weapon Omega to rid him of his powers entirely, Sabretooth was let out of captivity to aid the team in fighting the villain. As Jean was cornered by Omega in the Morlock Tunnels, Sabretooth arrived and battled Omega giving Jean a chance to escape. Helplessly overpowered, Sabretooth was apparently killed by Omega.
Graydon, badly injured in the subsequent final battle with Omega, snuck away after the conclusion of the fight, and journeyed through the Morlock Tunnels looking for his father. Finding Sabretooth’s dead body, Graydon was distraught that his father’s sacrifice now negated his past deeds and he was now seen as a “hero”. Graydon was also disappointed that he himself wasn’t the one who killed Sabretooth. Angered and depressed by his father’s apparent sacrifice, Graydon was prepared to kill himself when he suddenly realized Sabretooth was still vaguely alive and faintly breathing.
In the months that past, Graydon took his father’s body and ensured he received the best medical attention so that he could recover. Unsure of why he was doing this exactly, or even if he wanted the doctors to succeed. However, when his father recovered, the sheer animosity Graydon felt towards his father was seemingly gone or no longer his only feelings for his father. Graydon managed to patch things up with Jean who again welcomed him back and was glad to see Graydon’s relationship with his father had some what improved.
When Henry McCoy and Kurt Darkholme inadvertently unleashed a group of energy-devouring cosmic beings known as the Exterminators onto the world, the X-Terminated teamed up with the X-Men to battle the threat. Graydon and Sabretooth elected to sacrifice themselves as a diversion so that the two teams could regroup and formulate a plan. Kissing Jean farewell, Graydon and his father stayed behind to battle against the Cosmic monster they didn’t stand a chance against. Before going out with all guns blazing, when the two were alone for a moment, Graydon said goodbye to his father but reminded him he was a lousy dad. Sabretooth replied “I know, but I still love you”. Despite their rocky relationship, the two had seemingly made their peace and went out together, destroyed and consumed side-by-side.
Earth-1298 (Mutant X)
Graydon Creed of this reality is also the son of Mystique and Sabretooth. He became the President following the the Goblin Queen‘s conquest of the country and Reed Richards’ death. He promoted Nick Fury to General, he also founded the Friends of Humanity and worked with S.H.I.E.L.D.
Earth-11326 (Age of X)
Graydon Creed is a member of the Human Coalition where he is a colonel of his own strike force which targets mutants.
Earth-58163 (House of M)
Graydon Creed was an anti-mutant activist. He also contacted Bolivar Trask to help him in his Anti-Mutant advocacy. Magneto compares him with Hitler who attempted to overrule the entire world with his beliefs. To stop him from his future attempts, Magneto contacted his personal assassin Victor Creed who is also known as Sabretooth. He assigned him to kill his own son. However, this mission left him with no remorse in what he done for his master. The government responded by unleashing a sanctioned attack on Magneto’s island of Genosha.
In Other Media
X-Men: The Animated Series (1994)
Graydon Creed appears in several episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series. Voiced by John Stocker.
First appearing in the Season 2 premiere, Graydon Creed continued to appear throughout the second season as leader of the anti-mutant hate group known as the Friends of Humanity. Graydon exhibits most of the same characteristics as his comic book counterpart with a deep resentment of mutants and mutantkind for much the same reasons as in the comics.
Graydon leads the Friends of Humanity in many attacks against mutants and has his soldiers bait a group of X-Men into a fight while filming it and editing the footage to make the X-Men look like the attackers. Following this, Graydon and the Friends of Humanity begin to frequently target the X-Men’s Jubilee after she is tricked into going to their headquarters believing it to be a halfway house for mutants. After holding her captive for a time, the Friends of Humanity begin following her and framing her for accidents supposedly caused by her mutant powers.
Mid-way into the season, we see Graydon has a plot to raise anti-mutant hysteria by spreading a virus throughout New York and blaming it on mutants. It is revealed Graydon is involved with a mysterious benefactor who is responsible for the creation of the virus. After attempting to infect Beast with the virus during a televised debate, Graydon’s plan backfires when Bishop intervenes and Graydon is infected with the virus himself.
Graydon returns to his benefactor hoping for a cure to the virus and discovers the true identity of his ally is the mutant Apocalypse who is uninterested in curing Graydon. The X-Men arrive and after battling Apocalypse, destroying the virus and developing an antidote, Beast saves Graydon much to Graydon’s disgust to be saved by a mutant.
Following Beast saving his life, Graydon leads the Friends of Humanity in a campaign to personally harass Beast which includes burning down the research facility where he works and kidnapping his girlfriend Carly.
In the final episodes of Season 2, Wolverine goes undercover and joins the Friends of Humanity posing as a like-minded mutant hater. Later, Wolverine discovers Carly tied up and reveals himself and fights against the Friends of Humanity. As the conflict comes to it’s end, Wolverine reveals to all Graydon’s relationship with Sabretooth which drives Graydon over the edge and causes most of his followers to spurn him for his mutant parentage.
Graydon briefly appears in the Season 3 episode Sanctuary when Magneto is addressing the United Nations about the need for a safe mutant haven in response to people like Graydon and his concentrated attacks on mutants.
The character returns in the Season 4 where his relationship with his mother is explored. Graydon is mortified to discover he also has a half-brother and a foster sister who are also mutants. Graydon kidnaps Mystique and uses her as bait to draw Nightcrawler and Rogue into a trap where he intends to kill them all. However, Rogue manages to free Mystique as Nightcrawler brutally fights his venomous brother.
Later, Graydon shows up again and attempts to kill both Mystique and Nightcrawler. Shooting Mystique, he believes her dead but unfortunately for him Nightcrawler escapes. Mystique turns up alive, having only being shot in the shoulder and Graydon is captured and forced into confronting his father. His ultimate fate is left ambiguous but it is probable Sabretooth killed him.