Nightcrawler Appreciation 2019

[hokus83]

can he still camouflage in shadows? I can't think of when was the last time that was shown or utilized but it thinks like a fun thing that should be played around with more.

[Sundown]

As far as I know, but that's not one they've shown in a long time. The artist in the resurrection arc played with it in his designs, but it wasn't really brought up. I agree, I wish they'd use it more.

[sungila]

I love this so much.

tumblr_nt241vUyBp1qkz0bmo1_1280.jpg

http://hannahblumenreich.tumblr.com/...seen-i-believe

Art by Hannah Blumenreich

[Ricochet Rita]

Kurt and Kitty make such a wonderful pair and team, I love it so much. And I'm not talking about love interest, but true friendship and rapport between two persons of different age, genre, origin and culture.

[sungila]

Kurt and Kitty make such a wonderful pair and team, I love it so much. And I'm not talking about love interest, but true friendship and rapport between two persons of different age, genre, origin and culture.

Exactly Rita me too. For a long time now I've missed this earned and natural kinship. Kurt and Kitty. I am sure that becoming and being an older brother to Kitty is something like stepping in for Stefan, you know, and that Kitty's youthful genuinely reckless vigor roots Kurt's swashbuckling into a much need bedrock of responsibility which in actuality frees his emotional potential. Look at me psychoanalyze "them"...sigh, that shouldn't be so easy to slip into...it's just...yea.


I see them in that dancing bond, and I get this tug in my heart. This: in an empty open hand offered. Cue the music and..."Katzchen, shall we save the day?" And there's that tug.

You know, Stevie Hunter could be in this comic.
No uniforms.

And who better than Kitty to really just ask the obvious and hardest questions. In some dinner. No image inducer. Nothing hiding or protecting them.
"Kurt, what's up anyway? Are you really "the Kurt Wagner" I mean, like you were, like we all were before, or are you different you know, like, you must be angry right? Do you still pray? Nobody talks about it. I'm not gonna marry anybody ever again. Okay. Yea. I mean get engaged. Or whatever. Nobody really says that it's all crap. It's crap! It always was. We just keep fighting each other and there's this whole thing on the internet that fantasizes us into the crudest pairings, like me and you..."Kurty" grosses me out. They want me with Rachel, Illyana...you with Logan. Like what? Stop laughing? Logurt. Yup. Okay stop it Kurt.
See, its come to that...just sex, violence and bad soap operas, we look and act silly. I used to give speeches when I was a kid about all sorts of things I don't even, trying to be class president I guess. But, I mean I was a kid right? You were a kid too? But you died! What the Heck am I doing! I should have been a dancer. They didn't even put me in the Quest where they go to find you...they gave my part to Firestar! Kurt I'm so..."

"Remember when I was a priest..." Kitty looks up in surprise and then after a minute, starts laughing...Kurt starts laughing.

"Kitty. You know, you ARE a dancer."
His smile settles into a sad grin. The light in his eyes shimmers and shadows. He looks at her half eaten burger and lets his french fry fall dramatically limp into a pile of ketchup "I think I should be a vegan."

[raidensix]

can he still camouflage in shadows? I can't think of when was the last time that was shown or utilized but it thinks like a fun thing that should be played around with more.

He's also supposed to be missing his soul but I think that's been quietly forgotten. Also, his form of teleportation used to strain him and his passengers. He would use multiple teleportations to disable/weaken an opponent. In one of the older X-titles, he teleported Sunspot so many times Sunspot reverted to human form.

[Sundown]

Exactly Rita me too. For a long time now I've missed this earned and natural kinship. Kurt and Kitty. I am sure that becoming and being an older brother to Kitty is something like stepping in for Stefan, you know, and that Kitty's youthful genuinely reckless vigor roots Kurt's swashbuckling into a much need bedrock of responsibility which in actuality frees his emotional potential. Look at me psychoanalyze "them"...sigh, that shouldn't be so easy to slip into...it's just...yea.


I see them in that dancing bond, and I get this tug in the heart that isn't given from one from another, but made in this very gesture...an open hand offered, cue the music and..."Katzchen, shall we save the day?" And there's that tug.

You know, Stevie Hunter could be in this comic.
No uniforms.

And who better than Kitty to really just ask the obvious and hardest questions. In some dinner. No image inducer. Nothing hiding or protecting them.
"Kurt, what's up anyway? Are you really "the Kurt Wagner" I mean, like you were, like we all were before, or are you different you know, like, you must be angry right? Do you still pray? Nobody talks about it. I'm not gonna marry anybody ever again. Okay. Yea. I mean get engaged. Or whatever. Nobody really says that it's all crap. It's crap! It always was. We just keep fighting each other and there's this whole thing on the internet that fantasizes us into the crudest pairings, like me and you..."Kurty" grosses me out. They want me with Rachel, Illyana...you with Logan. Like what? Stop laughing? Logurt. Yup. Okay stop it Kurt.
See, it's come to that...just sex, violence and bad soap operas, we look and act silly. I used to give speeches when I was a kid about all sorts of things I don't even, trying to be class president I guess. But, I mean I was a kid right? You were a kid too? But you died! What the Hell am I doing. I should have been a dancer. They didn't even put me in part where they go to find you...they gave my part to Firestar! Kurt I'm so..."

"Remember when I was a priest..." Kitty looks up in surprise and then after a minute, starts laughing...Kurt starts laughing.

"Kitty. You know, you ARE a dancer."
His smile settles into a sad grin. The light in his eyes shimmers and shadows. He looks at her half eaten burger and lets his french fry fall dramatically limp into a pile of ketchup "I think I should be a vegan."

Ha! This would be such a wonderful conversation for them to have...

That's the Kurt and Kitty I know and love.

[Slicknickshady]

Kurt and Kitty!!

[sungila]

Ha! This would be such a wonderful conversation for them to have...

That's the Kurt and Kitty I know and love.

"Nightcrawler! He went through a couple of revisions too, but I think it's for the best.
I know folks love his current beard, but it doesn't fit for the story here. Sorry ��"

designer and stylist Mike Hawthorne


DsYs1upWwAoc2x7.jpg

Handsome devil. But, that onesie with utility belt affair is horrid, also, I think Kurt is more Don Juan than Don Johnson. Regardless, THE sexY blue velvet elf is an Excalibur thing and that's good...until the cape of course.

Isn't that tail a little too long? Hmmm, seems squiggly and snakelike...it's distracting. It looks like an afterthought or no-thought, not as animate, catlike and emotive as it should be.

He's also sorta 'hiding' his hands...

[Sundown]

Yeah, not feeling this redesign. Guy onesies look awful on anyone and that collar....good lord.

The casual one isn't bad, I guess. I've always wondered why more artists didn't give him sunglasses, since his eyes are supposedly sensitive to light. Agree that the tail is out of proportion.

[Darkspellmaster]

My sister and I were talking about Kurt the other day and we were both thinking that if the X office doesn't want to use him, why not let him be on the Avengers. If beast could do it, why not Kurt? I would think he could add something very interesting to that group and it could be a different dynamic.

Also we were both thinking what about She-hulk as a love interest for him. Both have interesting views on life and I would think with Jen's personality she could match Kurt's more intense moments of joy or anger.

[raidensix]

My sister and I were talking about Kurt the other day and we were both thinking that if the X office doesn't want to use him, why not let him be on the Avengers. If beast could do it, why not Kurt? I would think he could add something very interesting to that group and it could be a different dynamic.

Also we were both thinking what about She-hulk as a love interest for him. Both have interesting views on life and I would think with Jen's personality she could match Kurt's more intense moments of joy or anger.

In an alternate universe, Nightcrawler had a daughter with the Scarlet Witch - Nocturne.

[sungila]

Blessed be Cockrum who gave us the first and forever true face to face with this man of indelible light in the darkness, this Kurt.

Yet, John Byrne drew such a fantastic and very important Nightcrawler. The way he moved in his body, the contrasts of shadow, the balanced grace of acrobatic presence and misfit oddity. Rather than avoiding Kurt's physical differences he embraced them, strangeness at a standstill born into beauty as motion - he didn't sit in a chair, he crouched on sills...his tail a perfect expressive extension of his body and being. His fangs and smile always contradicting norms and entwining extremes, with asymetric familiarity. Often Byrne crouched Kurt, his expressive body always moving from coil to spring. There's a fluidity to his every stance and this three points of contact hold, as if every ground were a cliff face or great gymnasium of possibility for this superlatively expressive being.

Byrne kept the actuality of his arresting strangeness and vulnerability to the apprehension and discrimination of others real by rendering those moments when either seclusion or flight in performance aren't possible as scrutinizingly painful. And so very self-aware. You can feel Kurt's discomfort, that weight and confinement.

I'd forgotten how incredibly important Byrne's legacy of storytelling is to my understanding and vision for who Kurt is at heart.
Romita Jr and Paul Smith only took this to deeper depths for me, in part because of things and times. Still, I was primed.
It's Byrne who really offered the most tangible and empowering elusive rendering of Cockrum's original fever dream, in the flesh.

Can we talk about the art of drawing Nightcrawler?

The strangest looking of the strangest of super heroes and that legacy in X-Books.
Both, exclusively for Kurt and for the many queer and different most humanly other-than-human X-Men who have followed.

How much has Nightcrawler's reliable physical ambiguity and changing influenced X-Books, the X-Image and the overall feel for mutant characters...both externally and inwardly?

How important is the way Nightcrawler looks to the character driven image of who the X-Men are?

Which artists tell the best Nightcrawler?

Attachment 76886

[Ricochet Rita]

Can we talk about the art of drawing Nightcrawler?

Please!!!

Yet, John Byrne drew such a fantastic and very important Nightcrawler. The way he moved in his body, the contrasts of shadow, the balanced grace of acrobatic presence and misfit oddity. Rather than avoiding Kurt's physical differences he embraced them, strangeness at a standstill born into beauty as motion - he didn't sit in a chair, he crouched on sills...his tail a perfect expressive extension of his body and being. His fangs and smile always contradicting norms and entwining extremes, with asymetric familiarity. Often Byrne crouched Kurt, his expressive body always moving from coil to spring. There's a fluidity to his every stance and this three points of contact hold, as if every ground were a cliff face or great gymnasium of possibility for this superlatively expressive being.

Byrne kept the actuality of his arresting strangeness and vulnerability to the apprehension and discrimination of others real by rendering those moments when either seclusion or flight in performance aren't possible as scrutinizingly painful. And so very self-aware. You can feel Kurt's discomfort, that weight and confinement.

I'd forgotten how incredibly important Byrne's legacy of storytelling is to my understanding and vision for who Kurt is at heart.
Romita Jr and Paul Smith only took this to deeper depths for me, in part because of things and times. Still, I was primed.
It's Byrne who really offered the most tangible and empowering elusive rendering of Cockrum's original fever dream, in the flesh.

You know, I'm not usually Byrne's best fan, but you have completely convinced me. So very well expressed.

I think JRJR contributed with that splendid aquiline nose and a more mature look in general: Kurt grew to an adult thanks to his pencil.

As for Alan Davis, who I (and I'm persuaded most of us) think it's the ultimate Nightcrawler's artist, he dares to made him stand straight again. More: he gave him the silhouette of a dancer more than an acrobat, Kurt seemed always about to leap to a pirouette every second. I was delightful to see.

[From The Shadows]

@ Sundown I think you missed his ability to see in the dark in the intro post. That was introduced in Claremont's Revolutions run way back but not really used again. I'd like to see it mentioned again in newer books.

Here, this is better

Sorry, but all I'm noticing is his polka dot underwear... the hell if he's suffering. You mean he isn't a sexy thong man?I'm terrible.

My sister and I were talking about Kurt the other day and we were both thinking that if the X office doesn't want to use him, why not let him be on the Avengers. If beast could do it, why not Kurt? I would think he could add something very interesting to that group and it could be a different dynamic.

Also we were both thinking what about She-hulk as a love interest for him. Both have interesting views on life and I would think with Jen's personality she could match Kurt's more intense moments of joy or anger.

In House of M Kurt had a crush on Jen if I remember correctly. I'm not sure about them together, though. It could be fun and it would be reminiscent of Kurt/Cerise (The "lip massage" is definitely a Jen move) but I can't see many of her fans going for it. I go back and forth on the whole Avengers thing. It could be good if handled well.