Kurt Wagner: Nightcrawler Appreciation 2020

[Fokken]

Attachment 95767

This one here is particularly pleasing to my eye.

[Su_Whisterfield]

Ron Wagner (no kidding with his last name!). I love his work (he inked himself, BTW). He's the kind of humble, correct, expressive and loose artist I very much appreciate above bombastic ones.

This run was awesome, with that 'Girls' School From Heck' arc. Those were the days...

Ah, I remember.
I helped CC out with the research on the girls school issues, he’d seen St Trinians, of course, but I gave him some more reading of girl school stories, by letter, obviously, this is way, way pre-email.

This one here is particularly pleasing to my eye.

Yeah, I thought it was splendid, love the naughty gleam in his eye. It’s what I miss most in film Kurt, no enough sexy sauce.

[Ricochet Rita]

I helped CC out with the research on the girls school issues, he’d seen St Trinians, of course, but I gave him some more reading of girl school stories, by letter, obviously, this is way, way pre-email.

You acted as consultant to CC??? Wow!

I guess he already knew of Enid Blyton's stories

[Su_Whisterfield]

You acted as consultant to CC??? Wow!

I guess he already knew of Enid Blyton's stories

One of my friends is an ex-girlfriend of his, so I kinda had an ‘in’ with him. I wouldn’t say I know him, but we used to exchange letters and Christmas cards and I’ve been out for dinner with him (he was between wives at the time).
He knew of the Blyton books but hadn’t read them, hence picking my brains. He asked me at a convention, Eastercon 88 springs to mind, but I might be wrong.

As well as Blyton and St Trinians, we riffed on the Molesworth books, plus real school anecdotes, but my school was way more working class than a girls boarding school. I’ll have to re-read the issues to see what he used.

Terry Pratchett was a bugger for using fannish conversations and characters in his books, famous for it.
Fans would often find conversations used, on goths and war memorials, or sword making or cat wrangling, how projectors work, he was interested and would steal it all.
Magrat Garlick wears my jewellery (he was impressed by my arcane silver jewellery over breakfast at a con, no makeup, bleary eyed, but full jewellery at 8am) and the figurine of Perdita Nitt was apparently the ‘spitting image’ of me, thanks Terry!
The line between fans and pros was much blurred in the 80s.

[From The Shadows]

Ron Wagner (no kidding with his last name!). I love his work (he inked himself, BTW). He's the kind of humble, correct, expressive and loose artist I very much appreciate above bombastic ones.

This run was awesome, with that 'Girls' School From Heck' arc. Those were the days...

I love Ron Wagners few issues of Excalibur and would have loved him alternating permanently with AD, him or Lim, instead of all the fill in artists we have gotten. Wonziak was too much for me at the time, his style is just... He has storytelling skills and can do backgrounds which some later artists didn't think they even had to do so I'll give him due credit there.

Ron Wagner and Chris Claremont were a good combo I think for Englands premier team. Lockheed, Kurt, Rachel, Brian and Meggan defeat Mesmero and the Strucker twins and reunite w/ Kitty the next issue. It turned out Kurt was correct! Yay!





Brian and Kurt have developed a bit of a fan following. I can just imagine what effect someone like Ray may have on an all boys school. Who knows one of those girls may go to her afterwards (equal opportunity?)

[From The Shadows]

This is what I feel like when I stay up late because of YouTube. Minus the villain rampage of course.



This little TV with the antenna brings me back.

[From The Shadows]

This issue had the previously mentioned Wozniak on art duties, probably the least favorite Excalibur artist.







I loved Excalibur, not only did they go up against X-Men threats. They also went up against cosmic threats of the greater MU.

[Su_Whisterfield]

Found while noodling on T’internet. Very old fan art (2012) from animator Matthew Humphreys.
I like a lot of the other characters too but that Kurt is MAGNIFICENT, just one shot and the animator has got more of his character than I saw in all of the films. Particularly like the contrast with Hank.

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[From The Shadows]

I Remember that being posted years ago. What if X-Men were Disney characters I think? My favorite on screen version of Kurt is WatX. That was definitely the more serious version of the character that came later in ADs solo run of Excalibur. The one in those pics look more the light-hearted self he was under CC's pen in the beginning of the run.

[taozen]

Jorge Jimenez Kurt. It's not the classically handsome Kurt like Alan Davis but I like it. He give that fuzzy elf look with those ears:

[Su_Whisterfield]

Jorge Jimenez Kurt. It's not the classically handsome Kurt like Alan Davis but I like it. He give that fuzzy elf look with those ears:

I do like the hair. I could live with this.
But I tend to like my Kurt’s a bit older? There seems to be a trend with some of the younger artists to draw him very pretty and very young.

[taozen]

Carlos Pacheco

[From The Shadows]

Carlos Pacheco

This is closer to the look and age of how I like my NC. Maybe the newer artists were first exposed to Kurt during Evolution that's why they make him younger and prettier. I like pretty Kurt but not too pretty like Bishi. Its just a preference.

[Su_Whisterfield]

This is closer to the look and age of how I like my NC. Maybe the newer artists were first exposed to Kurt during Evolution that's why they make him younger and prettier. I like pretty Kurt but not too pretty like Bishi. Its just a preference.

It will indeed be from where they were first exposed to the character. Just like with writers, the generations we have writing and drawing the current books grew up watching the cartoons or reading books I didn’t.
And some of it’s purely down to the artist’s style and current fashion, comics go through fashion phases, same as everything else.

I far, far prefer pretty young Kurt to heavy, over muscular Kurt anyway.
And we’re fans, we’re allowed to be fussy! I hate his tail being too thin and too long, for example! Which is totally fannish obsession!

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And sometimes you throw it all out of the window, just because you like the artist’s style or it amuses you.

[Grimsmack]

Giant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler was a big let down.

Kurt was nothing more than a guide for a few of the other X-characters that joined him on the lame-o mission. I would argue that his teammates actually saw some character development whereas Kurt didn't do much of anything except state the obvious. It seems he was only along for the ride so that fans would buy the book. Nightcrawler fans are so used to being shortchanged that Marvel didn't mind passing this off as a Nightcrawler story (it wasn't, he could have been any other character and it absolutely wouldn't have mattered). It would have been more accurate to call this Giant-Size X-Men: Eye-Boy or Giant-Size X-Men: Cypher.

Do any of you that visit this thread think that the writers have much in store for Nightcrawler in the near future? Are any of you as disappointed as I am with his current "development"?

Right now, he's just sort of a figurehead - as one of the council members, he has the look of someone important, but he really hasn't done much. I mean, advising the other mutants to reproduce is just a nothing burger. Was it supposed to be profound?

Normally, I wouldn't much care at being duped into buying a comic with the premise being that Nightcrawler would be "featured" only to find out he's just window dressing. Since this story has developed last summer, it's become clear that (once again with another another X-Men event) he isn't going to be much of a factor in whatever outcome is in store. It's been years since he's really provided anything of note to the X-franchise and it doesn't seem like any of the creative forces at Marvel are very interested in him.