Nightcrawler Appreciation

[Hypestyle]

RE: Amanda (or Jimaine, as I prefer)

I'm one on the minority which didn't feel annoyed because of the sibling thing, and yes, I think their break had probably much to do with editorial (and audience?) penalty. That doesn't prevent their relationship from being interesting.

In my opinion, the most accurate and honest resume of the situation was this page from the awesome series by Aguirre-Sacasa/Robertson:

I'm not sure what this exchange seems to imply? what happened in this mini series?

[Sundown]

I'm not sure what this exchange seems to imply? what happened in this mini series?

Kurt and Amanda had been broken up for a good while at the time of the series, and really hadn't talked since the thing with Margali switching bodies with Amanda during Excalibur.
Amanda goes on in the next panel to crack a joke about crystal ball stalking him or something in reply to his question of how she knew about the boy.

The series itself was written along a Constantine vibe. Kurt became the defacto metaphysical expert of the X-Men, and got handed cases of that nature. The first case, which he's referring to here, is a little boy in a hospital who witnessed a mass murder. Kid is really traumatized, if memory serves (it's been a really long time since I read it) and some demon invoking sorcerers are involved. The next arc brings in Stefan, Kurt's brother, and elaborates more on him and what exactly happened that led into the fight with Kurt. This is the solo where readers find out that Amanda hid Illyana's corrupting soul sword inside Kurt, because Kurt couldn't be corrupted. She failed to tell him and something came after it. The end of the series has Mephisto trying to cut a deal with Kurt, using Stefan.

I even liked how Amanda was written in this one, as in this is the voice and personality I see her with.

All in all, it was an excellent year long series. I highly recommend it. Kurt got some very good development in it.

[Sundown]

@Sungila

You know, now that I think of it, it was in a miserable dark atmosphere, like the X-Men have been in so long now, when the original Excalibur launched and rocketed to popularity. It was the option if you weren't interested in the grim and gritty Outback Era of the X-Men, and people responded to that.

[From The Shadows]

Yeah, I liked Amanda in the Sacassa' solo (as well as her Magik mini which most everyone probably knows by now) but she was sooo boring in Excalibur. Though, most Amanda fans would probably disagree.

[sungila]

@Sungila

You know, now that I think of it, it was in a miserable dark atmosphere, like the X-Men have been in so long now, when the original Excalibur launched and rocketed to popularity. It was the option if you weren't interested in the grim and gritty Outback Era of the X-Men, and people responded to that.

Exactly! And the closest thing we've had to that kind celebration of impossible world and impossible odds in all the queer otherness that is trapeze fantasy in all it's most zany, big hearted wyrd calliope wonderfulness was Aaron's 'Quest for Nightcrawler.'

I love love the way the OG Excalibur began with all sorts of heavy gravity...stormy and dark and then...launched itself somersaulting into the endlessly STRANGE!

Why oh for a forsaken-heaven's sake why, at this very moment is the spirit of Excalibur and the core energy of X-Men who composed its classic line-up being treated so innocuously, vapidly, nostalgically, crudely and adolescently...

So what if Guggenheim didn't write Gold and what if Kurt was that team's leader (wouldn't Kitty gladly hand over that role and wouldn't Kurt graciously and lovingly accept) and then, is Storm in that book? I love Storm, but she'd have to go, move on...she deserves to lead her own group and really might have to...you know...at this point.

But yea, right? Back to this new new break free and be differently...

End Gold...Begin this new Excalibur...

AND CALL IT SOMETHING WITHOUT AN "X" IN IT!!!

My ideal first arc would somehow be about Karma...something about her being the villain...and something about this new Kurt led team fighting and assisting her...being a part of her progression through her demony dark and damaged decades through a kind a of transformative victory and self-reconciliation. Then becoming part of team...and hooray...and with Magik and Limbo and Lockheed too!

OKAY, so who in the Marvel U would guest spot and populate this future Excalibur by another name?

My ideal team (to start with)

Kurt
Rachel
Kitty
Lockheed
Northstar
Magik
and Karma...in that first arc, at the end of it...into the next.

[sungila]

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and a happy solstice and/or holiday or just this and tomorrow's day to you.

[Sundown]

OKAY, so who in the Marvel U would guest spot and populate this future Excalibur by another name?

My ideal team (to start with)

Kurt
Rachel
Kitty
Lockheed
Northstar
Magik
and Karma...in that first arc, at the end of it...into the next.

I actually like that line up, but I wouldn't put Rachel in it in the beginning, I'd have them go after her and address what's just happened with Ahab, her past trauma and let her choose to stay, or not stay (maybe do this in the 2nd or third arc of the book). If not, then have her as supporting cast. I'd probably also use the Braddocks as supporting, including Betsy.

I'd frankly love to have Illyana and Kurt on the same team together, same with Northstar. Those three personalities could play so well off of one another, if done right.

Also, happy holidays to everyone!

[Anduinel]

I'm kind of stunned by this forthcoming solicitation...given today's image of the thought to be 'squeaky clean' male showman with a backstage full of abuse against women...and Kurt and Meagan both being vulnerable to use in this...abuse in this...way...oh, but this just feels all sorts of bad & horrible & not nearly as smart or cute or anything as it may think it is...damn.

No, no, no...why even, sigh
Really? No and especially please not Kurt and really really not Kurt and Meagan.
THIS will have an impact on who Kurt was, will be and is.

I don't like this at all. Not in presentation. And in execution...I can only hope that my curiosity kills my inhibitions and my inhibitions be swept miraculously off these too wary to turn around, shuffling backwards in retreat, feet.

I'm not sure where you're getting this from? From what we've seen of the solits in several of the minis, the underlying sinister thread of Age of X-Man is that love is somehow forbidden. I'd say it's more logical to assume then that the scandal Kurt and Meggan are caught up in - and the story twist - is that someone (the Cucokoos?) has discovered they actually care about each other, and that it's not all just an act for the cameras. There's nothing to imply that anyone's being abused or silenced by Kurt.

I actually like that line up, but I wouldn't put Rachel in it in the beginning, I'd have them go after her and address what's just happened with Ahab, her past trauma and let her choose to stay, or not stay (maybe do this in the 2nd or third arc of the book). If not, then have her as supporting cast. I'd probably also use the Braddocks as supporting, including Betsy.

I'd frankly love to have Illyana and Kurt on the same team together, same with Northstar. Those three personalities could play so well off of one another, if done right.

Also, happy holidays to everyone!

Same to you! Of sungila's line-up, I'd probably keep Magik with the X-Men and bring in more characters on the Marvel UK side, preferably someone with prior attachments to Excalibur or the MI6 book. I'd like to see Pete Wisdom, Feron, and Faiza again.

[sungila]

I'm not sure where you're getting this from? From what we've seen of the solits in several of the minis, the underlying sinister thread of Age of X-Man is that love is somehow forbidden. I'd say it's more logical to assume then that the scandal Kurt and Meggan are caught up in - and the story twist - is that someone (the Cucokoos?) has discovered they actually care about each other, and that it's not all just an act for the cameras. There's nothing to imply that anyone's being abused or silenced by Kurt.

Thank you for alerting me to my erroneous assumptions and defensive alarm.
I didn't know anything about this interesting underlying thread of forbidden love.

I was completely wrong.

Oh my, and yet again, I see that I've become all too mistrusting and jumpy.
Oddly I have no rooted attachment to any nostalgic golden ideal, it could be something of the opposite.
Surely, I'm fearful and I'd most likely flinch at any solicit featuring Nightcrawler, and probably feel defeated if he wasn't there at all.

It's the state of the me in Anthropocene. I am worry.

All these ashen apocalyptic premonitions & 'end is near' poster board proclamations, the irony is that this is the distress of my idealism...I'm embarrassed, at myself, all scowls and howls in these rags.




Kurt and Meggan being Bowie-esque Heroes in love sounds great to me.
Wonderfully great.

[sungila]

I actually like that line up, but I wouldn't put Rachel in it in the beginning, I'd have them go after her and address what's just happened with Ahab, her past trauma and let her choose to stay, or not stay (maybe do this in the 2nd or third arc of the book). If not, then have her as supporting cast. I'd probably also use the Braddocks as supporting, including Betsy.

I'd frankly love to have Illyana and Kurt on the same team together, same with Northstar. Those three personalities could play so well off of one another, if done right.

I like your idea more than mine Sundown. I think it was more or less phantom reflex that made me put Kitty, Lockheed and Rachel on a new Kurt led Excalibur-esque team. But now I'm thinking why does it have to be like Excalibur at all?

Imagining a book more along the lines of Nightcrawler's two best solo series in spirit : Cockrum and Aguirre-Sacca. Take that basic spirit and infuse it with Aaron's 'Quest', Remender & Liu's AoA Nightcrawler, Claremont and Paul Smith & Romita Jr's 'From the Ashes/Mutant Massacre' wounded and reeling Kurt and of course lots of Claremont and Davis' swashbuckling team leader and BAMF! That's the book I want to read!

Sincerely, when Kurt left the X-Men the X-Men were believed dead and gone forever.
When he came back this last time HE was dead.

You know, maybe there is no coming back...as in, since his resurrection...since his near destruction just before Excalibur...since the schisms, divisions and dissembles of his ideals or concepts of family or second family or even eternity.

This could be a book of necessity, transition and transformation.

What's it like to leave the X-Men and be a Mutant? What's it like to be a super hero team in this day in age? What's it like to have a team of mutants and non-mutants and super and non-super people working together with the open sores of uncertainty and broken-habbits?

What if Kurt led a team that offered a central place to imagine and tell the story of life after X?

Wouldn't that be an important book to have in the mix and isn't now a great time for such a title?

Let Scott and Wolverine have the X-Men or destroy the X-Men or whatever. Let Kurt leave them to it. Let 'Red' be more or less his last try at a failing system and lost faith.

He's left heaven and hell...why not leave this purgatory too?

So with all that in mind and heart this core team (already acknowledging there would be big natural changes and progressions as things progress) could be something like:

Kurt
Jean-Paul
Illyana
Karma
maybe Layla Miller? she 'knows stuff' and the M on her face as an indelible...well...hmmm...

The names of the two children killed in the first scene of Man Loves God Kills are Mark and Jill.

That 'death', their 'death'...in the night in that playground...

Just before Magneto arrives upon the scene...

It's THERE at that beat in that cut at that pulse...there could be and there is another option, another way...a different response...a different story...but it's there...somewhere with Mark and Jill and in that night in that playground...that's the place and tone and feeling from which, for me, an all new and different and done with it and dealing with being done with it by doing this now...team with Kurt leading (or in actuality just leading by being the first to really leave...and then others following maybe nearly in step or already ahead of him)...emerges.

There are worlds where cutting down cast sizes and fitting this or that to the property rights owned isn't necessary at all.
There is nothing wrong with mutants dropping that branded stock and trade for a simple M...that does or doesn't have to be explained..."it just knows stuff" - maybe it's a 'W'...maybe it's just a shadow...maybe it's from the future and fades on approach...or changes depending on on depth and difference...and 'stuff'

How would Kurt...without the X-Men...respond to that scene, this scene in the playground?

Take it from here...

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[sungila]

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Amanda and Margali and Mystique and Azreal and Xavier and Mephisto and...after awhile it's hard not to sorta aknowledge Kurt's accountability for these manipulations...these layers...this habit of picking scabs...even his self conscious devil may care swashbuckling...it's elegant and also awkward.

It'd be kinda great to hear him actually go through his old iconography of stylized heroes...Captian Blood, Jonathan Carter, Jesus...and think about them...think about himself.

Kinda great to see him reflect on the impossibility of ever reconciling in blame or defense his past as causation or excuse...his way out of heaven...his way out of family...

Why does he cling to that costume...that circus suit...he loves outfits doesn't he...loves to perform...to change...as long as he's in control, as long as he's got a way back...as long as he's in retreat just as he moves forward...unless it's without a net...in sacrifice...into a seemingly exquisite end.

You know, I can't really think of a character nearly revealed in the nude as often as Kurt...is that a deliberate thing creators do...or is it...something else?

His psychic and spiritual susceptibility is seemingly at odds to his slippery psychic resilience that even the Shadow King most recently couldn't grasp...and even death lost hold of.

Who is this guy?

“You are free and that is why you are lost.” ― Franz Kafka

[Sundown]

I'd love to see explored why he chooses who he does -- so many of whom do manipulate him. Do his relationships keep failing because of Mystique and Margali's betrayals? Does he subconsciously choose women similar to them to try and make things turn out differently?

To me, Logan has forever and always been a stand in for Stefan. Kurt couldn't save his older brother, but maybe he can save this other broken brother he's come to know. Maybe that's why he's put up with so much over the years, and so many failures from Logan.

There was a nice line, in the X-Men Legends game my son gave me for Christmas. Kurt was talking about performing and being in the spotlight and how much he loved it. I can't remember the exact wording, but he goes on to add that he's never been sure if it was truly the spotlight he loved, or the acceptance of the audience that he was simply a man in a costume rather than something to be feared.

As far as Kurt being shown bare, I agree, it happens pretty often. I'm sure part of it is that Kurt has always had a fair few admirers in his reading audience. The other, yes, I think is saying something. It's stripping away his mask that isn't a mask, his show and performance that keeps people from getting too close to him. "Here I am, in the raw, do you truly see me now? I'm not your best friend. I'm not your would-be lover. I'm not a hero, a man of god, moral support an anchor to my teammates, or an X-Man. I'm all of these things and none of them. Can you see me?"

[Indigo_Lady]

He's been seen in the nude at least twice because the writers knew he is one of the lady's favorites. I know for a fact that Austen showed him nude in the Draco arc because a group of female fans asked him to do it. Too bad one of the worst artists I've ever seen on an Uncanny book was chosen to do much of that arc. So rather than loving the arc- Austen's awful writing notwithstanding - I found it very cringeworthy.