Duel at the Cliffs of Insanity - Batman vs. Nightcrawler

[Sharpandpointies]

Bruce actually has feats for snapping swords in half with kicks, so...

Kicking at the sword of someone who is currently being argued as at least as skilled and and actually faster than Bruce (with swords) isn't such a good idea, is what I'm saying.

[Matt the Manly]

So what makes him faster than CBPHs then?

Has he been shown to dance around Captain America or anybody?
Also how strong is he? Because Batmans last sword fight had him swinging hard enough to shatter both his and his opponents' sword into pieces

[FrenchGemini]

Here's the scan, for context.

http://s289.photobucket.com/user/dar...word2.jpg.html

But for that, even without the teleportation, Bruce would need to be able to get into grappling range, and control Kurt's sword arm, which, given the speed most people are saying he has, is far from being easy...

[Shai-Hulud]

Because Batmans last sword fight had him swinging hard enough to shatter both his and his opponents' sword into pieces

If you're fighting with medieval battle swords, then hard swinging is the way they did it back then, but this is a fencing match, presumably with rapiers (assumed by the reference in the OP to Inigo Montoya of The Princess Bride). The key is to thrust with the point, which takes considerably less time and energy than a swing.

In fencing, the move you're referring to is a beat, where you hit the opponent's sword, hopefully to dislodge it or throw off his rhythm. A skilled fencer has ways to deflect this, though, and concentrate on an actual winning move, like a quick thrust.

Knights-in-armor sword fighting is all about the strength, but dueling rapiers are all about speed and dexterity.

Here's the scan, for context.

http://s289.photobucket.com/user/dar...word2.jpg.html

Thank you for the scan.

That's not a fencer, but a medieval knight in armor with a battle-blade, either a longsword or a bastard sword.

A rapier duel is a totally different kind of match, and no experienced fencer would ever raise his blade above his head like he was swinging a war hammer.

Nice feat against the knight, though.

So what makes him faster than CBPHs then? Has he been shown to dance around Captain America or anybody?

Here's some scans from the Spiderman fight:

sp1612.jpg

sp1615.jpg

I don't know if you'd call this CIS or PIS or not.

Since his inception, Nightcrawler has been consistently depicted as having superhuman agility, so to me, it just looks like he's fast enough to land blows on Spider-Man.

If he can hit Spider-Man four times in two pages as legitimate feats, he should be able to hit Batman.

For them to be good in the present context we don't need them to support the "strong" claim that Kurt is as fast as Spidey. We only need them to support the "weak" claim that he does indeed posses a measure superhuman reflexes, and is therefore faster than Bruce.

[The Drunkard Kid]

Does Kurt have any feats of fighting/sparring with the X-Men's resident peak human master swordsman who he happens to be best friends with? Granted, Katana and Rapiers use difference skills, but it should be a good launching point for this debate.

[Hazard]

Given that Spider-Man is a high end bullet timer and Kurt is, well, not. Him hitting Spider-Man at all is considerably suspect.

[big_adventure]

Does Kurt have any feats of fighting/sparring with the X-Men's resident peak human master swordsman who he happens to be best friends with? Granted, Katana and Rapiers use difference skills, but it should be a good launching point for this debate.

Well, he's had to deal with full-on berserk Logan at least a couple of times, and pretty well danced around him without 'porting. I seem to recall them sparring with blades once, as background to some exposition, but that might just be my imagination. He's also consistently been shown to be quicker than basically any non-speedsters the X-Men face, since forever, dancing around people like Sabertooth and other good fighters. It's one of his things.

[Shai-Hulud]

Some Nightcrawler agility and swordplay feats:

Moving faster than miniature rockets:

nightcrawler1missles2.gif~original.jpg

Evading some bullets, looks like autofire:

dodgebullets.gif~original.jpg

Swordplay against multiple adversaries:

excal16ship.gif~original.jpg

Sorry for the tiny image size. I swear they were bigger when I downloaded them....

[Anarchist]

I think Spidey's encounter with Kurt in Secret Wars is more accurate.

[big_adventure]

I think Spidey's encounter with Kurt in Secret Wars is more accurate.

Eh, while I totally agree that Spidey is faster, when Kurt only has 2 "fights" against Peter in his history, and in one he's shown to be somewhere close to Spidey's speed and in the other he's shown to be a joke just like the rest of his team, at worst you can split the difference. I mean, they are both pretty PIS-y - Charles not just shutting Spidey down in SW was enough to make it that. Especially since the rest of Nighty's stuff shows him as someone stupidly quick compared to most people, including some CBPH-types.

[Hazard]

Some Nightcrawler agility and swordplay feats:

Evading some bullets, looks like autofire:

dodgebullets.gif~original.jpg

This would be aim dodging as opposed to actual bullet timing. Nevertheless, good feat.

[The Drunkard Kid]

Eh, while I totally agree that Spidey is faster, when Kurt only has 2 "fights" against Peter in his history, and in one he's shown to be somewhere close to Spidey's speed and in the other he's shown to be a joke just like the rest of his team, at worst you can split the difference. I mean, they are both pretty PIS-y - Charles not just shutting Spidey down in SW was enough to make it that. Especially since the rest of Nighty's stuff shows him as someone stupidly quick compared to most people, including some CBPH-types.

Eh, when he's not being PIS'd out, Pete's a guy that casually glues the peak human Logan between a pair of walls with his claw-holes stuck to his head and has the actually bullet-blocking Daredevil talking about how he could barely track Spidey even with all his super senses and how even his reflexes left him completely unable to react to a punch even though he knew it was coming. Nightcrawler doesn't have any super senses of note, hasn't regularly blocked/dodged bullets after they were fired at him from surprise, and has explicitly shown to be vulnerable to Classic Rogue's watered down version of the Spider-Sense telling her where he was going to teleport to before/as he 'ported.

OTOH, Rogue's super speed level is kinda inconsistent. She's got Super Sonic flight speed, but her reflexes are only intermittently depicted on or above that level. I seriously snickered uncontrollably when Sauron considered Wolverine to be a bigger threat to him than Classic Rogue, though in all fairness her showings in that arc were pretty crappy.

[The Drunkard Kid]

Here's Spidey moving clearly after the bullet was already fired and with the Spider-Sense only warning him when it was almost touching his back, for comparison:



And from more recently, there's this (I'm pretty sure that's just him emoing it up and not actually wearing the symbiote again):

[Shai-Hulud]

Another feat with Nightcrawler using agility to evade bullets—unless he's evading a beam weapon of some sort:

uncanny118mandriod.gif~original.jpg

[The Drunkard Kid]

That still looks like the general aim-dodging that most peak-humanish (and often below) engage in rather often. Even Wolver-block-with-my-face-ine does stuff like that, as well as things like shredding multiple guns into tiny pieces so fast that they hold together until he blew on them, or gutting a highly trained ninja so fast that she barely had time to draw her sword before seeing a blur running past her followed by seeing her lunch on her shoes. Captain America does it a lot more since he doesn't have a healing factor that writers feel the need to show off every issue.

This is of course, discounting the occasional bullet blocking/speedster hitting feat that peak humans that appear in lots of comics tend to accumulate. Wolverine is definitely not normally portrayed as someone faster than the super-sonic Thor, or capable of dodging a close ranged RPG, or anything on that line even though those things technically occurred in canon.