Nightcrawler Appreciation

[Aben]

Kurt fans, please vote!

Isn't this over?

[cc008]

Isn't this over?

Yes. 10char

[darewithpeace]

cool that he is on the cover of x men red 2

[Sundowhn]

cool that he is on the cover of x men red 2

Yeah, I like that cover, even if he does have a beard in it.

[Havok83]

Yeah, I like that cover, even if he does have a beard in it.

it makes it better and I wish it were adapated into his regular look

[Sundowhn]

it makes it better and I wish it were adapated into his regular look

I wouldn't mind it, arguments aside on his ability to grow one. It's not the first artist to give him facial hair.

The artist who did the cover also did a few issues of Remender's UXF. I really like his take on Nightcrawler.

[Indigo_Lady]

Sorry, but I think that cover is awful.

Cockrum said that Kurt does not have facial hair, so I'm not sure why some artists insist on pushing it.

[Sundowhn]

Sorry, but I think that cover is awful.

Cockrum said that Kurt does not have facial hair, so I'm not sure why some artists insist on pushing it.

Maybe it's just artistic interpretation of how he views the character within or something. Darrick Robertson did the same when he drew the cage cover. He wanted to show a wild man on the edge of sanity, so drew Kurt scruffy, with a beard.

I agree, Cockrum is obviously the authority, since he was the creator, but I'm interested in finding out if this artist was trying to say something with the design, or if it was "just because".

[sungila]

Maybe it's just artistic interpretation of how he views the character within or something. Darrick Robertson did the same when he drew the cage cover. He wanted to show a wild man on the edge of sanity, so drew Kurt scruffy, with a beard.

I agree, Cockrum is obviously the authority, since he was the creator, but I'm interested in finding out if this artist was trying to say something with the design, or if it was "just because".

I totally agree Indigo Lady. That cover is awful!

Cockrum's tempest born Nightcrawler of origin is somewhere brooding in the Kurt we've come to know, (he''ll always be in there, like a hole in the soul) but if you read the early sketch notes and then the first ten issues or so of Claremont / Cockrum & Bryne's X-Men you can see that with every panel a different sort of hero than the much darker inception takes body. In fact, in voice and manner it is a manifesto virtually spoken out loud through interior monologues to the audience that "I AM TRYING TO BE A GOOD MAN DESPITE, EVERYTHING!"

What's really fantastic is how Cockrum defies his own original sketches with the character of Nightcrawler in context who after a few issues and team struggles says to team leader Scott, "I have a name. It's Kurt Wagner." And then he challenges Scott to get over blaming the world and fate for his problems, pointing out that, after all, (making reference to his specific physical mutations) everybody has stuff they gotta deal with...AND IT'S BRYNE who really first draws the Kurt Wagner Nightcrawler we come to see and know in body and spirit aligned. Cockrum takes all of Bryne's cues and binds them with gusto just in time for the first solo book.

Sorry Sundowhn, but IMO, the beard makes no sense on the cover of Red.
The beard in any form never has worked for me - not because of shaving dilemmas or any of that. It's more or less that facial hair is an identity thing, Kurt has known bearded women. A statement and detail like THAT wouldn't go without serious reasons for Nightcrawler. A beard means something! Everything externally shown does. It's VERY important to Kurt.

Okay, so Kurt has fur. He wears shadow on his face all the time. He doesn't need a five o'clock or five week scruff on his face. It's silly and looks like an accident that got 'bearded' in for kicks.

What I remember of Robinson's Kurt is the stunning cover of that issue when he's in shadow inside the nightmare of his carnival trauma and the beard scenes are in keeping with the feel of the story but it seems to me that Kurt can't grow a beard and wouldn't even if he could - if musts be just rough 'em up a bit, make him wide eyed and ragged and maybe a bit mangy and hysterical (usually he keeps himself immaculately clean and in control).



That Red cover seems like it should have been used for a variant as it's more or less an inside joke or statement that speaks nothing to the story itself or to the fans. In Red, so far, it would be way more telling to show him out-of-uniform and in that hoody. Right?

To me it smells sulfurous, just another stupid pet Nightcrawler joke that I've never enjoyed and I thought Taylor and Asrar had no interest in exploiting.

[Adam-X]

Sorry, but I think that cover is awful.

Cockrum said that Kurt does not have facial hair, so I'm not sure why some artists insist on pushing it.

While I agree - the days of Cockrum on X-Men is long gone (sadly), so these new writers and artists will do their own spins to leave their own mark.

[Sundowhn]

I understand where you guys are coming from. From the artist, it's probably no more than a) trying to go for a different look or b) indifferent to the history. He's seen it used before, so added it.

I guess it would be like changing the texture of Storm's hair. There's been debate on updating that, too.

[sungila]

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Blue velvet? Is that the texture Sundowhn ?

This pictorial collection is meant to provide a multi-triplicity of perspectives by way of a fracturing bobbled funhouse mirror image of Nightcrawler as he is perceived and as he perceives others presumptively percieving him. He didn't know that shadows cloaked him so readily and hungrily into fully ingested invisibility until the little leprechauns of Cassidy keep told and then showed him because he didn't believe in them, then didn't believe them, then hardly believed himself.

What I'm saying (and showing) I guess is that times do change and it's wonderful that creators continue to tell the tales of Nightcrawler in new and different ways that challenge, contort, confuse, confound, amaze, astonish, astound, thrill, surprise, console, inspire and BAMF'el us all - but there is the Kurt who is not to be known other than through a sort of empathetic sympathetic understanding, a felt presence, an untranslatable dialogue in a silent language - bespoken alone in a familiarly strange land interior.

He's the son of Mystique, or so we think, or so we're told, but she's an unreliable narrator at best and who can trust a devil who claims to be your father even if he is...he might not be because he is.

Regardless, Kurt is a shapeshifter who can't and/or won't change shape. Think of how people hold themselves accountable to his idealism. Scott, Wolvie, Storm...everybody seems to hope Kurt will forgive them their sins and somehow feels their 'wrongness' amplify in his presence or felt absence. BUT IS HE ACTUALLY ACCOUNTABLE TO THEIR IDEALS!? OR IS HE MADE TO BE!?

Kurt, somehow, speaks for himself by denying to change shape...despite what he may wish, may be offered (paradise for instance), and what might seem like a safe and more secure hideaway. Come down from the cross. Come on ashore. NO, NO says Kurt. Even in his most melodramatic displays of high fantasy daring-do he more or less highlights his singularity and inverts that shadowy self into something bright and darkly shining! NOT ME MY FRIENDS, BUT FOR YOU seems to be his motto. A self imposed exile that's actually quite real.

So often Kurt isn't even given a new uniform. He's rarely shown in street clothes or anything consitently everyday contemporary and in keeping with blending into the shadows. He just doesn't blend. I don't think he wants to. Maybe he'd like to think he does, but he doesn't. He wants the opposite. To hide in the open. Thereby totally turning the trick tah-dah - and sticking the landing for all to see and applaud! It's worthy of a bravo and a gentle hand of compassionate understanding.

Nightcrawler, the code name, it's a bait worm or a euphemism for a creep that haunts the fringes of night and alleys, the ugly sort of vampire. It's a circus act. That signature brimstone egg-stench smell (is that what his fur smells like)! It's all a contradiction of who he seems to be, or is it, and if it is...well, then it is because it isn't, isn't it?

He's right here...but no...but wasn't he though?

[sungila]

nightcrawler_sitting_by_monoflax-db4yr4h.jpg

by https://monoflax.deviantart.com/gallery/61516326/KURT



mara1.jpg

[sungila]

So this is sort of a culminating for-now-sorta-final-parting consideration for here from me about contemporary Kurt in X-Men comics.

Let's just say Kurt embraces his rouge angel eastbound immortality as his mission and cause. Let's just say he comes to an understanding that he's not going to Heaven but that his soullessness is a part of heaven, a missing part, an absence in the everlasting that he embodies in existence. Let's say that he comes to believe that hope is a place between to points, that a jaunt is leap and leap is an act of faith. Let's just say he never needed wings and never had an interest in flying. Let's just say that he isn't concerned about tallying up good and bad, sins and forgiveness or earning or obeying codes or commandments. He's graduated Xavier's school for the gifted and dropped out of Paradise. He's died for the cause of his mutant-hood and survived beyond the span of his own belief and ideals.

I can't help but think of Cockrum's first solo Nightcrawler series and Claremont's last solo series as a bookends for a full story that's finished and been told.
So there is now, this potential for a new story. And there's a lot to tell and many ways to tell it. Yet, these two books, for me, should mark the END from which Kurt is both liberated and yet, necessarily, no longer admitted access.

Logan provides an interesting counter-point to Kurt's current position.

What would Kurt as a lone fallen angel be like? What would his own manifestation of a life unbound by mortality yet tethered to human suffering and pain be like? If and when he finally steps away from the final rites of his death and death-by-resurrection what sort of lone wolf-ronin-ishmael-logan would he be?

Anyway, one vehicle for talking about such a story in comic book superhero fantasy mythic fashion is to think of his potential adversaries. Who are the villains and foes Kurt would be hunting down or confronting?

Does this idea interest you? I hope so. I'd love to hear your thoughts and reasoning and creative imaginings.

Here's a few of the characters I'd most like to see Kurt encounter in a solo vendetta type way in the context which I've presented.

1. AoA Nightcrawler; Kurt Darkholme

2. Silver Surfer (any herald of the cosmos, but an encounter with Silver Surfer and/or the Beyonder is what I'd love to see) Earth-bound heaven vs the Cosmos

3. Dracula

4. Illyana Rasputin and Limbo (he's been a sheath for the soulsword, I loved X-Infernus and have always felt this potential for a story) Is there something there between Magik's stepping discs and Kurt's brimstone clouds? The pathways by which these two travel between jaunts. Can and will Kurt teleport in time as he does in space? Can and will Kurt teleport inter-dimensionally? Can and will Kurt be given access to magic-Marvel in a deeper way than he has been so far? Could the Scarlet Witch be a part of this (please)?

5. Logan of course. The returning Logan, before he's 'back' (but yea, that's not going to happen)...he already made his Red appearance and damn, how could it be he'd not try and connect with Kurt!? So close and he just...has other stuff to do?!

*And OBVIOUSLY, this has everything to do with ME not having any real invested interest in anything Kurt has been involved in since Claremont's solo and Aaron's 'Quest for'. Gold is all ideas and Red is, at least so far, more or less Kurt being given an out by way of a familiar context that is more or less nothing more than serving Jean's dream as he did Xavier's. What's a freak to do when the circus leaves him behind? It just feels like Jean's another ringmaster looking for a showman.

Nightcrawler-X-Men-Roof.jpg

[Sundowhn]

So this is sort of a culminating for-now-sorta-final-parting consideration for here from me about contemporary Kurt in X-Men comics.

Let's just say Kurt embraces his rouge angel eastbound immortality as his mission and cause. Let's just say he comes to an understanding that he's not going to Heaven but that his soullessness is a part of heaven, a missing part, an absence in the everlasting that he embodies in existence. Let's say that he comes to believe that hope is a place between to points, that a jaunt is leap and leap is an act of faith. Let's just say he never needed wings and never had an interest in flying. Let's just say that he isn't concerned about tallying up good and bad, sins and forgiveness or earning or obeying codes or commandments. He's graduated Xavier's school for the gifted and dropped out of Paradise. He's died for the cause of his mutant-hood and survived beyond the span of his own belief and ideals.

I can't help but think of Cockrum's first solo Nightcrawler series and Claremont's last solo series as a bookends for a full story that's finished and been told.
So there is now, this potential for a new story. And there's a lot to tell and many ways to tell it. Yet, these two books, for me, should mark the END from which Kurt is both liberated and yet, necessarily, no longer admitted access.

Logan provides an interesting counter-point to Kurt's current position.

What would Kurt as a lone fallen angel be like? What would his own manifestation of a life unbound by mortality yet tethered to human suffering and pain be like? If and when he finally steps away from the final rites of his death and death-by-resurrection what sort of lone wolf-ronin-ishmael-logan would he be?

I want to break my reply into pieces on this, because I think you make some good points.

One thing that grieves me is that Kurt hasn't been allowed to truly change in so many years. That which doesn't change stagnates, and all that, and it's been true of Kurt. Any time a writer has attempted to take him in a different direction, the next writer simply drops him back to where he was. It's an endless teleport that never gets him anywhere. When the writer has pushed it hard enough and thoroughly enough -- Austen comes to mind -- then subsequent writers just take a hands off approach. (The same happened to Husk and Havok, for awhile, after Austen.)

Anyway, I think Jason Aaron laid the framework for a profound change in Kurt, and no writer afterwards picked it up and really did anything with it. Guggenheim has mentioned it in passing. Other writers haven't even done that much. The same happened after his Aguirre-Sacasa/Robertson solo -- they gave him an independent, somewhat disillusioned but pragmatic attitude(towards the X-Men), and it was just dropped after the book ended. The character keeps getting shoved back into the same tired roles. I read about people wanting swashbuckling and jokes -- the last solo had that in abundance, but, what if after everything the character has been through, he doesn't feel like making jokes or putting on a show? Where is the writer who will touch on that?

That's not to say I want him down in the dumps, perpetually brooding or the "angry elf" like Darkholme, either. I just want to see him developed beyond the sideshow/sidekick support and given some oomph and substance of his own -- some consequences and some direction. I'm tired of seeing him in nothing but nostalgia roles. We've never even seen his reaction to Schism, the professor's death, what happened with Cyclops, Beast's betrayal, etc. Nothing.

I think what I loved most about Excalibur was the character development. Kurt's main story in that book was gaining confidence in his abilities as a man and a leader, rather than falling into the comfortable role of "mascot". He came to terms with that painfully, and rejected being the mascot, but then was dropped right back into it and is more or less there today.

Anyway, one vehicle for talking about such a story in comic book superhero fantasy mythic fashion is to think of his potential adversaries. Who are the villains and foes Kurt would be hunting down or confronting?

Does this idea interest you? I hope so. I'd love to hear your thoughts and reasoning and creative imaginings.

Here's a few of the characters I'd most like to see Kurt encounter in a solo vendetta type way in the context which I've presented.

1. AoA Nightcrawler; Kurt Darkholme

2. Silver Surfer (any herald of the cosmos, but an encounter with Silver Surfer and/or the Beyonder is what I'd love to see) Earth-bound heaven vs the Cosmos

3. Dracula

4. Illyana Rasputin and Limbo (he's been a sheath for the soulsword, I loved X-Infernus and have always felt this potential for a story) Is there something there between Magik's stepping discs and Kurt's brimstone clouds? The pathways by which these two travel between jaunts. Can and will Kurt teleport in time as he does in space? Can and will Kurt teleport inter-dimensionally? Can and will Kurt be given access to magic-Marvel in a deeper way than he has been so far? Could the Scarlet Witch be a part of this (please)?

5. Logan of course. The returning Logan, before he's 'back' (but yea, that's not going to happen)...he already made his Red appearance and damn, how could it be he'd not try and connect with Kurt!? So close and he just...has other stuff to do?!

*And OBVIOUSLY, this has everything to do with ME not having any real invested interest in anything Kurt has been involved in since Claremont's solo and Aaron's 'Quest for'. Gold is all ideas and Red is, at least so far, more or less Kurt being given an out by way of a familiar context that is more or less nothing more than serving Jean's dream as he did Xavier's. What's a freak to do when the circus leaves him behind? It just feels like Jean's another ringmaster looking for a showman.

Nightcrawler-X-Men-Roof.jpg

1. AoA Nightcrawler; Kurt Darkholme - you KNOW that's the one I most want to see. I need Kurt to face his dark mirror. SO much could be done with that as an ongoing adversarial role.

I enjoy seeing him butt heads with Mystique, from time to time, though it hasn't gone anywhere in ages. I think that story is more or less told, unless either of them have a status change.

I'd like to see him written opposite Illyana, as well. That is untapped potential.

On the same note, with Dr. Strange, though not as a foe, more as an outside of the X-Men friend.

I want to see him dealing with Logan, but I don't know if they'd go back to the kind of friends they were before.

I'd like to see him dealing more directly with Magneto and Emma, in an adversarial way. He was one of the ones who never seemed to accept either of them turning over a new leaf, and he was apparently correct in that.