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Mar 30

Amazing X-Men #1-5 – “The Quest for Nightcrawler”

Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2014 by Paul in x-axis

Let’s start with the Obligatory Plug (though Al does this stuff so much better than me) – don’t forget that you can now buy tickets for our live show on 31 May.  The details are all in this post.

Moving on…

When Marvel announced that Nightcrawler was returning from the dead, my reaction was at best ambivalent.  Not that his death in “Messiah Complex” was some sort of inviolable classic, of course.  Far from it; it was a classic example of writers killing off a beloved character because they had no plans for him and his accrued cachet might lend the story an illusion of weight.  It provided no sort of resolution to the character’s life, and frankly, it was a surprisingly cheap move considering the writers involved in that story.

No, the bigger issue was this: Nightcrawler hadn’t had anything to do in years.  He hadn’t had a major plot line in the X-Men comics since… what, the Joe Casey and Chuck Austen era?  And that had been a disaster – a clumsy attempt to steer the character in the direction of religious angst, completely missing the point that what he brought to the team was a sunny optimism that provided a much-needed balance to the X-Men’s more hand-wringing tendencies.  Since that point, Nightcrawler had largely been relegated to standing in the back of crowd scenes, reminding us all that we’re reading the X-Men.  That’s fine in itself – there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with a character moving into a gentle semi-retirement – but there was hardly pressing need to bring him back just to resume that role.

It’s reassuring, then, that Jason Aaron seems to understand the character’s “ray of hope” role in the team dynamic, gets his voice, and outfits him with a storyline to drive him going forward.  Admittedly, Aaron won’t be writing Nightcrawler going forward – instead, he’s getting a solo series under Chris Claremont – but it seems fair to assume that this story is setting up his new status quo.  Rather than simply claiming he didn’t die after all, the story tells us quite unequivocally that he did, and then sets about using magic to get him back.  The upshot is the idea that the Bamfs who’ve been hanging around the school are friendly demons, and Nightcrawler was so desperate to return to life that he sold them his soul in exchange.  Naturally, in the cold light of day, that starts to look like an enormously stupid move, which is presumably going to be his main driver going forward.

The need for a mystical story also goes some way towards explaining why this arc features the dreaded Azazel as its lead villain.  Surely nobody was clamouring for the return of this bozo, not merely because he comes from a notoriously bad story, but also because he hails from the period where Nightcrawler was being used in heavy handed stories about religion.  He is, however, on a short list of Nightcrawler solo villains, and the one probably best placed to serve the plot requirements of this story.  Aaron wisely downplays his more annoying traits, instead giving him a fabulously demented plan to create a pirate fleet and go raiding souls in the afterlife.  This is nuts, but it’s the right sort of nuts.  It’s so silly that Nightcrawler’s swashbuckling tone sits well with it, and it’s so over the top as to play to the strengths of artist Ed McGuinness – whose bold clean lines are beautifully suited to Nightcrawler, just as Alan Davis’ were.

All that being said… this doesn’t need to be a five issue story.  It starts with Azazel’s plan coming to light and the X-Men being drawn into the fray; it ends with Nightcrawler leading the X-Men to vanquish Azazel and returning to Earth in the process.  In the middle are three issues of the X-Men being split up, fighting demons, and getting back together again, which is essentially just busy work to give the impression of something happening between acts one and three.  It’s the bit in an old Doctor Who story where they kill an episode by running up and down corridors.  It isn’t really about Nightcrawler (who gets annoyingly shunted aside in issue #2), and it surely doesn’t need to take up more than half the arc.  This storyline wanted to be four issues – it might well have got by with three.

A subplot about Firestar joining the team feels bolted on, and Northstar is horrendously out of character from start to finish – Aaron ends up writing him as a bombastic hero, which is not just wrong, it encroaches on Kurt’s territory.

But there are good bits in the middle section too – lovely moments of characters being reunited, or a cute spot of Beast simply refusing to accept that he’s in Purgatory, and giving the usual Official Handbook explanations of why it’s really just another dimension of some sort.  Most importantly, though, by simply getting his voice right and giving him appropriate things to do, Aaron and McGuinness have indeed convinced me that I do want to see more of Nightcrawler, and after so many years lying fallow, the character has life in him yet.

Bring on the comments

  1. Brian says:

    As I recall, any Lee/Kirby instances of Iceman “melting” (from flame jets in the Danger Room, for example) left him as Bobby in his shorts and booties, sitting in a puddle of his melted “armor.”

    There’s surely a No-Prize in here somewhere about his mastering the freezing of the water of his body and admixturing that with the humidity around him…

  2. David Cummings says:

    Bobby has for a long time become pure ice with an extremely malleable form because he is no longer a human coated in ice. I believe Emma Frost (who at the time was possessing him) taught him that trick, essentially telling him he had been holding back how powerful he actually was.

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