As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

NIGHTCRAWLERS #1
“Sins of Sinister, part 3: Voices of Fire”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artist: Paco Medina
Colourist: Jay David Ramos
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

NIGHTCRAWLERS is the temporary title of Legion of X during the Sins of Sinister crossover.

COVER / PAGE 1: The Nightcrawler chimeras emerge from the shadows, led by the Wolverine version.

PAGE 2. Vox Ignis explores the Sanctum Sanctorum.

The Sanctum Sanctorum is Dr Strange’s base, and while he’s been known to disguise it as abandoned from time to time, it seems to be genuinely abandoned here. Vox Ignis tells us that Mother Righteous has sent them “to scavenge for items of power” – we’ll see at the end of the issue that she apparently has a plan that involves using iconic superhero memorabilia to bring down Sinister, and that the Eye of Agamotto is on her list.

Banshee tells us that everyone occult has fled to Otherworld, the magical world from Excalibur and Knights of X – apparently they’ve given up on trying to liberate Earth. In Sins of Sinister #1, Storm mentioned that all the Spirits of Vengeance had left the Earth about five years before this point.

PAGE 3. The Legion of the Night debut.

These are all Nightcrawler-based chimeras, apparently used as elite private assassins. They all wear hybrids of their regular costumes and Nightcrawler’s outfit. The one in the foreground is based on Wolverine (Laura Kinney), and the recap page names her as “Wagnerine”, though that name never shows up in the story. The others, from left to right, are based on the Toad, Sabretooth, Spider-Man (“Wallcrawler”), Domino (“Auntie Fortune”) and Pyro.

We saw Wallcrawler in Sins of Sinister #1. He’s a curious inclusion here because Spider-Man isn’t a mutant – apparently Sinister has also cracked using his chimera technology to blend mutants with other superhumans.

The name “Legion of the Night” echoes the Legionaires from Legion of X, of course.

PAGES 4-6. Vox Ignis frees three of the Legion from Sinister’s control.

This has apparently never worked before, and it only works on three of them here – Wagnerine, Wallcrawler and Auntie Fortune. They reject Sinister’s control and promptly switch sides. We’re not told directly why it’s only those three, but it might simply be that they’re the only all-hero chimeras. Everyone else is based on a villain, though you’d have thought Sabretooth would have an issue with being under anyone’s control.

Another Legion member appears here, and gets dialogue at the end of page 4. He’s based on the Generation X villain Emplate, who did indeed have some minor psychic powers. As in Sins of Sinister, the Sinister-affected chimeras carry his personality, but they aren’t part of a hive mind.

PAGE 7. Recap and credits. As usual, the Krakoan on the left is just the title.

PAGE 8. Data page. Sinister explains that he produced the Legion about ten months ago – “9 years, 2 months, 6 days since activation of Moira savepoint #7”, which happened at the start of Immortal X-Men #10.

Nightcrawler visited Sinister for help with his horns, and got killed and resurrected, in Legion of X #7. We saw in Sins of Sinister #1 that Sinister was still unable to fix Nightcrawler’s genome five years later. But recently things have changed and the Nightcrawler genome is working for him just fine. Later in the issue, Mother Righteous will take credit for this. But as we saw in Legion of X #8-9, it was a magical effect, and you have to wonder how much the departure of magic from Earth has weakened the spell. Maybe both are factors, and it made it easier for Righteous to break it.

PAGE 9. Mother Righteous arrives at the House of the Fall.

This is the former Summer House (keeping the season theme), now done up as a bar. It’s not clear who’s running the bar – since Stasis accuses her of gatecrashing, it’s presumably not Mother Righteous herself. (Or if it is, she’s remaining behind the scenes.)

PAGE 10. Mother Righteous meets Orbis Stellaris and Dr Stasis.

These are the other three Sinister clones that escaped Victorian London in Immortal X-Men #8, aside from Sinister himself. Stasis is still accompanied by Borman, his sidekick from Gerry Duggan’s X-Men.

The bewitching of the X-genes is the plot of Legion of X #7-9. The flashback panel shows Righteous apparently about to kill Margali Szardos, the sorceress responsible, as a sacrifice. The Black Knight – Dane Whitman, not Jackie Chopra from Legion #8-9 – can be seen slumped in the corner.

Stasis claims that the hex was commissioned by Orchis, which fits with what we saw in Legion of X #8-9. He also claims that it prevented Sinister from exploiting “some of the most dangerous bloodlines” – what, Angel and Nightcrawler? It’s not entirely clear whether Stasis is claiming that this is why Orchis did it – that would require them to have advance knowledge of what Sinister was going to do, but they do have some foreknowledge via Omega Sentinel, so that’s not impossible. Or Stasis might just be saying that this was a happy accident.

Interestingly, even though Mother Righteous was created by the Victorian Nathaniel Essex, Dr Stasis claims to be immediately able to tell that she is not one of (the current) Mr Sinister’s creations. Maybe he just means that she wasn’t created using the technology of the current Sinister, which would be true.

PAGES 11-14. The meeting breaks down into a fight.

Dr Stasis’s “Techslide by three” refers to Cable’s old “bodyslide by [however many people]” line from his 90s teleporter.

The whole meeting turns out to be a device to kill off Dr Stasis, with the real alliance already being made between Orbis and Righteous.

PAGE 15. Data page. The material about Strongholds and Dominions comes from a data page in Powers of X #5, as does the reference to the Kardashev scale. I’m not sure that the reference here to the Kardashev scale is correct – Kardashev’s idea was that a type 1 civilisation could use all the energy from a star like the Sun, a type 2 civilisation could do the same with a larger star and a type 3 civilisation would do it with a galaxy. A type 0 civilisation, by extension would be one that hadn’t even made it to type 1 yet (i.e., us). I’m not sure that’s what Spurrier means to say here.

According to Powers of X #5, a Dominion is “a collective of ten or more Titans acting in unison to control a particular sector (or sectors) of space in both area and epochs of time”, which is presumably where the idea that it exists at all points in time comes from. A “Titan”, in turn, “is an interstellar society that has become so advanced that the density of its unified intelligence has collapsed space-time into a singularity.”

The “Worldfarm”, as home of the Progenitors, was seen in recent issues of X-Men Red. It’s actually the base of Orbis Stellaris. The data page ranks it as a Stronghold, which per Powers of X #5 is just a collection of Titans that hasn’t assembled enough members yet to qualify as a Dominion.

PAGE 16. Orbis Stellaris thanks Mother Righteous.

Orbis Stellaris engineered the theft of Sinister’s lab in Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants #1. He claims here to be predicting the future through “the processing power of the Worldfarm”, but we saw in that issue that he also has an alliance with Destiny. Of course, he might not be relying solely on her to tell him the truth. At any rate, Mother Righteous agreed to take out Stasis in return for answers from Orbis Stellaris about his plan, and he gives them because he thinks there’s nothing that she can do with the information anyway. (But apparently he was worried about Stasis…?)

PAGE 17. The Nightcrawlers try to free other Legion of NIght members.

Panel 1 has a Colossus Nightcrawler in the Savage Land; you kind of have to zoom in to see it, but the riders on the dinosaurs, and the group standing behind them, are Madroxes. Apparently the Colossus Nightcrawler is also freed, presumably because he too is basically a hero.

Panel 2 is “New Abyssia”, presumably the renamed Atlantis, with Namor leading the defence.

Page 3 is apparently the X-Men Mansion at Graymalkin Lane.

In narration, Banshee and the Spirit of Vengeance discuss how far they can trust Mother Righteous. Vox Ignis still trusts her completely; Banshee is much more sceptical by this point, although clearly she hasn’t committed any really gross breaches of trust yet. Banshee mentions in passing that Legion has “sealed himself away in his own mind”, and doubtless we’ll hear more about that.

PAGE 18. The Nightcrawlers find Dr Nemesis and Nightcrawler.

Dr Nemesis still has the distended head from Legion of X #9 but appears to have regained his composure. Nightcrawler remains in the monstrous form seen from Sins of Sinister #1. Vox Ignis clarifies in narration that he could in theory be resurrected now and restored to normal, but that would just bring him under Sinister’s control.

They do free another chimera, apparently based on Pixie.

The tingle in Wallcrawler’s head is presumably his spider-sense, though it’s not obvious what the threat is that it’s responding to.

PAGE 19. The Nightcrawlers bring their trinkets to Mother Righteous.

The Book of the Spark was mentioned in various data pages in Way of X. It’s basically Nightcrawler’s philosophical text.

The Limbo rifle doesn’t ring any bells, but evidently it’s something Sebastian Shaw had lying around.

The Brain of Cortez is a power-boosting lantern exploiting the powers of Fabian Cortez; we saw Wallcrawler collecting it in the previous scene.

The black globe which Mother Righteous shows the Nightcrawlers was the main content of Sinister’s laboratory in Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants #1, where it was described as a protective forcefield shielding something (presumably the Moira clone).

PAGE 20. Mother Righteous explains her plan.

As usual, Mother Righteous at least claims to be acting for the greater good, and may in fact be truthful so far as she goes – no doubt she really does want to break Sinister’s hold on the Earth. She also continues to invoke religious and spiritual tropes, calling her weapon a “Reliquary” and “holy”. But at the end of the day, her plan is to get some magically powerful items and use them to power up a weapon.

PAGES 20-22. Wallcrawler sacrifices his life for Mother Righteous.

We’re told that he was losing his autonomy anyway, possibly because he’s not a mutant. Wallcrawler has been reading Nightcrawler’s book, which has inspired him to this last act of futile heroism. Note though that Banshee seems well aware that this is going to achieve nothing, and we see nothing to suggest that Wallcrawler’s death has actually achieved anything – other than allowing Mother Righteous to invoke his name to give meaning to her mission. And she hasn’t bothered to learn his name until after he’s dead.

PAGE 23. Mother Righteous with her collection of objects.

Not all of these things are identifiable, but from left to right:

• The magical book with a lower case D on the front is the Darkhold.
• A red ball thing
• A golden egg.
• A sword – probably not the Ebony Blade unless it’s a colouring error, but maybe Excalibur?
• The Siege Perilous
• Thor’s hammer. (The cracking reflects its current status quo in his own book.)
• The Eye of Agamotto, which Dr Strange normally wears on his neck.
• Some weird jewel thing.
• Some sort of helmet with serpent elements coming out of it – is this meant to be the Serpent Crown?

PAGE 24. Trailers.