{"id":2926,"date":"2015-03-29T13:47:15","date_gmt":"2015-03-29T12:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2926"},"modified":"2015-03-29T13:47:15","modified_gmt":"2015-03-29T12:47:15","slug":"nightcrawler-vol-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2926","title":{"rendered":"Nightcrawler vol 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nightcrawler\u00a0<\/em>is\u00a0but the latest in a long line of X-Men solo titles that never looked remotely likely to make it past a year, whatever it might turn out to contain. \u00a0And so it comes as no great surprise to find that this\u00a0second volume is the last.<\/p>\n

You have to wonder about Marvel’s thinking, when it comes to\u00a0commissioning books like this. \u00a0I doubt anyone would seriously dispute that the X-Men line is far larger than any creative considerations could justify. \u00a0But persistently launching titles for which there is little\u00a0discernible demand doesn’t exactly make much sense on purely mercenary grounds either.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Of course, we are now in a phase of Marvel’s history where the whole concept of an ongoing title is becoming somewhat vague. \u00a0It’s not simply the fact that titles are renumbered with every new creative team; it’s the existence of books like Spider-Man and\u00a0the X-Men <\/em>which are billed as ongoing series but are manifestly intended purely as short-run projects. \u00a0Increasingly, an “ongoing” title is merely a miniseries that hasn’t been announced as such. \u00a0If that is the thinking then perhaps books like this one make a little more sense – they’re intended to be cycled in and out every year or so to fill out the bottom end of the line, and in the unlikely event that one turns out to be a hit, something can be done with it. \u00a0And of course, depending on how\u00a0significant a relaunch\u00a0the X-Men line undergoes after\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em>, it’s decidedly possible that the B- and C-list X-titles are\u00a0literally are just marking time right now.<\/p>\n

Nightcrawler<\/em> more or less works as a twelve-issue run – it was clearly\u00a0written with that possibility firmly in mind – but it certainly reads as though Claremont had longer-term plans for it. \u00a0This collection covers issues #7-12, but issue #7 is a Death of Wolverine tie-in co-written by Marguerite Bennett, and I reviewed it separately at the time. \u00a0So let’s\u00a0focus on the rest of the run.<\/p>\n

The set-up which Claremont inherited at the start of this series from\u00a0Amazing X-Men<\/em> – and boy, doesn’t the promotion given to\u00a0Amazing X-Men<\/em> #1 as a big new launch just look comical\u00a0with hindsight? – was Nightcrawler recently returned from the dead. \u00a0There seems to be no common line as to whether he needed to earn his way back into Heaven or whether he had actually sold his soul;\u00a0Claremont is clearly going for option A,\u00a0Amazing<\/em> explicitly went for B during an\u00a0Axis<\/em> tie-in, and the whole thing looks distinctly as if it falls under the heading of “What are the editors doing all day if they can’t keep track of the basic premise of a main character?”<\/p>\n

Over the course of twelve issues, Claremont sets about establishing a supporting cast. \u00a0He\u00a0re-established Amanda Sefton and then promptly banished her from Earth to obstruct the relationship. \u00a0He\u00a0introduced\u00a0two\u00a0kids, Ziggy and Rico,\u00a0so that Kurt can mentor them as\u00a0his supporting cast. \u00a0And in the second volume, he\u00a0surprisingly repositions Bloody\u00a0Bess from the Crimson Pirates as a rival love interest, and has her team with Kurt and the kids to take down Tullamore Voge, a minor slave-trading villain who’s been cropping up intermittently in Claremont’s stories for\u00a0ages now.<\/p>\n

Voge’s defeat certainly gives the thing some degree of closure, but it’s pretty obvious that\u00a0the\u00a0longer-term agenda is to set up a triangle with Amanda and Bess, and that’s something the series never gets around to. \u00a0Nor does it seem terribly likely that anyone else will pick it up – again, leaving aside any issues about the impending reboot, the Crimson Pirates\u00a0were created back in Claremont’s turn-of-the-century X-Men run, and have never seemed\u00a0to hold much interest for\u00a0other writers. \u00a0Here, at least, they play into the swashbuckler angle that Claremont is understandably keen to stress with Kurt, but they’re\u00a0still a bunch of weird gimmick villains best approached with tongue firmly in cheek.<\/p>\n

The series is certainly a throwback to a more innocent era – which is no criticism, since that’s presumably what anyone buying a Chris Claremont\u00a0Nightcrawler<\/em> story in 2015 was looking for. \u00a0Todd Nauck’s cheerful, clean artwork fits quite happily with that tone. \u00a0Despite his name, Nightcrawler has never been a particularly dark or atmospheric character –\u00a0he settled very quickly into the role of an upbeat team player, with his supernatural\u00a0aspects\u00a0as an ironic flourish. \u00a0He was intended to seem vaguely demonic, but everyone ended up calling him an elf.<\/p>\n

So this is the book Claremont and Nauck provide – one where heroic heroes prevail\u00a0over\u00a0villainous villains through heart, determination and (literally, in some cases) the power of love. \u00a0The bad guys in these issues are the Shadow King and the aforementioned Tullamore Voge, both of whom are essentially mind-control and slavery-themed bad guys. \u00a0Long a preoccupation of Claremont, this is something that could be played for the horror of violation, but it’s treated more as a genre convention. \u00a0Both villains are entirely one-dimensional – the\u00a0Shadow King is simply evil, Voge is purely greedy. \u00a0But this isn’t\u00a0because Claremont fails to give them depth; it’s because he’s profoundly uninterested in doing so.<\/p>\n

Voge originated in\u00a0one of the “Cross-Time Caper” issues of\u00a0Excalibur<\/em> way back in the 1980s, when he was one of a group of slavers who came across as upper-class twits. \u00a0These days he tends to talk a lot about profit. \u00a0This might suggest that Claremont sees the character as vaguely satirical, but if so, it’s hardly an angle that gets developed. \u00a0It seems more likely that he simply\u00a0sees the profit-driven baddie as a familiar\u00a0and suitable trope. \u00a0Equally, the story rather takes it for granted that\u00a0what appears to be a vast and well-organised slaving operation will fall apart if Voge is abducted – which\u00a0seems at\u00a0the least optimistic, particularly as we really know very little about the whole thing. \u00a0If there’s that many people involved and that many buyers out there to profit from, it seems rather likely that someone else would simply more in to fill the gap. \u00a0But this is beside the point, really; Voge isn’t there to be realistic, he’s there so that his defeat can represent a goal for the heroes.<\/p>\n

All of which makes it a bit odd when the story wants us to accept Bloody Bess as a love match, without her really doing anything in particular to reform. \u00a0Why is she willing to take down the same slavers that she’s been working with for years? \u00a0It’s more of a problem with her, because she’s meant to be a love interest for\u00a0Kurt, and that means she does have to function as a\u00a0more rounded character.<\/p>\n

Taken on its own terms,\u00a0Nightcrawler<\/em> is perfectly fine. \u00a0It does recapture\u00a0the voice that\u00a0Claremont gave the character back in the day, and that goes a long way to making the book enjoyable despite its problems and limitations. \u00a0If Claremont\u00a0seems keen to look back to\u00a0his own previous creations, well, that’s probably what he was hired to do, and besides,\u00a0it’s hardly egotism for him to look back on 1980s X-Men as a golden age (as issues #9 and #12 in particular seem to do). \u00a0The\u00a0closing pages of issue #12, and the\u00a0heavy focus on mentoring the new kids, seem equally interested in\u00a0positioning all\u00a0that material as a foundation for the future; Claremont, after all, is from the generation of creators who\u00a0thought of Marvel’s ongoing titles as\u00a0open-ended sagas.<\/p>\n

It’s not a book with any great depth,\u00a0but\u00a0not does it really aspire to be. \u00a0It’s a conscious throwback, and more successful in that vein than many of Claremont’s return visits have been. \u00a0Even if there isn’t much to the story, it does at least recapture some of\u00a0his style. \u00a0How far that takes you will\u00a0doubtless turn on how\u00a0much affection you have for the 1980s X-Men.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nightcrawler\u00a0is\u00a0but the latest in a long line of X-Men solo titles that never looked remotely likely to make it past a year, whatever it might turn out to contain. \u00a0And so it comes as no great surprise to find that this\u00a0second volume is the last. You have to wonder about Marvel’s thinking, when it comes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2926"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2992,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2926\/revisions\/2992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}