Comic Info
Comic Name: Nightcrawler (Volume 2)
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: Todd Nauck
# of Issues: 6
Release Date: 2014
Nightcrawler (2) #2
Reprints Nightcrawler (2) #1-6 (June 2014-November 2014). Nightcrawler is back from the dead and learning that what he considers home has gone through some changes. When he and Amanda Sefton are attacked by a robot creature called Trimega, Kurt and Amanda journey back into their past and the trip could cost them dearly. Plus, Nightcrawler finds himself a new teacher at Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, but all his years as an X-Man might not have prepared him for facing students.
Written by Chris Claremont, Nightcrawler Volume 1: Homecoming is an X-Men spin-off Marvel Comics title. The collection features art by Todd Nauck.
Nightcrawler was my favorite X-Man of the “new X-Men”, and Chris Claremont was my favorite writer of the character. When Nightcrawler went to Excalibur, I followed him to Excalibur…having the “furry blue elf” back after the character was killed off and having it written by Claremont was a gift…but also feels odd.
Claremont’s X-Men were serious, but they also were fun. The characters were real family and much of the comics were infighting and relationships just as much as battling villains. Over the years, the X-Men have morphed (sometimes at Claremont’s hands), but since Claremont left the X-Men, it feels really alien to his characters.
Nightcrawler (2) #5
Nightcrawler feels like Claremont’s writing dropped in this alternate world. It does help that the character feels a bit like an alien among people he used to know, but it doesn’t fit tonally with the other X-Men series from the period. The X-Men and the X-Men series are dark, but this comic feels light. I like that aspect, but it doesn’t feel really connected to the Marvel Universe in that sense.
The first half of the story involves a visit to Nightcrawler’s “mother” Margali Szardos and kind of wraps up aspects of Nightcrawler’s death (with another quasi-death). It is so-so and dominated by a really dull and generic villain named Trimega which is like an even less interesting Sentinel. The second half is more in the Nightcrawler vein in that Nightcrawler is trying to navigate his new position, befriending another mutant whose power disfigures him (Rico), and facing very Chris Claremont and Excalibur style “space pirates” to save a young mutant…it is more where the series should go.
The X-Men in this period were all over the place and frankly not very likeable. It was when I quit reading, but I did dip back for Nightcrawler which did have a classic feel with Nauck’s art even mimicking Davis and Byrne. Like with all comics nowadays, you have to read them with a bittersweet approach because they always end up cancelled and this allows you never to truly to attach to them…and solo titles are the worst in this situation. Nightcrawler 1: Homecoming was followed by Nightcrawler 2: Reborn.
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