The return of two X-Men legends this week.
Wolverine led a squad through Heaven and Hell to bring the late Kurt Wagner back from beyond in the first arc of Amazing X-Men by Jason Aaron.
Now Kurt is starring in a new ongoing Nightcrawler series by legendary X-writer Chris Claremont and artist Todd Nauck.
“He’s smart, tough, creative [and] daring, with an instinctive understanding of people and situations,” Claremont told Marvel.com in an earlier interview. “He has a wicked sense of humor and a devastating charm. As his body’s designed well outside the box of human experience, so too are his thought processes. His ‘normal’ is revolutionary to most people; throw him a problem, he’ll find a way to solve it that’s unique to him. He quite simply is the kind of man [who] others trust; to know him is to have faith in him.”
Wolverine helped Kurt defeat his father in hell and will join the “Fuzzy Elf” on his adventures in this new series. Nightcrawler will need Logan’s help transitioning to a radically different world since he departed.
Since Kurt died in Second Coming back when a united X-Men lived on Utopia, there have been some huge changes especially the rift between Logan and Scott Summers. Claremont says Nightcrawler is returning to a very different dynamic among his Children of the Atom.
“The one that comes most markedly to my mind is that Kitty [Pryde] appears to have gone over to the ‘dark side’ by leaving the school and joining up with Scott’s group,” says Claremont of what will hit Kurt hardest. “To Kurt, without an explanation from Kitty herself, it would seem a fundamental violation of character, something she would never have done especially [in] Excalibur. Presumably one of his major goals would be to find out directly from her the truth behind her decision.”
“If we presume that the Kurt who returns to the land of the living is fundamentally the same man who departed years ago, why would the experience affect his friendship with Logan at all?” questions Claremont. “If anything, given how the two of them relate, it might cherish their time together as friends and teammates all the more.
“By the same token, it might also fundamentally affect how Kurt relates to combat; knowing there is an afterlife and an implicit judgment of the individual soul might make him more reluctant to take another’s life, or it might make him even more determined to protect the innocent. Either way, it gives the storyteller something nice to play with.”
Nightcrawler #1 arrives Wednesday.
By Editor