Nightcrawler (character)

• 1. Introduction

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  Nightcrawler, the indigo-furred teleporting hero of Marvel Comics, began as a sleepless sailor's idea during a typhoon. Artist Dave Cockrum was serving in the United States Navy, stationed at Guam, when the storm kept him awake. He later recalled it this way: "I sat up one night in the middle of a typhoon because it was too noisy to sleep, so I stayed up and thought up this character." That character reached print in Giant-Size X-Men #1, in May 1975. Today Nightcrawler is the superhero identity of Kurt Wagner, a mutant who most often fights alongside the X-Men. What did Cockrum's first version of the character look like? How did an idea sketched at a naval station end up at Marvel? And who is Kurt Wagner, a man whose family history has been rewritten more than once?

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• 2. A Demon Rejected

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  In Cockrum's original plan, Nightcrawler was a demon from Hell who had botched a mission. Rather than go home and face punishment, this demon chose to stay in the human world. He was meant to be the sidekick of The Intruder, another hero Cockrum had invented. Cockrum drew him in trunks instead of a full costume, but otherwise he looked just like the final design.

  DC Comics saw the character first. Cockrum had submitted him for The Outsiders, a group set in the universe of the Legion of Super-Heroes series. That group should not be confused with a later team of the same name. DC rejected the idea, so Cockrum brought the character with him to Marvel after he began working on The X-Men in 1975.

  Editor Roy Thomas wanted the new X-Men to be a multinational team. That wish is the reason the former demon became a German.

  A naming problem followed. Marvel already had a character called Night-Crawler, spelled with a hyphen. To avoid confusion, that older character was later renamed Dark-Crawler. The earliest comics also gave the German hero a hometown, a small Bavarian village called Witzeldorf.

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• 3. Circus Child

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  Herr Getmann's Traveling Menagerie, a small Bavarian circus, is where Kurt Wagner grew up. A sorceress named Margali Szardos, a Manouche Roma queen, worked there as a fortune teller, which covered her magical activities. She took the newborn Kurt to the circus and became his unofficial foster mother. No one ever legally adopted him. The whole troupe raised him and had no prejudice against mutants, with one exception, the ringmaster Herr Max Getmann.

  Margali's son Stefan and daughter Jimaine were Kurt's two closest friends. His teleportation did not emerge until puberty, but he had tremendous natural agility long before that. By his teens he was the circus's star acrobat and aerial artist. Audiences assumed he was an ordinary-looking person in a devil costume.

  Years later, a Texas millionaire named Amos Jardine bought the troupe. Jardine ran a large circus in Florida and planned to move the best acts to his American show. He insisted, however, that Kurt be placed in the freak show, and he drugged him to prevent an escape. A young mutant child who could sense other mutants helped Kurt get away.

  Appalled, Kurt headed for a German village where his foster brother Stefan lived. There he found that Stefan had killed several children. Later stories said Stefan was not mad at all and had recognized the children as disguised demons. When they were younger, Stefan had made Kurt promise to kill him if he ever took an innocent life. Two nights after leaving the circus, Kurt found Stefan and fought him, hoping only to stop the killing. Stefan died in the struggle.

  The villagers took one look at Kurt and assumed he was the killer. They were about to kill him when Professor Charles Xavier psychically paralyzed all of them. Xavier had come to recruit Wagner into the X-Men, and Wagner joined the team under the codename Nightcrawler.

  Margali blamed Kurt for Stefan's death. Years later she built a copy of the hell from Dante's Inferno to punish him. Then she used Doctor Strange's all-seeing Eye of Agamotto, learned the truth, and reconciled with Kurt. Jimaine, meanwhile, had moved to the United States and changed her name to Amanda Sefton, and she later became Kurt's girlfriend. Amanda would eventually leave to take control of Limbo, though the two stayed close friends.

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• 4. Anatomy of a Mutant

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  Teleportation is Nightcrawler's signature power, and it follows strict rules. He moves himself, his clothing and a limited amount of extra mass from one place to another almost instantly. To do it, he briefly passes through an alternate dimension and emerges at a spot he has chosen. Under ideal conditions his range is about 2 miles, and pushing to that distance leaves him badly fatigued. He has exceeded the limit many times, once covering somewhere over 50 miles. Direction matters too. Travel north to south along Earth's magnetic lines of force is easier than going east to west against them.

  Every jump leaves a signature. A puff of smoke and a faint smell of burning brimstone remain, a small portion of the atmosphere of the dimension he crossed. The sound is a loud "bamf", which is air rushing in to fill the space he just left. Only superhumans with heightened senses, such as Daredevil, can detect the slight change in the atmosphere just before he arrives.

  Safety limits shape how he uses the power. A faint, unconscious spatial awareness stops him from teleporting into solid objects nearby, though it weakens as the distance grows. Because landing inside solid matter could injure or kill him, he only jumps to places he knows or can see. His arrival automatically pushes aside liquids and gases.

  Passengers pay a price. Carrying anything beyond his body and clothing strains him, and most passengers lack the tolerance that extensive training has built in him. With practice, he can carry a passenger a long way without exhausting himself. In a fight, he grabs an opponent and makes several quick jumps, which often leaves the opponent weakened or unconscious.

  His range grew after his revival, through outside help and a later enhancement tied to a deal involving a demonic race of Bamfs loaned to him by Azazel. Now he can lock onto a waypoint and cross greater distances, even between dimensions. He has teleported more than 7,800 miles from the United Arab Emirates to Antarctica. He has also covered more than 2,900 miles from the Czech Republic to Egypt.

  His body is as unusual as his power. Velvety indigo fur covers him and helps him fade into shadows. A dimensional portal that always surrounds him absorbs photons, which adds to the effect. He has three-fingered hands, two-toed feet, yellow eyes, pointed ears and fang-like canine teeth.

  An early Bizarre Adventures story showed something stranger. The villain Vanisher flung a piece of the Darkforce that formed Kurt's costume at him, and Kurt vanished. He reappeared from within the Darkforce on the ground and described it as "a pool of shadow" that he "fell right through". Later stories never really explored that shadow-travel idea again.

  His prehensile tail can hold his weight and lift an adult man off the ground at the same time. It is deft enough to fight with while wielding a sword or blunt object. Microscopic suction cups on his hands and feet let him cling to walls, though a few surfaces are too frictionless. His agility surpasses that of an Olympic-level gymnast, and his flexible spine lets him crouch for long periods and perform contortionist feats without harm. He also has heightened night vision.

  Skill adds to biology. Nightcrawler is a superb fencer and hand-to-hand fighter, good enough to stalemate Captain Britain. He has served the X-Men as pilot and medic, and he and Wolverine long maintained the team's Blackbird jet. Other Marvel heroes treat him as the leading authority on teleportation. After their first encounter with Francis Klum, Spider-Man and Daredevil came to him for advice. From photographs of a crime scene, he worked out that a man had been killed by someone teleporting inside the victim, though he had never seen such a thing.

  Magic runs through him as well. For a long period his body housed the Soulsword, which Amanda Sefton had hidden there for fear it would be stolen. Magik says Kurt is attuned to magic, so he can wield her Soulsword and Pixie's Souldagger. After Margali brainwashed him under Orchis' command, she drew out a part of his soul essence that represented his innate hope and shaped it into a Hopesword. Its full capabilities are unknown, but it has stunned an opponent it impaled. It has also restored sanity to the shattered mind of Mystique.

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• 5. The Parentage Puzzle

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  Writer Chris Claremont once intended to reveal that Nightcrawler was the son of Nightmare, a major villain from the Doctor Strange stories. Roger Stern, then the writer of Dr. Strange, objected. He recalled replying with something like, "No, he's not. I'm not going to let you appropriate one of my character's major villains." Len Wein crossed the room to shake his hand. Stern later became the X-Men editor and kept the idea from happening until Claremont changed his mind.

  Claremont's next plan was that Mystique and her lover Destiny were the parents. Mystique, being a shapeshifter, would have taken a man's form to father the child with Destiny. Marvel judged the idea too controversial, so a different origin was developed.

  The official answer came in 1994, when it was revealed that Mystique, also called Raven Darkholme, was Nightcrawler's mother. Writer Scott Lobdell confirmed it in X-Men Unlimited #4 after years of hints.

  The story of the father kept changing. Margali Szardos had claimed she found baby Kurt an hour after his birth, in a small roadside shelter in the Black Forest, with his father lying dead on the road outside. That claim was later called into question. A 2003 storyline named Azazel as the father. Azazel belongs to the Neyaphem, a race of demonic-looking mutants dating back to Biblical times, who were banished to another dimension by a race of angelic mutants. In that version Mystique was married to a wealthy German, Herr Wagner. The tale was backed by a cruel detail: the healing blood of the X-Man Archangel did not heal Nightcrawler and caused him great pain.

  That turned out to be a ruse by Destiny meant to deceive Azazel. In the revised account, Mystique impregnated Destiny but altered her own body to mimic the pregnancy and fool the Bavarian nobleman Baron Christian Wagner. Destiny, pretending to be Mystique's maid, gave birth to Kurt. Mystique then fled with the baby into the woods to escape attacking villagers. Charles Xavier later erased the details of the birth from both women's minds, at Destiny's request.

  The truth was spelled out again in 2023's X-Men Blue: Origins. Destiny, whose real name is Irene Adler, was Mystique's wife. Mystique had given herself the power to reproduce as a man, and Destiny carried the pregnancy. Mystique hid the baby in the woods so she could go back and rescue Destiny. When she returned, Destiny was gone and the baby had been taken. Destiny implies that she told Margali where to find him.

  Kurt himself learned the details during his time as Spinnenmann. He restored Mystique's full memory and discovered that she was his father and Destiny his actual mother. His likeness to Azazel came from Raven absorbing Azazel's genes. Irene's precognition had shown her Azazel conquering the world and killing all mutantkind, and it also showed that only a child he presumed to be his blood heir could stop him. That is why she told Margali where to find Kurt, so he could be raised into the role of a hero.

  Later, the two women asked Professor X to erase their memories of Bavaria, to resume their relationship for the sake of Anna Marie. Raven insisted on still remembering Kurt as her son. When Kurt learned all this, he and Raven reconciled.

  His family tree has other branches. His adoptive sister is Rogue, and his half-brother by Mystique is Graydon Creed. Abyss and Kiwi Black were once counted as half-brothers from Azazel, and Nightcrawler fought beside them to defeat Azazel, who had tried to use him as a pawn to escape his prison. Azazel never fathered a child with Mystique, so that link was erased. He is also a distant cousin of Blindfold and Trevor Chase, the grandchildren of Destiny.

  In a parallel universe, an alternate Nightcrawler fathered a daughter with an alternate Scarlet Witch. The girl, named Nocturne, is a dimensionally stranded mutant who bears traits similar to his. She calls him her father, and the two have developed a close bond that resembles a father-daughter relationship.

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• 6. Faith and Swagger

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  Errol Flynn is the film swashbuckler Nightcrawler most often compares himself to. In his earliest appearances he was a happy-go-lucky practical joker and a fan of swashbuckling fiction. Despite his looks, he is charming and gallant, and his years in the circus made him a gifted performer and showman.

  Some people call him "Trickster", because his teleporting and his playful nature make it easy to pull off a prank. Wolverine is his favorite target and rival. Peter Rasputin, the X-Man Colossus, called their feud a "war of pranks". In one round, Logan hacked into Kurt's image inducer, a personal holographic device he uses to pose as human. The hack made Kurt look like Angelina Jolie, and tabloid newspapers printed a picture of Angelina and Peter together.

  The image inducer lost its hold on Kurt after a different bet with Wolverine. He lost and had to walk through town without the device. The experience emboldened him, and he has largely given it up, using it only when necessary.

  Under the swagger sits a devout Catholic, which is an irony, since his demonic appearance makes attending Mass difficult. The faith was less emphasized in his early appearances, and later depictions made him more vocal about it. As mutants became more accepted, he nearly became a priest, but a villainous group called The Neo interrupted his studies. A later story reversed this and said his priesthood had been an illusion and that he never attained it. Several storylines set his love life against his religious nature.

  In San Francisco, Kurt took it upon himself to build a new chapel at Graymalkin Industries, the X-Men's new home. During a Danger Room training session, he admitted he was trying to stay distracted. Whenever he had time to think, he thought about Kitty Pryde, about how the X-Men did not need him, and about how Pixie was a better teleporter than he was. After losing to several simulated villains, he reprogrammed the room to show Kitty. He said he was sorry he had not been there for her, hugged the simulation and cried. The simulated Kitty replied that she missed him too.

  A trip back to Germany renewed his conviction. It brought an encounter with a boy cursed by gypsies into demonic form, a brush with Mephisto and a romantic fling. Then he returned to San Francisco to help the X-Men against a foe they were struggling with in his absence.

  When the mutant colony of Krakoa was established, Kurt received a position on its council, helping shape the laws of the new mutant society. His religious concerns led him to decide to form a mutant religion.

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• 7. Death and Return

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  The 2010 storyline X-Men: Second Coming ended Nightcrawler's life in the middle of a teleport. Shortly before, he had argued with Cyclops after discovering the lethal methods used by X-Force. During a battle with Bastion, the villain stretched an arm into the exact spot where Nightcrawler would reappear. Nightcrawler rematerialized around it and fused with the arm. Though mortally wounded, he teleported the mutant Hope from Las Vegas, Nevada to Utopia, a mutant safehold just off the coast of San Francisco. That jump covered more than 410 miles. Before he died, he told her that he believed in her.

  Death did not stop him from helping friends. When Wolverine was possessed by Hellverine, Nightcrawler entered his friend's mind to help drive out the invader. The X-Men who joined him there assumed he was only a manifestation of Wolverine's own thoughts.

  In Heaven, he spent his time beside Professor X. He enjoyed paradise, yet he felt he had unfinished business, and he stayed at the edges rather than joining the heavenly choir. Then Azazel attacked Heaven, using his connection to Kurt as a door. Nightcrawler told a few Bamfs to open a portal inside the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, which let him summon the X-Men to help him fight. With the Bamfs and his link to Azazel, he restored himself to life on Earth. The same link tied the two together, so Azazel could not attack Heaven again. The cost was Kurt's own soul, which he sacrificed to make sure Azazel could never return to Heaven.

  His Welcome Back party drew all the X-Men, including Cyclops' branch of the team. Despite the tension between the groups, Nightcrawler said he wanted all of his family present. He soon slipped out to confront Mystique, who was successfully freeing Azazel.

  The loss of his soul left marks. It made him quasi-immortal, though he still feels the pain of any injury. It also gave him a heightened resistance to psychic domination. That helped him resist the telepathic powers of the Shadow King, even after the Shadow King had possessed minds as strong as those of Rachel Grey and Psylocke moments before.

  With encouragement from Storm and Rachel, Kurt accepted a teaching position at the Jean Grey School. There he formed a bond with a pupil called Scorpion Boy. The two clashed with the Crimson Pirates, who were acting for Tullamore Voge, over a young mutant named Ziggy Karst, who then joined the school. Later, the resurrected Shadow King mind-controlled the Pirates and the X-Men. The Pirates kidnapped Ziggy and Scorpion Boy and fatally stabbed Nightcrawler.

  On his way to the afterlife, Kurt was intercepted by Amanda, Wolverine and the Phoenix, who encouraged him to return. Together with the pirate Bloody Bess and the Bamfs, he traveled to Voge's interdimensional child slave market. They rescued Ziggy and Scorpion Boy and fought off Voge's henchmen and the Warwolves. In the end they defeated Voge, broke up his slavery racket and returned the enslaved children. Those left orphaned by the slavers were taken into the school.

  During the 2016 "Civil War II" storyline, Kurt chose the side of Magneto and Iron Man. He later joined Kitty Pryde's mutant school and developed romantic feelings for his longtime friend and teammate Rachel.

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• 8. Pages and Screens

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  Bizarre Adventures #27, dated July 1981, carried Nightcrawler's first solo story, penciled by Cockrum and written by Jo Duffy. His own title did not come until November 1985, a four-issue limited series written and drawn by Cockrum. In it, Nightcrawler and Lockheed accidentally travel through several alternate dimensions and meet strange beings such as the Boggies and the Bamfs. The tone was a lighthearted comedy, which contrasted with the heavy angst and soul-searching Nightcrawler was going through in The X-Men at the time. It was largely a standalone work whose new characters never appeared in later publications. It is also the first Marvel comic printed on Baxter paper instead of newsprint.

  In 1987, Nightcrawler became a founding member of Excalibur. The team formed after he, Shadowcat and Rachel Summers joined Captain Britain in the United Kingdom and fought the Technet, a group of inter-dimensional mercenaries led by Gatecrasher. They worked together so well that they decided to stay a team. Captain Britain first led, but Nightcrawler gradually took over the role. He even renamed the Technet his "N-Men".

  More solo books followed. A four-issue series in November 2002, written by Chris Kipiniak and penciled by Matthew Dow Smith, sent him against a group of slave traders. In September 2004, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Darick Robertson launched the first ongoing Nightcrawler series, which was canceled with issue twelve. Claremont returned to the character in 2014 for another ongoing series, which also ended with issue twelve.

  Way of X, written by Si Spurrier and illustrated by Bob Quinn, was announced in January 2021 for an April debut. It was billed as a smart, psychedelic tale about faith, science, culture, love and law, and it brought back Legion and the threat of Onslaught. In April 2023, Spurrier and artist Lee Garbett announced the five-issue Uncanny Spider-Man, in which Kurt became the latest Spider-Man, called Spinnenmann. He got a spare suit from Spider-Man during the Fall of X, and in that role he later fought Rhino and became involved with Silver Sable.

  Critics have been kind. Wizard magazine ranked Nightcrawler the 133rd-greatest comic book character of all time. IGN put him 80th among comic book heroes, describing a mutant with the appearance of a demon and the heart of a preacher. In 2006, IGN placed him seventh on its list of the top 25 X-Men of the past 40 years, saying that his faith is why he has stayed true to the X-Men for so long. Marvel's own 2008 list of the top ten X-Men of all time ranked him fourth. In 2014, Entertainment Weekly ranked him fifth in its list of every X-Man ever.

  On television, G. Stanley Jones voiced him in an episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and Neil Ross voiced him in X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men. Adrian Hough voiced a version in X-Men: The Animated Series that was a monk at a Swiss abbey, and returned for X-Men '97. X-Men: Evolution cast Brad Swaile as a teenage Nightcrawler who is insecure about his appearance and starts a relationship with Amanda Sefton. In Wolverine and the X-Men, Liam O'Brien voiced a version who protects mutant refugees traveling to Genosha.

  Video games have used him often. Alan Cumming voiced him in X-Men: The Official Game, and Dee Bradley Baker voiced him in X-Men Legends and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. He is also a playable character in Marvel Contest of Champions and Marvel Puzzle Quest. A Star Trek crossover story, Planet X, has Geordi La Forge theorize that his powers use the same subspace as the Enterprise's warp drive. The band Weezer mentions him in the song "In the Garage".

  In film, an early X-Men script by Michael Chabon included him before the script was scrapped. Alan Cumming played him in X2, with a body covered in tattoos that represent his sins. In that film Colonel William Stryker brainwashes him into a failed assassination attempt on the President of the United States. Director Bryan Singer says Nightcrawler was intended for X-Men: Days of Future Past but was cut because he felt "that we were forcing too many mutants into the story." Kodi Smit-McPhee played a younger version in X-Men: Apocalypse, Deadpool 2 and Dark Phoenix. In Apocalypse, that younger Nightcrawler is forced into mutant cage fights against Angel before Mystique rescues him. Cumming is set to return to the role in Avengers: Doomsday, a Marvel Cinematic Universe film scheduled for 2026.

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