Saturday, May 23, 2009

1985 - The Fuzzy Blue Elf gets his own miniseries



Nightcrawler
4 issue miniseries
November 1985 - February 1986

Writer/Artist: Dave Cockrum
Nightcrawler has long been one of my favorite X-Men and it was nice to see him get his own miniseries. Dave Cockrum, who co-created Nightcrawler with Len Wein, wrote and drew the entire miniseries.

Nightcrawler's attempt to rescue Kitty’s pet dragon, Lockheed, during a Danger Room scenario lands them both in an alien dimension. Fortunately, Nightcrawler finds himself at home among sky sailing ships and pirates. After a couple of issues, Kitty and Illyandra yank him out of that dimension and throw him into another which resembles that of Kitty's fairy tale from The Uncanny X-Men #153.

The first two issues are a lot of swashbuckling fun and high adventure. Unfortunately, the last two issues are less memorable with a story line that weakly parallels the Wizard of Oz with Kitty/Dorothy, Colossus/Tin Man, Wolverine/Lion, and the Nightcrawler/Strawman. There’s only so much cute you can put up with and it seems to me at least that it went one for a bit too long.

I was disappointed with this miniseries since it had no real character development. Nightcrawler’s past and origin, which was partially revealed in The Uncanny X-Men Annual #4, never surfaces in this series. No attempt was made to pick up the ongoing X-Men plot thread about his relationship to the mutant shape-shifter Mystique. It was also unfortunate that Amanda Sefton, Nightcrawler’s girlfriend, didn’t play any role in this series.

6 comments:

  1. Jason, Do you happen to remember where this house ad for the Nightcrawler limited series appeared? Thanks, James

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    1. Hey James, if I'm not mistaken, it would have been from Marvel Age. I"ll check this evening.
      J.

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  2. Ok, I found it! The ad was published on the back inside cover of both issues of the X-Men and Alpha Flight limited series.

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    Replies
    1. Awesome. I scoured through the first 40 issues of Marvel Age and didn't find it!

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  3. Sorry about that... I did the same thing and then started flipping through the various X-titles from 1985. In any case, thanks for looking!

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    Replies
    1. No worries! It was fun little excursion... found a few good as well. :)

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