He lives! A faith- based look at the death and return of Nightcrawler.

Hi everyone, welcome to another edition of the Nightcrawler Experience!
This is an entry I’ve been working on writing off and on for quite a while now, and my first foray into comic books in this blog.
             As I pointed out in my blog’s first edition, I named this blog after one of my favorite superheroes, the X- Men hero Kurt Wagner, aka Nightcrawler. He was cool, funny, brave, and a dedicated Christian. In fact, as seen in the picture above, my best friend a couple Christmases ago gave me a vintage action figure of Nightcrawler because he knew what a big fan I am. In late summer of 2010, however, Nightcrawler was killed off in an issue of the comics, dying a hero’s death to protect his friend Rogue and an important young mutant named Hope from falling victim to the evil cyborg Bastion. His death was quite sad, as was his funeral in the next issue (One memorable line from the funeral was Professor Xavier saying that “He was the student I taught the least, yet who taught me the most.”).

 I figured that they would bring him back eventually, both because Marvel comics superheroes generally don’t stay dead for long (Especially members of the X- Men; Pretty much every major character in that team has died at least once, and usually come back in no more than a year or two), and because in Nightcrawler’s funeral, the priest presiding over the ceremony cited the story of Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones from Ezekiel 37:1-14, which I saw as the writer’s way of hinting that Nightcrawler would return to life as the dry bones did. However, for three and a half years, no such return happened. An alternate- dimension version of Nightcrawler showed up for a while, but he was a mean- spirited and cynical version that possessed none of the qualities that made the character so endearing for me.

Then finally, earlier this year, what I had waited years for happened: Nightcrawler returned! Issue #1 of the new ‘Amazing X- Men’ series began a 5- issue storyline involving how Nightcrawler would come back to life, and he got his own series as well.
So, I thought I’d give my thoughts on the comic book storyline which featured his return, entitled, simply enough, “The Quest for Nightcrawler.”

Amazing X- Men #1 gets started setting up his eventual return. Mutant heroine Firestar is seen arriving at the Jean Grey School for the Gifted (Kind of a spinoff of the Xavier School that was the original home of the X- Men), having been offered a teaching position there. We see some good interactions and exchanges with the various characters, such as a hilarious debate between Wolverine and Storm as to whether taking the kids off- campus to view a kung- fu movie marathon at the last minute during exam week would be considered an approved field trip, and Beast expressing pure, unadulterated fury over the theft of his beloved coffeemaker. We see that the Bamfs (A group of rodent- like creatures who bear a noticeable resemblance to Nightcrawler and have taken up residence in the Mansion) stole his coffeemaker and various other electronic devices around the mansion to build some kind of mysterious machine.

 While all of this is happening, we see that Nightcrawler is in Heaven, but he remains lingering at the very edge of it. He does not feel that he should go deeper into Heaven, even though it is everything that he, as a man of faith, had hoped it would be and more, because he feels that he still has unfinished business on Earth. At this moment, Heaven is abruptly invaded by Nightcrawler’s father, the evil demon Azazel. He and his demonic minions are in the process of kidnapping righteous souls from Heaven and not- so- righteous souls from Hell for their own foul purposes. They attack from strange celestial pirate ships, each captained by the soul of a different historical fiend (i.e. Jack the Ripper, Billy the Kid, Caligula). The Bamfs’ device ends up opening a portal to the afterlife, which several X- Men get sucked into, Wolverine and Northstar being transported to Heaven and then to Limbo, while Storm, Iceman, and Firestar find themselves in Hell. Beast also eventually comes into there, leading to both a funny scene in which he fights Azazel and some of his crew (i.e. A great moment in which he manages to use his knowledge of math to take out several pirates with one blow), and a quite scary scene in which he goes almost completely feral for a while. Eventually, Nightcrawler is reunited with all his old friends, and they mount a massive assault on Azazel and his remaining henchmen. Nightcrawler ends up sacrificing his own eternity in Heaven to pull both himself and Azazel to Earth, thus saving/ freeing all the souls that Azazel has captured. While this means Nightcrawler is now back on Earth and reunited with the X- Men, he now is left without knowing if he’ll ever be able to return to Heaven again.

There a lot of good Scriptural lessons to be learned from this storyline. One of the foremost that sticks out is Nightcrawler as an allegory for Christ. Like Jesus, Nightcrawler wasn’t content to remain comfortably in Heaven while those he loved were in mortal jeopardy. It says in Ephesians 2:5-8, “ For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:  But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man.” Like Jesus, Nightcrawler set aside the comfort of Heaven to save innumerable souls. Most obviously, like Jesus, Nightcrawler died sacrificing himself for another (As it says in my favorite verse in the Bible, John 15:13, “There is no greater love than to lay one’s life down for one’s friends”), and eventually rose again. Like Jesus helping to redeem His disciples and restore their faith after the Resurrection, Nightcrawler refused to give up on any of his friends that came into the Afterlife with him. He is determined to reunite all of them again, even as they’re in opposite sections of the Afterlife. As I said earlier, Beast momentarily goes feral in an issue and attacks Nightcrawler, yet Nightcrawler patiently helps his old friend regain his former state of mind by reminding him of a happy memory they shared.
The storyline as a whole is quite a great read. The artwork is absolutely wonderful, the characters’ portrayals are all spot- on, it has great amounts of action and humor, and I liked the way it handled each of them in their parts of the Afterlife (i.e. Wolverine makes a poignant observation upon his glimpse of Heaven and struggle through Limbo, and there’s a great scene in which Iceman pushes his powers to the limit to fend off an army of demons in Hell in a way that gives new meaning to the term "When Hell freezes over"), and the action sequences are thrilling. So, ‘Amazing X- Men’ issues 1-5 are definitely worth a read, for X- Men fans, and especially fans of that incredible blue elf.

That’s all for this edition of the Nightcrawler Experience. I promise there will be some new entries more frequently over the next couple months. See you next time, happy Thanksgiving, and God bless you all!