Good-Night(crawler)

     Recently I've been thinking about Kurt Wagner aka Nightcrawler of the X-Men.  I know that he has been dead for a little over a year now, but I don't think that is any reason to forget about him.  And because I love him so much I refuse to except that he is dead and instead will talk about him in the present tense.

     So here goes.  He is one of my favorite X-Men, because he is one of the characters that feels the most real to me.  He has that little bit of self loathing that sneaks up, and it hits him in a way that, especially as a teenage girl, makes him a character that one can empathize with all too much.  He is seen on many occasions to be the type of character to not only need an image inducer to blend in, but to somtimes desire one as well.

Nightcrawler wearing the image inducer Tony Stark invented for him at a bar with Wolverine.

     The wonderful thing about Kurt is that on so many occasions he can be seen treating each mission as though it was an adventure.  He jokes around and doesn't take it too seriously like many other members of the team, and just embraces being an X-Man for what it is, an adventure.  I mean how many X-Men get cutlasses and galavant around acting a bit like pirates.  He is know to act in a bit of a dramatic fashion, which, coupled with his wonderful sense of humor, and love of a good joke, makes him a perfect character.

     But that is not to say he lacks depth.  And because he was an aspiring priest he has the full example of being torn between religion and the world he sees.  He is forced to face the fact that religion is all to often used as an excuse to kill when he sees Reverend William Stryker and his crusade against the mutant race.  In the "God Loves, Man Kills" series Kurt is forced in a way to once again face the same prejudice he faced as a child when mobs chased him for being a mutant.  Kurt is placed in a position where he once again has to face the fact that people don't see him as human, but instead as a demonic creature that is even below the rest of mutant kind in the eyes of the Purifiers.

     And whats more, he has to deal with the fact Reverend Stryker is willing to point a gun at Kitty Pryde, who is something close to a little sister for most of the X-Men (the exception being the Rasputins, because Illyana is younger, and it would be incredibly creepy if Piotr thought of Kitty as a little sister).  Kurt has to come to grips with the fact that religion can lead people so far astray, and that his friends aren't nearly as willing to accept God as he is, most significantly Logan, who find any use for the imaginary, which is what he considers God to be.
     But Kurt manages to power through that,  as well as anything else thrown his way.  For instance the guilt he faces for not being there to keep Kitty from having to sacrifice herself to save the world from the bullet shot at Earth.  He feels as though he could have saved her, and that he let down a girl he had considered a close friend and a little sister, especially after their time together with Excalibur.  To help him get passed pain he is feeling, he programs the Danger Room to create a hologram of Kitty, to whom he can apologize.

Kurt programs the Danger Room to allow him to apologize to Kitty, and to say goodbye.

     The series "Manifest Destiny" shows Kurt facing the problem, what do you do when your friends have someone who is better than you in what you pride yourself in.  Kurt struggles with where he fits in all over again because Pixie is a better teleporter than he is.  A trip home and a little perspective bring him back to his rightful place alongside the X-Men.
     But in a way half of me wishes that Kurt had stayed away so that he was still alive, and my other half is telling me that it is better to die a hero than live a coward.  The second half should be told to shut up because Kurt was far too good a man to die.
     At his funeral Logan said something that says a lot about Kurts character, because for a man of religion he was far from judgmental.

And to quote what Logan said to Hope as he was leaving Kurts funeral "You better be worth this, I swear to God."

and he was right, Hope sure as hell better live up to her nickname as "The Mutant Messiah".