Yay! I'm happy. So, the last vote for "Loose Canon" was X-Men themed because I said so, and while it was really close, the closest I've had yet, in fact, my favorite X-Man Kurt Wagner won, hooray! This is the Nightcrawler episode. Considering Nightcrawler is not one of the maaaaain X-Men that you see in, like, every fucking thing, he's surprisingly popular. Because he is the best. Seriously, I-I don't have anything, like, deep to say about this character. He is just the best in a franchise that is often dour and portentous and way too convoluted, Kurt Wagner is our beacon of light. He is not like night...crawling in my skin... most of the time. So, let's take a look at everybody's favorite acrobat-turned-superhero-turned-priest-turned-superhero-again... Kurt Wagner, Nightcrawler. The X-Men can be read as an allegory for basically any minority group. This was always the intent, but it would coalesce more significantly when we learn about Magneto's backstory as a prisoner of German concentration camps years a few years after the series launched, and Xavier and Magneto eventually taking on what some would describe as a sort of... ...Martin Luther King-Malcolm X dynamic with respect to their ideologies. I'm not -- I'm not gonna touch that one. - "There's something I need to tell you" By the time the movies came out, it had shifted more to a big gay allegory. Especially under the vision of director Bryan Singer: - "Have you tried... not being a mutant?" That one is a bit more on the nose, because unlike, say, a race allegory, you can't usually tell who's a mutant just by looking at them. Most of them can "pass" as, er... "normal", so to speak, but there are a few who cannot. Nightcrawler was created by artist Dave Cockrum super originally in the 60s, but the X-men version debuted in 1975 alongside Storm, Colossus, and Thunderbird, who died one issue later. Before Nightcrawler was an X-Men character, he was one of Cockrum's own creations: a demon, and acted like one, and he was a jerk, but then Cockrum made him an alien, 'cause his people were, like, the source of, uh... Earth's legends and mythologies about demons, and eventually, when Marvel came a-knockin', a mutant. Kurt is usually described as being fuzzy. In some versions, he just has blue skin, but usually it's taken to mean that he's, like, covered in this layer of, like, not so much, like, animal fur, like Beast, but, like, you know, fuzz. And then, he also has normal human hair on top of that. He can teleport, but not very far, a couple of miles at the most, and always somewhere he's already been. - "I have to be able to see where I'm going. Otherwise, I could wind up inside a wall." But superpowers aside, the reason Kurt has remained so popular over the years as a character isn't his powers, or the way that he looks, but, really, because of his personality. For a long time, Nightcrawler was the only X-Man who couldn't pass for a non-mutant, 'cause, y'know, Beast was not with the X-Men through basically all the 70s. He's also probably the most affable member of the team: He's flirtatious, he's chivalrous, he's playful. He uses swords, and he dresses like a pirate sometimes. He loves Errol Flynn movies. Even Wolverine likes him. He's just the best, and that persona is basically one giant coping mechanism. He states many times over in the comics that he knows people will be freaked out by the way that he looks, so he anticipates this, and he goes out of his way to be chill about it. Basically, using his charms to overcome people's prejudices. Again, this worked a lot better when mutants were a relative rarity in the Marvel universe and not basically, like... every other person you bump into while walking down Bleeker street. As a baby, Kurt was adopted and raised by a Romani... ...uh... ...sorcereress named Margali, like every foundling in the Marvel universe. She's off and on evil, and basically makes no sense, we're not gonna talk about her. Originally, he was going to be Mystique's child by Destiny. Mystique, in the form of a dude, impregnating Destiny. Despite their lesbian relationship being canon, Marvel was like... "Eugh, N-n-no." So, um... he was originally the son of some German aristocrat named "Count Wagner", or... Baron von Wagner, or something. It changes. Given that Kurt has never actually met this guy, it's unclear as to why he didn't take Margali's surname instead of... "biological dad" Wagner surname, but OK. Kurt basically macks on everybody. Again, this is probably somewhat a part of that coping mechanism thing, until he up and decided "Hey, I want to be a priest." We'll get to that. He is sometimes romantically paired with the occasional fellow X-Man, but the most consistent love interest is his adoptive sister, Amanda Sefton. Kurt seems to be into Amanda when... ...she's around. It'll be like "Yay! You're back! You're the love of my life!" ...And then, she goes away for some reason, and then he gets over it, and maybe dates someone else, and then it's like "Yay! You're back! You're the love of my life!"... and then she goes away for some reason. At the time of the recording, she literally just went away in the "Nightcrawler" series. Kurt is Also Wolverines best friend. So, for all of Wolverines relationships that matter, we got Jean, who he wants -- er, wanted; a small army of plucky female sidekicks; and Kurt, who he drinks beer with, and sometimes... Well. That was a thing that happened from the first "Nightcrawler" miniseries, not the one that's going on now, and in the words of the artist, "Nobody at Marvel noticed." Cheeky. Literally. Anyway, let's look at some of the adaptations. "Pryde of the X-Men" (pride with a "y") was a pilot for an unproduced X-Men animated series. And you can see why it was not meant to be. The animation quality is about on par with a "Jem and the Holograms" episode, and it is very "Jem" in style and in quality. Magneto is truly, truly outrageous. But the writing and acting was just not... there. - "Ho ho, It is good, little one. Colossus like rain" This show follows Kitty Pryde when she first shows up at the Xavier school, and they are going for the, you know, playful, precocious Kurt, and failing so beautifully. - "Ahhh, fräulein. What a lovely vision you are!" - "Please, allow me!" That is -- that is literally their first interaction. Stranger danger! - "Fräulein! You left before I could properly welcome you!" Heh. Stranger Danger, Kitty! Stranger Danger! This -- This did happen in the comics, but it was way, way, way more low-key. Kurt was not "stranger danger" in the comic version of this. - "Until later, my child!" Stranger danger, Kitty! Don't be alone in a room with him! Like, they're trying to frame it like... like she's the unreasonable one, when he was just being, like, "Ahhhhh!" "Stop touching me." So, that series didn't turn into a thing, but by the time we did get a real X-Men series a few years later, Kurt was not in the X-Men comics anymore. The X-Men all died, or something. Fake died. Anyway, so, they're off the map, and Kurt and Kitty Pryde, who are, by this point, besties -- they have a sad, but they go to England and start their own damn superhero group called Excalibur, and this series lasted for ten years. It was also one of those rare coed groups that had a female majority, at least for the first few years, and no one ever commented on it! "Excalibur" wasn't really much with the social issues. It was a much lighter adventure story thing. It was cute, it was fun. It dealt with a lot of universe-hopping, and I loved it. This was all before Kurt really found God. Because, when he does come back to the X-Men... Boom! Kurt being all "Jesusy" is also an element in the animated series. - "Our ability to understand God's purpose is limited." - "But we take comfort in the fact that his love is limitless!" Kurt only shows up in two episodes of this show, and it's kind of odd, considering he was one of the most popular X-Men characters, even though he wasn't in the main X-Men books at the time. He is a monk, who dresses Like That. The episode starts with him literally being chased by literal townsfolk with literal torches and pitchforks. Wolverine, Rogue and Gambit, meanwhile, are... on vacation? - "Yeah? Well, next time, plan your own durn vacation!" They seem like they're being forced into this vacation. And before you know it, the episode has turned into a conversation about Wolverine's personal relationship with Jesus Christ. - "I've tried. Don't you think I want that?" Woah! Tone it down, Wolverine! Fortunately, even though the monastery burns down, what with the torches and pitchforks, the episode ends with the townsfolk getting over it, and everybody gets along. But the most beautiful thing about this: the episode ends with Wolverine finding God. - "You have comforted me. I will trust, and will not be afraid." Yep. He pops up again in an episode where, soap opera that X-Men was, we find out that EVERYONE is related!! - "They just want your brother!"
- "Huh?" It's like how Magneto is EVERYONE'S fathe?. Well, Mystique is EVERYONE'S mother, and Kurt, you were just so insufferably preachy in this series. Actually, I take it back. I'm glad you're only in 2 episodes. - "Why should you or your God care about me?
- "As for God, he cares for all of us." But in the end, Mystique, despite being about to sell him out, does a bit of the old self-sacrifice, so I guess she's not all bad, and that's the last we see of him in this series. This was about the time, in the comics, when Kurt went from being, like, modestly normal, you know, practicing Catholic to "Hey, guys! Imma be a priest!" And everyone's, like, "Weird, you've never expressed interest in that before." "Yeah, I did!" This didn't come completely out of nowhere, but before this, the religious stuff was initially... much more low-key. In one of his earlier comics, Wolverine walks in one day and sees Kurt praying, and he's, like, "hey, I didn't know you were religious", and Kurt's like "yep." And so, it was always there after that, but only insofar as Kurt appears to be, like, a practicing Catholic. Then, with no motivating factor or ever showing prior interest in joining the priesthood, priest! Somewhere along the line, in the late 90s, he gets fully ordained offscreen somewhere. Never mind that that shit takes, you know, years. Y'know. It's kinda like becoming a doctor. Whatever. He's blue. This got retconned a few years after that, and I feel like I am one of the few X-Men fans who did not... LOATHE the entirety of the infamous Chuck Austen run of "Uncanny X-Men", but, about the things that he did with Kurt: Number one was "Holy War". See, it turns out that Kurt never was ordained as a priest. Someone telepathically implanted it in his mind! Man, the trust issues people must have in this universe. Anyway, it's stupid, but the long and short is that there was this big conspiracy that wanted Kurt to eventually become the Pope, and then, they were going to use communion wafers to make all the Catholics in the world explode, and people would be like "Ah, Rapture!", and then, it would be revealed that Kurt looks the way he does, then people were gonna think he was the Antichrist, and this was all set in motion because there was a nun who got raped by a priest, and wanted to murder all of the Catholics -- you see why people didn't care much for this stretch? And then, of course, the other thing was the retcon of Kurt's origin story. During "The Draco", we find out that Kurt's dad was this red motherf*cker named Azazel. He's kind of the worst. Like, he's a Demon-mutant, a mutant in the way that Apocalypse is a mutant, I guess. Some kind of demon-something, and he was just... making babies all over the planet to help with his evil plan, and Kurt was one of them. Nope, couldn't be enough that he happens to look like a demon, he's got to be actual demon spawn. Then Chuck Austen went on the record in some interview and said that Kurt also has two dicks. Because he's got two fingers. "I heard that motherfucker had, like, thirty goddamn dicks" Ha ha... You know how, like, normal people have four fingers, so they have four dicks? OK, Chuck Austen. Buh-bye. - "We are right beside you! Popcorn?"
- "Augh!" "X-Men: Evolution" showed us a more successful execution of what I think they were going for with "Pryde of the X-Men". He's not "stranger danger" here so much as overcompensating, socially awkward, but good-natured for an exchange student. - "Ah! She's fully not into the fuzzy, dude." The characters are divided between teachers and students here. Kurt is one of the students. The show keeps both the "Mystique is his mom", and the "Rogue is his adoptive sister" angle. Amanda Sefton is here, too, and thank God she is not his adoptive sister this time, so it's way less weird. Although it is still kind of weird. - "When you suddenly changed into... into something else, and then disappeared, I couldn't believe it!" - "But I couldn't stop thinking about it!" Your - your tail, your digitigrade hind legs... - "All I knew was I just had to get to know you" She sees his true self and thinks "hot", and not, like, "What?" Anyway, this show is on the lighter side, younger skewing, and probably the best of the X-Men cartoons, if only because it really holds to that whole "school for mutants" thing, instead of "school for adults that train in the Danger Room all the time". - "Who the hell is this?
- "Kurt Wagner," - "but in the Munich circus, I was known as the Incredible Nightcrawler!" Kurt had a goodly sized part in "X2: X-Men United", played by Alan Cumming. The movie starts when he tries to kill the president in a scene that is just The Best Damn Scene, under mind control, of course. He's a cinnamon roll in this version. He's a bit shyer and more religious than in the comic incarnations. And... the problem that a lot of people had with this version is that he's too religious. To which I say "hey, the guy's just been under mind-control. He's kinda freaked out". The praying doesn't bother me, that makes sense. The scarification... - "How many do you have?
- "One for every sin. So quite a few." It's like, cutting is cool when it's for Jesus? Which, again, would kinda make sense, if you have a religious person who looks like him who's desperate to prove just how not a demon he is. Especially when you consider that, at the end of the day, the character they are going for... he seems kind of just like a good-natured religious dude, not a self-flagellating scarification practitioner. It's even more flimsy when, at the end of the day, the scars are there pretty much totally for aesthetic reasons. That said... F*ck the haters! Ha ha! I love Alan Cumming, and I love this version, and this movie! This movie is so great! Oh, you know, he's nice, and he's shy, and sometimes mischievous, and often heroic. He's even kind of proud of his whole circus thing. - "But in the Munich circus, I was known as the Incredible Nightcrawler!"
- "Yeah, save it" Aaaw. I feel like this was meant to be set up for that third X-Men movie that they never ended up making. Like, Kurt and Logan were going to learn to be friends in that third X-Men movie that didn't... yep. Too bad they never made that third X-Men movie, huh? "Welcome, mutants!" For the "I wish X-Men: Evolution had been darker and grittier" crowd, we have "Wolverine and the X-Men", and this series assumes the audience has some familiarity with the material... because it starts after the X-Men have already disbanded. Xavier and Jean have disappeared, and Wolverine is trying to get the gang back together, and the plot for the whole season is ridiculously convoluted, so I'm not even going to bother. It's like all of the bad guys, all of them! You can tell this show skews older because the male characters actually appear to have some human anatomy! I'm gonna assume there's only one dick in there. Ha ha ha! Nightcrawler is off doing his own thing for the first half of the series, and during this period, we only see him in episodes where he is the main character. He ends up on Genosha, which is Magneto's totalitarian mutant-topia. And of course, things are not going so great over there, because, y'know, Magneto's a little bit of a dictator. But he does kinda have like a little bit of a thing with the Scarlet Witch. Anyway, while he is gallant and heroic, he's also not much fun in this show, because nobody is. As always, there are alternate versions within the comics, although they have an odd consistency to them. We meet an alternate nazi version in the Excalibur comics, who's a... rapist... and then, there's an evil version in the Magik miniseries from the 80s, who's also a little-- and then, there's the version from the Ultimate universe... Hello, darkness, my old friend... Well, he's obsessed with Dazzler, and kidnappes her at one point. He's dark and gritty and really inconsistent and nobody likes him, but he's dead now, so -- are there Ultimate versions of characters that people actually like besides Miles? And finally, because it was his turn, I guess, Nightcrawler died during one of those belabored multi-issue series spanning event crossovers that I hate. There is a living McGuffin named "Hope", and he dies saving her in a way that I can't help but think, you know, we could have figured out something a little bit less, you know, "martyr-y", but OK. X-man down, you know the drill. Nightcrawler's only down for about two years before they bring him back. He's in heaven and you know who shows back up, but that motherf*cker Azazel. And you know what? If we must have a character as ridiculous as Azazel, he may as well be dressed like a pirate and sailing a pirate ship around the afterlife, and commanding an army of demons in his quest to take over heaven while dressed like a pirate. So, Nightcrawler's alive again, but I actually really like the series he was brought back in, and stars in now. Not th-this, but this. Because it's fun, and it's like an adventure book, and it's not trying to do the Ultimate Gritty Thing, and it retains that allegory, but it has fun with it, and it's well-written, and I dig it keep go--oh, wait. Dammit, Secret Wars! And next year, get hyped, because he's back, baby. Yay! Finally! He is played by this kid, and, um... When did he get started on those scars? He's, like, 12. Anyway! Well, I'm so happy he's back, 'cause there was a really big hole in my heart left by that third X-Men movie that they never made. Yeah. Anyway! So, thank you very much for watching, if you like this show, you can support it on Patreon, here. and, of course, you can follow me on Twitter. The next vote, er, 'cause my website is down, is going to be in my personal blog, and you can vote for the next round right here, and... Here are your options. Because, you know, October and Spoopy! We're doing, er, universal monsters, so here are the three. Choose wisely.
Thanks for sharing! I love this!!! :D
Lindsay is my favorite YouTuber and she used to do a series called Loose Canon where she'd take a character (or in one video, an event) and talk about how they've been portrayed in different media. I noticed the Nightcrawler episode hadn't been posted here so I figured I'd rectify that.
She'll have a hard time if she chooses to make one about jubilee