Nightcrawler 1976

All Nightcrawler, all the time! THE place to discuss everyone's favorite fuzzy elf in all his various incarnations!
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Post by Darick »

Image

Not really the way you imagine Wolverine and Nightcrawler, eh?

Thing is, (for all of you purists that think we should stay super tight to continuity), this was the way Len Wein imagined them. And he's the guy who created Wolverine and introduced Nightcrawler to the world (with Mr.Cockrum of course.)
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Post by kladyelf »

A- HA!!

i have that copy myself you know, and there was always something a little "off" about nightcrawler in that issue - and now i know why!!
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Post by Northstars Love »

I really should know that issue but it escapes me at the moment. I know this was pre-Phoenix correct? Annual? Reprint? I can't remember! :oops:


Anyway, ya, Dave said Nighty was supposed to be very demonic looking so the look is correct for that early period. But I like the way Nightcrawler has evolved to the fuzzy blue he is now! :D
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Post by Azur »

Originally posted by **Northstars Love**
I really should know that issue but it escapes me at the moment. I know this was pre-Phoenix correct? Annual? Reprint? I can't remember! :oops:

i think it's from Amazing Spider-Man #161 :read
not only pre-Phoenix, nearly pre-everything :crazed
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Post by CurlyyHairGirl »

Yes, and back when he had a third toe on each foot still...looking at him today, it seems evolution had more plans for him and took a leap.
:LOL
And about the personality switch...:eekindeed.
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Post by Blue_Demon94 »

What was with his pink teeth, did he have gingivitis or something?
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Post by Northstars Love »

Originally posted by Blue_Demon94
What was with his pink teeth, did he have gingivitis or something?

Most likely due to the priniting of the comic. Happens. I think Kurt takes care of his choppers so I don't think he'd have gingivitis. LOL! :LOL
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Post by Darick »

Yeah, you'll note that he ended up with one green eye as well.
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Post by Shadow_Dancer »

I could be mistaken, but I believe Chris Claremont is responsible for some of the personality traits we've come to know and love. :D

The X-Men didn't need any more moody loners.
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Post by Darick »

Well, the above story came out in 1976. The new X-men appeared for the first time in Giant Size X-men #1 in 1975.


Image
GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1
Marvel, 1975
(probably released sometime in March 1975)

"Second Genesis!" (36 pages) writer: Len Wein
plot suggestion: Chris Claremont (uncredited; see below)
artist: Dave Cockrum
letterer: John Costanza
colorist: Glynis Wein
editor: Lein Wein


Comments
• This issue features the first appearances of Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Thunderbird, along with Illyana Rasputin (who is not named but appears briefly).

• X-Men stories continue in X-Men 94.

• Regarding Chris Claremont's uncredited plot suggestion:
". . . Len [Wein] and Dave Cockrum were evolving the new X-Men concept. And they'd be sitting in Len's office, which is now Shooter's office, plotting it. I would be sitting there just outside proofreading. I'd wander in and say "Can I listen?" and they'd say "Sure." They'd evolved the whole first issue of Giant-Size [X-Men #1] except the ending. They needed a way to get rid of Krakoa utilizing the powers of the X-Men. I was thinking about it and I thought, well, we've got Lorna Dane, who has since become Polaris, here, and her power is magnetism, so why don't you just have her slice across the magnetic lines of force, the gravimetric lines of force? And then the speed of the Earth's rotation on its axis would just squirt it up and away it would just go. In a sense Krakoa would stay in place while the Earth just rotated around its axis and revolved around the sun and away from it. And off he goes into the wild blue yonder. It would be like taking a bar of soap and watching it go Pfffttt! right into the air. Len thought it was a great idea and Dave came up with the visuals and that was that. . . ." (From an interview with Chris Claremont in The X-Men Companion I, edited by Peter Sanderson, Fantagraphic Books, March 1982, p. 91.)
So Nightcrawler was less than a year old when that story was published and Claremont seems to have been near since the beginning.
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Post by Northstars Love »

I thought I recognized that page. Question, was it part of the the story of the living island or was it an extra story towards the end?

I can't for the life of me remember. :/
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Post by Darick »

The pages above are from Amazing Spider-man #161.

The funny thing is that if I drew Nightcrawler like that, fans would be howling for my blood. :LOL
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Post by Northstars Love »

Originally posted by Darick
The pages above are from Amazing Spider-man #161.


sorry :oops: , it was mentioned above but I read your previous post with the GS #1 image attachment as a story within the pages of GS #1. This happens when you work your ass off and don't get enough sleep. :crazed


I never owned ASM #161. But I do recal The Punisher being in it and Nighty and Spidey sorta team up to battle him or somethin. That was a issue long ago. It's worth some money now. :D
The funny thing is that if I drew Nightcrawler like that, fans would be howling for my blood. :LOL
I'm glad you're not. Don't change him a bit because the previous posts in this thread speak for themselves on how well your talent is being received by us Nighty fans. And quite a few from the other X Fans. ;)
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Post by Darick »

Thanks! I prefer the handsome Kurt. He's more interesting if he's good looking, but blue furred and pointed ear with a tail and weird hands and feet. I like dichotomies.
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Post by The Drastic Spastic »

"By now I should! I've been working with one long enough!"

He had a nice sharp tongue on him, didn't he? :love

But yes, he looks awful, though I do like the gi-normous ears. And I think he wouldn't look quite as bad if he weren't frowning in every panel.
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Post by Maelstrom »

Yeah, he was pretty unpleasant-looking in this one. But, then again, I didn't expect much from cross-overs in the 70s. The occasional cross-in got the short shrift so far as art went. I remember getting a "Marvel Team Up" with Dazzler, Paladin, and Spidey in it, and Dazzler was so damn bland that you required the costume to identify her.

And it was really early on in Kurt's life, so to speak. ;) They hadn't nailed him down yet in the Xmen universe. Not too much earlier, he teleported into Norad blind without problems, so it's not fair to expect a different artist-writer team to adhere to the still-evolving stylesheet. Speaking of "adhering", at one point in this book, Spidey webs the spade of Kurt's tail to a wall, and he pulls three or four bricks out as he yanks free! :eek That would *never* happen now. Kurt just isn't that strong.
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Post by Darick »

Good point about his strength and tail.

You know, Ross Andru, who drew those pages above, was one of the BEST artists to ever draw Spider-man and work in comics in general. Those characters were brand new and having been in his shoes, he was probably doing his best to keep them consistent with how he viewed Cockrum's versions. Given the date, cockrum was probably still working out his version.

I am very familiar with Kurt, and have drawn him for years and yet as I'm working on him steadily now, month to month (I'm half way through issue 4) I can see an evolution in how I draw him coming together.

How the character is written also has an impact on how the character is portrayed.
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Post by BH123 »

Originally posted by Darick
You know, Ross Andru, who drew those pages above, was one of the BEST artists to ever draw Spider-man and work in comics in general. Thise characters were brand new and having been in his shoes, he was probably doing his best to keep them consistent with how he viewed Cockrum's versions. Given the date, cockrum was probably still working out his version.
Okay, so that was Ross Andru's pencils. I kept thinking of Gil Kane, but I didn't think it was his work. Now I know why it looked kinda familiar. Andru was a very underrated artist. Hopefully all the twnety-somethings buying the Essential Punisher TPB will discover his art and come to appreciate it. But I digress.

Good points about how the look of Nightcrawler has changed and developed over the years. Alas, to a certain degree, fandom can be both very fickle and have extremely short-term memories. I guess that wasn't a problem in yesteryear, but in today's age of instand communication via e-mail and message boards, all the ill-considered vitrol can come pouring out with a few keystrokes.

In any case, Darick, I would like to think that most readers are of a more even-tempered disposition, and are willing to approach things with an open mind.

I admit, I have always enjoyed the swashbucking, romatic, humorous Nightcrawler seen in Cockrum's miniseries and the Alan Davis issues of Excalibur. So I was a bit disappointed to learn that this new series would be taking a darker turn. But I will still be giving it a chance.

As for your artwork, based on his appearances in Wolverine and the preview art, I think you are doing a very good job drawing Nightcrawler. And, no, I am not brown-nosing, honest!!!
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Post by Darick »

I appreciate that you're even coming in with an open mind.

Not to de-rail the thread, but I honestly believe only about 10% of the people that read the books and buy them get on the boards and get vocal about them.

That said, your point about loving the swashbuckling version is my point in presenting this other early version. Sometimes you have to stake out new territory with a character before it becomes the version everybody accepts as classic. If we stay too close to the previous concepts, then you'd still have a very ugly, huge eared Kurt running around fighting with Logan, rather then the version we've come to accept as the "real" Kurt.

Right?

That said, we have Kurt fencing in issue 3, Claremont and Alan Davis are doing "the Cruelest Cut" and in that widely viewed, double page splash, you should be getting just what you're looking for.

We shouldn't have to be all the same all the time in every title though. That's predictable and ulitmately boring. Fans resist change, but they ultimately demand it simultaneously.

I think that in this series we've found a happy medium.
(keeping in mind that none of you have even read the first issue yet!) :naughty
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Post by Bamfette »

one, i agree with Darick, been saying the same sort of sentiment myself for a while....

but i really kinda wanted to pop in and say that no one should be blaming the artist of this particular issue for his appearance. no one's outright said it, but i have been getting that impression, a little bit. the look in those pages is VERY close to how Dave was drawing him at that same time. if you look at the first issues of Dave's first run on the book and his character designs from before that, it looked exactly like that. this guy didn't screw up anything, this look and attitude was not out of the ordinary, which was Darick's point. that the character has changed, and it is the changed version people identify with.
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Post by Darick »

I was saying the same thing. I just wanted to point out that I find it ironic how many fans want artists and writers to cling reverently to the past, but over time you begin to see that, like it or not, these characters have evolved into the ones you love and cherish.

I got a lot of flak for my Wolverine, but I was going to the source that was my inspriation. well, I have to come to realize that the problem was that my version was inspired by the same guys that inspired Jim Lee's version, but Lee's and Silvestri's version were what most readers have come to think of Wolverine being.

But if Marvel took the attitude that the characters have to stay exactly as they were conceived, then I'd be drawing Nightcrawler looking like this!

Image

While I grew up on Claremont, Miller, Byrne and Smith (Adam's and Windsor Smith respectively) they had grown up on Jim Lee and Silvestri.

So everyone here should know, my Kurt is inspired by Cockrum, Byrne, Davis and Smith (and honed by Hughes!)

At the same time, I gotta be me. :bamf
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Post by Bamfette »

heeee! oh, Darick, i think you really ought to be true to history and go with this drawing for the series :p

personally, as art goes, i like seeing different takes. especially with a character like Nightcrawler who is so easily identifiable that the artists have more wiggle room in keeping him recognizable while still adding their personal touch. some i may not be overly fond of, or entirely agree with, but i still like seeing.

and for the record, i liked your Wolverine a lot. it captured his personality and life history better than many of the more recent artists, imo. but i remember from modding your forum on X-Fan all the people bitching about it, so obviously they did not agree. but hey, that just shows that there is a place for different takes.
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Post by bluefooted »

I think Jill summed up exactly what I like about Nightcrawler - and why I like to draw him so much. His features make him so instantly recognizable that I can add as much (or as little) of my own personal touches as I like. I also absolutely adore the changes the character goes through, appearance-wise. It's just so much fun to see everyone's vision of the same character and how they've shaped him in some unique way.
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Post by Darick »

Yeah, the BAMF doll appearing in the series sort of confirmed that notion.

Blue skin, elf ears, devil tail, yellow eyes...You pretty much know who that is.

That's why I believe the right writer is super important.

It all comes through in attitude and dialogue!
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Post by BH123 »

Originally posted by Darick
I appreciate that you're even coming in with an open mind.

Not to de-rail the thread, but I honestly believe only about 10% of the people that read the books and buy them get on the boards and get vocal about them.

That said, your point about loving the swashbuckling version is my point in presenting this other early version. Sometimes you have to stake out new territory with a character before it becomes the version everybody accepts as classic. If we stay too close to the previous concepts, then you'd still have a very ugly, huge eared Kurt running around fighting with Logan, rather then the version we've come to accept as the "real" Kurt.

Right?
Oh, well, I was agreeing with you, I guess I just didn't phrase it in a very comprehensible manner :oops:

Yes, I agree that the character of Nightcrawler has many different sides. While my favorite depiction of Kurt Wagner is as a daring swashbuckling adventurer, I recognize that there is more, much more to him than just that. And I can see that this series will be exploring those other aspects of the character.

I don't think this is going to "ruin" Nightcrawler, or any such nonsense. Actually, I don't know how anyone can jump to that assumption before even the first issue is out. That tiny but vocal segment of fandom I mentioned earlier seems to have a knee-jerk reaction for hitting the panic button.

Nightcrawler is one of my favorite characters, and I am happy that he's being given a series. So of course I intend to approach it with an open mind.

Hey, I approached Chuck Austen's run on Avengers with an open mind, telling other people on message boards to keep quiet with the criticisms and flame wars, and to wait and see what he did with the title. True, I subsequently found Austen's Avengers stories to be very disappointing, but I did give them a chance.

So, anyway, Darick, to cut to the chace, I look forward to seeing how the new Nightcrawler series turns out. Don't let the panicky naysayers on the web get you down.

And thank you for stepping into the lion's den to actively post online.

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