Just announced at SDCC. Good to hear I missed him. Too bad Colossus isn't on the team.

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansit.../news/?a=83854

Was anybody really missing him?

Good creators in Aaron & McGuinness, so they shouldn't botch this.

Interesting to see Firestar on the team. With Bobby, that's both Amazing Friends of Spider-man on the team!

It is funny that as a Mutant she didn't get worked into A vs X. Nor has she ever had much involvement with other mutants. Ice man aside.

I am super happy to hear of Nightcrawler's return! He's my favorite (underdog) superhero! We share very similarly in faith so I always felt a kinship to him :D

Nightcrawler is one of my favorite X-men, but I hope he stays dead and that this is just a one-shot for fun story.

I understand that writers get nostalgic and bring characters back, but there are too many X-men characters as it is. There's no need for him.

I disagree. The one thing that Nightcrawler offers that no other team member does is a different sense of morality. The X-Men fight injustice and for equality and all that good stuff like any team/hero...but Nightcrawler adds a spiritual element that gives the team and his character "heart" that appeals to a broader scope of readers. Not many characters tackle Christianity as a fundamental element in their character and it makes him exceptionally unique.

Ive found no other comic book character by any company seems to understand the importance of what he is better than Nightcrawler. If he didnt have a conscious and able to BAMPH around like he does, it would be "uncanny" what he would be able to do as a villain. (Pun intended lol)

There's already 40+ years of stories with him doing that. What X-men needs right now isn't nostalgia. They need some dramatic reorganizing and need to get rid of the dozens of senior characters long enough for new characters to develop personalities on the same level as Nightcrawler.

Afterall, don't forget that Nightcrawler (and Wolverine, Colossus, ect.) came out of the original team being dismantled. If older characters had stuck around and hogged the spotlight, they would have never turned out as strong as they did.

Or in other words he would be AOA Nightcrawler

OR his father.

Oh gawd you talk of he who shall not be named ...thank god he was put away in teh sandbox and forgotten ...well until the movies....but there he was actually quite bearable...take away Austen and him being an actual demon at war with Warren and an actual angel and he is not Maggot level at least

He stayed dead a full three years. Revolving door of death indeed.

AoA Nightcrawler does NOT exist...

Apocalypse was just fantasizing...that never really happened!

Now youve done it...you hurt'ed my feel bads *sniff*

The big two superhero companies have stopped just being companies that tell stories in comic form. They've long since become machines for maintaining stables of characters for toys, games, cartoons, and movies. When we are lucky, they still turn out good comic book stories, but ultimately they work within a framework. That framework requires popular characters to continue having adventures.

The justification for this is even demonstrable here, in this tiny corner of comic fandom. There's a thread, a discussion, about Nightcrawler's return. They rightly assumed it would garner interest. It has. Why bet on an unknown when you can bet on a sure thing?

Sorry for the cynical view, but your expectation for seeing Kurt stay dead is an example of an idealistic view of how stories and characters ought to change and evolve bumping up against the corporate merchandising requirements of a never-ending comic company working under the umbrella of an entertainment mega-corporation. It doesn't necessarily make me happy, but it's the framework we have to live with when we read comics from these companies.

It goes beyond merchandising though.

Take Ray Palmer for example. He had been replaced (By a guy who added much needed diversity to DC, no less). Palmer isn't a guy who sells toys (Actually Choi was already being made into toys due to Batman: Brave and the Bold). He doesn't have a movie deal. He's pretty much unknown to non-comic fans, and there wasn't really heavy demand by comic fans for his return. But some writer just got nostalgic.

Same deal with Barry Allen. And Barbara Gordan walking again. And Hal Jordan (Which was extra unnessecary because casual fans had accepted John Stewart as Green Lantern.) There's a lot of bad wiriting/business moves that I believe are made for reasons beyond merchandise and more due to the personal feelings of bad writers.


Edit: I also should mention that even though I made this big rant, it's really too early to say if Nightcrawler is even returning.

Sometimes there are issues where the writer gives a quick nod to their favorite character, but doesn't really bring them back. I have a Wolverine comic during the time Colossus was "dead" where Wolverine temporarily dies, allowing him and Colossus to team up in the afterlife and fight dead villains until Logan eventually revives himself. I hope the Nightcrawler comic is a similar situation.

Good point and good examples.