Anyway, this is of course a bit of a riff on the dropped plotline that Wolverine was going to be an evolved wolverine, "courtesy of the High Evolutionary, but Stan Lee himself, according to Cockrum, nixed the idea." (From CBR's Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #21!) Grain of salt and all, but if so, Stan was right on there: it would've really undermined Logan's humanity and flattened the character.
But...Nightcrawler is an odd duck, isn't he? He has powers neither of his parents have, but that seem to fit. Almost makes you think it wasn't just random chance...And I re-read Azazel and Kurt's return in Amazing X-Men, mostly to try and get a handle on Azazel: I call him a demon, although I think in "The Draco" (which I emphatically did not re-read for this!) Beast suggests he might be one of the first mutants. Or was that Apocalypse's deal? Enh, Azazel lives in a hell, or hell-adjacent dimension; and there's a line in the old OHOTMU to the effect that 'demons' may be anyone that says he, she, or it was one. (If you look up the page...which, shoot, I may actually have handy! At least one of those 'demons' wasn't, and was revealed as a Deviant in Quasar!)
Moreover, the big stinger ending of Kurt's return was that he sacrificed his soul to return from heaven, stop Azazel, and save the X-Men, heaven, everything. You might think that would be a big plot point for later: maybe he has to go on some big quest to get it back, or get a new one maybe? Or maybe without his soul, he'll start to go bad? Nah, I think he looks sad about it twice in that series, and that's about it. It maybe came up once in his solo book? Should re-read that, too.
I'd actually forgotten that storyline where the High Evolutionary temporarily reverted mutants into humans. Good callback.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I still prefer the original explanation that Mystique was his mom and he had a random royal dad. Or they could've kept his dad's identity mysterious rather than the shit Chuck Austen later did by making his dad a literal demon. Yes it did help double down on explaining his powers and appearance but it also seemed forced to fit & a bit too convenient.
Curious to see where this all goes though...
I'm still amazed at how much emotion you can get out of action figures, even without their faces changing and relatively limited articulation.
ReplyDeleteAlso, that was quite a jump from the street to the bar. Did somebody 'port them in or something?
Claremont has Kurt muse about what he gave up to return once or twice, over beers with Logan. And there's a bit where Margali Szardos did something stupid and Amanda Sefton had to go into Heaven to fix, and Kurt was tried to go with her and couldn't get through.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I knew he gave up his soul to get back, so I assumed he was barred from Heaven because he'd rejected it to return to the mortal plane. Ostrander did something kind of similar with the title character in GrimJack, which is probably why my mind went there.
I can picture some of the Sean Phillips art from that one, but I'm trying to remember the Mystique flashback issue if she was with a prince or merely a baron or something. Kurt missed out on being Eurotrash royalty! I'm sure he's bummed.
ReplyDeleteThanks H! One of the funnest things about doing these, is finding out which figures are good 'actors' and which ones aren't! And I should have an exterior set with the bar door! Think less Cheers, more like a creepy looking door, possibly with 'Free Hugs' and a DP logo spraypainted on it...
I have some Grimjack, but not enough. Not enough to get the bigger picture, anyway; and I think somebody swiped my Flint Henry issues! Anyway, poor Kurt had like three plotlines from his revival to Hickman that were just dropped: his missing soul, he was unkillable for a while in X-Men Gold, and he was engaged to Rachel for a bit. That last one was kind of a nonstarter.
I'm sure there's an alternate universe where Kurt is in fact Eurotrash royalty (LOVE that term btw) sports the shaved soccer/football look he had briefly back in 1996 compete with goatee, listens to nothing but Daft Punk & any other electronica band/Eurotrash recommended playlists. Total douche canoe too though unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteI can see that- something like one of those underground clubs have in movies. I was more thinking that the High Evolutionary went from posturing in the alley to posturing in the bar. Guy seems to hold his emotions in. Doesn't even have a Charlie Brown sad walk for when people hurt his feelings …
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