The time has come for Marvel to finally reveal the secret history behind Nightcrawler's origin. The swashbuckling X-Man has one of the more convoluted origins in the X-Men's history. His mother is Mystique, a longtime nemesis and sometime ally to the X-Men, and his father is a devilish character called Azazel. Even these facts have been up for debate, which is probably what has prompted Marvel to release the definitive Nightcrawler origin story. A new one-shot will delve into all of these mysteries, and also unearth even more shocking discoveries.
ComicBook.com has the exclusive preview of X-Men Blue: Origins #1 by Si Spurrier, Marcus To, and Wilton Santos. Spurrier is the writer who has charted Kurt Wagner's adventures through the X-Men's Krakoan age in titles such as Way of X, Legion of X, Nightcrawlers, and Uncanny Spider-Man. This last title spins out of the Fall of X, with Nightcrawler escaping to New York City and donning a masked superhero moniker. The preview of X-Men Blue: Origins #1 finds Nightcrawler and Mystique together, but Mystique's memories are a mess. She's reliving her past, which includes Nightcrawler's birth and her affair with Azazel.
"Mystique, she's fascinating and wonderful and would be an utterly unlikable character if it weren't for the fact that everything she does is purely and pragmatically focused on love," Spurrier told Looper in an exclusive interview. "That redeems so much—this idea that she and her wife have this centuries-old romance that is so overwhelming that it threatens to destroy not only everybody around them but also each other."
"They keep coming together and smashing together and then going away and coming back," he continued. "It's this elaborate decades dance, which is such a wonderful thing to think about. Everything they do is focused on each other, so we can, if not quite forgive a lot of what Mystique does and has done, we can at least understand it in that context. That buys her a lot of points in my view."
The exclusive preview of X-Men Blue: Origins #1 is below. The issue goes on sale Wednesday, November 29th.