Nightcrawler, born Kurt Wagner is a popular character in the Marvel X-Men comics. Gifted with the power of teleportation, he the son of the popular Mystique and Azazel. This explains his blue skin, pointed tail and teleportation ability. There are many different versions of his origin story, one of the most widely accepted is that Mystique gave him up as a baby to save him from an angry mob. He was then raised in a circus where he excelled due to his natural agility. After facing prejudice against mutants and hostility because of his looks, he found safety in a Catholic church, leading to his strong faith later in the comics. Created by writer Len Wein and artist Dave Cockrum, he was introduced in May 1975, he joins the cast of mutant characters that were introduced after the original publication in September 1969. Along with others created in the 1970’s, he gained enough popularity to be featured in subsequent X-Men comic story arcs, animated series, and live-action films. Nightcrawler has had his own installments of stand-alone comic series in 1985, 2002, 2004 and currently since 2014.
His character became especially popular due to his role in the animated series X-Men: Evolution, featuring a high school age cast of X-Men students. Close friends with Kitty Pride, he uses his ability to save all of his fellow friends in many conflicts. This depiction drew back to his “happy-go-lucky” demeanor that was originally written with the character. One particular story sequence reveals that when Kurt teleports he travels to a parallel hellish dimension inhabited by dinosaur-like creatures. This is due to when the character Nightcrawler was created by Dave Cockrum, he had originally thought to make his character a fallen demon who failed a mission on earth and went into hiding to avoid the wrath of the devil on the fiery plane of his homeland.
He was portrayed by the talented actor Alan Cumming in the live-action film X-Men two circa 2003 and is set to be played by Kodi Smit-McPhee as a younger version of Nightcrawler in the film X-Men: Apocalypse circa 2016.
As with any character that has been around as long as Nightcrawler, there will be multiple eras of costume to choose from. Below we have provided guides to both the classic and modern movie adaptations of the Nightcrawler Costume.
Nightcrawler Costume: The Basics
Nightcrawler Costume: Modern Basics
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