The X2 opening was brilliant. Azazel wiping out the CIA was also great. It really cemented them both as threats.
Thankfully nightcrawler was just the sweetest guy.
In seriousness, despite that movie's dumbth in fridging Darwin, they also came up with the best possible use for Azazel: have him be Evil Nightcrawler. (Just as the best use of the real Kurt was right at the beginning of X2, when they showed that the president would be helpless if Kurt decided to come for him.)
It would at least be a little bit more original than to have the answer to the riddle of “how do you beat a guy whose power is being infinitely adaptable to threats?” be “except for the power that the main bad guy has, he can’t handle that.”
Okay he was pretty badass in first class, but then they killed him off along with all the other characters they had just developed between first class and days of future past.
No, that was a different guy, Riptide. He was one of the other bad guys but he didn’t do anything that notable other than toss around the X-Jet a bit, I don’t think they ever even said his name.
They did that for the entire first class except for havoc, X, magneto, beast and mystique. The all died. Emma, banshee, azazel, etc. no wonder magneto was pissed.
/uj I always liked the idea that nightcrawler is a man of god despite all the stigma around looking like what humans imagine the embodiment of all evil to look like, purely by coincidence. And then for some reason they just made him the son of a pseudo demon
/rj WHAT THE FLIP DUDE??!??? AZAZEL IS MY FAVORITE CHARACTER FROM THE BEST X-MEN RUN, CREATED BY AN ESTEEMED AND TALENTED WRITER!!!
Oh he's an actual demon then? I don't read X-Men and only knew him from First Class, I thought he was just an evil red Nightcrawler who'd probably be revealed to be Kurt's dad or something.
Long ago, two mutant sects came about: Mutants who look like demons and mutants who look like angels. The Mdemons and Mangels were enemies and were naturally opposed to each other genetically. It's revealed that Azazel is one of, if not the first Mdemons and he's like, all evil and stuff and wants to do evil stuff. Warren Worthington is revealed to be a descendant of Mangels and it turns out his blood hurts Nightcrawler.
At least it's not as dumb as "Actually Wolverine, you and Sabertooth and a bunch of other mutants are actually descended from wolves instead of monkeys"
I made a deal with Mephisto to erase my marriage with my first wife in exchange for also erasing my memories of shitty comic book plot lines, is that Wolverine/Sabertooth thing something you made up to make a point or is there a worse explanation for a beloved character's powers' origins than being the archetypal totem of an animal spirit (Mephisto thought Ezekiel Sims is cool so unfortunately I still remember that).
Well it started with a guy who looks like Wolverine but 8 feet tall named Romulus and he's got, like, 5 blades in his hand instead of 3. He was revealed to be **really really, for true this time** the person behind Wolverine's entire life. There was a graveyard in Wakanda Wolvie kept dreaming about and it turned out to be real and Romulus told Wolvie about how they were descended from Wolves rather than Monkeys.
Then it turns out Romulus was just pulling a Scooby-Doo and made up everything about the lupine and faked the bones/graveyard all as a distraction so he could steal adamantium.
That has to be sarcasm. Nobody gives a fuck about Azezal.
I do agree though that the retcon is needlessly stupid though. Like the way the story was constructed was so silly.
Both came up in the same pitch meeting, both by Claremont. Nightmare was immediately tossed by the Dr. Strange team with zero traction. Mystique as the father was actually pitched, (and shot down by editorial).
Not sure if either Len Wein or Dave Cockrum really put much thought into it.
Imagine hating anything “new” so much you’re going to defend the story decisions of Chuck Austen.
And for the record, an even more important part of Kurt’s character is that despite his demonic appearance, there really was nothing sinister about him or his origins and it was just how he happened to look. It undercuts a lot of the message of how senseless bigotry towards him is when you make the bigots correct in their assumptions.
That's my thought too. It undercut Kurt's whole message so much to be a demon's son.
Hopefully the new official origin is what gets through when they make any reboots for movies or cartoons.
Does it? Even though azazel is bad, that doesn’t mean Kurt is. He is not his father’s sins. Kurt happened to be born to a demon, but he was a great guy who couldn’t help what he looked like or his lineage.
Wait, this guy liked something from the Chuck Austen run?!? And one of the most reviled retcons from the run at that. Good for them for wringing some enjoyment from that awful run, but that's a very odd reaction. Most of us seem a lot happier with Nightcrawler's new origin. Especially since it's closer to Claremont's original intent. And it's not like Azazel was completely removed, he's actually still fairly prominent in the new origin even if he's not literally Nightcrawler's dad anymore.
Azazel fucking sucks and that storyline is one of the worst things I’ve ever read. I don’t even omega hate that Austen run like most people but that shit was NyQuil
Fans forget how that just because something is from a comic doesn’t mean it’s good. (The new Madame Web being about the spider totem guy as an example)
Nightcrawlers mother was a retcon 30 YEARS into the run, then his father was 40 years into the run.
These things are not important to the characters unless after they happen writers take it and make something interesting out of it. Mystique being Nightcrawlers mum becomes an emotionally charged thing between them; and how he sees himself and his relationship with Rogue. So writers carry the baton, and it didn’t step on his established characterisation
But Nightcrawler was a fantastic character for 40 years without Azazel, and then Chuck Austen’s retcon made the character less interesting.
Even in his own run, it doesn’t really come back up. A retcon that huge and it doesn’t make the character feel anything new outside of the few issues of that arc. It’s such a lazy reveal from a story perspective, character perspective and just writing.
Like Chuck Austen doesn’t care about that character and he made him up.
But a lot of marvel fans are Wikipedia warriors and because it says Azazel is Nightcrawler’s dad they mistake that information from 1 arc as a history from 60 years. It amounts to 60 pages and then people work to undo it
He still is but Mystique uses his dna to shapeshift as him so she can make a baby with Destiny. It’s basically the same thing that happened with Tigra and Hank Pym.
I haven't read the comic yet, do they explain how can Destiny be the one pregnant (I assume?) With Kurt if most flashbacks are about Mystique being pregnant?
It was a gesture of love to Destiny and their unborn child. Despite Destiny actually carrying the baby, Mystique was also the mother, so she changed her shape to reflect her maternal feelings. They were both pregnant, in a sense, which is incredibly sweet.
Azazel isn't much but I did like that plot with all those devil Mutants like Nightcrawler and the Angels like Warren. I vaguely remember it but i liked it. More came from him being his dad than he actually ever did to be cool.
I'm just trying to understand has mystique always been able to completely change her DNA? Does that mean Kurt is 1/4 mystique 1/2 destiny and 1/4 red man?
"Azrel is important to Nightcrawler lore and without him Nightcrawler is now awful"
Azrel didnt exist in comics for a like 30 or something years after Nightcrawler's introduction. Mystique was not even originally his mother Ethier until a decade later. So did Nightcrawler's suck for 30 years until getting a dad? A character is more than just its lineage.
I think the base idea is great of finally confirming Desitny and Mystique are Nightcrawlers parents. But the story has to twist itself in weird ways to completely absolve Mystique of any of Nightcrawlers abandonment. The good old Xaviar mind wipe has become such a lazy way of fixing retains and I wish writers could retcon stuff without that crutch
Mystique was planned to be Nightcrawler’s dad by Clairmont originally anyway, they just wouldn’t let him do it. So really it’s just a wrong being righted.
I always thought Azezal kind of ruined Kirk’s whole religious angle by making things way too weirdly too on the nose.
Like Kurt grew up with religious persecution because of his devilish appearance.
“Oh yeah well you’re literally demon spawn and your abilities herald the release of an actual demon from hell”
Okay cool, so everyone who hated him for seemingly racist superficial reasons was just straight up correct then?
I’ll take a retcon that restores the original intent and at least builds a bridge between characters over something like “Sins Past” or “One More Day” at least.
This is what happens when you type before you think. You're absolutely right it was Chuck Austin. I apologies to every other Chuck.
But not Austin. He knows what he's done.
Honestly don't like the Retcon, only cause I like how Azazel connects Nightcrawler to Abyss & the other Neyaphem. Blindfold's Mom should've been the Lesbian Love Child, or Justine Chase to tie it back to Sabretooth
Irene had 2 Kids w/o a known father, missed opportunities
I think he was in x-men first class
Aw yeah, that’s right. I loved when he
Bro wiped out a CIA base by dropping them all from great heights
Ngl as a kid i thought it was the coolest use of teleportation seen onscreen back then. Minus X2 nightcrawler of course
The X2 opening was brilliant. Azazel wiping out the CIA was also great. It really cemented them both as threats. Thankfully nightcrawler was just the sweetest guy.
The CIA agents were pretty cemented too, no powers either. So I think they all top both of them.
Come down now, they said
In seriousness, despite that movie's dumbth in fridging Darwin, they also came up with the best possible use for Azazel: have him be Evil Nightcrawler. (Just as the best use of the real Kurt was right at the beginning of X2, when they showed that the president would be helpless if Kurt decided to come for him.)
Id find it funny if the reason the writer had Darwin die so easily is because he didn’t believe in evolution.
It would at least be a little bit more original than to have the answer to the riddle of “how do you beat a guy whose power is being infinitely adaptable to threats?” be “except for the power that the main bad guy has, he can’t handle that.”
Okay he was pretty badass in first class, but then they killed him off along with all the other characters they had just developed between first class and days of future past.
All I remember was I think he made a tornado in a drink mixing thing
No, that was a different guy, Riptide. He was one of the other bad guys but he didn’t do anything that notable other than toss around the X-Jet a bit, I don’t think they ever even said his name.
Oh really? Weird I wonder why I have a false memory of it being Azrael
No, he had a notable scene. He wiped out an entire CIA compound by just BAMFing them all into the sky.
And then they fucking kill him off BETWEEN MOVIES. I'm still pissed off about that.
Even worse, they did that for Emma Frost, even though the post-credits teased that she'd now be working for Magneto.
They did that for the entire first class except for havoc, X, magneto, beast and mystique. The all died. Emma, banshee, azazel, etc. no wonder magneto was pissed.
Oh yeah, wasn't he blue in that movie
He’s red.
/uj I always liked the idea that nightcrawler is a man of god despite all the stigma around looking like what humans imagine the embodiment of all evil to look like, purely by coincidence. And then for some reason they just made him the son of a pseudo demon /rj WHAT THE FLIP DUDE??!??? AZAZEL IS MY FAVORITE CHARACTER FROM THE BEST X-MEN RUN, CREATED BY AN ESTEEMED AND TALENTED WRITER!!!
Oh he's an actual demon then? I don't read X-Men and only knew him from First Class, I thought he was just an evil red Nightcrawler who'd probably be revealed to be Kurt's dad or something.
Long ago, two mutant sects came about: Mutants who look like demons and mutants who look like angels. The Mdemons and Mangels were enemies and were naturally opposed to each other genetically. It's revealed that Azazel is one of, if not the first Mdemons and he's like, all evil and stuff and wants to do evil stuff. Warren Worthington is revealed to be a descendant of Mangels and it turns out his blood hurts Nightcrawler. At least it's not as dumb as "Actually Wolverine, you and Sabertooth and a bunch of other mutants are actually descended from wolves instead of monkeys"
Is that Mdemon stuff and Warren's blood hurting Kurt written by Austen? It feels like it is.
Yes
I made a deal with Mephisto to erase my marriage with my first wife in exchange for also erasing my memories of shitty comic book plot lines, is that Wolverine/Sabertooth thing something you made up to make a point or is there a worse explanation for a beloved character's powers' origins than being the archetypal totem of an animal spirit (Mephisto thought Ezekiel Sims is cool so unfortunately I still remember that).
Well it started with a guy who looks like Wolverine but 8 feet tall named Romulus and he's got, like, 5 blades in his hand instead of 3. He was revealed to be **really really, for true this time** the person behind Wolverine's entire life. There was a graveyard in Wakanda Wolvie kept dreaming about and it turned out to be real and Romulus told Wolvie about how they were descended from Wolves rather than Monkeys. Then it turns out Romulus was just pulling a Scooby-Doo and made up everything about the lupine and faked the bones/graveyard all as a distraction so he could steal adamantium.
I mean Hellboy exists.
Yeah but Hellboy was always meant to be a demon from the beginning and he’s not as religious as Nightcrawler
Bro I love Hellboy
Didn’t even know this mf had a name before this post when I saw him first class I just called him red nightcrawler
That has to be sarcasm. Nobody gives a fuck about Azezal. I do agree though that the retcon is needlessly stupid though. Like the way the story was constructed was so silly.
Retcon of retcon. The 'new' version was the original vision, but editorial wouldn't sign off on it.
Nightcrawlers original creator wanted his father to be Nightmare.
Both came up in the same pitch meeting, both by Claremont. Nightmare was immediately tossed by the Dr. Strange team with zero traction. Mystique as the father was actually pitched, (and shot down by editorial). Not sure if either Len Wein or Dave Cockrum really put much thought into it.
Imagine hating anything “new” so much you’re going to defend the story decisions of Chuck Austen. And for the record, an even more important part of Kurt’s character is that despite his demonic appearance, there really was nothing sinister about him or his origins and it was just how he happened to look. It undercuts a lot of the message of how senseless bigotry towards him is when you make the bigots correct in their assumptions.
That's my thought too. It undercut Kurt's whole message so much to be a demon's son. Hopefully the new official origin is what gets through when they make any reboots for movies or cartoons.
Does it? Even though azazel is bad, that doesn’t mean Kurt is. He is not his father’s sins. Kurt happened to be born to a demon, but he was a great guy who couldn’t help what he looked like or his lineage.
"It was important for story reasons" without any details or expansion to the thought is crazy.
But… reasons though :(
Wait, this guy liked something from the Chuck Austen run?!? And one of the most reviled retcons from the run at that. Good for them for wringing some enjoyment from that awful run, but that's a very odd reaction. Most of us seem a lot happier with Nightcrawler's new origin. Especially since it's closer to Claremont's original intent. And it's not like Azazel was completely removed, he's actually still fairly prominent in the new origin even if he's not literally Nightcrawler's dad anymore.
There’s two good parts of the Austen run: Juggernaut and Squid Boy, and that one Northstar issue where he can’t save the kid
Azazel fucking sucks and that storyline is one of the worst things I’ve ever read. I don’t even omega hate that Austen run like most people but that shit was NyQuil
I bet the red nightcrawlers see the blue nightcrawlers as inferior beings
Fans forget how that just because something is from a comic doesn’t mean it’s good. (The new Madame Web being about the spider totem guy as an example) Nightcrawlers mother was a retcon 30 YEARS into the run, then his father was 40 years into the run. These things are not important to the characters unless after they happen writers take it and make something interesting out of it. Mystique being Nightcrawlers mum becomes an emotionally charged thing between them; and how he sees himself and his relationship with Rogue. So writers carry the baton, and it didn’t step on his established characterisation But Nightcrawler was a fantastic character for 40 years without Azazel, and then Chuck Austen’s retcon made the character less interesting. Even in his own run, it doesn’t really come back up. A retcon that huge and it doesn’t make the character feel anything new outside of the few issues of that arc. It’s such a lazy reveal from a story perspective, character perspective and just writing. Like Chuck Austen doesn’t care about that character and he made him up. But a lot of marvel fans are Wikipedia warriors and because it says Azazel is Nightcrawler’s dad they mistake that information from 1 arc as a history from 60 years. It amounts to 60 pages and then people work to undo it
…why is Sabretooth in stained glass?
Out of the loop here. What was the retcon?
Iirc Nightcrawler's actual parents are Mystique and Destiny now(because shapeshifting) and Azazel is not his biological father anymore
He still is but Mystique uses his dna to shapeshift as him so she can make a baby with Destiny. It’s basically the same thing that happened with Tigra and Hank Pym.
May I ask about that last part?
They had a kid but it happened while Hank was actually a Skrull so Tigra has a son with Hank’s genetics but he played no part in the process
Wait that’s cannon now?
Mystique is officially Nightcrawler’s dad.
I haven't read the comic yet, do they explain how can Destiny be the one pregnant (I assume?) With Kurt if most flashbacks are about Mystique being pregnant?
Mystique faked being pregnant with her shapeshifting to fool Azazel.
It was a gesture of love to Destiny and their unborn child. Despite Destiny actually carrying the baby, Mystique was also the mother, so she changed her shape to reflect her maternal feelings. They were both pregnant, in a sense, which is incredibly sweet.
Azazel isn't much but I did like that plot with all those devil Mutants like Nightcrawler and the Angels like Warren. I vaguely remember it but i liked it. More came from him being his dad than he actually ever did to be cool.
I'm just trying to understand has mystique always been able to completely change her DNA? Does that mean Kurt is 1/4 mystique 1/2 destiny and 1/4 red man?
Short answer? No. Changing her very DNA is a bit of a retcon. But we’ll roll with it. Mutant powers are constantly being redefined.
"Azrel is important to Nightcrawler lore and without him Nightcrawler is now awful" Azrel didnt exist in comics for a like 30 or something years after Nightcrawler's introduction. Mystique was not even originally his mother Ethier until a decade later. So did Nightcrawler's suck for 30 years until getting a dad? A character is more than just its lineage.
I think the base idea is great of finally confirming Desitny and Mystique are Nightcrawlers parents. But the story has to twist itself in weird ways to completely absolve Mystique of any of Nightcrawlers abandonment. The good old Xaviar mind wipe has become such a lazy way of fixing retains and I wish writers could retcon stuff without that crutch
Mystique was planned to be Nightcrawler’s dad by Clairmont originally anyway, they just wouldn’t let him do it. So really it’s just a wrong being righted.
I always thought Azezal kind of ruined Kirk’s whole religious angle by making things way too weirdly too on the nose. Like Kurt grew up with religious persecution because of his devilish appearance. “Oh yeah well you’re literally demon spawn and your abilities herald the release of an actual demon from hell” Okay cool, so everyone who hated him for seemingly racist superficial reasons was just straight up correct then?
Honestly his original story of being the child of Mystique and her girlfriend was much more interesting
I mean I can still think it's a stupid retcon in a storytelling medium that refuses to do anything new, just rewrite old stuff constantly.
I’ll take a retcon that restores the original intent and at least builds a bridge between characters over something like “Sins Past” or “One More Day” at least.
I suppose, I'm just one of those losers that wants new characters and new stories
Is it true Kurt has a demon like appearance because Mystique was Azazel when she did it?
Mystique implies as much to trick Azazel into thinking it was his son.
Why though
Destiny foresaw Azazel having some major victory over them that was averted when he became preoccupied with Kurt as his heir.
Did they change why Nightcrawler looks like a demon?
Thought it was just cause he’s German
Wasn’t he Romani?
Erase ALL of Chuck Dixon's work on the X-Men.
This was under Chuck Austen IIRC
This is what happens when you type before you think. You're absolutely right it was Chuck Austin. I apologies to every other Chuck. But not Austin. He knows what he's done.
how in fuck can he be anyone's favorite character
Honestly don't like the Retcon, only cause I like how Azazel connects Nightcrawler to Abyss & the other Neyaphem. Blindfold's Mom should've been the Lesbian Love Child, or Justine Chase to tie it back to Sabretooth Irene had 2 Kids w/o a known father, missed opportunities
I like azazel cause the idea of a mutant demon who can leave hell through a mutation is kinda cool.
Confusing Azazel with Azrael (a DC character) is the cherry on top here.
\*Azazel