Publisher: Marvel
Writer(s): Craig Kyle & Chris Yost
Artist: Mike Choi
Cover: Adi Granov
**Major Spoilers**
“Second Coming Ch 5”: Things have been moving at a break neck pace since Cable and Hope finally arrived back in the current timeline to find and rejoin the X-Men. Immediately being attacked by anti-mutant forces upon their return, they have been running and the X-Men sent to recover their friends are hot on their trail. After catching up to them in X-Men Legacy #235, Cable and Hope are forced to split up with hopes of drawing Bastion’s forces to the decoy team, while allowing Rogue, Nightcrawler, and Hope to make it back to Utopia.
The decoy team is pretty much in the thick of it, which means that they’re doing their job, but Bastion has decided that it’s time he step in. After some mutant tracking, he’s located his objective and arrives in Vegas seconds after Nightcrawler teleports in with Hope and Rogue. And though Rogue was able to take the powers of Wolverine, X-23, Colossus, and Angel (Why him?) before the teams split up, Bastion has been upgraded as well and is more than ready to take on this small team of mutants. The fight is brutal, neither side is holding back, and after suffering a devastating shot to the back, Nightcrawler utters a prayer and makes the ultimate sacrifice to get Hope back to Utopia.
There have been many rumors and a lot of speculation as to who was not going to make it out of Second Coming alive, and after the death in X-Men Legacy #235 of a character who was the equivalent to a “red shirt” in Star Trek, I was pretty ticked. After reading this issue I was even more upset that my prediction came true, but not in a bad way, it’s just that I’ve been a Nightcrawler fan since I first saw the character when I was a kid. I was glad that the death just wasn’t something done for shock value, but was very much in line with his character and reinforces the conversation he had with Cyclops in Second Coming Ch 1. What also helped bring it home was the last few panels, when the decoy team lands at Utopia and after looking at Scott and Emma’s expressions, Wolverine immediately knows that his best friend is dead. Mike Choi did a great job showing the emotions in those scenes, and it was just a great looking book from page to page.
Kyle and Yost continue to help move this story, which is by far one of the best X-Men crossovers to take place in a while, and it’s only on chapter 5 in this 13 chapter saga! There wasn’t much dialogue and it read pretty fast, but the action did more than make up for that. However, as good as this story is, I do question some things that are happening here and there. I’m not sure though if they meant for Colossus to come off kind of annoying, repeating that the team had to go after his sister since she disappeared in X-Men Second Coming ch 1, only stopping when he realized that Nightcrawler has died. I’m also wondering why they chose to have Rogue copy Angel’s power, since the feathery wings really don’t do much and aren’t needed when you have a teleporter. And probably my biggest issue is how the hell did Wolverine and X-23 find time to get new costumes after being severely burned to a crisp in Chapter 4, because Wolverine was practically naked afterwards. Mistakes like that in any book are more annoying than anything, because it just shows a lack of attention to detail.
Other than those gripes, Nightcrawler’s death is pretty significant because he’s a second generation X-Man and usually the heart, soul, and conscience of the team, and when you lose that things change. The fallout from this issue should be pretty traumatic, and we’ll probably see Wolverine lose it for better or for worse, but I’m also worried. Considering how Marvel likes to bring the dead back, I’m wondering how long it will be before Kurt returns to the team and is having beers with Colossus and Wolverine again.
Infinite Speech
infinitespeech@comicattack.net
Nightcrawler? Nooooooooooooooooooo! Should have read that, I guess. Always been a Nightcrawler fan. But yeah…he’ll probably come back somehow in a couple years. Maybe he teleported at the last second and is stuck in a parallel dimension or something dumb like that.
Just finished reading this and…Wow!
I’m pretty bummed about Kurt. But it was so well done.
Andy should be happy though, there was a quick shot of Iceman in the beginning! 🙂
From reading Second Coming I had thought it would be Kurt. Even then, reading it actually happen did have some shock value. And I thought it was great. Not him dying, although he had been annoying in the other Second Coming chapters, but just the way he died. I don’t want to give away too much but the entire handling of his death from the battle scene to island scene, in my opinion, was just brilliant.
I just assumed that Rogue took the powers of all the mutants available (she also took Psylocke’s powers by the way) just as a precaution. That way she’d have more powers at her disposal and give her the option to grab Hope and fly away if she needed to.
i generally always liked Nightcrawler but he’s suffered through some poor writing and story lines, most recently just being whiney.. he went out like a champ though
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Yeah, that whole exploded clothes coming back thing bothered me, too. I thought that stuff only happened on Loony Tunes.
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