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Nightcrawler is a Sex-Positive Superhero. Here’s How—And Why It Matters
🕑 Added 2022-04-28 23:25:48 +0000 UTC
Collage of Nightcrawler images, 1989-2019, penciled by (left to right) Robertson, Davis, Frigeri, Wagner, Davis, Robertson
By Anna Peppard
If you care about seeing inclusive sexiness in your stories, reading superhero comics can be challenging. And yet, I continue to love them, for reasons that are, ironically, directly related to their depictions of sexuality. I’m drawn to stories starring flamboyant mutants, aliens, robots and plain-old-regular humans in brightly colored spandex posing and strutting and intimately colliding and tangling because of the possibilities they offer for diverse, deviant sexiness. I particularly adore the deliciously subversive fact these possibilities hide in plain sight, baked into the fabric of an officially heteropatriarchal genre that’s nonetheless centrally concerned with bodily freedom, experimentation, and transformation. Many of my personal favorite examples can be found in comics starring Nightcrawler.
Historically, mainstream superhero comics have rarely lived up to their sexy potential. More often than not, sex is linked with violence, or else violence stands in for sex, and sexiness that doesn’t involve the stereotypical objectification of female bodies for a stereotypical male gaze usually has to be salvaged from scraps and metaphors. That’s what makes exceptions so precious—those rare moments when you’re encouraged to look differently and feel loved by a genre that too-seldom loves you back. For most of his comics history, Nightcrawler has loved me back.
If you’re only familiar with the X-Men’s resident fork-tailed blue teleporter from movies, the ’92 X-Men cartoon, or the Krakoan era, you might be surprised to hear he’s one of the most sex-positive male characters in the history of superhero comics. This sex-positivity is both subversive and canonical, consistently emphasized across the character’s forty-five-year history. Grab your popcorn and step right up for a singularly seductive sermon on the death-defying, boundary-busting, heart-heartening importance of the multitudinously marvelous mutant who’s part man, part monster, all sexy—Kurt Wagner, the amazing Nightcrawler.
I’m eager to gush about the greatness of Nightcrawler offering himself as a Christmas gift to Amanda Sefton in Claremont and Paul Smith’s Uncanny X-Men #168 (1983), but first, I need to address the elephant in the room—Amanda is Kurt’s foster sister. The intent behind this storytelling choice has never been clear. If it’s a kink, it’s underplayed, the canonical story reducing it to little more than an odd plot detail. Maybe the relationship was meant to explore taboos, or perhaps Kurt and Amanda, raised in a German circus by a sorceress, are less tethered to traditional American notions of family. In any case, because the story leaves these possibilities unexamined, I’m going to stick with discussing those things I am sure of—like the fact the scene at hand presents a joyful erotic exchange between consenting adults. It also deliberately foregrounds a female gaze and Kurt’s willingness to play to it in ways that were revolutionary and remain remarkable.
Image Caption: Uncanny X-Men #168, Marvel, April 1983, Claremont and Smith
Kurt’s pose in this scene is a reference to Cosmopolitan magazine’s first male centerfold from 1972, featuring Burt Reynolds reclining naked on a bearskin rug, a cigarillo stashed between the white teeth of his similarly playful smile as a single hand discretely covers his genitals. The Reynolds centerfold appeared at the behest of legendary Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown, author the '60s bestseller Sex and the Single Girl, who wanted to prove women had the same “visual appetites” as men. It was an instant sensation. Parodies and imitations abounded, including an entire magazine, Playgirl, that debuted the following year. Stan Lee notably copied the pose the same year Nightcrawler did, in a promotional photo that was, at the time, considered too racy to be released; the original photo didn’t become widely available until Marvel historian Sean Howe shared it online in 2012.
Lots has changed since 1972, but lots also hasn’t. The parody of the Burt Reynolds centerfold used to market the first Deadpool film, or the overt eroticism of Colossus’ recent Hellfire Gala look, are memorable in part because where male superheroes are concerned, these images remain unusual; Google “Batman’s penis controversy” or “heroes don’t do that” for evidence of the superhero genre’s continued discomfort with the idea of male superheroes having real or rich sexual lives. In contrast, 39 years ago, Kurt Wagner was totally cool with being consumed by women. Which is not to suggest the appeal of Kurt or Burt is limited to women; while both Nightcrawler posing for Amanda and Reynolds posing for Cosmo foreground a heterosexual female gaze, anyone of any gender or sexual orientation who wants to look is welcome to. Arguably, the Nightcrawler scene is especially disruptive of gender and sexual binaries since it unconventionally eroticizes an unconventional male body within a space that typically assumes a straight male reader.
Still, because Nightcrawler isn’t naked, his pose could be considered tamer. To make up for this, Claremont and Smith double down on the theme of consumption. The most potent phallic symbols in this scene are also liquid consumables. This includes the champagne bottle and Nightcrawler’s prehensile tail curled around a glass of champagne, both of which are angled toward Amanda, and toward the reader, since we’re sharing Amanda’s perspective gazing at Kurt. The replication of Nightcrawler in a toy of himself—the “Bamf doll” notably positioned in front of his genitals—combined with the large present framing the panel ties a nice bow around everything, which is given an additional flourish by Amanda’s exclamation of “Yum!” In an excellent thread on Nightcrawler, Cosmo, and the sexual revolution, The Claremont Run describes this as “a perfect encapsulation of the consumption metaphor.” More bluntly: Amanda is unashamedly hungry to consume and/or play with Kurt. There’s humor here, but the sexiness isn’t a joke; the following issue makes good on the promise of unwrapping Kurt by displaying his implicitly naked body in appealing contexts of romance and action—in a hot tub with Amanda and teleporting around the city to save Candy Southern (who Kurt subsequently drops in the hot tub with the still-naked Amanda).
But the most important difference between the Nightcrawler scene and the Reynolds centerfold is the fact Kurt’s a mutant, and specifically, a mutant marked by monstrousness. He’s got blue fur, pointed ears, fangs, a forked tail, glowing yellow eyes, three-fingered hands and feet—your standard demon package, similar to the ones that menaced so many maidens and gentlewomen (and sometimes gentlemen) in Medieval and Renaissance art. Nightcrawler is a sexy monster. And that matters. In Western culture, anything that’s not the stereotypical desires of cis gendered, straight, white, able-bodied men has often been characterized as monstrous; other desires have been persecuted, pathologized, or simply ignored by those wielding the most cultural capital. Yet Uncanny X-Men #168 offers us a sexy mutant demon we’re not only allowed but encouraged to consume, happily and without guilt, because he’s welcoming our gazes and because the exchange of looks doesn’t neglect subjectivity; while objectification is often thought to diminish agency, Kurt’s sexiness extends from and deepens his character.
Image Caption: Excalibur #44, Marvel, November 1991, Davis
Uncanny X-Men #168 flips the script on a whole bunch of bigoted, prudish ideas about who gets to be sexy and does so within a genre that’s better known for replicating those ideas. It also connects Nightcrawler’s liberated sexuality to his defining rejection of the expectations a judgmental society heaps upon his connotatively monstrous body. Many subsequent stories build on this foundation.
If you’re the least bit intrigued by the concept of sexy Nightcrawler, I highly encourage you to read Excalibur (1988-1998), a UK-based X-Men series created by Claremont and Alan Davis. For a representative example of the type of Nightcrawler content regularly on offer—consider a scene from Excalibur #44 (1991), written and drawn by Davis, which begins with Kurt, rocking an enormous leg cast and tiny track shorts, opening the door upside-down with his tail. The visitor, Inspector Dai Thomas, is intrigued by the view. But not as much as his companion, Miss Emelia Witherspoon, a rare visibly older woman in a space that prioritizes impossibly perky youth, who calls Kurt a “devilishly handsome rogue” and asks if she “might be permitted to stroke [his] fur.” If you read Kurt as racialized, that request’s a bit suspect, but Kurt welcomes the attention. He smiles proudly as we learn, through Miss Witherspoon, that his fur approximates the texture of velvet.
Kurt’s shamelessness in this scene is particularly notable given the reason his leg is broken. Captain Britain/Brian Braddock initiated a fight in the previous issue because of Kurt’s simmering attraction to Brian’s girlfriend, an “empathic metamorph” named Meggan—and Meggan’s simmering attraction to Kurt. Kurt and Meggan’s longtime flirtation, which commonly features Meggan shapeshifting into a female version of Kurt in response to his desire, hers, or both, can be problematic depending on how you read Meggan’s agency, and the comics can be frustratingly ambiguous on this point. As I’ve written before, with Meggan and in general, Kurt’s flirting is only fun when it’s consensual. That said, Kurt and Meggan’s flirtations can also be read as a form of transformative empathy.
Image Caption: Excalibur #43, Marvel, November 1991, Davis
When Kurt has a sexy dream about Meggan in the gorgeous three-page wordless sequence that opens Davis’ Excalibur #43 (1991), he transforms Meggan into his heart’s desire, which is that female-presenting version of himself. This is clearly narcissistic, as well as potentially Freudian, since Kurt’s biological mother, Mystique, is another blue shapeshifter. Meggan doesn’t have agency here; it’s Kurt’s dream. And yet, this dream communicates a powerful fantasy of acceptance and equality, and, perhaps, a desire to become as well as have. Meggan choosing Kurt’s features affirms their beauty; in his dream, Kurt is beautiful like Meggan, and Meggan is beautiful like Kurt. Moreover, Kurt desiring a woman who not only resembles him but mirrors and matches his powerful athleticism suggests that for all his talk about rescuing damsels in distress, what he truly wants is a partner—a co-adventurer who performs with him rather than for him. The mixing and merging of power and grace throughout the sequence, contained within each body and exchanged between them, also makes Kurt and Meggan equally accessible to an erotic gaze—or rather, erotic gazes, since the gender fluidity at play creates a multitude of affective possibilities.
But because Kurt and Meggan’s relationship gets all the attention, I also want to spotlight a lesser-known example of Kurt’s Excalibur-era sex-positivity—a scene from Excalibur #55 (1992), again written and drawn by Davis, featuring Kurt and the alien warrior Cerise sharing a very intense kiss. Cerise, a newbie to Earth customs, wants to learn about kissing. So she does, seizing a surprised Kurt for an embrace. Kurt could teleport free, but doesn’t. Instead, over the course of four panels (and, according to the grandfather clock in the background, seven full minutes in heaven), he progresses from modestly swooning to matching Cerise’s power to swooning way harder, kicking up his leg in a connotatively feminine posture of arousal before becoming a puddle of pleasure, his phallic-yet-fluid tail tied in knots. There’s an ungenerous reading of this scene where we’re meant to laugh at a man being humiliated by a sexually aggressive woman. But that’s not my reading. Kurt blushes, and is the subject of knowing smiles. Yet at this point in the series, he’s the respected leader of the team, and he’ll later have a relationship with Cerise; this is a meet-cute, not a one-time punchline. We’re invited to romanticize Kurt’s attraction to a big strong lady who’s not beholden to Earthy gender norms. As a fellow big strong lady—I love that for him and me.
Image Caption: Excalibur #55, Marvel, October 1992, Davis
This scene with Cerise is also typical rather than exceptional. Throughout Excalibur, Nightrcrawler’s sexiness often features elements of gender play. In Excalibur #1 (1988), Meggan compares him to Joan Collins after interrupting him during a sexy bath. In Excalibur #6-7 (1988), he flirts and bonds with a gender ambiguous gargoyle. In Excalibur #15 (1989), he flirts with Brian Braddock while dressed in female drag. And in the fondly remembered Excalibur #16 (1989), “Warlord,” a send-up of John Carter of Mars and other sword and sorcery stories, Kurt plays into a macho heroic role only to become the consort of a succubus. When he realizes the beautiful queen is actually evil, he does the right thing and rejects her. But where most succubus stories moralize giving in to temptation, Kurt’s seduction does little to dampen his enthusiasm for sexual adventures; in the following issue, he attends a bacchanalian orgy.
Excalibur changes when Claremont and Davis leave, but Nightcrawler’s sexiness endures. In the final issue of the series, Excalibur #125 (1998), written by Ben Raab with pencils by Dale Eagelsham, chronicling Brian and Meggan’s wedding, Kurt welcomes overtures from Lila Cheney, Cerise, and Amanda, the latter ladies lustily fighting over his affections. It’s corny and the catfighting sucks. But it does confirm Kurt’s status as a ladies’ man, and specifically, the type of ladies’ man who’s as comfortable receiving attention as offering it, usually from decidedly powerful women.
Repression and Resistance in the 21st Century
When Excalibur ends, Nightcrawler goes back to the X-Men, rejoining the team in Uncanny X-Men #360 (1998). Two years of publishing time later, following a “six months later” time jump, for reasons possibly related to movie synergy, Claremont made Kurt a celibate Catholic priest-in-training. Though Kurt’s Catholicism was revealed back in Uncanny X-Men #165 (1983), only a handful of previous stories had substantially referenced it; Kurt suddenly being traditionally devout enough to pursue priesthood in X-Men Volume 2 #100 (2000) was meant as a shocking twist. It certainly shocked me, but the fate of the story suggests it wasn’t a hit. Eight months later, before explaining how or why Kurt pursued priesthood, Claremont was reassigned. And Kurt’s priesthood was soon given the mightiest of all retcons—in Uncanny X-Men #423-424 (2003), it was revealed as a dream, or rather a nightmare, since it was specifically explained as brainwashing by an anti-mutant cult.
The Chuck Austen-penned retcon is all kinds of ridiculous, yet Nightcrawler’s reasons for rejecting priesthood strike me as pretty in-character. In Uncanny X-Men #417 (2003), following months of nightmares and emotional distress, Kurt has a sexualized encounter with Stacy X, a sex worker with the mutant power to manipulate pheremones, who is a member of the team led by Kurt at this time. Stacy is the aggressor; she’s naked while Kurt’s in uniform and pins him to the bed as she kisses him, though she insists she can sense Kurt’s desire. Kurt quickly extricates himself and seeks out his mentor, Father Whitney, for guidance. But in Uncanny X-Men #419 (2003), what starts as a confession becomes a heated exchange. Kurt tells Father Whitney he “can no longer justify the repression of desire,” a decision he admits is partly informed by “the recent troubles in the Church,” i.e., the Catholic Church’s role in covering up sexual abuse committed by priests. This scene problematically links celibacy to sexual abuse; this is not a sophisticated critique of anything. But it does emphasize Nightcrawler’s belief in sexual freedom and justice, which is so fundamental that even intense psychological manipulation can’t extinguish it. Importantly, Kurt rejects priesthood before he knows he’s being brainwashed, and Stacy is adamant she didn’t use her pheromone powers; Kurt’s decisions and desires are his own. He has never subsequently pursued priesthood.
Image Caption: Nightcrawler #5, Marvel, March 2005, Aguirre-Sacasa and Robertson
Nightcrawler’s first post-priest solo series, Nightcrawler Volume 3 (2004-2006), by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa with art by Darick Robertson, sees his sexiness recentered, albeit tentatively. Kurt turns down several sexual overtures in this series, including implicit ones from Storm and explicit ones from deeply smitten Night Nurse Christine Palmer. Yet the presence of these overtures, plus some very deliberate gaze-y-ness—this series includes two extended shower scenes that generously display Kurt’s body while interested women look on—indulges Kurt’s erotic appeal, as well as his penchant for shameless exhibitionism. Importantly, as in the Cosmo callback from Uncanny #168, while the in-story surrogates who gaze at Kurt are women, his appeal is never limited to those gazes. Aguirre-Sacasa is no stranger to queering popular fantasies. The openly gay creator of Riverdale (2017-present) debuted his play Archie's Weird Fantasy (later retitled Weird Comic Book Fantasy), featuring America’s favorite teen coming out of the closet, a year before his tenure on Nightcrawler.
Nightcrawler’s erotic appeal and exhibitionism are similarly on display in his final solo outing before his death, the clumsily titled X-Men: Manifest Destiny Nightcrawler (2009), written by James Asmus and pencilled by Jorge Molina and Adrian Syaf. In this comic, Kurt contemplates quitting the X-Men, doubting his usefulness amid an atmosphere of ever-escalating violence. He gets his mojo back by responding to an invitation to visit the newly opened “Nightcrawler Museum” in his hometown of Weinzeldorf, Germany. The museum is run by a woman named Mara Keller, whose bookish demeanor and unabashed devotion to all things Nightcrawler situate her as a fangirl surrogate. Kurt kisses Mara, and possibly sleeps with her, declaring, as they embrace, “I’ve got a fire we need to put out.” I’m suspicious of the power dynamics involved in Kurt having sex with a fan, but far be it from me to suggest Mara didn’t know exactly what she was doing. I’m familiar enough with Nightcrawler’s appeal to believe a woman might build a museum in his honor to honeypot him.
Image Caption: Nightcrawler #12, Marvel, May 2015, Claremont and Nauck
The next time Nightcrawler’s character was rebooted, following his 2010 death and 2013 resurrection, his sexuality was strongly asserted. Countering the priest turn a decade before, Claremont, who wrote Nightcrawler Volume 4 (2014-2015) with Todd Nauck on pencils, left little doubt about the first thing Kurt would want to do with his new body—he’d want to get laid. So he seeks out Amanda, greeting her in a callback to his own callback to the Cosmo pose. After Amanda sacrifices herself to save the world, Kurt’s devastated, but quickly finds comfort in the arms of a new beau, an alien bounty hunter named Bloody Bess. Though Kurt admits Bess is a “psychotic killer,” that doesn’t stop him from spending a weekend with her at a “very private hideaway,” an event he commemorates with a photograph where he’s embracing Bess with a playful grin, his tail coiled down her bare thigh as she reaches into his low-buttoned shirt to caress his velvety chest. When Kurt shows the photograph to Betsy Braddock, she asks him about Amanda. To which Kurt replies, “Different bond, no less real.” This presents Kurt as someone who believes it’s meaningful rather than shameful to take pleasure where you find it, and that pleasure itself is meaningful. Some relationships may be sexual and romantic; some may be purely romantic or purely sexual; some are neither; all are valuable.
The most recent Nightcrawler solo, Age of X-Man: The Amazing Nightcrawler (2019) written by Seanan McGuire and pencilled by Juan Frigeri, foregrounds the relationship between sexual freedom and social justice. The context of this series is a lot to explain, but basically: a powerful reality-warping mutant (the namesake X-Man/Nate Grey) remakes the world so the X-Men are no longer outcasts—they become beloved heroes, living “perfect” lives. The catch is that perfection requires denouncing biological family connections and sexuality. Kurt and Meggan, recast as Hollywood stars with no memory of their past, plentifully resist this directive, making it the second story from the past twenty years in which Kurt heroically defies powerful brainwashing that attempts to repress his sexuality. McGuire also allegorizes Kurt and Meggan’s romance as queer. In issue #2, Kurt and Meggan don carnivalesque masks to visit an underground club for mutants who share their forbidden desires; diverse couples, many of them same-sex, gender ambiguous, or possessing visible mutations like fur and tentacles, are pictured enjoying each other’s company alongside Kurt and Meggan.
Socially conscious sex-positivity is also a key feature of Nightcrawler’s mentorship of younger visibly different mutants. In Nightcrawler Volume 4 #6 (2014), he counsels Scorpion Boy about the importance of not being a “nice guy”—of accepting affection from women as friendship rather than an automatic invitation to romance. And in Amazing X-Men Volume 2 #13 (2014) written by James Tynion IV and pencilled by Jorge Jiménez, Kurt empathizes with Anole’s experience of embodied difference to encourage him to go on a date with the boy he likes. Anole does, and the boy likes him back; the issue ends with Anole and his date walking down a sunny street, holding hands. In the same issue, Kurt viciously decapitates an illusion of himself spewing homophobic hatred at Northstar, further assuring us his sex-positivity doesn't discriminate. McGuire’s queerness and Tynion IV’s bisexuality lends additional resonance to their stories about Nightcrawler; in recent years, LGBTQ+ creators seem especially attuned to the history and importance of the character’s sex-positivity and its potential to signal inclusion beyond heteronormative paradigms.
Image Caption: Amazing X-Men #13, Marvel, January 2015, Tynion IV and Jiménez
Speaking of queerness—no discussion of Nightcrawler’s sex-positivity can be complete without mentioning Esad Ribic’s infamous cover of Wolverine Volume 3 #6 (2003), released, interestingly, a few months after Kurt’s priesthood was retconned. Ribic acknowledges he based this cover on erotica and is surprised he got away with it. While I can’t prove it, I suspect this cover snuck through because the people who approve such things assumed either the male-male context or Kurt’s monstrousness precluded sexiness. But for those of us who see Nightcrawler's unique body as a feature not a bug—this cover is a gift that keeps on giving. Notably, while Logan is angrily brooding, Kurt is, as usual, shameless, posing proudly as Michelangelo’s statue of David.
Which brings us to the current comics. I’m not the only fan or critic who took issue with aspects of Way of X #3, a 2021 Nightcrawler-led comic written by Si Spurrier with art by Bob Quinn. But for the purposes of this essay, I’m going to focus on the parts involving Nightcrawler. In the wake of the raucous Hellfire Gala, Kurt finds his old teammate Stacy X distributing contraception. Kurt is opposed to Stacy doing this, but not, he says, because of his Catholicism. Instead, it’s because of “Make More Mutants,” a law created by Kurt which is the first of three central tenets of the X-Men’s new nation on the living island of Krakoa. When Kurt subsequently learns Stacy has built a safe space for mutants to experience consensual pleasure, physical and otherwise, he condemns her for “starting a brothel in the Garden of Eden,” and reaffirms that according to “our first law,” mutants are “told to multiply, not surrender to… empty desire.” He also learns babies are being routinely, anonymously left on the metaphorical doorstep of an improvised nursery. We're not shown the individual circumstances informing these decisions, but the surrounding context strongly suggests a lack of access to contraception—and, presumably, abortion—as contributing factors.
Image Caption: Way of X #3, Marvel, June 2021, Spurrier and Quinn
To be fair, this version of Nightcrawler may be influenced by the psychic villain Onslaught. But Onslaught wasn’t around when Kurt created the “Make More Mutants” law, and generally exaggerates impulses characters already had. Stacy also punches Kurt, perhaps teaching him a lesson. But it's unsettling, to say the least, that this is a lesson a lifelong ladies’ man would need to learn. It’s also fair to situate this comic in context. Comics, like all art and stories, don’t exist in a vacuum; they exist in conversation with history and culture.
It's always worth questioning who’s being served when characters with non-normative bodies have their sexuality intentionally repressed or excised. Does it productively engage cultural prejudices or reaffirm them? It’s also worth questioning who’s being served when a male character with a long history of welcoming diverse gazes and actively resisting sexual repression suddenly comes out against sexual freedom. I am a woman existing in a world where we’re being charged with murder for having miscarriages and large financial rewards are being offered to people willing to inform on their neighbors for seeking reproductive healthcare. I am also a woman with ample experience fighting for space in a culture and genre that rarely respects my perspective or desires, who strongly believed Nightcrawler was an ally and deeply valued that allyship. From this subject position, I reacted viscerally to Kurt condemning Stacy, and not in a good way. It hit like my hero was condemning me–my desires and my bodily autonomy. And because these issues with reproductive rights were presented in relation to a law governing all social relations on Krakoa, it made me wonder if I could ever feel welcome in that space again. Almost a year later, I’m still wondering.
When handled thoughtfully, stories about navigating bodily or sexual shame are certainly worth telling. Yet what initially drew me to Nightcrawler was the fact he was one of the only monster-heroes in the entire superhero genre who wasn’t centrally defined by that particular type of shame. That story’s also worth telling, and was being told the last time Kurt interacted with Stacy X, in “Saturdays Are for the Body Count,” a vignette written by Leah Williams with pencils by Michael Shelfer, appearing in Domino Annual #1 (2018). In this story, Stacy, distraught after being depowered, is welcomed into a support group led by Kurt for, in his words, “non-passing mutants and friends to come together and work on reducing our critically negative body images.” “The goal,” says Kurt, “is to distance ourselves from human expectations of acceptable mutant bodies.” Though Nightcrawler’s sexual identity isn’t directly addressed in this story, Williams, like many writers and artists before her, shows she understands the body-positivity that informs Kurt’s sex-positivity. It’s also significant that Kurt is shown empathizing with a female sex worker, the same way it’s significant he’s shown opposing one in Way of X.
Image Caption: Domino Annual #1, Marvel, November 2018, Williams and Shelfer
X-Men: The Onslaught Revelation, a one-shot by Spurrier and Quinn concluding the Way of X storyline, offers some much-needed hope for sexier days ahead. Kurt ends that comic planning to use a psychic temple created by Legion as a base of operations for a new mission, embracing beliefs inspired by the needs of Krakoa; this temple may include a version of Stacy’s “brothel.” There are also indications the upcoming Spurrier-penned Legion of X might be taking a different tack, including the fact the first issue has a variant cover by Nick Robles, an artist known for his unapologetically thirsty Nightcrawler art. But has the issue of reproductive rights on Krakoa been resolved? If so, it happened off-panel, and Kurt never directly admitted he was wrong. Kurt’s current view of his own sexuality also remains a mystery. Does he still believe sex that’s not for making babies is “empty”? And why, with his history, would he ever believe that? For me, Nightcrawler’s sexiness was never skin-deep; the things he stood for were at least as important as the possibilities of his prehensile tail.
Maybe I shouldn’t expect mainstream superhero comics to offer inclusive sexiness. And yet, they have before, and so has Nightcrawler. Like real-life people, Kurt Wagner is sometimes insecure; he sometimes doubts himself and struggles to decide what he wants; he sometimes makes bad choices and feels guilty and angry. Yet in the vast majority of his comic book stories, he has some core beliefs. This includes the belief his unique body, like every unique body, is special—even divine—and so is the pleasure that flows from and into that body. This version of Kurt Wagner passionately embraces sexual freedom and diversity for the same reason—because he knows, as well as any mutant out there, that all desires, and all bodies, deserve all kinds of love.
This version of Kurt Wagner made me feel loved and helped me love myself better. Which is why I love him in turn. And why I hope whatever comes next is sexy as hell.
Image Caption: Excalibur #16, Marvel, December 1989, Claremont and Davis
