The Sinister Regime is still rampant, but the Nightcrawler chimera stands against them. Find out if Vox Ignis and Mother Righteous can stop the Sinister clones in Nightcrawlers #2 by Marvel Comics!

NIGHTCRAWLERS #2 (OF 3)

Writer: Si Spurrier
Artist: Andrea Di Vito
Colorist: Jim Charalampidis
Letterer: VC’s Clayton Cowles
Editor: Jordan D. White
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: March 8th, 2023 

Previously in Nightcrawler: The Sinister Era began 100 years ago. Vox Ignis freed the nightcrawler chimera from Sinister’s control and developed allies in the war against the Quiet Council. Wagnerine and the nightcrawler assassins called themselves the Holy Thieves. Their goal is to loot holy items to build a sacred weapon with the help of Mother Righteous.

Nightcrawlers #2 starts with an overview of the last few decades. It shows the looting of Asgard and the attempt to build the weapon. The problem is that the Nightcrawlers are infertile and are slowly dying out. They will likely all return to the control of Sinister before their mission is complete. Wagnerine, a chimera between X-23 and Nightcrawler, has a natural healing factor that allows her to be fertile again. However, when the child was born, the baby teleported away.

Realizing things must change, Wagnerine summons the original Nightcrawler to attack Mother Righteous. However, Mother Righteous is too powerful and quickly dispatches Kurt. In the last moments, Wagnerine teleports away, believing her child is still alive.

Most of Nightcrawlers #2 dealt with information dumping. There were scenes with the original Legion and other characters that provided context to the world at large. However, I struggled to transition from world-building to the primary plot. In fact, when Wagnerine was discussing her child, I thought it was just a backdrop about the more significant issue. This made the first read-through unenjoyable. When I realized the narrative structure, I focused more on the clear writing objective.

Nightcrawler #2 makes several promises that aren’t fulfilled to the reader. For one, I expected more Asgard stuff because of the first few pages (let alone the front cover), and I never got that. I expected more from Vox Ignis and Mother Righteous, but they were secondary characters to Wagnerine in this issue. Lastly, the original Nightcrawler had the potential for significant impact but fell short when Mother Righteous defeated it quickly. When we don’t keep promises to the reader, we lose the emotional impact, regardless of how cool an idea Wagnerine’s offspring brings.

The art was solid throughout the issue. The character designs give a lot of room to flex an artist’s skill. Unfortunately, everything ends up being blue and cold on the page, and I would have liked a contrast of warm colors occasionally. Still, good work from the creative team!

Despite my reservations, I am intrigued by the ideas in Nightcrawlers #2. The Sins of Sinister event provide great ideas that work on the comic page, but I fear we don’t have the page count to give these ideas the space it deserves. The comic has to explain decades worth of history and have a plot point in a single short issue. With that in mind, Nightcrawlers #2 is a 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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Nightcrawler #2

70%

70%

Intriguing

Nightcrawler #2 is an excellent story that suffers from too much explanation of the world around them.

• Writing

  7
• Art

  8
• Coloring

  6
• User Ratings (0 Votes)
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