Bounding into Comics published an article on the “harmful elements” that have slowly been eroding the Big 2 comic book companies in the U.S. While the article takes issue with the most recent changes to Superboy and the latest iteration of Robin, anyone who has been following comics over the last decade isn’t truly surprised by these alterations. DC and Marvel have been steadily working up to them for years, which is why this author cashed in her Marvel fan chips and abandoned their comics in 2015/2016 – the same years Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War came out.
Admittedly, I stayed on the MCU train until Endgame. I knew the comics were being poisoned and that this venom would spread to the rest of Marvel’s media. But I had started on the MCU journey and I hoped they could at least finish the Thanos arc without capitulating to SJW grandstanding. For the most part, they accomplished it, and I have ceased to watch anything related to the theatrical Marvel universe.
Oh, I’ve seen a few clips from the TV shows and read up on a couple of them, as well as the Black Widow movie. But doing even that tends to be painful for me, both as a professional writer and a fan. Any halfway competent storyteller will look at Black Widow or Falcon and the Winter Soldier, for instance, and tear their hair at the thousands of missed opportunities in both these branches of the franchise. Many fans who dabble or keep up the hobby of writing fan fiction have done their best to rectify these errors, and it says something profoundly sad that most of their output is far and away better than the official canon.
From a fan perspective, it hurts to see these characters which great men created and built up over the years be reduced to cheap trash. Watching the actors and actresses who put their hearts into the roles be forced to support these asinine alterations hurts as much, if not more, since they did some of their best creative work for Marvel and its fans. Now they are being compelled, to one degree or another, to bend the knee to the pathetic mini-tyrants running the company. It is disgusting and heart-wrenching.
One would think, after reading the Bounding into Comics article linked above, that this latest news would be just as painful. At this point, however, I am largely numb to such terrible news. The comics have been dead for years now; what we have is a walking zombie that, sadly, hasn’t finished eating the brains of those who made the MCU worth watching in the first place.
Still, reading the article did prompt some thoughts for me. These were centered on the news (to me) that Nightcrawler/Kurt Wagner, arguably one of the most Catholic characters in Marvel Comics, has ceased to be Catholic and has started his own mutant-centric religion. He also committed murder for the first time, killing Professor X’s disturbed son David, a.k.a. Legion. The panel from that moment is this one:
The murder isn’t that surprising. Neither, sadly, is Nightcrawler turning away from Catholicism. Since X-Men: Evolution, Marvel’s writers have had little attention to spare for Kurt’s faith. It wasn’t a sharp departure at the time, and when I first saw the series, this lack didn’t even register. Only when I went back to the 1990s animated series did I remember that ‘Crawler, as he is affectionately known, was Catholic.
In fact, in the comics, Kurt studied to become a priest – and was nearly ordained on two different occasions. The ‘90s series made him a monk and gave him some of the best lines in the entire show. As John Trent, author of the Bounding article points out, Marvel has stronger ties to Catholicism than DC. They published a comic book on the life of the then-living Pope John Paul II, as well as a number of comics about various saints, including Francis of Assisi. One could say, therefore, that the canon of the Catholic Church and her roster of saints are Marvel canon as well. 😉
So, some ask, shouldn’t this treatment of Nightcrawler hurt more than anything else? It is a great tragedy even for one so numb as I. But that is not what got me thinking about the scene in the comic panel above.
What caught my attention was the callous, off-handed treatment of Nightcrawler’s sudden lack of faith. You can see it in the image above: the first panel shows the real Nightcrawler. The compassionate, abused soul faced with doing something he doesn’t want to do, but believes he has no alternative to doing. The person in second panel, though – that is not Nightcrawler. It is someone else; someone the writer controls, and who is not technically acting on his own.
Thus, the third panel has no meaning whatsoever to fans of Kurt Wagner, for the simple reason that the person shooting isn’t him. It is a meat puppet that just happens to be wearing his appearance.
While this alteration is meant as an insult – and it is indeed that – the affront was not an unexpected offense. Catholics are not told the world will love them; we are, rather, told the world will hate us. If the world loves us, something is clearly wrong with us, specifically. The abuse heaped on Catholics at present in comics is nothing new, nor will it be when it happens again in the future.
In that case, why am I talking about Nightcrawler and his faith? The fact is that his faith is part of his character. Marvel has violated one of the basic tenets of storycraft not only by having him toss it aside for no discernible reason, but for the manner in which they show it happening.
Once upon a time, it was not unexpected or unwelcome for a character’s faith – whatever it was – to be challenged. Some characters even lost their faith, if only temporarily. Razorfist described one such incident for Solomon Kane, and the video about Wolverine’s Christianity shows the angry Canadian sparing no barb when he questions Kurt’s faith. One could argue, quite believably, that Frank Castle’s turning into the Punisher is emblematic of his loss of faith in God’s justice after seeing the instruments of said justice refuse to punish those who murdered his family.
These things are real things in the sense that people of faith face such challenges and losses every day. Like Solomon Kane, some people have been beaten and battered to the point that one incident makes them snap at God, verbally if not via action. Like Kurt, believers are faced with angry, hurt people who have questions about suffering which are difficult to answer. The Punisher is a direct representation of “there but for the grace of God go I”; it may not take one bad day to turn someone into Frank Castle, but anyone honest can picture becoming that type of beast all too easily.
Yet in this comic Marvel treats Kurt’s loss of faith as if, in the end, it doesn’t really matter. As though he can simply discard his Catholicism as easily as he can tear off one of his gloves and throw it away without noticing that he has done so. As though it has no bearing on his identity as a person, let alone as a superhero or member of the X-Men.
That, to me, is the most startlingly thing in the panel. I expected them to remove Kurt’s faith and childishly exclaim that they were “brave” and “bold” to do so. I even expected them to have him commit murder (hence why I said he did it for the first time – they’ve had other heroes fall into this trap in prior years). Given a comment they put in Kurt’s mouth in the Avengers vs. X-Men storyline, making him the head of a mutant-worshipping cult is not so startling, either.
But the way the change happens in those first two panels is interesting. Anyone who looks carefully at Nightcrawler’s face can see the difference. They can see, essentially, Kurt Wagner being bodysnatched and replaced by a pod person.
While there is no way for this author to guess how many other people may have noticed that change, the fact remains that it is noticeable. That hints not only at a lack of concern for the craft, but at a hubris that considers the audience too stupid to react in any other way than with their emotions. Marvel is acting like the bullies in the schoolyard breaking one’s favorite toy, calling someone names, or holding the target’s head in the toilet bowl. They don’t have a cause to advance or even a cause driving their actions.
They just want to hear us scream, cry, beg, and cajole. All they get out of doing things like this is the perverse satisfaction of making us suffer.
Of course, some will take this time to quote Our Lord’s admonition to turn the other cheek. That, contrary to popular opinion, is not an instruction to be a doormat; it is meant to encourage restraint in one’s response to injustice. In the Ancient world, if a man was struck across the face, it was considered a challenge that meant the one abused should strike out at his attacker immediately. By instead offering the other cheek, the Ancient world would have seen the victim of the attack as the stronger party while the man who struck him was shamed for acting out of turn.
Thus, if you will, I shall explain how I turn the other cheek to Marvel in the second half of this post. Stay tuned for more, readers, and do not forget to check out my Amazon Author page. There is more to come and you do not want to miss it!
I see this kind of thing in all sorts of literature--the only kind of Christian clergyman liked by modern writers and publishers is one that's having a crisis of faith. The one who goes about his business of mercy and education is considered an idiot--because only an idiot wouldn't question his faith, right? Show me an English novel with a vicar and I'll show you a novel with someone who claims to be questioning a faith he actually knows nothing about.
Nightcrawler is a symptom of their SJW spread. The X-Men is only about Identity politics, and they're obviously all Magneto now. Which is funny, since he's so much of a Nazi it wasn't even subtle about it. Now the SJWs have become what they claim to hate, and it's so obvious in their execution that everyone can see it but the content creators -- because it's not hate when they do it, obviously.
Why should they care about Kurt's faith? It's not like they care about anything else about the X-Men. The comic that was all about being accepted by society and changing the hearts and minds of people who "are afraid of what they don't understand" has turned into a comic about the ubermensch setting themselves up as being morally and biologically superior. Beast has become Doctor Mengele, using science to enslave creatures to his will. Cyclops was the first to become Magneto.
This isn't X-Men, they're the mirror universe version of the X-Men.