Thoughts

And so this four part mini series stumbles to an end, with a final issue very much like the previous one. Not really any sort of plot – just Cockrum winging it, running through a collection of half ideas. Stringling them together to get to the page count. It’s such a shame after the fun of the first two issues that it ends like this. There are plenty of Errol Flynn / pulp sci-fi stories that you could have stretched voer four issues, ending in this one with Nightcrawler having defeated the evil threat to Swashbuckleland, made a whole host of interesting friends and having won the heart of a princess. (only to be teleported home at the end!)

I guess it might have been that Cockrum thought such a tale would be too predicatable, and so deliberately changed things up. But even then there really isn’t *anything* to these last two issues that make that change seem worth it. There are ways, I think, it could have gone. Return To Oz was a film around this time, bringing Dorothy back to a land much changed since our last visit. Maybe go down that route with Ktty’s Fairy Tale – return to the fantasy world decades later, when things are darker and much has changed.

(although, Return To Oz sunk at the box office so it might have been wise to avoid that route)

Anyway – there are moments in this that have ideas I would have loved to have seen more off. The adventures of tiny Bamf could have held up an issue on its own, and Cockrum really captures their fun, mischeavious quality.

Cockrum does have quite a thing, however, for having his lead surrounded by women. All of whom are quite utterly desperate for him. It was pretty much the plot of the Bizarre Adventures story this refers back to. And here he gets surrounded by lady Nightcrawlers who all want him. Before he returns to the world of sexy women who call him God. It’s such a weird repeating idea – a very unsexy horniness running through the story, and again there’s no real pay off to it.

In the end its a shame. Nightcrawler is a great character – possibly mt favourite X-man. There is so much about him that could sustain a great story. But this collection of half ideas strung together just isn’t it.

Fun Panel

The last through pages of this book sees Nightcrawler leaping from universe to universe, for no reason other than to give Cockrum more odd, fun things to draw. It’s a good job he does make them fun. Its a mini Cross Time Caper years before Nightcralwer is to go on an epic one!

It was a Product of its Time

Actually one thing that was disappointing about this mini once I’d finished is how it leaves things at the end of Issue 2. In all its swashbuckling excitement we get a fun world, fun villain and fun princess. Nightcrawler is whisked away at the end but given that the Princess is left along, heartbroken and at the mercy of rather creepy boggies, the natural inclination is to think Kurt’s coming back to rescue her.

Only he doesn’t. This is the last we see of her. At the time it probably seemed like a slightly lecherous gag. It has not aged well, and while a lot of the bizarre horniness of this title is just odd uncle being a bit weird, this lands worse than that. Which you would hope they wouldn’t do nowadays.