Nightcrawler

Real Name: Kurt Wagner
Affiliation: X-Men
Previous Affiliations: Excalibur
Relatives: Raven Darkholme (Mystique, mother), Azazel (father), Nils Styger (Abyss, half-brother), Kiwi Black (half-brother), Margali Szardos (foster-mother), Amanda Sefton (Daytripper, foster-sister), Stefan Szardos (foster-brother, deceased), Graydon Creed (half-brother, deceased) - Family Tree
Alternate-X Versions: (AOA), Nightcreeper (Amalgam - merged with DC's Creeper), (Days of Future Past), Belasco II(?) (Earth X), (Lightning Squad, Earth ???), (Limbo), (Mangaverse), (Movieverse), (Mutant X), (Ultimate, (Evolution), (TAS)
Codename Etymology: Pronounced nīt-krô'əlr' [From Old English, niht + Old Norse, krafla]; An earthworm.
Powers: Nightcrawler has blue fur, yellow eyes, fangs and a prehensile tail. He has three fingers and toes on each appendage and can stick to walls. He is a line-of-sight teleporter and is also a master swordsman and acrobat (his boyhood - and adult - idol is Errol Flynn). His teleportation, which smells of brimstone and sulfur and makes his signature "BAMF!" noise, takes him through another dimension, although he only actually saw it once. Generally, though, his teleportation is instantaneous. The opening to the dimension travels with Kurt at all times, distorting light and leaving him in shadow when it's light out, and rendering him nearly invisible when he's in shadow. He also has an infallible spatial awareness, which is necessary for him to teleport, because if he does not judge distances accurately, he could end up teleporting into solid matter, which could cripple or kill him. As a result, Kurt generally only 'ports to places that he can see, or to those that he knows very well, like his room in the Mansion.

Kurt spent his formative years in a traveling carnival with his foster-mother and -sister, but then left to explore the world. He was recruited by an American carnival whose owner drugged him with a mutant-suppressant and kept him docile in a cage as part of a freakshow. Eventually a boy named Philip, also a mutant, freed Kurt, who returned to threaten the carnival owner into changing his inhumane ways. Unfortunately, when his foster-brother began to kill children to further his black magical powers, Kurt returned to Bavaria to kill him, fulfilling a vow that they had made as children. Due to his actions and appearance he was branded a demon, and was almost lynched by a mob when Professor X saved him and recruited him into the new X-Men. Nightcrawler became a charter member of the team, and soon learned to expand his abilities to carry first objects with him and then other people. Unfortunately, people who travel with him tend to get nauseous. Nightcrawler also learned to teleport multiple times in few seconds, allowing him to attack foes from unexpected directions with uncanny accuracy. On rare occasions, he could also teleport more than one person at a time, but it strained him tremendously. Then, when the Marauders attacked the Morlocks and the X-Men went to stop them, Kurt was severely injured by Riptide and went into a coma. When he finally woke up on Muir Island, it was to hear that the X-Men had died in battle with the Adversary. Kurt also found that he could not teleport anymore, at least not without life-threatening strain. However, Kurt still banded together with Shadowcat, Phoenix II, Meggan and Captain Britain to form Excalibur, based off the coast of England. Though the team was in theory led by Captain Britain, Nightcrawler ended up being the defacto leader on many occasions. Finally, after months with the team, Kurt regained his ability to teleport during a battle in Limbo. Later, when Excalibur split up for "vacations" and Kurt was home with a broken leg, he took in the members of the Technet and trained them as the "N-Men." Then Excalibur returned and though Roma revealed that Cap hadn't led the team because of a "blunder factor" she had given him, Kurt remained the leader.

Eventually, though, Kurt and the others discovered that the X-Men were indeed alive, and after Brian and Meggan's wedding he and Colossus and Shadowcat returned to the States to rejoin their friends. In the last six months, though, Kurt, who had always been a devout Catholic, left the team to study to become a priest. Unfortunately, he was ambushed and shot by the Neo, which led him to Dr. Cecilia Reyes, who saved his life, and back to the X-Men team. Kurt flip-flopped between his life as a priest-in-training and an X-Man for a while, even going to Limbo to help his old flame Amanda Sefton (now Magik II) to fend off a malignant evil that was threatening all of the realms of the underworld. Still, he remained committed to both his faith and his friends. However, when his best friend Colossus sacrificed his life to hose the cure for the Legacy Virus, Kurt was shaken to the core. Unable to think rationally, he went out (sans image inducer) and accosted some humans in Salem Center before he realized what he was doing. Just as he fled into the shadows, he was confronted by Sinister, who offered to make a clone of Peter for Kurt, for a "small price" to be discussed later. Kurt refused, and smashed the test tube with Peter's DNA in it. He then returned to the X-Mansion and left a letter for Storm saying that he had to leave the team in order to deal with his doubts about his life, his faith and God.

Not long after, however, Kurt rejoined the team, though whether he completed his studies and actually joined the priesthood is uncertain. On a mission to rescue Stacy X from the Church of Humanity, Kurt encountered the mysterious Supreme Pontiff, who did something to the X-Man that caused a severe personality shift. Nightcrawler became a brooding pessimist, and afterwards a flamboyant showoff. No one, not even Kurt himself, appears to be fully aware of what exactly happened and why he was acting this way. Soon afterwards, in another altercation with the Church of Humanity, the Supreme Pontiff revealed a plan to make Kurt a candidate for Pope and then cause a mass disappearance of followers using their teleportation technology, revealing Kurt as a mutant and toppling the Church. How this related to Kurt's mental shift is unclear, though it seems to simply have been an attempt at mind control. After defeating the Supreme Pontiff, Kurt returned to normal.

His family life, however, was complicated with the opening of a portal on Isla Des Demonas that led to the "demon" Azazel, who revealed himself to be Kurt's biological father. Kurt's teleportation powers were part of a very long-range plan of Azazel's to open a large portal back to Earth, using all his children, including known mutants such as Abyss. Kurt rejected his father's plans and the X-Men escaped back to Earth, where Kurt took some time to get to know his half-brothers.

More recently, following the destruction and rebuilding of the X-Mansion, Kurt worked on some solo cases in New York while also functioning as part of Storm's X.S.E., and found himself attracted to not one, but three women: Storm, Marvel Girl III and Night Nurse Christine Palmer. Which way Kurt's heart will lead him remains to be seen. Following some adventures of a supernatural nature, Kurt found his way back to Winzeldorf, where he discovered the carnival members slaughtered by demons. After running back to Florida to warn Jardine's carnival, Kurt encountered more demonic and supernatural creatures, including Man-Thing and Carrion, before being accosted by Hive, who revealed that Kurt now possessed the Soulsword. Margali and Magik II arrived to contain Hive (and heal Christine, who had been stabbed by a possessed Wolverine), and Magik revealed that she sent the sword to Kurt to keep it out of Limbo while the barriers between the Splinter Realms were breaking down. The sword's presence accounted for Kurt's recent brushes with the supernatural, and also seemed to be retarding or reversing his aging.