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Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler

Real Name
Kurt Wagner
First Appearance
Giant-Size X-Men #1 (May, 1975)
Creators
Len Wein, Dave Cockrum
Team Affliations
X-Men, Excalibur, X-Treme Sanctions Executive, The Vatican, Archdiocese of New York
Aliases
Fuzzy Blue Elf, Kurt Szardos
Base of Operations
Salem Center, New York
Powers
Teleportation, Super-Agility, Ability to Stick to Walls, Prehensile Tale, Ability to Blend into Shadows, Night Vision
Skills and Ability
Martial Arts Expertise, Fencing Expertise
Tools and Weapons
Occasionally fights with a fencing foil

Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner) is a super-hero in the Marvel Universe and a member of the super-hero team The X-Men.

Origin

Born with strange deformities, Kurt Wagner was born with innate super agility and the ability to teleport.  Raised by the circus, Kurt performed as an acrobat until he was recruited by Professor X, a mutant rights activist, for a new team of X-Men, to help fight evil and prejudice.

Biography

Kurt Wagner was born to Mystique, a shapeshifting mutant disguised as a noblewoman in Germany, who had married the Baron Christian Wagner. After Mystique's affair with the mutant Azazel, Mystique became pregnant and was asked by Azazel to keep his true father a secret from all. When Christian became suspicious, he was murdered in a way to make it look like an accident. However, it was hard not to raise suspicion, for the child was born with pointed ears, a tail, deformed hands and feet, strange eyes, blue skin, and a thin layer of fur. What's more, the strain of the childbirth was too much for Mystique, and the exhaustion caused her to reveal her true form. News spread fast and an angry mob of paranoid townspeople decended on Mystique, forcing her to flee and to leave her child in a basket to float down the river in the hopes that the child would be safe.

The baby was in fact discovered by a sorceress and gypsy queen named Margali Szardos who was hiding her magical abilities as a circus performer. She took her to the circus where she worked, Herr Getmann's Traveling Menagerie. Rather than having the child adopted by anyone person, the circus raised him as their own, loved by all despite his deformities, save the ringmaster Herr Max Gettman. Kurt grew close to Margali's natural children Stephan and Jimaine, who also inherited their mother's powers. Stephan, fearing that his powers may one day make him a danger to others, asked Kurt to stop him if ever he were to become a threat

As Kurt grew older, his mutant powers emerged and he displayed a high level of innate agility.  Kurt was popular with the audience, who assumed his demonic appearance was merely a disguise for the act.  Meanwhile, Herr Gertmann began treating Kurt with more cruelty, keeping him sedated between acts.  When Kurt began to draw less of a crowd, Gertmann decided to sell Kurt, causing Margali to free him so that he may be safe.  Kurt escaped (accidentally starting a fire that destroyed the circus) and when he was about to be shot, his mutant power to teleport awakened for the first time, allowing him to escape.

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