While Mystique gets cancelled, Nightcrawler goes on hiatus.  After this issue, we're going to hear nothing more of the book until June, when they promise a story about Nightcrawler's origins.  Wonder if they'll renumber it from issue #1 again? 

It's slightly reassuring to see that Marvel is at least reacting in some way to the dreadful sales on the new solo titles.  But it remains to be seen whether they appreciate the real problem, namely flooding the market.  I confess to being intrigued by the trailer for an origin story, mind you.  Although that's largely because I'm hoping they'll take the opportunity to delete "The Draco".  Come on, guys, you know it sucks and everyone hates it.  Do us all a favour.

Anyway, this initial run wraps up with the concluding half of "Ghosts on the Tracks", in which Kurt crosses paths with a few ghosts, has a token action sequence, and then visits a library and works out that some dead workers were underappreciated in 1904.  It's all hugely anticlimactic, and I can't honestly say I buy into the idea of ghosts hanging around for 100 years only to be satisfied by the announcement of a compensation scheme.  Do they really care that much what the current mayor of New York thinks?

I think the problem with this issue is that it seems to think it's a horror story - even going so far as to compare itself to The Grudge.  And it misses the mark in that regard.  It just comes across as Kurt stumbling upon a mildly interesting historical anecdote.  Or, perhaps more accurately, the writer stumbling upon a mildly interesting historical anecdote which he feels strangely compelled to share with us. 

History is littered with underappreciated workers who died in unfair circumstances and I don't honestly see what's supposed to be so special about these guys.  If anything, they seem to have been unusually well recognised by virtue of making it into the newspapers.  If they're sufficiently annoyed to hang around, then god, I'm surprised you can swing a cat in the Marvel Universe without hitting the phantom of a disgruntled Victorian loom cleaner.

Nice art, though, and Aguirre-Sacasa does write a good Nightcrawler.

Rating: B-

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