Nightcrawler returns from its hiatus to start a new storyline. 

Quite what the hiatus was meant to achieve is beyond me.  On some level, it was supposedly meant to address the book's poor sales - which have already killed off Gambit and Rogue while it's been away. 

But how exactly are sales supposed to be increased by putting the book on hold for three months, and then bringing it back, with almost no publicity, in the shadow of House of M?  You almost get the feeling that Marvel had a vague plan to do something with the book, then changed their minds and decided to bang out the remaining storyline anyway.  If they genuinely think this pause was going to help sales in any way, that suggests a rather poor grasp on market realities. 

I'm also a little unclear as to why this book was singled out for special treatment.  Of the three solo titles which launched around the same time, Gambit was emerging as the most entertaining.  It also has the advantage of featuring a character who could logically sustain a solo title because he's in the habit of going off and having solo adventures.  Nightcrawler and Rogue are born team players, and hardly naturals in this role.

Anyhow, the plan seems to be that Nightcrawler should do a story that carries a bit more significance for the character.  So the answer is "Winding Way", a storyline about digging into the character's origins.  I'm crossing my fingers to hope that "The Draco" is quietly booted from continuity somewhere along the way - a story which is not merely awful, but actively damages the character.  Mind you, writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa seems more concerned about the background to Giant-Size X-Men #1, which doesn't particularly interest me at all.

We start off, in this issue, with one of those trippy dream sequence stories where the hero has been injured in battle, and proceeds to hallucinate meaningfully for 22 pages.  I'm really not a big fan of this kind of thing, and I'm not sure what I'm really meant to take from it beyond the fact that there's something in Kurt's mind which he's been locking away, and now he presumably wants to find out about it.  Otherwise, it's the usual routine of establishing that certain things are quite important to the character, most of which were obviously important to him already.  Perhaps it'll make a bit more sense as the story goes on, but as a starting point, it leaves me cold.

Rating: C+

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