Since his earliest days with the X-Men under writer Chris Claremont, the circumstances of Nightcrawler's birth have been the subject of rumours, half-truths, and heartbreak...until now, that is.
In November, Si Spurrier, the writer who's masterfully guided the character through the Krakoan age, will clear away all the lies to tell the definitive Nightcrawler origin story in X-Men Blue: Origins #1! With art by Wilton Santos and Marcus To, the one-shot will deliver a rousing saga that spans mutant history with revelations that X-Men fans have longed for.
You think you know the tale of Mystique and Azazel's devilish affair, but what role did Mystique’s true love, Destiny play? Their beautiful romance has steered the course of mutantdom throughout the century, and when they reunited on Krakoa, they became two of mutantkind’s most prominent leaders.
Now, with Fall of X spiralling around them, it's time to spill their biggest secret. You too can celebrate this pivotal moment for the iconic Marvel couple with Russell Dauterman's new X-Men Blue: Origins #1 variant cover. The gorgeous piece blends the passion and doom of their storied relationship spectacularly and is perfect for what Marvel Comics is saying will be "one of the most talked-about issues of the year."
"Mystique, she's fascinating and wonderful and would be an utterly unlikable character if it weren't for the fact that everything she does is purely and pragmatically focused on love," Spurrier says. "That redeems so much - this idea that she and her wife have this centuries-old romance that is so overwhelming that it threatens to destroy not only everybody around them but also each other."
"They keep coming together and smashing together and then going away and coming back. It's this elaborate decades dance, which is such a wonderful thing to think about," the writer adds. "Everything they do is focused on each other, so we can, if not quite forgive a lot of what Mystique does and has done, we can at least understand it in that context. That buys her a lot of points in my view."
You can check out Dauterman's breathtaking cover below, and we'll learn the truth behind Nightcrawler's birth once and for all in the pages of X-Men Blue: Origins #1 this November.
Do you think Mystique and Destiny have been part of the "greatest love story in mutant history"?