Nightcrawler is drawn into a world of adventure and action - just what he needs to pull himself out of the malaise of current X-Men comics!
Originally Published April 1986
To begin with Nightcrawler is feeling it - the existential angst of being confronted by the unlimited godlike power of the Beyonder, that is.
Yes, Nightcrawler is a whole mood - am I saying that right? - willing to spend all night in the rain catching pneumonia just to express exactly how shook he is. And why shouldn't he be a-shakeneth? Not that long ago he was the leader of the X-Men. Now he doesn't even rank being dragged into the Beyonder's machinations, having been left behind while the other X-Men journeyed to San Francisco. This has left him with no small amount of guilt since he didn't even follow.
He comes in from the cold at last and bemoans to his sister-lover Amanda how things used to be so lighthearted and fun around here; if you read Kurt's own miniseries, a multidimensional swashbuckling romp by Dave Cockrum which we didn't cover, you might know. Those days are long gone, however. Now it's only a time of philosophical rumination and existential doubt.
Even Amanda is not in the mood, taking off when he lashes out at her, his musings leading him to suppose that maybe he doesn't even love her, that he is only under her spell since she's a witch.
As Amanda leaves for Kennedy Airport, we see a jogger preparing for a run in the rain. While he remains on the balcony sulking, Nightcrawler hears the trademark SFLANNG of someone being kidnapped by Arcade in the distance. He takes it as a call to action and follows the insidious garbage truck (being driven by Arcade's associate Chambers) to Murderworld.
Within, Arcade reveals to this jogger that she is the target of Murderworld's latest contract. The rules are simple: don't die, somehow. The jogger is perplexed, being that she is just a simple nobody.
She is deposited, via Arcade's Human-Sized Pinball Machine, in an 18th-century Hussar setting, hunted by dogs. She is chased into a river where she is attacked by a shark ("Those can't exist in fresh water! Wait, Arcade makes the rules") but rescued just in the nick of time by our man Kurt.
Once Kurt is able to convince her that he's one of the good guys, they find themselves in a desert Mad Max setting, being chased by goons on buggies, while Arcade - in drag as queen of the post-apocalyptic goons - vows to end them both.
Kurt commandeers a WWI plane from one of the robots, causing another to crash into the mob to delay them, and has the jogger drive forward through the desert until she reaches Chinatown, while he flies off into the sunset. Once again left to fend for herself, she is offered a place to hide by a rather racist "dragon lady" who offers her to be a chance to be a prostitute. Ick.
Kurt arrives and saves his damsel from another mob, but just as Arcade vows revenge, his control room is breached - by the X-Men!
Of course, these are just Arcade's simulacra (you know, the ones he has sex with) - Nightcrawler stole away in the middle of the chase to go reprogram them to attack the control room, thus defeating Murderworld yet again.
Having saved the day, Kurt brings the jogger - Judith, by name - home, only to find two more sneaky figures occupying her apartment. Only they're not more foes. They're...
That's right! After all that, we learn that this seemingly ordinary New Yorker is really the heiress to the throne of some obscure (possibly fictional) Eastern European state! What a life!
The end!
Further Thoughts:
I'll wager that coming into this issue, a lot of us are like Nightcrawler - head spinning at the heavy-duty existential foes the X-Men have been set against lately, wondering where all the fun is in our funnybooks. Kurt is uniquely positioned as the vehicle for this observation, being both a melancholy soul-searcher and a self-styled swashbuckling adventurer.
It's strange to get another Arcade outing so soon after the last one, but it was well-timed. While Arcade stories don't exactly bleed "significance" the way the Beyonder ones try to, or the trial of Magneto absolutely did, they are fun little escapist episodes that give us a break from the unrelenting dirge of the recent comics, which let us see out heroes in a high adventure world, with wacky setpieces and clever tricks to undo the machinations of Murderworld.
As a result, this issue resembles nothing so much as the famous "Kitty's Fairy Tale" issue from years back - escapist, just barely on the edge of continuity, but all the same a cogent comment on the current direction of the comics and a nice refreshing change of tone, all rendered in guest artist June Brigman's crisp lines. The whole metaphor is stitched up nicely when we find out the truth about Judith, that our fair damsel is actual secret royalty. There's some real metafictional work being done here to course-correct the recent tone of the X-Men, using Nightcrawler, the character who best represents the balance between light and dark in these comics.
Say what you will about Arcade, but he keeps it light.
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