Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: giant-size x-men, marvel, nightcrawler, x-men, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column

Giant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler #1 Recap: An In-Sidri-Ous Surprise

Published Mon, 06 Apr 2020 08:00:59 -0500

by Jude Terror

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Giant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler #1 was written by Jonathan Hickman with art by Alan Davis. Carlos Lopez did color art and Clayton Cowles lettered. It's the second in a series of five Giant-Size X-Men one-shots focusing on specific X-Men. When the next one will hit stores remains up-in-the-air during the industry shutdown. Thankfully, the one-and-done nature of these stories won't suffer from the delay. Let's recap Giant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler #1.

The cover to GIant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler #1 from Marvel Comics, with art by Alan Davis and Edgar Delgado.

Giant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler #1 Recap

Nightcrawler, Magik, Eye-Boy, Cypher, and Lockheed travel by Krakoan gate to the Greymalkin Habitat. For those who don't know, that's the former site of Charles Xavier's mansion, now abandoned. Except it apparently isn't abandoned. Mutants have been detected in the area as someone has been trying to access the gate.

Eyeboy uses his powers to see that the building appears empty. However, there has been a lot of movement recently. The place appears haunted. Lockheed smells something and starts spraying fire everywhere. Nightcrawler sees a vision of his dead teammate, Thunderbird, but he disappears.

Next, Nightcrawler believes he sees the silhouette of Rachel Grey in her hound costume, but she too disappears. Then she reappears and everyone can see her, but she runs. The X-Men give chase, following Rachel into some kind of alien tunnel. Nightcrawler remembers he can teleport and jumps in front of her.

Rachel speaks in an alien language, which Cypher describes as "some kind of standard harmonic binary." Then he touches the wall of the tunnel and gets sucked inside. "Rachel" escapes in the confusion.

Meanwhile, Cypher finds himself in a Tron-like space with a red glowing orb. He attempts to interface with it. Unfortunately, he's interrupted when a Sidrian Hunter (an alien race that first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #154) creeps up behind him.

The rest of the X-Men follow Rachel and reach the end of the tunnel to find "Rachel" standing in a glowing room. Rachel speaks now, explaining that she's dreaming of traveling throughout space. She's trapped. She disintegrates into hundreds of Sidri. The X-Men are surrounded.

For Once, Talking Out Problems

Elsewhere, Doug is communicating with the Sidri and looks to solve their problem. The rest of the X-Men communicate in a different way, with their fists. Magik teleports away to find Doug so they can retreat to Krakoa. She finds him, but he's not alone. Warlock has separated from Doug's arm and now inhabits a Sidri. Apparently, they've been keeping this from the rest of the X-Men.

Doug says explanations will have to wait until later. He's solved the Sidri's problem. They just want to leave the X-Mansion, but they've got a mutant problem. Lady Mastermind is here inside a cocoon. They free her and wake her up.

Lady Mastermind explains she game here to use the gate to get to Krakoa. Doug theorizes the Sidri had been gestating since their last invasion and hatched at just the right time, capturing Lady Mastermind. But in a dream state, she used her powers to create the nightmare world around them and used them to call for help.

It seems that Doug made a deal with the Sidri. They can use the estate as their nest, but they'll let mutants use the gate. Nightcrawler is satisfied with the outcome and the X-Men go home.

My Opinion on Giant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler #1

First of all, who can possibly not love Alan Davis on a modern X-Men comic? That's enough to make this issue the Wolverine's Weiner X-Pick of the week, so let's get that out of the way right now. As icing on the cake, this issue made good use of history while simultaneously sneaking in a pretty major reveal. What's going on with Cypher and Warlock? It looks like we'll have to wait a while to find out.

Sworn to sell comics for Marvel executives who feared and hated the fact that Fox owned their movie rights, the Uncanny X-Men suffered great indignities in the past decade. But that dark era is past. Now, thanks to a corporate merger and a line-wide relaunch, the X-Men can finally return to doing what they do best: entertaining fans of the greatest soap opera of all time.