Nightscrawlers

1) I didn't ask this. Never would either, for the record.
2) I dont' know who did, (it is anonymous that's the whole point) but I would hope it's no one from these boards.

But I think this solidifies Tom Brevoort as not being a jerk.

Does Paty Cockrum scare you as ,much as she does me? by captaingeeek

I hope you know Paty Cockrum, because otherwise this is a pretty mean thing to say about a complete stranger.
13 hours ago

I think Paty is a terrific person, and I think she's perfectly entitled to have Marvel shaking in their boots. And anyone who crosses her should be scared.

No, I didn't ask that question, because Paty doesn't scare me.

[Edited on 23/5/2010 by Angelique]

Ult_Sm86 wrote:1) I didn't ask this. Never would either, for the record.
2) I dont' know who did, (it is anonymous that's the whole point) but I would hope it's no one from these boards.

But I think this solidifies Tom Brevoort as not being a jerk.

Does Paty Cockrum scare you as ,much as she does me? by captaingeeek

I hope you know Paty Cockrum, because otherwise this is a pretty mean thing to say about a complete stranger.
13 hours ago

It says "by captaingeeek".

You may be right, Ult_Sm86. I will give Tom Brevoort the benefit of the doubt.

Obviously, captaingeeek is a jerk.

However, it occurs to me that captaingeeek must either be a member here, or is watching the forum, otherwise, how would he know anything at all about Paty?

I also suspect that he has more than one username.

I would never post anything like that, either. I admire Paty and her chutzpah.




[Edited on 24/5/10 by neling4]

No, I'm right. He is a jackass. Here is one of his latest Q&A answers on Formspring:
Question:

I feel Nightcrawler's death harmed Kurt and Scott. Scott sent a short-range combat 'porter (Kurt) instead of a long-range transportation 'porter (Pixie) to get Hope. It hurts their credibility as leaders via not questioning bad strategy. Your thoughts?

Tom Brevoort's answer:

I think it hurt Kurt more.

[Edited on 24/5/10 by neling4]

Does anybody feel almost as if Nightcrawler was the target, and not Hope?

Bear with me here...

Bastion doesn't just want to get Hope. We've established that he's after all mutant-kind, right? Then he needs to trap them. We know he was targeting teleporters.

When Bastion attacked Kurt, Hope, and Rogue, he did not fight Hope. Even when she tried to brain him with a pole. Bastion stood around talking to her. Being a robot, he doesn't have the psychological need to talk about it. It wasn't right.

What really happens in that interchange? Nightcrawler dies. I think that Kurt was the target simply because he was a teleporter, and Bastion had to get rid of all teleporters for his plan to work. Therefore, KURT WAS THE TARGET ALL ALONG. Hope is, and always has been, just bait.

No, it's Hope.

Otherwise he wouldn't be so intrigued in Cable and have been waiting for Cable to come back. I like your spirit, but it's not how it is unfortunately.

He is acting apathetic because... he's just ... honestly... Bastion feels he won. I think he wants genocide now... More than those of the mutants.

He seems to be indicating a mass-cleansing. He probably figures after the X-men, the rest of the world won't be much of a challenge. LOL!

Is this a hopeful sign from Tom Brevoort's Formspring?

Question:

Tom, what are the chances of putting Dead-Kurt in charge of a Supernatural team, similar to "Hellboy's", and putting some peeps like Deadgirl, Doc Strange, Magik, etc... on there? I think you would have a great new book and pleased Crawler fans!

Tom Brevoort's answer:

I think that, if a character is dead, and yet you're able to see them every month and experience new adventures with them and so on, then they're not really dead at all. (Which is kind of what you want in this case, I know.) Part of the point of any character being dead is that you don't get to see them for awhile.

[Edited on 24/5/10 by neling4]

That was actually my question. I think what he's saying is "Look, I feel your pain, but don't hold your breath. For this death to mean something, he's gotta be out of the picture for awhile."

I'll go a little further and say... to make him a great character, and for his return to be meaningful and not just a plaine-jane retcon, the people need to miss him.

Nonsense. The people already miss him.

We certainly do, but the other people don't yet. They need to see how crucial he was to the team.

Trolls who are that jaded about death don't count, IMO. We on this forum are not the only ones who've been wanting more Nightcrawler goodness and have been feeling skunked.

From what I've read here, I gather that Nightcrawler has been killed off. Since I don't have easy access to a comic store, would someone be kind enough to tell me which issues I need to find in order to see how this happened?

Karl wrote:From what I've read here, I gather that Nightcrawler has been killed off. Since I don't have easy access to a comic store, would someone be kind enough to tell me which issues I need to find in order to see how this happened?

It happened in X-Force #26. There is a review of the book here:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page ... ew&id=2167

Thanks, neling4! From the review, it doesn't even sound as if they did it very well.
To say that I'm disappointed and dismayed would be an understatement, but if I said what I'm reallly thinking, I'd be thrown off this forum for serious overuse of profanity.

Well you never want to see your favorite character get skewered

And as they were planning, to kill some mutants to give this storyline more weight and meat, feels forced that they killed him, as really they could have offed anyone. And there have been several casualties so far. Deaths, profanity, nudity, violence can be provocative if used for emphasis, but with the littering of these tools thru out it kinda becomes bland and not very punchy.


So to the fans it is a senseless death

But at least Kurt went out rescuing a damsel in distress. And wolives reaction that issue and in the next chapter was fitting. So that's something...

BAMFCentralII wrote:Well you never want to see your favorite character get skewered

Well actually....

Not in this case, no, but I actually have been rather pleasantly delighted at the deaths of some of my favorite characters. Specifically certain characters in Harry Potter. JK Rowling made at least some of those deaths make sense. There were, naturally, a few I was outraged at, but of my three favorite characters, I was satisfied with the deaths of two.

Nightcrawler's death was un-called-for and unnecessary. They are playing with our heartstrings and telegraphing their moves, as well as destroying a perfectly wonderful character who had plenty of life left in him. He died for no good reason, other than a simple tactical ploy and a rather false "messiah."

Plus, his death was obvious. Before the issue, was any of us really in any doubt? We were all simply hoping. "No, they wouldn't do that. They wouldn't do that." This was not "Luke I am your father," or "Snape killed Dumbledore!" surprise. This was similar to, Oh, yeah. Edward's a vampire. DUH.

Sorry. I wouldn't have minded his death so much if it hadn't been so pointless and they hadn't ruined his funeral issue.

I'm with Bamfcentral.

And I think the true trolls, Ange, are the ones going on his Formspring and not asking questions such as "when will he return?" but rather yelling at him to bring Kurt back, reverse OMD/BND, and bring back Jean. All-in-all, I know he expects this kind of thing, but the true fans can be trolls as well.
Of course we're not the only ones, but for the weight of the loss of a character of this magnitude to be understood, it needs to go on a little longer than one story arc. Let's face it, we know why Kurt is great.

The mass of X-Fans... they don't. Or have forgotten. So let's show them, by being adamant about needing that icon back on the team, showing our love for the Elf by only buying the comics with him in it (if that's how strongly you feel), and letting Marvel know where you want to put your money.
Instead of going on his Brevroorts Formspring or Yost's Twitter to blast him for our sense of loss.

Oh, I dropped all canon X-titles, and, much as it pained me, I told Chris Yost exactly why. And I wrote Joe Quesada and told him why. And I wrote Isaac Perlmutter, told him why, and hopefully alerted him to a number of problems I see in Marvel marketing as well as editorial. Quite frankly, merely dropping books will not accomplish much. If we don't say specifically why, we can't help them improve.

And the trolls, referring specifically to the internet variety, live to hurt and antagonize others- ie, the bullies who show up on other forums' Nightcrawler-related threads or other threads about killing off characters and say things like, "I'm glad he's dead," or "What are you all whining about?" They are extremely vocal, too, and not above setting up sock puppet accounts to make their numbers seem much higher than they really are.

Of all the Nightcrawler fans I am aware of, I can't think of a single one I would define as a troll. And last I checked, Chris Yost still shows up on my friend list, so I figure I'm doing something okay.

[Edited on 25/5/2010 by Angelique]

neling4 wrote:No, I'm right. He is a jackass. Here is one of his latest Q&A answers on Formspring:
Question:

I feel Nightcrawler's death harmed Kurt and Scott. Scott sent a short-range combat 'porter (Kurt) instead of a long-range transportation 'porter (Pixie) to get Hope. It hurts their credibility as leaders via not questioning bad strategy. Your thoughts?

Tom Brevoort's answer:

I think it hurt Kurt more.

[Edited on 24/5/10 by neling4]

That was my question.
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming my real meaning was lost to the space constraints. I wanted "harmed Kurt and Scott as characters" in there, but it wouldn't fit. Whether he understood that or not should become clear when the followup I posted today gets answered.

Dedicatedfollower467 wrote:
Well actually....

delighted at the deaths of some of my favorite characters. Specifically certain characters in Harry Potter. JK Rowling

Well Rowling had the benefit of being the only writer and architect for her story, so the characters stayed constant one, and she had more control over the flow of the story.



i had a bit more typed but edited it... started to get off topic

so back to regularly scheduled topic

Angelique,
Would you please post the email addresses of the people you mentioned at Marvel? I'd like to write to them also.

Don't bother with email. Regarding Chris Yost, I was lucky in that, having corresponded with him before, I wasn't a total stranger to him. Otherwise, he might have deleted my messages unread, and I wouldn't have blamed him.


With the others, I snail-mailed letters directly to the Marvel offices in NYC. There's no guarantee that they were read, but it takes more effort to throw out a letter than it does to delete email.

Karl (& other interested parties, including lurkers):

You might find it informative to read the thread in which Neling asked Marvel to Retcon the Draco Arc. See the posts from Ang on 20/10/09 for the address, neling's on 22/10/09 for names, and mine on 4/12/09 to see what they said in their form letter, so you can maybe let them know the "passion for our brand" is in jeopardy with some folks. It includes a link to a letter-writing episode long before my time here, thoughtfully provided by St. Kurt.


And the mantra is: short, polite, specific point.

I made another post for Mr. Brevoort on Formspring. I tried my best to ask my question in a polite and respectful way. I hope Mr. Brevoort will respond politely and with respect.

Here is my post:

Mr.Brevoort: Many Nightcrawler fans are character-based fans, and for us, Nightcrawler was the main, indeed the only reason, we continued to patronize the comic book genre. How, in the long run, is his death good for business?

I would have liked to expound a bit more , but there seems to be a limit to the length of the posts, so I had to keep it concise. I hope my meaning is clear, because I really want to know why they thought his death was worth a temporary boost in sales.




[Edited on 26/5/10 by neling4]

Here is my post:

Mr.Brevoort: Many Nightcrawler fans are character-based fans, and for us, Nightcrawler was the main, indeed the only reason, we continued to patronize the comic book genre. How, in the long run, is his death good for business?

I would have liked to expound a bit more , but there seems to be a limit to the length of the posts, so I had to keep it concise. I hope my meaning is clear, because I really want to know why they thought his death was worth a temporary boost in sales.

Actually, Mr. Fraction, the writer of the book, did his best to answer that for us here and Brevroot, who did not write it, can only give you as professional/editor-based response possible. To be honest? It's going to be a like what Fraction said, but probably a little more blunt.

I imagine it will go like this:

Saying a characters death is good for business is honestly a pretty cold/clinical way to look at things. If you think we are unaware that Kurt has a huge, arguably underground, following in comparison to other characters, your'e greatly mistaken. The fact that he is such a beloved, defined, well drawn out character who has been relatively consistant for so long, shows the impact and seriousness of this story. It's a story plot, it's not a slap-in-the-face-to-fans. Yes, at the end of the day, everything comes down to, "Will the story sell" but not because we want the story to sell because someone dies, we want the story to sell because it's believable, because it pulls at the heartstrings of our readers, and it makes them feel something. If this happens, then we did our job. Be they angry or pleased, the writers pulled of their job.

-======
I really have a feeling that is going to be how that goes.
Do I agree with that stance? Not entirely. I do think deaths are cheaply thrown around, and I think you could put anyone else in Kurt's shoes and get the same reactions, it did not NEED to be him who died. But if Kurt and Hope, Cable, Bobby, Warren, and Emma drew straws, I'm afraid Kurt's was the shortest. It was a very, stupidly, unfortunate roll of the die.