I've got to admit, I'm pretty hyped for the X-Men sequel. I liked the first movie quite a bit, and it looks like they're adding some of my favorite characters into the mix as well as providing an interesting backbone to the story. My only worry is that with so many characters, there won't be a lot of room for the film-makers to explore as much as they could. Which is where these comic-book prequels come in, theoretically, at least from a creative point of view. Commercially, their point of existence is obviously to build up anticipation for the movie and more importantly give movie-goers an easy entry point back into the comics.
Nightcrawler is a focus on a character I have always liked, but who has been mishandled pretty badly more often than not. It's difficult to judge without seeing the movie, but it looks like Austen's take on the character is something of a mix between the Nightcrawler we've seen in X-Men throughout the years and the Ultimate X-Men incarnation. In fact, there's a lot of resemblance to Ultimate X-Men here, but I don't know if that's Austen echoing Ultimate X-Men or the movie echoing Ultimate X-Men and Austen emulating the movie.
At any rate, the result is that the story feels a little familiar, and those who didn't enjoy seeing the X-Men tortured by Weapon X in the second arc of Ultimate X-Men aren't going to much enjoy this story either. It's largely a story of Nightcrawler being turned into a weapon by a shadowy military officer and suffering at the hands of sadistic, mutant-hating guard. Which is to say, it's not the most original piece of work ever, and it doesn't shed a whole lot of light on how the movie version of Nightcrawler differs from the comic-book version.
On the other hand, the goal here isn't necessarily different so much as interesting to those who've seen the movie and want more, and Austen provides that. The basics of Nightcrawler's origin, steeped in X-Men comics lore, are conveyed here without any references to continuity, and Austen balances Nightcrawler's sense of humor and brooding nature well enough that I'm certainly interested to see him tackle more of the character in Uncanny X-Men. And the bigoted guard, while certainly a cliche, is a believable cliche; I found his distaste at sharing "his" God with a mutant to be a particularly nice touch.
Austen also mixes things up with a story of Kurt's love affair with Amanda Sefton, a nod to X-Men continuity without relying on anyone actually knowing that continuity. Providing a foundation of something else in his life gives Nightcrawler's story of being taken by Stryker more tragic, and enables Austen to give us more sympathetic character work before dropping Nightcrawler into the military/torture story.
The artwork here is by Karl Kerschl, best known for his work on the Iceman limited series. It's gorgeous work, with nice color by Transparency Digital, and I especially enjoyed Kerschl's take on Nightcrawler. He makes him look somewhat small and wiry, and manages to convey an appearance that is grotesque to those who don't know his personality and sympathetic and human to those who do. He is also terrific at suggesting violence, allowing Austen to tell a fairly dark story while keeping it safely accessible for the army of teens and younger that Marvel is presumably hoping will pick up this book.
