End Notes and Comic Book Tie-Ins:

Following the events of this story…

Xavier unfroze the townspeople, the orphanage was rebuilt, and the town and its children eventually settled back to normal. Radulfus and Stefan's bodies were found and taken care of by the monks, who initially assumed Radulfus had been trying to restrain Stefan and in the violence of the struggle they had both been killed. They learned the truth only after Kurt, who they guessed had been chased away by the mob, sent the monks a letter from New York explaining what had happened that night. Margali would ultimately learn the story from them.

Xavier had recruited Nightcrawler, along with Thunderbird, Sunfire, Banshee, Colossus, Storm, and Wolverine, to save Xavier's original X-Men team from the living island Krakoa (see Giant Size X-Men #1: Second Genesis). Kurt soon became close friends with Wolverine, and fell in love with Amanda Sefton, a young flight attendant. On his (twentieth) birthday, Kurt received a surprise birthday present apparently sent by his foster sister Jimaine. The present, a small statue, exploded in his face, trapping his soul in a very real illusion resembling Dante's Inferno. To save their friend, the X-Men called on Dr. Strange (who may or may not have been Kurt's brother Stefan at that point) to help guide them through the complicated adventure. Together, they encountered and fought against Belasco and Nightcrawler's own demons—namely, his guilt over Stefan's death (See King Size Annual X-Men #4: Nightcrawler's Inferno).

The illusion was created by Margali. She had blamed Kurt for her son's death and wanted him to suffer. What she discovered, though, was the depth of Kurt's love for Stefan, and the pain his brother's madness had caused. Margali forgave Kurt, but Kurt would remain wary of her and her powers. His biggest birthday surprise came after their return from the Inferno, however, when Amanda Sefton revealed herself to be Amanda Szardos. She had disguised herself as part of her own attempt to find out what had really happened to Stefan, and to keep an eye on Kurt. Amanda and Kurt remained together, on and off, for several years until they finally broke up in Uncanny X-Men #204, shortly before Kurt became the founder of the British super-hero team Excalibur in the one-shot issue Excalibur: Sword is Drawn.

Kurt served as leader of that team for about ten years. During that time, he once again became entangled with Margali, Amanda, and the Winding Way. Competing sorcerers were after the mysterious and powerful Soulsword, hoping to climb higher on the Winding Way. Nightcrawler and Amanda tried to recover the sword, but Margali took it. She claimed it was for safe keeping, but she took the power for herself. Amanda joined Excalibur for a short time under the codename Daytripper, only to leave Kurt once again without an explanation. Some time later, he found her at their old circus, where she told him Margali had been imprisoned in Limbo by Belasco (see Excalibur: Soul Sword Trilogy). But Amanda and Margali had swapped souls, and it was really Amanda who was trapped. They defeated Belasco, but the real Amanda decided to stay behind as ruler of Limbo, abandoning any shot at a life with Kurt for good. Kurt felt used and betrayed after that, but he and Jimaine remain friends, and Kurt sometimes consults her concerning mystical matters (see the recent 12 part Nightcrawler mini-series.) Shortly after that adventure, Kurt's teammates Captain Britain and Meggan got married, Excalibur dissolved, and Kurt, along with fellow Excalibur members Kitty Pryde and Colossus, rejoined the X-Men in New York. For a time, Kurt sort of drifted, particularly after Colossus's death. It seemed like he was struggling to find a niche for himself, now he was no longer the leader of his own team. He tried his hand at the priesthood, but found out the whole experience had all been the weird mind-control plot of some deranged nun who wanted to discredit the Church or something, so that didn't work out. In fact, and no offense, but in my opinion that whole awful story arc was so insultingly dumb, I'm not even going to credit the issues where it happened.

Kurt had previously discovered the truth about Mystique being his mother in X-Men Unlimited #4: Theories of Relativity and, in the six-part serial Uncanny X-Men: The Draco, he was told his father was a powerful, ancient, red-skinned, demon-looking mutant named Azazel who had long ago been banished to an alternate dimension by creatures that looked like angels. In Universe X, it was put forward that Belasco was actually a brainwashed and physically altered Kurt Wagner, who had been kidnapped by the demon Mephisto after losing his team in a fight against the Gray Gargoyle. This, coupled with the whole Azazel thing, upset me, because the whole point of Nightcrawler has always been that he is NOT a demon. I wrote out my response to that whole convoluted mess in the form of a story: Belasco's Beatrice. It's rather dark and very strange—Kurt vs. Belasco, with the battleground being Kurt's own mind—but it has lots of Belasco backstory, and Kurt gets the girl at the end. :) If you're interested, you can read it here or at Fonts of Wisdom, Nightscrawlers, or The Realm of the InterNutter.

After the whole Draco thing, Kurt joined Storm's XSE team in New York and got semi-romantic-ish with Storm, then Rachel, then a girl named Christine Palmer in the 12 part Nightcrawler mini-series, but there was nothing really serious. My story Eros's Arrows was something of a response to Kurt and Christine's rather flat parting scene. Currently in the comics, Nightcrawler remains an active, if tragically underused, member of the X-Men team.

I thought I'd close with a quote from the pretty booklet that came with the awesome little Nightcrawler figurine I got for my birthday last month: The Classic Marvel Figurine Collection Issue 42: Nightcrawler. It goes:

"Popular since his introduction, Nightcrawler remains a crowd-pleaser. He may be a teleporter [with the ability to disappear in the shadows, but Nightcrawler himself is in no danger of fading away."

Let's hope that's true.

I hope these end notes were a helpful follow-up. If you have any questions about them or my story, though, please don't hesitate to ask!

Thanks everyone for reading, for sticking with me all this time, and for your marvelous, fantastic, wonderful, encouraging comments! And a million, zillion thanks for helping to make this story my very first ever story to get over 100 reviews! I'm so, so completely thrilled about that, and I'm enormously grateful to you all!

Thank you!

Rowena Zahnrei