I was merely correcting you on your notion regarding Nightcrawler's ability. No other point. :)

You stated that Nightcrawler had not shown this ability before. I corrected you stating that he had in fact shown that ability, and very early on in his history, in an issue pencilled by his co-creator.

As to how it works, I agree, but I didn't get into that. I was merely correcting one part of your statement.

Hmmmm, that's debatable though.

Please hear me out.

Before the castle 'shadowing' we hadn't actually seen Nightcrawler in any dark lit scenes before, so it doesn't technically break continuity. (Of course, simpler colouring had to come into play in regards to heavy shadows, but still...)

From the point of view of known powers before then, absolutely right.

Like I said -- fun power, and I used it to good advantage during my own time on UNCANNY -- but there's no way 'round the fact that it appeared without warning, without so much as a hint.

Again, I respectfully disagree. You've got a whole village full of people, all shown with large torches, pointing at him. That place was lit up like a Christmas Tree.

Also, thanks to the X-Men Omnibus, Mr Cockrum's notes on Nightcrawler show notes along the lines of 'his face is always in shadow' so obviously, something along this vein was in Cockrum's mind. I'd give it a fair possibility to being Mr Cockrum's idea, based on his original sketches.

PS my name is Jonathon. :)

EDIT: edited to add a 'Mr' before my first mention of David Cockrum.

> It's a fun power, but it turned up without precedent.

Heh.  Since the late 1990s, Superman has debuted a few powers that some fans think are unprecedented, too, while other say they're natural outgrowths of his traditional post-Crisis powers -- I'd love to get your thoughts on these, John:

• Ice breath: He could blow hard, but not blow ice post-Crisis until the Loeb era.
• Photon torpedos: Mix of X-ray and heat visions to generate a concussive effect (although, to be fair, other artists have portrayed Superman's HV as carrying a material impact -- this tweak just codified it).
• Torquasm-vo and torquasm-rao: Bizarre mental powers -- like creating armor out of psychic energy and plugging into the "energy of the universe" to do all sorts of vaguely defined stuff.  Haven't seen this stuff used in years.
• Stress-based dynamic strength: The more stressed he gets, the more energy he, literally, pulls out of the Sun.  Rucka came up with this idea about 2 years ago ... hasn't been heard of since.
• Invisibility/phasing: Vibrating so fast so as to render himself invisible/intangible.  Also able to commandeer large object's vibratory rate--e.g., matching and then reversing an entire planet's vibratory rate to make is fade from our plane of existence.
• Faster-than-light flight: Began under the late Jurgens' era; used frequently by the Loeb crew.  Most recently seen in Infinite Crisis ... when the two Superman pushed Superboy Prime from Earth to Krypton in the span of a few panels (maybe a page or so).
• Non-solar energy absorption: Anti-sunlight, magnetic force, chronal energy, etc., etc.  Some have argued that Superman's ability to absorb Rampage's "solar and cosmic energies" (not verbatim) -- later simply called "super energy" -- laid the groundwork for this, but that might be stretching it.
• "Soul vision": Fans are split on this.  What Superman sees, he has described as simply a person's EM or bio-chemical aura -- and I believe he had been doing that long before Birthright, which specifically called an aura a "soul" -- others say it's too mystic to be an extension of his "aura vision."  Seen once in Birthright, and then in Verheiden's run on the Superman books; never since.
• Heat vision "tractor beams": Using heat vision, Superman can rip electrons from matter, "tractor" them elsewhere and then graft them to other materials -- even inert materials.  He and Krypto mixed their heat visions to get the Eradicator hot enough to shave off some of his electrons, tractor them to a piece of inert metal and then bond them to the metal.  This caused Eradicator to go flying into the metal; bond with it, too, as the attraction between the electrons and their original host (E) was still operational.  Never seen since.
• Hearing/speaking in space: Started seeing this in the Jurgens era.  Pretty common nowadays.
• No breathing in space: Writers went on and off with this after JB left the book.  Loeb made it one of his conditions for working on Superman -- he hated the idea of Superman having to breath in space, so he nixed it.

Thoughts, JB?

Thanks.

_FR