Codename: Nightcrawler
Real Name: Kurt Wagner
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 195 lbs.
First Appearance: Giant Sized X-Men #1
Group Affiliation: X-Men
Previous Affliation: Excalibur
Known Allies: Logan, Ororo Munroe, Professor Xavier, Scott Summers, Katherine Pryde, Piotr Rasputin
Known relatives: Raven Darkholme (Mystique, mother), Eric Wagner (father, deceased), Margali Szardos (foster mother), Jimaine Szardos (Daytripper, alias Amanda Sefton, foster sister), Stefan Szardos (foster brother, deceased)
Known Enemies: the Marauders, Magneto, Necrom

Powers: Nightcrawler is host to several mutant abilities. Firstly, he is a bearer of line-of-sight teleportation. This allows him to teleport himself, anything he is wearing and some extra mass (usually a person) within a distance of three miles. When he teleports, he spends a microsecond in another dimension. This dimension apparently consists of sulfer, which explains the sulfur smell that is apparent after he teleports. Secondly, Nightcrawler can blend into shadows extremely well, making himself effectively invisible. Thirdly, Wagner can stick to surfaces with friction. This makes him an effective sleath agent, allowing him to remain undetected very easily. Finally, Kurt is extremely agile and flexible (he can remain in his crouched state without harming his posture or body). As part of his mutation, Nightcrawler has three fingers on each hand and two toes on each foot. Also, he has blue fur, a prehensile tail and fanged teeth (which further made people believe he was a demon).

Origin: Kurt Wagner was born with certain unusual physical characteristics, but his power of self-teleportation did not emerge until puberty. Margali Szardos, a sorceress and gypsy queen, found Wagner an hour after his birth, in a small roadside shelter in the Bavarian Alps. She found his father, Eric Wagner, dead of a heart attack on the road outside. Margali is said to have found Wagner's mother lying next to the baby and dying, but this assertion has been called into question, and not even Kurt Wagner knows the truth. Margali took the baby to the small Bavarian circus where she worked as a fortuneteller as a "cover" for her activities as a sorceress. Wagner was never legally adopted by anyone, but was raised by all the members of the circus, who had no prejudices against "freaks." Margali acted as Wagner's unofficial foster mother. Wagner grew up happily in the circus, and his two closest friends were Margali's natural children Stefan and Jimaine. Long before his teleportation power emerged, Wagner had tremendous natural agility, and by his adolescence he had become the circus's star acrobat and aerial artist. Circus audiences assumed that he was a normal-looking human being wearing a demon-like costume. Years later, the Texas millionaire Arnos Jardine, who ran a large circus based in Florida, heard of the circus Wagner worked for and bought it. Jardine intended to move its best acts into his American circus. However, he demanded that Wagner be placed in the circus's freak show. Appalled, Wagner quit and made his way towards Winzeldorf, Germany, where Stefan was. He discovered that Stefan had gone mad and had brutally slain several children. Two nights after leaving the circus, Wagner found Stefan and fought him, hoping to stop his rampage. In the course of the struggle, Wagner unintentionally broke Stefan's neck.

Then the villagers of Winzeldorf, who assumed him to be a demon who was responsible for the child killings, discovered Wagner. They were about to kill him when they were all psionically paralyzed by Professor Charles Xavier, who had come to recruit Wagner into the X-Men. Wagner agreed to join the group, but before they left for America, he and Xavier went to the Bavarian circus so that Wagner could explain to Margali about Stefan's death. However, Margali was not there. She held Wagner responsible for murdering Stefan, but years later, she learned the truth and she and Wagner were reconciled. Wagner was also happily reunited with Jimaine, who now lives in the United States under the name of Amanda Sefton. Known as Nightcrawler, Wagner became a member of the X-Men. After Storm left the team on a leave of absense, Nightcrawler took on leadership of the X-Men, during which he (as well as Rogue and Colossus) encountered the Magus. For the first time ever, Kurt teleported only a piece of the object he was carring (which happened to be part of Magus). This caused the Magus incredible pain and helped Rogue defeat him.

However, when he tried the same trick on Nimrod (a futuristic sentinel who had already fought the X-Men prior to this attempt), the robot had other plans. Since Rogue had previously performed the "teleport a piece of him" trick on Nimrod, it had learned about the move. In response to the teleport, Nimrod nearly killed Nightcrawler, who appeared far away from his planned destination. The strain of this caused Nightcrawler to stop teleporting for a while, but when he did it had dire side effects. After using a multiple teleport on Vertigo to put her unconcious, Nightcrawler had no energy left to teleport out of Riptide's way, which nearly killed him again. Kurt went into a coma that would last until the X-Men died in Dallas. When he was contacted by his former teammate Phoenix (Rachel Summers), Shadowcat, Meggan, Captain Britan and himself managed to save the young Phoenix and founded Excalibur. Nightcrawler was leader of that organization throughout its existance, but has recently rejoined the X-Men.