ORIGINS:
Nightcrawler was created sometime around 1968 (also the year X-Men debuted, BTW...) to entertain his family. Later, he pitched the character idea to DC comics for a new series, The Outsiders. Thankfully enough, DC rejected him.
Later, Nighty was picked up by Marvel and made his debut in Giant Size X-Men #1.
It was all history after that. Since then, NC has appeared in all the cartoons, almost all the X-Men comics, even had his own four-part mini-series, and recently stole the show in X-Men 2: X-Men United.
HISTORY:
A young, German nobleman died soon after his wife was discovered to be pregnant with "his" child (see "Azazel"). But when the child was born, it was quite clear it wasn't human; Kurt Wagner was born with only three fingers and toes, blue fur, yellow eyes lacking pupils, and a forked, prehensile tail. The village accused the mother of witchcraft and her son of being a demon, exiling them both.
The mother was none other than Raven Darkholme, AKA Mystique. She blamed her failure at power on her son and threw him over a waterfall, where he mysteriously disappeared in a puff of purple smoke unbeknownst to Raven.
Thankfully for our fuzzy friend, he was found by the members of the Munich Circus, raised by the sorcress Margali as one of her own. He took the alias "Nightcrawler" as a stage name and quickly became the star attraction. But that all came crashing down when his adopted brother left the circus and began terrorizing a local town. Kurt hunted him down to stop it and was forced to kill him. The villagers found NC and the body, immediately accusing of murder and being a demon.
Damn, this happens quite a bit to him, no?
Anywho, the mob is stopped from killing Fuzzy by Charles Xavier, who recruits Kurt onto his team of X-Men. It was all good from there. ^.^
NIGHTCRAWLER LINKS:
