Plenty of influential creators have taken on Marvel's merry mutants over the years, but none have made as big of an impact on the X-Men as Chris Claremont. During his 16 year tenure writing Uncanny X-Men, he co-created a number of popular X-Men and wrote most of the defining X-storylines fans remember today like "Days of Future Past" and "The Dark Phoenix Saga."
While Claremont left the world of the X-Men after launching X-Men with Jim Lee in the 1990s, Marvel revealed that the writer is returning to one of the X-Men characters he largely defined with an upcoming story in Marvel Comics Presents.
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That recently-relaunched anthology series has has been focusing on Wolverine throughout each decade of Marvel history, with other stories from characters specific to those time periods as well. Marvel Comics Presents #5 will focus on the 1980s, and Claremont will be revisiting "The Cross-Time Caper," one of the most legendary storylines from his British X-spinoff Excalibur in a story starring Nightcrawler.
Nightcrawler was a core member of Excalibur when that team was involved in the "Cross-Time Caper." The zany 12-issue storyline began in Excalibur #12 and took the team on a crazy adventure through time and space on a train powered by their tiny robotic friend Widget, which says a lot about why it became such a fan-favorite storyline.
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Claremont's return to "The Cross-Time Caper" will bring Nightcrawler to a key moment in the history of his homeland at the fall of the Berlin Wall, presumably during a time when the team was separated.
This isn't the first time Claremont has returned to the X-Men by any means since his high-profile departure in 1991. He had a few stints writing Uncanny X-Men and X-Men and wrote every issue of X-Treme X-Men in the 2000s. He also wrote the lengthy alternate reality series X-Men: The End and X-Men Forever, which featured an alternate timeline where Claremont followed through on some of what he had planned before his departure.
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More recently, Claremont wrote a solo Nightcrawler series with artists Todd Nauck, Chris Samnee, and Jamie McKelvie that left fans wanting more from Claremont and Kurt Wagner.
Marvel Comics Presents #5 will hit stores in May with Claremont's segment starring Nightcrawler, alongside another chapter of Charles Soule's "Vigil" featuring Wolverine, and a new story with 1980s' creation Venom.
MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS #5
- CHARLES SOULE, CHRIS CLAREMONT & MORE (W)
- PAULO SIQUEIRA. LUKE ROSS & MORE (A) • Cover by ARTHUR ADAMS
- VARIANT COVER BY ROB LIEFELD
- Welcome to the 1980s, Marvel style! First, Wolverine’s Vigil goes into its fifth decade but doesn’t go the way he planned. Then, join Nightcrawler mid-Cross-Time Caper at the fall of the Berlin Wall! Finally, a tale of one of ’80s Marvel’s biggest creations, that most lethal of protectors, Venom!
- 40 PGS./Rated T+ …$4.99