I had always loved the Nightcrawler stories about his internal conflicts over faith and his past, so I was looking forward to a deeper investigation of his character. Unfortunately, the only references to these parts of his life were passing mentions, and even revisiting Amanda lacked drama. The "cases" he is given to "solve" didn't engender personal reflection except in superficial references to his compassion and distress, and all of them were solved, not by his own efforts really, but by his connections to more powerful mutants and magicians.The lack of personal reflection was even more conspicuous because most of the story is told in the comic equivalent of "voiceovers," but all Kurt says in the voiceovers is narrative, not reflective. This accomplished little more than to distance the reader even farther from the action.

Worse, it was hard to keep track of which characters were which because of inconsistent facial features (most noticeable on Kurt himself, who is blue, sure, but sometimes looked more like Keanu Reeves, sometimes more like the guy who played Draco Malfoy; also I was reduced to using hair color and length to distinguish between the uniformly 40-22-30 women, all of whom dressed in alluring clothing even when at work in a children's psychiatric ward).

All in all, disappointing. I expect more from a series focusing on conflicted, haunted Kurt Wagner than a few stories about conflicts and haunts that he coasts through with a little help from his friends. ( )