Ororo Iqadi T'Challa (née Munroe)/Storm

See Storm

Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler

A mutant from Germany, Nightcrawler possesses superhuman agility, wallcrawling, a prehensile tail, and the ability to teleport. Despite his demonic appearance, he is a devout Catholic and even led to believe he was an ordained priest for some time *

It's very complicated, but suffice it to say that given the revelations in the "Holy War" arc, his ordination would not have most likely been valid, meaning he was never a priest to begin with.

. Nightcrawler was raised in a circus, where he was accepted with the other "freaks", and grew to have a playful and happy-go-lucky personality. He's apparently a fan of swashbuckling fiction, as for a time, he took up swordplay and started to wear an almost pirate-like costume. Kurt later discovered that the villainous terrorist Mystique was his mother, who had to abandon him because he couldn't change his shape and blend in with her. This also makes him Rogue's adoptive half-brother. Nightcrawler, while never heavily featured, is generally considered to be the Ensemble Darkhorse and manages to consistently rank in the top 5-10 most popular X-Men. He's also one of the most lucky with women, as his unusual appearance and approachable personality tends to draw women to him really easily. Especially the tail and the fuzzy. Chicks dig the fuzzy. But not anymore...

Nightcrawler's unique design was a carryover from an earlier Dave Cockrum pitch to DC for new members of the Legion of Super-Heroes. In that case, Nightcrawler would have been an alien.

• Adorkable - His original characterization was this just through his wacky antics; later interpretations and adaptations often have him as a huge fan of one fandom or another—see Ultimate X-Men.
  • In Excalibur he would flirt shamelessly with Meggan only to become embarrassed and befuddled if she turned the tables on him.
• Badass Adorable
• Badass Preacher
• Chick Magnet - Like the summary says, chicks dig the fuzzy. His period of time spent as a priest made him a Chaste Hero, but he remained a chick magnet. A single panel from Excalibur summed it up perfectly:
  Man 1: A horror!
  Man 2: A demon!
  Woman: A cutie!
• Cool Teacher: When he does teach he specializes in theater and music, and is said to have some of the most popular classes at Xavier's school.
• Cute Little Fangs
• Dark Is Not Evil
• Does Not Like Shoes: The unique shape of his feet make most shoes uncomfortable at best.
• Dual Wielding - Or rather, triple wielding, thanks to his prehensile tail.
• Dying Moment of Awesome - While impaled with Bastion's mechanical hand, Kurt manages to gather enough strength to teleport himself and Hope, the possible mutant messiah, away from the enemy before dying. That's a badass moment, but the thing that makes it a dying moment of awesome is that he managed to teleport from Las Vegas to the coast of San Francisco, while having a mechanical hand right through his chest.
• Flanderization: His religious devotion in later years. While his Catholic faith was a part of the character during the Claremont years (on more than one occasion he was depicted praying, and received spiritual direction from a priest), other writers tended to go overboard on this aspect of his character until that's all there was. Especially when they had no conception of what the Catholic faith was really like. The worst offender in this has to be Chuck Austen.
• Friendly Tickle Torture: He's done it a lot, some of his favorite victims have been Rogue, Meggan, even Phoenix (Rachel Summer). He completely gets away with it every time, except with Rogue, who completely freaks out the first time he does it, as she's not used to being touched, and panics about him accidentally touching her bare skin.
• Fun Personified
• Has Two Mommies: Or would have, according to Chris Claremont — originally, he had decided that Nightcrawler would be the son of Mystique and Destiny. For painfully obvious reasons, The powers that be at Marvel decided this was not a story they wanted to tell, and so while Claremont cotinued to lay broad hints that Mystique was Nightcrawler's parent, and did lay very subtle hints at a lesbian relationship between Mystique and Destiny, he kept those two plot threads carefully unbridged.
• Heterosexual Life Partners (with Wolverine)
  • And Colossus, sometimes the two even fight over him like jealous girlfriends.
• In-Series Nickname: "Demon" (if you're a jerk), and "Blue Fuzzy Elf" (or just "Elf"), Wolverine's own personal nickname for him is "Misfit". Dave Cockrum would affectionately refer to him as "Nightie" which was also used a few times in comics.
• Internet Backdraft: When he was killed in a story arc that otherwise had nothing to do with him, fans were angry.
  • Despite the nature of his death, most fans are happy that he got to go out as a hero.
  • He's since been "replaced" with his Age Of Apocolypse counterpart who, although a very different character, is starting to gradually win over fans.
• Irony: A devout Catholic that looks like a demon and is implied to travel through Hell while teleporting.
• Killed Off for Real
• Luke, I Am Your Father ("Mystique, you are my mother")
• Nice Guy: One of the nicest in the Marvel Universe.
• Not Blood Siblings: Nightcrawler's "true love" is his adoptive sister, Amanda "Daytripper" Sefton.
  • Also Rogue, whom Kurt has flirted shamelessly with quite often.
• Pillars of Moral Character
• Platonic Life Partners: With Kitty/Shadowcat. To the point when he left to join Excalibur, she went with him.
• Raised Catholic - Depending on the writer, Nightcrawler is more or less a practicing Catholic.
• Sad Clown: Sometimes, usually he's a plain old happy clown.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: The probable reason behind his recent demise.
• Swashbuckler: By his own admission.
• Teleporters and Transporters
• Torches and Pitchforks: A key part of his origin story.
• Trickster Archetype
• Ugly Cute: Despite his "demonic" appearance, he is adorable. Some artists have tried to make him actually look ugly, but this is impossible.
  • Even Dave Cockrum's original pitch◊, which is one of the few honest attempts to make him look ugly, came about unbelievably cute.
• Wall Crawling

James 'Logan' Howlett/Wolverine

See Wolverine

Piotr Nikolaievitch "Peter" Rasputin/Colossus

Piotr is a gigantic man able to transform his body into living, armored metal. He's a shy, sensitive, and honorable character who can be a bit naive. He's reluctant to use his powers to hurt anyone and only resorts to them when there's no other option. He's also a very talented artist. In the regular universe, he's usually involved with Kitty Pryde, although there was a lot of angst about it since she was technically under age 14-15 years old in the Claremont-era issues. In the Ultimate Universe, Colossus is gay and is involved with Northstar, but retains most other character traits. Usually finds himself paired up with Wolverine during fights. He's also the great-grandson of that Rasputin. He is currently the new incarnation of The Juggernaut.

• Bash Brothers: With Wolverine.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He's a calm, gentle artist. But upset him seriously and you'll end up with his metal fist in your face.
  • Or, in the case of Riptide, twisted in half.
• Cain and Abel: With Mikhail
• Chrome Champion
• Determinator: Another good reason not to piss him off.
• Face Heel Turn: Joined Magneto for a while after the aforementioned death of his little sister. His personality didn't change all that much, though, which made it a very poor fit, and he went back to the X-Teams within a couple of years.
  • See also his X-Men: Evolution incarnation.
• Fastball Special - He and Wolverine cornered the market on this, their Combination Attack being both the Trope Maker and Trope Namer.
• Genius Bruiser: An absolute giant of a man who can duke it out with some of Marvel's heaviest hitters, but an exceptionally bright and insightful man as well.
• Gentle Giant
• Good Hurts Evil: His Incorruptible Pure Pureness has been shown to be as harmful as his metal body when it comes to most demons and Legions of Hell.
• Husky Russkie
• Ho Yay - As mentioned below, Ultimate Colossus is a Straight Gay with an unrequited crush on Wolverine. In mainstream, they're just very good friends. Sometimes this shows with Nightcrawler as well.
• Heroic Sacrifice: To stop the Legacy Virus, which had infected and eventually killed his sister, Piotr sacrificed himself so that no other mutants would fall victim to it's curse. Don't worry though, he got better.
• Implacable Man: You piss him off and nothing will stop him. Riptide found this out the hard way.
  • After the events of Fear Itself, he has become The Juggernaut.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness - As mentioned above, Colossus is one of the nicest, gentlest, and most decent-hearted of all the X-Men. His "purity of spirit" has been shown to be harmful to the various incarnations of The Legions of Hell, whenever the X-Men have gone up against them. Though he has killed (most famously when he snapped Riptide's neck during the Mutant Massacre), he has to be pushed very far to do it, and it usually involves righteous rage, which doesn't detract from his "purity" in any way.
  • FYI, Riptide was a psychopath and had, in plain view, slaughtered dozens of innocent people.
    • Since becoming the Juggernaut, Piotr has had troubles keeping that purity in recent battles.
• Made of Iron: Literally, via Voluntary Shapeshifting.
• Martial Pacifist
• May-December Romance: He started dating Kitty when she was how old? 14?! And he was almost 20...
  • To his credit, when a depressed Kitty actually asked him to sleep with her for the first time, Peter refused on the grounds of her still being underage. They only consummated their relationship several years later.
    • Things like this disturbed then-Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter to no end, finally leading him to not only demand in no uncertain terms an end to the relationship arc, but to personally write a story arc in Secret Wars in which Colossus falls in love out of nowhere to force a "breakup" story in Uncanny X-Men. To be fair, it was an awesome story, that started out a Tearjerker and ended with Colossus on the wrong end of a Curb-Stomp Battle administered by Juggernaut...
• Pillars of Moral Character: Depending on the Writer
• Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: Piotr after becoming the current avatar of Cyttorak.
• Spock Speak
• Straight Gay (Ultimate Universe only)
• Super Strength
• Technical Pacifist
• The Big Guy
• The Cape
• The Juggernaut: Literally.

Sean Cassidy/Banshee

A detective and minor Irish nobleman, Sean Cassidy was a former Interpol inspector with flight and sound manipulation abilities. After his wife died in a terrorist bombing, he blamed his cousin, causing him to run off with his daughter and driving a rift between the two. He was mind-controlled by an alien terrorist group but freed by the X-Men. Later, he joins the X-Men when the original five are kidnapped. Being about 10-15 years older than the rest of the recruits, he was only active for a short amount of time but still hung around as a reserve and as a mentor, who applied his experience in espionage and anti-terrorism to the younger members of the group. Currently deceased.

• Big Brother Mentor
• Bound and Gagged: A few times, due to his vocal abilities.
• Cain and Abel: With Black Tom Cassidy, his cousin (or brother, in some continuities).
• Captain Ethnic
• Dropped a Bridge on Him - or rather, a 747.
• I Believe I Can Fly: Attempted to explain as him riding on soundwaves. No, just... no.
  • It came with a Crowning Moment of Funny in the TV series, when he gave Wolverine a ride.
• Make Me Wanna Shout
• Officer O'Hara
• Oireland
• Older and Wiser
• Retired Badass

Sunfire/Shiro Yoshida

Sunfire got his powers from his mother being poisoned by the radiation from the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. He vowed to use his radiation powers to fight a one-man war of revenge on the U.S., with the help of his Manipulative Bastard uncle Tomo. After his uncle revealed his true colors by murdering Sunfire's father, he surrendered himself to authorities. He was invited to a new version of the X-Men, but only agreed to be on reserve status, because his temper and radiation powers combined means he doesn't play well with others.

• Anti-Hero
• Captain Ethnic
• Combo Platter Powers
• Handicapped Badass: His legs are now cybernetic due to Lady Deathstrike cutting them off.
• Heel Face Turn
• Hot Blooded (And HOW!)
• Jerk Ass
• My God, What Have I Done? (after what his uncle did...)
• Playing with Fire
• The Atoner

Thunderbird I/John Proudstar

An Apache Indian and Vietnam veteran with the mutant abilities of superspeed, strength, and invulnerability - and super-tracking which was basically a standard requirement for all Native American superheroes until recently. He joined the X-Men solely for excitement and glory, despite resenting "the White Man". He died in vain, and acted against orders - trying to keep a minor supervillain from getting away, causing a plane crash that he did not survive.

• Anti-Hero: The major factor leading to his character's death. Claremont wanted to kill off one of the characters early in his run (for the shock value, apparently), and Thunderbird was chosen because, as Claremont put it "everything he had, Wolverine had too, plus claws."
• Ineffectual Loner
• Not So Invincible After All
• Positive Discrimination: Notably averted; apart from having a terrific set of Combo Platter Powers, he was a stone cold Jerk Ass who meshed poorly with the rest of the team, and paid dearly for it.
• Sacrificial Lamb
• Super Strength
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He was questioning his decision to join the team up until his death.
• We Hardly Knew Ye