Why Spider-Man Beats Nightcrawler, and Why the Fight Isn't Close

Spider-Man versus Nightcrawler pits the friendly neighborhood wall crawler against the teleporting fuzzy blue elf. These two have been friends for years, but if they went at it in a real fight, I think the answer to who's left standing is clear. Spider-Man wins, and once you line up what each of them can do, it isn't close.

Spider-Man's strength puts him among Marvel's most powerful street level heroes

Peter Parker started out as a nerdy kid from Queens, invisible to almost everyone around him, until a radioactive spider bite gave him the proportional strength, speed and power of a spider. With great power comes great responsibility, and Spider-Man lives that out, protecting New York City from all sorts of threats. Peter has been through a lot in his life, but he keeps showing up anyway, because he's Spider-Man.

He's also far stronger than you might think. He's one of the most powerful street level heroes in all of Marvel. He has easily thrown around cars and trucks, lifted subway cars clear over his head, and even lifted private jets. Peter has lifted one of those massive construction cranes, and he has helped support and lift up buildings by himself.

All that strength goes into one heck of a punch. He has fought some of his toughest villains, including Venom, Rhino and Electro, and punched them clean through buildings. He once sent Electro flying through 40 stories of a skyscraper, and that's a regular thing for him. On one hand, Peter can knock out a guy with one finger. On the other, he can injure the Hulk, injure a Phoenix Force boosted Colossus, and he even ripped Mjolnir straight out of She-Thor's hands. He gets even stronger when he stops joking and starts taking fights seriously.

Spider-Man can take hits from Hulk, Juggernaut and even a Scud missile

Spider-Man can definitely take a punch, to the point where Peter will rest in fights by letting normal people punch on him. Those are the moments when he catches his breath. He has taken punches from Hulk and Apocalypse and point blank hits from Juggernaut. Hercules once knocked him hundreds of feet backwards with one hit, and Peter shrugged it off.

He has taken full on attacks from Iron Man and Doctor Doom, and he has battled villains for hours or even days straight. Peter is nearly impossible to keep down, to the point where he survived a point blank Scud missile explosion. Between his durability and his incredible willpower to stay in a fight, you can never truly rule Spidey down for the count.

Spider-Man's speed and spider sense let him blitz more skilled fighters

Spider-Man is legitimately one of the fastest and most agile characters in all of comics, at the very least at street level. He can move faster than the eye can see, think and react in microseconds, and appear as a blur to well trained fighters. He can move across miles in seconds. Dodging bullets is too easy for him at this point. He has dodged lightning and energy blasts, even energy blasts that are supposedly faster than light itself.

That translates into Spider-Man routinely speed blitzing most of the opponents he faces, even the likes of Black Panther, Daredevil or other master martial artists. They might be more skilled than Pete, but he's so much faster that he's going to land his hits anyway.

That's before you factor in the spider sense, which does more than warn him about danger. It's precognition in a fight. It gives him 360 degree threat detection at all times, even when he's asleep, and it runs through possible battle scenarios in real time to steer his defense. He has used it to fight invisible opponents, and he has beaten Daken using the spider sense alone. It can even move Peter's body to avoid danger without him being fully aware of it.

Web shooters and an IQ north of 250 round out Peter Parker's toolkit

The web shooters give Spider-Man some awesome tools on top of all this. His webbing has a tensile strength of 120 pounds per square millimeter, roughly 2.6 times stronger than steel. He has stopped a bullet midair with a web. He also has acid webs that melt steel, sonic disruptor cartridges, magnetic webs, and concrete setting webs that can briefly hold the Hulk.

Then there's the intelligence. Peter has an IQ north of 250. Mr. Fantastic himself has confirmed Spider-Man's science is at his level, and Hank Pym considers him smarter than himself. As a teenager, he improvised a full antimagnetic inverter in hours to counter the Vulture. He solved Wakandan calculus equations in a fight that nobody else in the room could crack, including Doctor Octopus. He has even trained under Shang-Chi and developed his own Way of the Spider hybrid fighting style. The kid from Queens decided that responsibility was worth caring about for the rest of his life, and he became the amazing Spider-Man.

Nightcrawler's circus past and his tail make him tougher than he looks

Kurt Wagner's story starts about as rough as it gets. He was born with blue skin, yellow eyes, a prehensile tail and only three fingers on each hand. He was abandoned at birth and left to fend for himself, and he ended up being raised in a traveling circus in Bavaria, where he became one of the most gifted acrobats in all of Europe. Eventually Professor X found him and brought him into the X-Men, and Kurt finally had a family.

He's deeply religious, one of the kindest characters in comics, and one of the most fun to watch in a fight. "Trust me, you do not want to fight this guy." Nightcrawler isn't going to out muscle anybody. That's not his thing. His thing is being the most frustrating, most disorienting, most impossible to pin down fighter you've ever faced, all thanks to his teleportation.

Physically, he's stronger than most people give him credit for. He has thrown grown men around one handed, forced open steel doors and snapped chains with his bare hands. Then there's the tail. He has trained himself to use it as a third arm in a fight, and he can hold a fully grown man with the tail alone. While his hands are busy with one thing, his tail is grappling, tripping and disarming at the same time. That extra limb can be a game changer.

He's also tougher than he looks. He has taken punches described as enough to flatten a dozen men and stayed on his feet, and he has kept going through hits from superhumans and demons. He once teleported directly into a solid statue and survived, which should have killed him outright. It didn't.

Nightcrawler's teleportation makes him nearly impossible to pin down

The teleportation is the whole thing. Nightcrawler disappears from one place and reappears somewhere else by passing through a dimension called the Brimstone dimension, with extreme heat, extreme cold and a toxic atmosphere, before stepping back into reality with the iconic bamf and puff of smoke. His standard range sits around 4 miles, but at his absolute extreme he has cleared over 7,000 miles in a single jump. Those long distance hops exhaust him and could potentially kill any passenger he brings along, so it's not something he does lightly.

In a fight, his teleportation works completely differently. Short range combat teleports are fast, faster than a bullet. He can dodge bullets and electric charges, with attacks passing through the smoke cloud where he used to be. He has dodged military rockets and Cyclops' optic blasts. He can chain these teleports together with strikes in what's called a tele-blitz: hopping in, hitting you, disappearing before you can respond, then appearing somewhere else and hitting you again. You never know where he's coming from, and you never know where he went.

What takes Nightcrawler to the next level is that he can, in theory, teleport part of an opponent's body away, sending a piece of you somewhere else. He has used this to sever limbs before and beat people who are superhumanly tough. He's a very dangerous man when he wants to be. Nightcrawler just doesn't often do this.

Nightcrawler's fencing and acrobatics carry him even without teleporting

Teleportation isn't the only thing that makes Kurt so hard to deal with. He's a very skilled fighter. He fenced competitively in the circus before he ever joined the X-Men. He has fought through entire arcs where his teleportation was temporarily disabled, carrying himself on pure hand to hand skill and acrobatics. The blue fuzzy elf who grew up performing in a circus and found his family in the X-Men became one of the most impossible fighters in all of Marvel to get your hands on.

Spider-Man and Nightcrawler have already fought in Amazing Spider-Man

Spider-Man and Nightcrawler are good friends. Nightcrawler has even worn the Spider-Man costume before, and the two have fought. In Amazing Spider-Man, Nightcrawler is investigating a sniper who killed one of his old circus friends, and Spider-Man has been framed as the killer. They run into each other at a theme park, both assume the worst, and they go at it.

Both of them land their punches, but like all hero fights, it's a big misunderstanding, and they team up instead. So the real question is who would win if that fight never stopped.

Spider-Man outclasses Nightcrawler physically in nearly every area

Physically, Spider-Man outclasses Nightcrawler in nearly every area. The best you can say for Nightcrawler is that he can overpower normal people, snap metal chains or bust through walls, and he can take hits from superhumans without instantly going down. He's peak human in a comic book world. That's nothing compared to Spider-Man.

Peter is strong enough to trade blows with Iron Man or punch villains through buildings. He has lifted hundreds of tons, one shotted villains and staggered people like Hulk or Apocalypse. Pete is so strong that if he wants to, he can knock Nightcrawler out with one hit. He only has to land one punch here. "One good punch, and Nightcrawler's going to be down for the count."

It's also hard to see how Nightcrawler is going to injure Spider-Man easily, because Spider-Man is that tough. People at Nightcrawler's strength level, peak human, aren't able to hurt Peter with their punches. Normal people break their hands against Spidey's skin, and Spider-Man is tough enough to be punched across city blocks without going down. Nightcrawler's swords can do some damage, since Spider-Man isn't necessarily immune to piercing damage, but Kurt has to land those attacks, and that's a lot easier said than done.

The spider sense cancels out Nightcrawler's teleportation, so Spider-Man wins

This whole fight boils down to Spider-Man's speed, agility and spider sense versus Nightcrawler's teleportation. Nightcrawler can teleport at a crazy fast rate. He has dodged bullets and missiles with it and blitzed opponents, but it has been explicitly stated that Spider-Man has faster and better speed and reflexes than him, even with his teleportation. Spider-Man has proven that in their encounters.

Peter's spider sense also completely negates Nightcrawler's teleportation and the element of surprise that comes with it. It's not only that Peter has the reflexes to react the split second Kurt teleports. His spider sense can help him sense and predict where the next teleport is coming from, so he can react to attacks before they even come his way.

The only way Nightcrawler can even begin to injure Spider-Man is by teleporting off body parts, and that's something Kurt would never even begin to do. It's not in his character, and it's not how he fights. Spider-Man has also beaten Nightcrawler before, and he has even taken on the whole X-Men team. They might be friends, but "Spider-Man is truly just on a different level than the blue elf." There's nothing Nightcrawler can do about it. Spider-Man wins.