Bodybag is a particularly nasty answer to a bounty hunter's practical problem: what do you do with somebody after you have caught them?

Bodybag is a particularly nasty answer to a bounty hunter's practical problem: what do you do with somebody after you have caught them? His body supplies the prison. A target is incapacitated and ends up confined in one of the sacs carried on his back. The creature who helps take you out of the fight is also the vehicle carrying you away. There is very little comforting distance between the guard and the cell. The Sword Is Drawn uses that ability to put Kitty, Meggan and Rachel in the same immediate predicament. Their individual strengths have stopped being the important thing. They need somebody outside that confinement to create an opening. That is why Kurt's response works so well. He reads what is happening around him and uses the confusion of the fight to free the captives. Bodybag's unsettling anatomy becomes something that can be understood and exploited. Nightcrawler's value in a rescue is right there in the way he thinks about the battlefield. The design also changes what a capture looks like on the page. Shackles and cages are familiar superhero scenery. Carrying people inside a living creature is intimate and grotesque, even when the drawing leaves room for a visual gag. The absurdity doesn't make the loss of control less real for the people trapped there. There is no need to give Bodybag a long speech about cruelty to establish the danger. His role is obvious as soon as somebody disappears into him. The other hunters can spend their attention catching the next person while their previous victims remain packed away. For this particular line of work, that is horribly efficient.