Marvel Legacy may claim to be about honoring the past, but one way in which the line-wide Hail Mary relaunch is definitely looking to the future is in its extremely bold choice of facial hair styles for Nightcrawler on the cover to March's X-Men Red #2 by Travis Charest. Revealed by X-Editor Mark Paniccia on Twitter, the Nightcrawler appears to be taking a cue from Chris Evans in the Avengers: Infinity War trailer (and defying Henry Cavill's anti-facial hair Justice League stance) by growing a formidable beard.

The cover led to speculation on how Nightcrawler, whose body is covered in blur fur, is even able to grow such a well-defined beard, but that will hopefully be explained in the story by writer Tom Taylor and artist Mahmud Asrar. Perhaps Nightcrawler's fur is always growing, and he regularly has to shave the rest of his body. Perhaps it's a secondary mutation. Even Paniccia himself is vying for the no-prize:

@MahmudAsrar will be happy to explain this lol but my theory is he uses rogain on his chin. — Mark Paniccia (@MarkPaniccia) December 18, 2017

Panicia also revealed part of the cover to X-Men: Red #3, teasing a Gambit appearance in the book.

It is indeed. I tagged #travischarest on the image but in my haste missed adding him to the tweet. Here's a snippet from #XMENRED #3 by none other than the great @TravisCharest, of course!!! #XMENMONDAY pic.twitter.com/aveFLT2OaZ — Mark Paniccia (@MarkPaniccia) December 18, 2017

Announced back in November, X-Men Red is the latest in a prestigious line of X-Men books named after colors which will see a resurrected Jean Grey lead a team of mutants on adventures so important, they couldn't possibly be contained in one of the other two ongoing X-titles.

The first issue hits stores in February, and more details about X-Men Red #2 should be revealed in tomorrow's Marvel solicits.

[h/t to The Xavier Files]