Played a bunch of X-men, and spent some time troubleshooting the Nightcrawler popups. They'll very often pop up, and then drop immediately during gameplay, especially during Rogue. In trying to get them to stay up though, I got the left one to the point where the latch wouldn't drop it at the start of a game (at least not on the first try). I managed to adjust the mech so it drops the way it's supposed to, but it seems like a bad design. It's fairly simple (coil pops up NC, spring pulls latch under the plunger, plunger rests on latch), but I think that the problem is that the weight of the target is such that the coil has to pull the latch out from underneath, overcoming the full weight of the whole target. Either the coil is underpowered for the job, or the friction on the bottom of the plunger is too high. I thought that adjusting it so that the latch was inset further on the bottom of the plunger might help the targets stay up, but this caused my earlier problem, so now it's back to just barely resting on the edge of the latch.
Anyway, working now. Still haven't managed to get to Dark Phoenix, but I did actually finish 3 Villain modes last night, which was my best yet.