X-Men Annual #4: "Nightcrawler's Inferno"

X-Men has effectively been soft-relaunched. Scott has left the team, and has been replaced with Kitty Pryde, a new viewpoint character and somewhat a blank slate. (Perhaps Claremont could have used some of the other X-Men for this, but they've all been saddled with increasingly complicated backstories. Of which more anon.)

It's Nightcrawler's 21st birthday, and he's opening his presents. One of them is a statue of himself, which explodes and knocks him deadinto a hell dimension, which Doctor Strange, guest star for this issue, transports the rest of them to.

The hell dimension is consciously modelled after Dante's Inferno, and we, along with the X-Men, are taken on a tour of it. One of the funnier moments is when Colossus, surveying hell, proclaims that he is pleased that he was brought up as an atheist, if being a Christian means you have to accept the existence of what he's looking at.

What's this all about? Well, Nightcrawler, way back in Giant-Size #1 was being chased by a mob. But not (directly) because he looked weird. He'd been blamed for some murders, which were really the doing of his step-brother, who he later killed in self-defence. The hell has been the doing of his step-mother. And Amanda Sefton, the girl he's been dating for quite a while now, turns out to have been his step-sister, spying on him.

Eew.

This is where Kurt really shows his really-good side, as he's more than happy to forgive everyone involved, and isn't even mad at Amanda about the whole incest thing, and is in fact more than happy to continue it.

Which is strange, because Westermarck effect, so was how old was Kurt when he was adopted, anyway?

Otherdoors, Kitty is totally crushing on Peter, and I am thinking about making an X-Men Shag Chart.