X-MEN ANNUAL #4: Nightcrawler's Inferno

The X-Men go straight to hell!

Originally Published 1980

It's Nightcrawler's birthday!

Look at this panel. It does such a great job recreating the discomfort of a small group of people murmuring their way through "Happy Birthday To You." And of course Wolverine doesn't join in. But I have no explanation for why they sing it as "Happy Birthday Kurt Wagner" instead of "Dear Kurt", which is standard where I'm from, unless I suppose the Birthday Boy isn't dear to you. Also props to Kurt on getting what appears to be twice as many gifts as there are X-Men.

After the festivities, Professor X notes there's one gift left, a mysterious black box that doesn't look at all ominous...

I'm not sure who would want an intricate crystal figurine of themselves for their birthday (Cher maybe?) but before Kurt can even check to see if there's a gift receipt, we find out the figure is cursed, or booby-trapped, or something:

I hate when that happens.

The Professor brings Nightcrawler's body to the lab, where he is assisted by Storm, who is the X-Men's scientific expert this week because, and I paraphrase, her childhood career as a thief in Cairo gave her familiarity with electronic home security devices... and some of those skills, somehow, are transferrable to this sophisticated medical equipment.

Which one of these is the machine that goes Ping?

In other words, Chris Claremont still hasn't figured out which X-Man is supposed to be the smart one.

After running every test available, Xavier delivers this heartbreaking news:

Oh, sorry, wrong image:

Soon, the grieving X-Men are visited by Dr. Strange, the Master of the Mystic Arts, at Xavier's invitation. Strange clarifies that while 'Crawler is not currently alive, that doesn't mean he's dead. It's just that his body can't move, he has no pulse, his brain isn't doing anything and his soul has left his body. But other than that, he's not dead.

The source of he attack is revealed to be a mysterious sorceress called Margali of the Winding Road, who attacks our heroes with a tentacle monster and drags them into the abyss when they ask to have Nightcrawler's Soul back please and thanks.

The book then gets all snobby and highbrow on us as the X-Men are treated to a comic book adaptation of Dante's Inferno, slightly modified.

There, they are reunited with Nightcrawler (Weird because I could have sworn they left his body back at the mansion.) He doesn't seem altogether surprised to be in Literal Hell but he keeps mum about why exactly they might have found themselves in the inferno or who this Margali woman is.

For our benefit, he actually does reveal - in a thought bubble - that he may deserve hell because he killed Margali's son, a fact that is hard to reconcile with Kurt's Catholic, non-murdery nature as we know it, but I guess people can contain multitudes. This is a shockingly nonchalant way to reveal one of your longtime protagonists actually has a history of murder, and the book takes a while to circle back to and elaborate on that remark.

"Something on your mind, Kurt?" "Nein..."

They meet Charon, the grim ferryman, and Minos, the Concierge of the Gates of Hell who presents as a pansexual dandy because Hell = Anything Goes = Non-Heteronormative flirtation.

This has not aged well.

Given the opportunity, trust Claremont to always bring it back to Weird Sex Stuff.

As you might expect, what ensues is a lengthy tour of the various Circles of Hell as outlined in Dante, with horrors, tortures and monsters aligned with various forms of sin.

Dr. Strange, as the only one who's actually read the book, acts as tour guide while the X-Men - specifically wrathful Wolverine and ex-thief Storm - reckon with their past sins. (Ororo is briefly turned into a snake, but gets better, and Wolverine gets off relatively scot-free.)

Other than that, they mostly just ooh and ahh at the various scenic locales Hell has to offer: Malabolge, Dis, Cleveland. Just kidding, nobody does anything bad enough to deserve Cleveland.

All along the way, Strange suspects there is something "off" about this Hell, and it might not be the real deal. Eventually, the X-Men fight their way down to the ninth circle, where they find Margali waiting, disguised as Satan. She's a little confused as to who the X-Men are and how they got here, since she only meant to summon Kurt. A previously unknown woman named Jimaine shows up and says that she was responsible for bringing the X-Men, disguised as Margali from earlier, to prevent the sorceress from committing a terrible wrong.

This is a lot to process very fast.

Margali wants justice for the son Kurt murdered. Understandably, the other X-Men go "Woah, Kurt couldn't murder someone, that's crazy, you're crazy." And Kurt goes, "Yeah I totally murdered a guy once, let me have it."

Luckily, Strange always has with him the Eye of Agamotto, which can tell us all objectively the truth of what happened, like dashcam footage of Kurt's life.

We learn that when Kurt was a baby, his birthmother died and he was discovered by the Roma Sorceress Margali Szardos, who, like many in the Roma community, is 12 feet tall, has ram's horns, and radiates an ethereal incandescent light. She had two children of her own, Stefan and Jimaine (recently seen being turned into an ice sculpture.) It would seem to be no big deal for someone described as a "Witch Queen" to raise an adopted son who looks like a blue demon, no questions asked, sure, so Kurt and Stefan grew up as brothers.

One day, Stefan very speficially asks Kurt to kill him if he ever turns bad and harms an innocent person. While this seems overly dramatic, and Kurt tries to laugh it off, Stef insists he is absolutely not kidding and really wants to die if he ever goes bad.

So, one day, years later, Stefan does commit murder - the circumstances of which we are not told - and Kurt fights him. He actually doesn't kill him on purpose, but his fragile neck human snaps like so much Slim Jim in the struggle, and Kurt more or less feels responsible because he's a good Catholic boy wracked with guilt 24-7.

As Kurt was rushing to explain himself to Margali, he was accosted by angry villagers who believed him to have committed the murders Stefan is guilty of - which happens to be the moment Professor X arrived to recruit him for the X-Men. After that, things got a little busy.

Margali can't help but forgive Nightcrawler, in light of this new information, and takes her leave. It's got to be a huge disappointment to have spent all this time devising an exact replica of Dante's vision of hell in which to torment Nightcrawler for eternity, and now it just goes to waste, but there's really no need for it now. Jimaine, meanwhile, reveals she loved and believed in Kurt all this time, and had in fact been close by to protect him...

Weird! But ok.

Further Thoughts:

We're a little between the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga and Wolverine's visit to Canada here, since Storm is confirmed as the X-Men's new leader but Wolverine hasn't donned his new brown outfit yet. There's a subplot about Kitty Pryde not feeling like part of the group and keeping her distance - she's wary of Nightcrawler because of his appearance and (only barely) misses out going to Hell with the others. But later she gets to share in the celebration of a job well done, all while admiring Colossus' pecs.

The art duties for this issue are handled by a young John Romita Jr., capably imitating the standard John Byrne-generated look of the X-Men. He'll return a few years later with a style all his own.

Much like the previous Annual, this story features the X-Men being whisked away to some other realm to have a kooky fantastical adventure, but this story adds to that formula by adding in a high profile guest star to lend some panache to the proceedings. Using the whole oversized Annual format to do an extended riff on The Inferno is a pretty good idea, for sure.

In practice, the issue is a bit of a slog as the whole trip through Hell takes quite a bit of the page count while we're sitting there waiting to find out who Margali is and why Kurt is openly claiming (to us the reader) to have committed murder most foul.

The answers don't disappoint. Kurt's backstory had been the most glaring blank space left in the New X-Men's mythos, as we know Storm's origins as a street urchin thief well, and have a sense of Wolverine as a mystery man who was previously employed by the Canadian Government as their ultimate killer. Colossus' background as a humble farmer doesn't leave much room for intrigue. That leaves Nightcrawler - what must his childhood have been like, why such a swashbuckler, who could have raised him and - less importantly - why was he moments away from being lynched when Professor X found him? (Okay, we didn't need to go right up to the moment with that one.)

Since Claremont's M.O. is to give everyone as busy of a backstory as possible, finding out that Kurt was raised by a literal demonic sorceress, that he had to kill his stepbrother (in a way clinically designed to absolve him of all wrongdoing in the reader's eyes) and had another witchy stepsister he was secretly hot for, is par for the course.

But after all that, the explanation, parceled with the rundown of Kurt's backstory, comes off a bit rushed, and before you know it, he book is over.

Some may quibble with whether this this has any place in the X-Men mythos, but the truth is all the kooky shit has always been there, so not only should this not stick out, it makes a nice part of the X-Men's lives have such a rich tapestry. Whether you like it or not, this is a book about everything - about mutants and prejudice, yes, but also about aliens and magic and demons and killer robots and maybe even some time travel.

Also, Kurt is fully human. Remember that for 25 years or so down the line.