DISCLAIMER: I don't own
the X-Men or any of their multiple incarnations. Please don't sue me or
steal my story!
NOTE:
In Italian, Beatrice is pronounced Bee-a-TREECH-eh. Since the great
Dante wrote his Inferno in Italian, I would guess Belasco would say the
name with the Italian pronounciation.
NOTE II: The opening
speech (from "There..." to "What about Kurt Wagner?" ) is quoted
directly from Universe X Volume 2. The descriptions in between those
quotes and everything that follows is mine (except the characters
themselves, of course. Those are Marvel's).
A Bit on Belasco
A number of people have been asking about
Belasco and his place in X-Men lore. I'm certainly not an expert
myself, but while preparing to write this story I did a fair bit of
research so I feel pretty confident that I can give you some basic
information.
Before I do that, though, I just want to let you
know that my story was only inspired by several of the events shown in
the graphic novel Universe X Vol. 2. I say 'inspired' because it only
deals with Kurt/Belasco's part of the story and pretty much ignores
everything else. The plot for Belasco's Beatrice is completely
original, so you don't really have to worry about knowing a lot of
background information on the X-Men. Hopefully the necessary backstory
will become clearer as the story goes along and pieces of
Belasco/Kurt's past are revealed little by little. In order to make it
less confusing, though, I'll include notes to let you know which parts
I made up, which parts are from the comics, and which parts are based
on the biographies of the real Dante Aligheri and Beatrice Portinari.
And
now, on to Belasco. I found this information at various sites on the
Internet and in Universe X Vol.2. Some of it was contradictory, but I
did the best I could to sort it all out.
The character of
Belasco made his first appearance in Ka-Zar The Savage #11. He was
originally some kind of sorcerer from 13th century Italy. I figure that
since he knew Dante and Beatrice, he had to have lived in Florence at
some point before 1290. (That was the year Beatrice died. She was 24.)
Belasco
apparently suffered from a bad case of pleonexia (the single-minded
desire for dangerous knowledge, no matter the consequences). He used
his skill at alchemy and 'the dark arts' to make contact with some
powerful, demonic beings known as The Elder Gods. He made a rather
Faustian deal with them: he'd help them to cross over to Earth from
their dimension with the help of the mysterious, magical stones known
as 'bloodstones' and they, in turn, would grant him immortality and
power. There was a second part to the deal, though. Belasco was
supposed to breed a race of demons for them on Earth. To this end, they
drastically changed his appearance—hence the red skin, the horns, and
the tail. They also gave him a specially forged sword.
In his
new, demonic form, Belasco kidnapped Beatrice and took her to a land
called Pangea, which had once been inhabited by a technologically
advanced race that used climate control to make the place into a
tropical recreation center or something.
Dante tracked them
down, but he was too late to save Beatrice from her horrific fate. She
had been forced by Belasco and died in childbirth. Enraged, Dante
fought Belasco in a volcano; a duel that ended when the demon
accidentally sliced through an overhead duct with his sword, releasing
a gas that froze him instantly (Rather like Boris Grishenko in James
Bond: Golden Eye! (little joke. Actor Alan Cumming played both Boris
and Nightcrawler in the movies.) ;D ).
Centuries later, Belasco
appeared again under unexplained circumstances. He claimed the volcano
had become active again, causing him to thaw out. He tried once again
to contact the Elder Gods with one of the remaining bloodstones, but he
was stopped by Ka-Zar after he abducted Ka-Zar's girlfriend Shanna
O'Hara to be his new mate. Ka-Zar threw the bloodstone into the
volcano, closing the inter-dimentional rift Belasco had opened and
preventing the Elder Gods from coming through. As punishment for this
second failure on his part, the Elder Gods trapped Belasco in a
dimension known as Limbo.
Time in Limbo is very different from
time on Earth. Years there would only be moments here. No one knows how
long he was trapped there, but over time he managed to become the
absolute ruler of that dimension of demons. There, he encountered,
fought, and corrupted an X-Men team from an alternate dimension. Later,
he brought the official Marvel X-Men team from Earth 616 to Limbo,
where they met the older, corrupted versions of themselves. Then,
Belasco proceeded to torment them. These X-Men managed to escape him,
but not before he had seized Piotr Rasputin's (Colossus) little sister
Illyana. He made her his apprentice and used her soul to make a number
of new bloodstones to help him finally succeed in bringing the Elder
Gods to Earth. However, this process corrupted the girl and infused her
with magical abilities. Finally, when she was fourteen, she turned on
Belasco and defeated him, driving him from Limbo so she could take
over. She became the powerful sorceress known as Magik, managing to
return to Earth mere moments after the X-Men's escape from Limbo. To
them, it appeared as though she had aged instantly from an innocent
little girl to a powerful fourteen year old. She eventually joined the
New Mutants.
Years later, Belasco returned as a threat to the
X-Men. This time, however, he was told by the reborn Captain Mar-Vell
that he was not really the demon Belasco at all, but a brainwashed
copy. His true name was Kurt Wagner, the X-Man Nightcrawler who had
been presumed dead after a disastrous confrontation with the Gray
Gargoyle many years before. The Gargoyle had tried to trap him and his
team in stone. Nightcrawler had tried to teleport away, but he
reappeared without his arm or his mutant attributes. Weak and
lost, he tried to look for help, but instead was beaten almost to death
by a mob of angry mutants. It was then that the demon Mephisto
first approached him.
In denial, Belasco journeyed back to the volcano on Pangea, only to
find the real Belasco's body was still there, frozen in ice. The
Mar-Vell child told the other X-Men what had happened to Kurt, but
apparently they didn't approach him. Kurt/Belasco took up residence in
the crumbling city slum where I gathered he became something of a
vigilante peacekeeper. Although he is still uncertain as to his true
identity, he often watches the X-Men from afar.
And that's all I was able to find out about Belasco. Whatever else I
need for my story I fully intend to make up. :D
I hope this was helpful!