ALTERNATE VERSIONS
Earth X offered a startlingly different take on Belasco’s origins. The Hell-Lord called Mephisto actually manipulated Nightcrawler of the X-Men into becoming the Belasco he was familiar with. Kurt Wagner suffered a series of tragedies in this timeline. First, the Grey Gargoyle attacked his team Excalibur and turned them into stone. Nightcrawler was in the process of being turned as he teleported away, leaving a stone arm behind. Around this time, the Terrigen Mists rippled through Earth’s atmosphere, mutating normal humanity into superhuman or monstrous states. As a curious side effect, Kurt reverted to a normal human appearance under the Mist’s influence. In a wicked bit of irony, Nightcrawler was pursued by a mob of humanity for looking too normal.
After a vicious beating, the physically and mentally exhausted Kurt Wagner was visited by Mephisto. He twisted Nightcrawler’s bitterness to his advantage and brainwashed him into believing he was the Belasco from Dante’s logs. Transformed into a demonic and red-hued version of his former self, Nightcrawler was cast back in time to Pangea. While the real Belasco remained in stasis, Kurt Wagner assumed his place when he first laid eyes on Shanna the She-Devil. Mephisto had a lofty plan to avoid his judgment at the end of time by propagating an infinite number of divergent timelines for him to escape into. By using time travel to create this version of Belasco, and encouraging his use of the timeless Limbo, Mephisto ensured a new puppet to unwittingly support his machinations. He would be forced to battle groups of X-Men after X-Men in Limbo in an attempt to create multitudes of alternate realities, the result of which would increase Mephisto’s own personal power.
What If? Magik told a story where Illyana escaped from Limbo and was found by Doctor Strange. He trained her to become the next Sorceress Supreme, but Belasco hunted her down and tried to force her back to Limbo. He nearly killed Strange in a sorcerer’s duel, but Illyana used her newly conjured Soul Staff to strike down Belasco instead.