Random Happenstance

At first glance, this looks like a retelling of Nightcrawler's first appearance in Giant-Size X-Men #1. In the next page, Kurt even gives the same "I learn my lessons well!" speech, but it's slightly reworded, since it's out loud, to the angry villagers this time.

In fact, this was another batch of angry visitors, accusing Nightcrawler of having killed a child. The "child" in question, though, was merely a disguise of a monster, that was killed by its brethren for revealing itself; and the monsters in question had been killing children and may have been responsible for Kurt's step-brother going insane, which led to his death at Kurt's hands...

Yeah, this was a pretty big lump of retcon, in Marvel Comics Presents #104, "Male Bonding, part 4: You Know That We Do It Together" Written by Scott Lobdell, pencils by Gene Colan, inks by Al Williamson. In previous versions, Kurt's stepbrother Stefan made Kurt promise if he ever went bad, Kurt would stop him; and Stefan did go bad, committing more than a couple murders. He ended up snapping his neck in Kurt's tail, at which point the villagers found them, and gave chase, leading into Giant-Size.

Kurt fares against the villagers about as well as he did the first time, but luckily he's saved this time by Wolverine. This was their first team-up since Logan and the X-Men supposedly died in Uncanny X-Men #226 (an issue I have, but needed the footnote this issue to remind me) and Kurt's a little pissed about not being let in on the gag.