Mephisto: the Architect?

**gambit2051** · 09-02-2021, 01:39 AM

Just curious how everyone feels about the Influence that Marvel is affording Mephisto now-a-days.

Between what Jason Aaron has done with the villain over in Avengers (with Mephisto acting like a whisper in MANY Villains Ears over the Centuries, possibly helping push them to finally take an action they had been hold back on, and thus Creating numerous Fights throughout the Marvel Timeline) and what Nick Spencer has been teasing in ASM with Kindred (and what it appears he DID with the Osborns and Mephisto...it totally fits that Norman would sell his son's soul to Mephisto tbh...), it is looking more and more like Mephisto is being treated with far more Respect and Ambition than they have given the character in Decades (if Ever really...I mean...Mephisto is now a Central Villain for the Avengers and Spider-Man...he mainly hung around Ghost Rider and Dr Strange with hints that he was really "the Devil aka Lucifer" and sometimes Thor...but never to the Level he has been given in Both of those Titles Currently)

lmao at this point, I would not be surprised if Mephisto is some how responsible for Hickman's imminent Inferno storyline LMAO

**FFJamie94** · 09-02-2021, 02:38 AM

I'm not 100% on board, but hopefully it won't spiral out of control.
If this is all because of One More Day, then that story was a bigger mess than originally thought.
A part of me reckons that Marvel believe that Mephisto may be the next big MCU villain after Secret Wars and so are cashing in early to create more stories to sell.
If this is the case, you can't can't Thanos him. And look at what it did to Thanos, now his threat level has shrunk to the point where he is just canon fodder at this point.

**jackolover** · 09-02-2021, 03:21 AM

Ever since Heroes Reborn ended (a Mephisto promotion piece), all we are getting is storyline’s involving alternate realities.

FF Life Story
The Marvels
Ka-Zar
Avengers Tech-On
Kang the Conqueror
Amazing Fantasy
Dark Ages

Then you get these linked stories.

GOTG
The Last Annihilation
Black Cat and Infinity Score
SWORD
DEATH OF DOCTOR STRANGE
The Darkhold
Defenders

We could be seeing something like post Heroes Reborn being a Mephisto construct of the Multiverse, and whose to say Dark Ages isn’t some link. Mephisto is that strong that he could affect the Multiverse, setting up pieces like he did in HR.

We really have not seen resolution of a lot of the anomalies connected to the Eighth Iteration universe being a synthetically produced Seventh Iteration re-run, when the whole of the Eighth Iteration is bursting to get out and live it’s life.

**Pav** · 09-02-2021, 06:30 AM

Not that it's really the same thing, but I've been waiting for Mephisto to make his play since reading the Aguirre-Sacasa run of Nightcrawler.

-Pav, who would love to see that run brought back into continuity relevance...

**CosmiComic** · 09-02-2021, 06:31 AM

IMO he's too big of a villain to just be stuck with Ghost rider. No offense to GR fans

**Jabare** · 09-02-2021, 06:45 AM

this is all Spider-Man's fault

**Iron Maiden** · 09-02-2021, 08:02 AM

I guess you could say Mephisto was Stan Lee's last great character since he created him as the counterpoint to Silver Surfer the Surfer's solo series.

**Revolutionary_Jack** · 09-02-2021, 08:34 AM

Originally Posted by Iron Maiden

I guess you could say Mephisto was Stan Lee's last great character since he created him as the counterpoint to Silver Surfer the Surfer's solo series.

I don't think Mephisto is a great character at all. I always felt he was a mediocre and terrible supervillain, not in power threat but in characterization and concept, and also visual design.

There's nothing interesting about him at all, since he's basically a traditional concept of the devil played straight without any of the nuances and interest you have in the versions of the devil you see in 20th Century Culture (The Master and the Margarita, "Sympathy for the Devil", the 1967 Bedazzled, Neil Gaiman's Lucifer). Heck Mephisto is far inferior to the Mephistopheles featured in the Faust legends, where Mephistopheles often came off as more sympathetic and likable than Faust himself.

The character has had a fundamental air of sleaze and louche quality consistently and the only legitimately great story he was part of "Triumph and Torment" had him as a one-dimensional foil to make Doctor Doom come off as the good guy.

Jason Aaron using him in The Avengers was a mixed thing because the fact is the biggest story he was ever part of -- One More Day -- is a genuine pezzo da merda that can turn heads and get eyeballs but it's also not a story that can do much or anything in comics.

**Morgoth** · 09-02-2021, 08:49 AM

I think they're trying too much in making Mephisto literally the architect of everything bad in Marvel Universe. Norman twist, for instance, wasn't necessary, imo.

**Citizen Kane** · 09-02-2021, 10:05 AM

I don't care for this idea that Mephisto was secretly orchestrating events that happened years ago. It doesn't add any tension to what they're building up, and it lessens the impact of what happened in the old stories. Marvel just doesn't really seem to know what to do with him. And with a "devil" character like Mephisto, he needs to be played with tact. I think Mephisto's fatal flaw is that many of his schemes are too brazen and obvious. There's three things that should be kept in mind when using Mephisto in a story: 1. His motives should almost always be obscured; 2. Mephisto should rarely appear on panel, only coming out when forced to; 3. If he's involved, his involvement should only be hinted at [He should never be explicitly named, and it shouldn't be obvious he's involved], giving the reader the chance to piece together the "mystery" themselves all the while building anticipation for the conclusion. What's being done here by Marvel is just plain lazy.

**gurkle** · 09-02-2021, 10:12 AM

It would be funny if they believed the rumors that Mephisto was going to be in the MCU and built him up for nothing.

**Hypestyle** · 09-02-2021, 10:22 AM

His "reality warp" power displayed in OMD I hadn't noticed before in any other comics. That would need to be explained at length. I presume the same thing happened with the Squadron Society of America world warp. It would seem to need an expending of tremendous energy, perhaps more than he would normally have access to. When Franklin Richards blasted him away for a while, that had to hurt him..

Now with this "council of Mephistos", I presume he's no longer aligned with other "hell lords" of the 616 universe; what was that one coterie called? The six fingered Hand? Or something like that.

**davew128** · 09-02-2021, 02:02 PM

Originally Posted by Hypestyle

His "reality warp" power displayed in OMD I hadn't noticed before in any other comics. That would need to be explained at length. I presume the same thing happened with the Squadron Society of America world warp. It would seem to need an expending of tremendous energy, perhaps more than he would normally have access to. When Franklin Richards blasted him away for a while, that had to hurt him..

I agree it needs an explanation because it was originally explained way back when in Secret Wars II that he had no real power outside of his domain and everything in this world was an illusion.