Marvel Comics has created some amazing villains over the decades. Magneto has become what is easily the best sympathetic villain of all time, growing into a franchise unto himself. The MCU introduced the world to Thanos, a complex monster that always gives you more than meets the eye. Doctor Doom is getting the MCU rub lately, but he’s far from the only big Marvel villain that Marvel Studio has in their backpocket. The MCU has introduced various villains to their fandom, one of whom became one of the most talked characters in the MCU before he even appeared on the screen – Mephisto.
The villain is your classic Satan-inspired bad guy, a red-clad demon who is the lord of his own infernal realm. He has all of the power he could ever want, so his whole MO is all about trying to trick pure souls into damnation. Over the years, he’s become the arch enemy of heroes like Silver Surfer, who is known for his purity, and became a big deal thanks to his role in “One More Day”. He became the villain that MCU fans would end up learning about while wiki-ing comics, so they could appear knowledgeable in comics in online arguments, with many constantly predicting him showing up somewhere and becoming the next big bad. However, that never happened and beyond that, Mephisto has never been all that big a deal in Marvel Comics. However, one classic trilogy cast him as the ultimate evil in the Marvel Universe: the Earth X trilogy.
Earth X was an outstanding story and it had its genesis in Kingdom Come. Alex Ross had hit it big with Marvels and his next major project would see him team up with Mark Waid for the DC classic that took place in a future where the old heroes had retired and a new generation had taken over. The four-issue story became a modern classic, leading Wizard Magazine to ask Ross to Kingdom Come the Marvel Universe. They published the results in an insert for issue #77 of their magazine and fan reaction was generally positive.
1999 would see the House of Ideas enlist Ross, with writer Jim Krueger and artist John Paul Jones, to bring the story to life. The 14-issue series would see the Watcher recruit X-51 the Machine Man to watch the end of life on Earth. In this future, humanity all mutated, the entire planet gaining superpowers after an accident destroyed Reed Richards’ machine that would have broadcast free energy to everyone. The old guard of heroes didn’t so much retire as they weren’t really needed any more or were killed, with a few like Captain America remaining. Into this world, the Inhumans returned. They had found something terrifying in the void, Black Bolt leading them back to Earth to investigate the greatest mystery in the universe.
Earth X started each issue with an origin recap of a Marvel character and used their story to tell a chapter of its greater saga, as the Inhumans, Reed Richards, and the Thing learned the secret of life on Earth and Captain America fought a war against the Skull, a mind-controlling teenager on a trip across the mutated United States. The story revealed that humanity was created by the Celestials, each of them implanted with a seed that would give them superpowers so they could defend the planet, which was basically the egg shell for a Celestial embryo.
Ross and Krueger were able to take the history of Marvel, link it together in new ways, and create a new piece of mythology. It ended with the Celestials defeated and Mar-Vell reborn, leading into Universe X, a story that focused on ’70s Marvel characters and concepts, with Mar-Vell creating the ultimate arsenal to battle Mistress Death, all while the realities of Mephisto are revealed – that he was a being whose race had evolved to a level where they could be anything they wanted, but were influenced by the people around them, becoming the gods of other worlds (like the Asgardians). He ended up on Earth, and so he was influenced to become a Biblical demon, using his power to tailor the universe to his liking.
He used time machines to create alternate Earths to escape to in case God showed up – because he believed that the Bible was literally real – which led to Paradise X, which revealed that the whole thing had happened because Mar-Vell saw the truth when he had the cosmic consciousness and had made a plan to stop the Celestial plan, free the universe from Death, and stop Mephisto from creating infinite worlds with infinite Celestials in them before he died, with him finally finishing the mission now. Jones left after Earth X, replaced by Doug Braithwaite, with various artists joining for the tie-in miniseries, and covers from Ross.
Earth X was huge when it came out, with Wizard especially pushing the book; after all, it only existed because of them. The Celestial origin of superpowers made a lot of sense with the history of the Marvel Universe, with Ross and Krueger proving that they had done their Marvel homework with the book. It ended on a cliffhanger, with the return of Mar-Vell, so fans knew there was sequel potential. Universe X dropped to some early acclaim, but the book lost fans when it started including tie-in miniseries that you had to read to get part of the story. While it allowed for it to be longer, it annoyed fans.
Universe X slowed down the story’s momentum, and by the time Paradise X came out, even Wizard wasn’t pushing the book. However, going back and reading all three parts reveals a meticulously crafted story, one that takes the various pieces of the Marvel Universe and found new ways to fit them all together. The narrative gets altogether more complex as it goes on, which worked against it back in the day, but it’s the perfect saga for Marvel fans. It’s the one story that finally uses Mephisto to his utmost extent, finally making an argument for him as Marvel’s greatest villain.
Mephisto is the devil of the Marvel Universe, but calling him a major villain is incorrect. It’s one of the reasons MCU fans’ obsession with Mephisto in the early ’20s was so funny for a lot of longtime Marvel comic fans; everyone was guessing he was behind everything and acting like he was some kind of big villain. In the comics, though, Mephisto was, at best, a D-list villain who would show up sometimes, trying to steal someone’s soul, and then get foiled. There are very few stories you can point to that show the character as anything other than a powerful but low level villain.
However, the Earth X trilogy does a fantastic job of taking Mephisto and finally making him into a threat. Making him into a being that believed he was actually the Devil is an inspired idea; the House of Ideas has always been really careful to make sure he was never actually the Devil, so it was a cool subversion. The story found a way to make every terrible thing in the Marvel Universe his fault and it all made sense. What makes it interesting is that the Celestial plan is canon to the MCU, meaning that the rest of the story could easily become canon. Marvel has a road they can follow to make Mephisto the biggest MCU villain in history, finally paying off fan theories everyone has forgotten.
What do you think about Mephisto as Marvel’s greatest villain? What’s your opinion on the Earth X trilogy? Sound off in the comment section below.
