Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Last issue the man plotting against Victor Von Doom turned out to be not Mr Fantastic or the Maker but Mephisto (well, the 1st letter was correct). Now he's fighting Iron Man (Doom) and Doctor Strange at the SHIELD base Project Pegasus.
Mephisto freezes the action in order to talk to us readers. He wasn't expecting Stephen Strange to be in this fight. Strange was supposed to be busy elsewhere, and even if he wasn't he shouldn't waste his time helping evil Victor. But then Strange always was a Goody Two-Shoes, and his soul is well beyond the devil's grasp. But there's no way he was going to let Doom escape him by turning good.
Doom has spent a lifetime doing evil, finally destroying the multiverse and ruling what little was left of it (Secret Wars III). But worse still he defeated Mephisto to save his mother's soul (with help from Dr Strange in the Triumph and Torment GN (MGN#49)). Mephisto had been hoping 1 of the superheroes would kill Doom, and then he'd get 2 souls instead of 1. But now he's broken the rules by coming to do it personally - and none of the other cosmic powers care to stop him.
He reminds us that he'd been impersonating the Maker (Reed Richards from the Ultimate Universe) in the previous issues. And now he confirms that 'Cynthia Von Doom' in those issues wasn't really Victor's mother but a construct of his own (who *thought* she was real). The plan was to mess up Doom's redemption quest so much that he ended up committing suicide. Well the last bit hasn't worked but the 1st part is still on.
But now Mephisto knows he's going to lose this fight, and be scattered to far dimensions so it will take a long time to pull himself back together. And he lets time recommence and accepts that fate.
Thing tells Commander Sharon Carter to get her SHIELD agents safely inside. Dr Strange wields the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak as Doom moves in for the kill. But 1st he asks what Mephisto has done with his mother. The devil doesn't enlighten him with the truth *we* know. And Doom's mystic blasts rips his foe apart.
As Mephisto dissipates Cynthia appears to Victor saying she's confused. Stephen tries to tell him she's not real, but Victor still despairs as she too dissolves away.
Thing and Carter now emerge to join them, and she says Doom is under arrest. Victor replies that she *could* do that, and put him with the 42 supercriminals he's brought in for her recently. Or she could let him go to defeat a Hydra science island for her. After he's taken a few hours to recover from this.
Ben Grimm can tell she's considering it, and he objects. But 1st Doom and Strange confirm for him that the Reed Richards who came to see him recently was really Mephisto. So Mephisto was messing with his mind just to cause trouble for Doom. In other words that's another in the long line of bad things Ben can blame Victor for. He raises his fist to strike but Doom teleports him away.
We see Thing materialise on a balcony of an apartment in what he discovers is Amsterdam. There's a note from Victor saying the place is Ben's for whenever he wants it. And there's a bottle of whisky and a glass on the parapet.
Sharon asks Strange where Ben has gone. Stephen says Doom could have 'ported him anywhere - and given he has a time machine, any*when*. She tells her team to contact Agent Grimm, but DrS says he thinks Doom hasn't done anything bad to his old enemy.
She also wants to know that that wasn't the *real* Devil, but Stephen hasn't got a consoling answer for her. But Doom may very well deliver a Hydra base to her. And we see Iron Doom defeating a whole Hydra army.
On Ryker's Island the 42 convicts Doom captured are planning a combined revenge.
And in a doctor's office Amara Perera receives the news that she's pregnant.