The recent 38th issue of the ongoing Avengers comic series reveals that Mephisto was the one who originally tempted the Mad Titan to attack Earth in the era of the First Avengers.
Thanos is one of the most prominent supervillains in the fictional world of Marvel and is also one of the greatest adversaries that Earth’s Mightiest Heroes have ever faced. And despite failing to realize his global-domination plans, the character has a way of returning from the dead to haunt the Avengers, even if it’s through cheating death itself.
Now, the aforementioned comic has revealed that we have the demon Mephisto to thank for Thanos’ numerous incursions on Earth. After the “Age of Khonshu,” where the superheroes had to fight the ancient Egyptian god, Tony Stark knows about Mephisto and his masterminded plans to take over the universe.
The issue goes further into revealing the intentions of the literal incarnation of the Devil in the Marvel Universe, though. Apparently, Lucifer has manipulated supervillains on a number of other occasions to serve his purposes. One of these was Thanos, whom he encouraged to seek out Earth and understand its connection to Death.
At the time, the Mad Titan was obsessed with impressing Mistress Death. In fact, this was his main motivation for gathering all the Infinity Stones. And the recent comic book issue reveals that he even went toe-to-toe with the First Avengers, who were basically Earth’s defenders in the caveman era.
This obviously has a lot of implications for the Marvel continuity. But perhaps the most interesting is the fact that Thanos’ appearance in Iron Man #55 all those years ago wasn’t actually his first. And his beef with humans, in particular, goes a long way back.
