An Important Theological Question

[history79]

Comments

[lilacsigil]

To be fair, Mephisto is *a* devil, and there's lots of beings more threatening than Mephisto out there!

[donnblake]

Also to be fair, in his home realm Mephisto is often nigh-unbeatable. They may have beat him by punching here, but while I do generally like Gwenpool and Squirrel Girl comics, I'm not terribly inclined to give them credit for calling out problems they, if not create, exacerbate.

[crinos]

Well remember Captain America DID beat up the Devil in the Golden age.

As for why it doesn't happen more often, there are a few reasons:

1) Mephisto (And other evil devil like entities on his level) tend to run on the higher end of the power spectrum, so punching them generally doesn't usually work.

2) On that token, unless you have power enough to actually get to Mephisto's realm, its kind of hard to actually reach the guy.

3) He kind of does get punched a lot already? I mean Mephisto semi regularly interacts with the heroes of the marvel universe, and usually to his detriment. I mean he doesn't get punched all that often, but he does usually end up on the losing side of things, he's inconvenienced most time (I mean his biggest success was destroying peter and MJ's marriage, and even that he kind of got screwed by a loophole added by MJ, if you buy that). I mean we saw in the Priest Run of Black Panther he ran into T'challa a few times, and got dunked on pretty thoroughly by him. So....

[locuatico]

however, due to the nature of comics and stories, Mephisto is in the losing end of the spectrum. thus his power levels are ultimately meaningless.

[broblawsky]

Dr. Strange and Dr. Doom try just that in The Triumph & The Torment. Spoiler warning: it doesn't work. Fighting Mephisto in his own realm is an elaborate form of suicide.

[locuatico]

actually, it did work. their mission was to save Doom's mother and they did. thus they acomplished what Gwen mentions here.

[thehood]

It did work. Their goal was to save Doom's mother soul and they succeeded.

[broblawsky]

It worked, but not because of their personal abilities. Mephisto's plan backfired on him by giving Doom's mom a chance to renounce her son's evil. Mephisto was wounded by trying to hold a redeemed soul; Doom and Strange did everything in their power to fight Mephisto and got their asses kicked. Even afterwards, Mephisto could've simply killed them, but chose to let them go in hopes of corrupting them later rather than losing their souls now.

[thenicochan]

Doreen is so friggin cute in this.

[jencaasi]

I think the answer to that question "Why aren't heroes down here punching the devil all the time?" is kind of the same as "Why doesn't Thor just show up every time Daredevil's in trouble or whatever? They work in the same town."

To paraphrase Alfred Hitchcock, "They don't (go deal with evil at the source solving the problem right away) because it's dull." If the heroes did everything in the most pragmatic and efficient way all the time, we'd have less interesting comics.

At least, that's how I see it.

[jencaasi]

This looks like a really well done comic, though. I love that art style.

[icon_uk]

Gurihiru do beautiful work!

[icon_uk]

Yeah, Mephisto isn't the devil in the Christian sense (I don't feel qualified to comment on other religions and their devil type concepts), he's a demonic creature who instigates evil when he can, but he only exists because evil already exists in the world.

The only time he's been actually destroyed was by Franklin Richards many, many years ago (in the Byrne FF run I think), and even that noted that Mephisto is the embodiment of all humanities sinful acts, so defeating him serves no long term purpose, because humanity will still commit evil acts and in doing so, recreate and re-empower Mephisto eventually.

Punching Mephisto might prevent a few people from making deals with him, and thus make the world a slightly better place (Though his appearance in New Mutants suggests he's not doing that as much as he used to because there's no real point to it), but it certainly wouldn't have an uimpact on the general popualtion's capacity for evil and sin.

[zachbeacon]

This just makes me wish Strong Guy was still running Hell (have they ever addressed why he's back among the living?)

"Whatever. Just take the revolving door out."

[silverzeo]

... so you are saying... that when Mephi offered that deal to Peter... he could have just PUNCH HIM REPEATEDLY UNTIL HE DID IT FREE OF CHARGE and that whole stupid and insulting story would have never happen!?!?!

[silverzeo]

Huh... is it me or is Marvel really doing that alot with their characters?

A classic characters are "owned" by a relatively newer character. First it is here with the concept of the devil, but it was also happened with Hope Grey telling Prof Xavier how to be more "open minded", and then the new Nova asking "Why is the Watcher watching"... and that infamous scene where Spider-Man looked stupid in-front of that Academy of Young Avengers...

[oakie620]

The Worf Effect is a common trope in fiction. Sadly, it seems to be used more and more as a crutch instead of proper storytelling these days.

That said, I actually don't mind it here, since I couldn't care less about Mephisto and it isn't what Gwenpool's final issue is really about.