WARNING: The following contains mild spoilers for Avengers #38 by Jason Aaron, Ed McGuinness, Mark Morales, Jason Keith and VC's Cory Petit, on sale now.
In Avengers #38, it is revealed that Mephisto has been manipulating events since the beginning of time. In the Avengers comic series, the demonic villain has been pulling the strings of multiple threats such as Dracula, Atlantis, the Winter Guard and the Squadron Supreme, ensuring they all end up in the path of the Avengers. The issue reveals Mephisto sent a young Thanos to battle the Avengers of 1,000,000 AD, at the dawn of time.
And he didn't stop there: he also manipulated Apocalypse, the Hulk and Doctor Doom to attack the Avengers. But not just any version of Doctor Doom, the villain's final form: Doom the Living Planet.
Doom the Living Planet first appeared in 2010's Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #2 by Jason Aaron and Adam Kubert. This version of the character is from another timeline where an aging Doctor Doom transferred his consciousness into a giant robotic planet. He is essentially a planet-sized Doombot with the mind of the real Doctor Doom, and his creation resulted in most of life on Earth being wiped away.
Although the character first appeared as part of an alternate timeline, Doom the Living Planet now returns in the far future of the Marvel Universe. Avengers #38 shows all of the time periods in which Mephisto manipulated a villain to attack Earth's Mightiest Heroes: it starts in the past and moves forward, but it doesn't stop at the present because the final sequence takes places millions of years in the future.
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There, Doom the Living Planet appears, threatening what remains of life on Earth after Mephisto makes him remember who he truly is. Thankfully, the planet still has its defenders: in this era, the world is now protected by Old Man Pheonix and three women that appear to be Thor's granddaughters. This coalition of superheroes is one we have seen before in writer Jason Aaron's overarching Thor saga. Indeed, throughout the writer's stint on Thor, brief glimpses of an era near the end of time itself showed an aging God of Thunder with three granddaughters and who crossed paths with a Phoenix Force hosted by Wolverine.
This future Thor's last exploits were chronicled in Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic's King Thor, but now, this timeline is being revisited in Avengers #38.
The outcome of the fight between Doom the Living Planet and these future Avengers isn't revealed just yet, but it seems all but certain we'll learn more about this confrontation further down the line. After all, the tease is epic and it promises a massive brawl of epic proportions: it's a planet-sized Doom against the Phoenix, Asgardians and space sharks for the fate of the entire world -- and possibly the future itself.
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