HELLVERINE #5
“The Mephisto Conspiracy”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Raffaele Ienco
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Mark Basso

HELLVERINE

This one won’t take long.

After being drowned by Mephisto’s water demon last issue, Akihiro is transported to Hell. Since Akihiro never actually made a deal with the devil, Mephisto separates him from Bagra-Ghul and tortures him, before trying to get him to sign up.

However, Akihiro has been studying the Book of Lamentation that Dr Strange gave him in issue #3, and we saw in issue #4 that he could work magic by using his claws to carve symbols into his own chest. Once separated from Bagra-Ghul, he’s able to claw a symbol into the demon’s chest – a “possession cipher”, apparently – that lets him reclaim the demon under his control. So Bagra-Ghul is now under Akihiro’s control and Mephisto’s plan to use him as a conduit has been thwarted, at least for now.

Apparently, Bagra-Ghul is powerful enough that Mephisto isn’t prepared to fight Akihiro directly even on his own territory. Instead, he resorts to using an illusion of Aurora to shock Akihiro into powering down, and then returns him to the real world.

SUPPORTING CAST

Bagra-Ghul. We get to see what the demon looks like in its natural form; it’s an animalistic purple thing which duly sets about turning Akihiro into one of its mutilated flesh displays. (Or that’s the illusion that Mephisto portrays – one of the other.) It doesn’t speak and seems more like Mephisto’s pet than an actual character.

Dr Spivey. She shows up at the end of the issue to enlist Akihiro’s help against something called the Hell Hulk. She’s a scientist who was working for the Pentagon’s Project Hellfire during the Hellverine miniseries. Project Hellfire was an attempt to harness the power of Hell for military purposes, although its commanding officer General Harms had been outright demonically corrupted and was trying to subvert the government. The miniseries ended with Harms defeated, and Project Hellfire left under the control of Spivey and two soldiers whom she’d brought back from the dead as hellfire-powered cyborgs. She’s not exactly a heroic character, but she did put up a fight against Harms and seems to have some moral red lines.

VILLAINS

Mephisto. Since Akihiro isn’t doing his bidding willingly, Mephisto tries to strongarm him into making a deal through torture. He doesn’t seem to have understood that Akihiro was learning magic and doesn’t recognise the magic even when it’s performed right in front of him. When he realises that he’s lost control of Hellverine, he seems genuinely perturbed (“What have I created?”) and resorts to booting him back up to Earth.

According to Mephisto, his newfound interest in mutants has two main causes. First, they’re a wonderful source of fear and hate for him to tap; second, they’re the destined future dominant species (in his view) so he wants to control them. Mephisto’s vision of a demonic mutantkind is represented in the art by a rather underwhelming splash page of the X-Men in spiky bondage gear.

OTHER FOOTNOTES

Page 1 panels 1-2: “Drowning is the worst death. I would know.” Akihiro died by drowning while fighting his father Wolverine in Uncanny X-Force #34 (2012).

Page 9 panel 3: The flashback shows Akihiro, Logan and Jeanne-Marie Beaubier sharing a drink; it’s probably meant to be the Green Lagoon Tiki Bar from Krakoa. The girl with them is most likely meant to be Akihiro’s genetic little sister Gabrielle.

Page 9 panel 4: This seems to be Wolverine and Akihiro fighting together at the tail end of the previous run of X-Force.

Page 9 panel 5: A generic flashback to Akihiro and Jeanne-Marie as lovers during the Krakoan era.