Spoilers ahead for Captain America #16, which went on sale this week.
There are comics that end an arc, and then there are comics that accidentally kick a hornets’ nest in an entirely different series. Chip Zdarsky and Valerio Schiti’s Captain America #16 manages both. The visible plot concerns Steve Rogers, who has spent the past few issues in a coma while his soul was frogmarched to Hell by Doctor Doom. Doom needed Steve’s famously noble spirit to help overthrow Mephisto and install a kinder demon called Veratok in his place. The plan runs into the usual obstacle with Doom plans, which is Doom.
By the end of the issue the Latverian monarch has wrestled the throne away from Mephisto and kept it for himself, which is the sort of career move you’d expect from a man who has never knowingly handed anything back. Steve, meanwhile, is returned to the land of the living, with the Red Skull, who does not so much come back as turn up again like a bad smell. Before he goes, Doom announces that every one of Mephisto’s contracts is now void.
Cue the sound of a thousand Spider-Man fans sitting bolt upright. The most notorious Mephisto contract in comics is, of course, One More Day from 2008, in which Peter Parker and Mary Jane signed away their marriage to save Aunt May. It has been argued over in comic shops, forums and pubs for the best part of two decades, and it is not remembered with universal fondness. If every deal Mephisto ever struck is null and void, the logical conclusion is that Peter and MJ get their wedding rings back. The scene has an extra twist of irony, since Doom himself was among those Peter asked for help back then.
Nobody should start ordering confetti just yet. There’s no sign in Amazing Spider-Man that anything has changed, and Marvel has a long and proud tradition of declaring things undone and then quietly carrying on as before. The more plausible landing spot is Zdarsky’s new Avengers series, which sets Spider-Man’s team against a threat to New York, and where hints about the contract have already been dropped. Whether that is a retcon, a tease or merely a very expensive pub argument remains to be seen.
Here at SFcrowsnest magazine, we’ve always held that the best superhero comics are the ones that send a square-jawed patriot to Hell and make him the most reasonable person there. If you’d rather wait for the paperback, the arc is collected as Captain America Vol. 3: Hell’s Angel.
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