This annual starts with the origin of the entire universe…
I’m not going to tag all the Gods who appear in a flashback panel or two. This Annual shows their images briefly, but this isn’t about them. It’s about this guy…
Only it’s not about his golden god body…
It’s about Demogorge The God Eater.
After introducing him, we get an introduction to our more familiar Norse friends, who are gathering at a funeral. As a parallel, the hell-based mythological dimensions are having a meeting of their boards of directors (Hela, Set, Pluto, Mephisto, and a few others who are not important enough to name or tag).
Mephisto proposes a corporate merger. It’s about time. There are way too many soul-collecting “hells” in the Marvel Universe–with many versions of the devil as well, who don’t even appear here (other than Mephisto). I do like that for some reason the underworld has organized itself the same way humans do, based on arbitrary geographical and cultural boundaries. I wish there were an entire series just about hells that could explain how they allocate dead souls, work out jurisdictional boundaries, etc. It would be great. But I would want it to have been created in the ’70s by Steve Gerber or the mid-’80s by Mark Gruenwald (who plotted this very annual). Or maybe the ’00s by Morrison or Ellis. Or Ennis. Imagine if Ennis did it. That would be cool AF.
If it were done today, I’m not sure who would be able to do a good job with it.
For reasons too plot-specific to recap, the process of merging unleashes Demogorge, who already got an origin sequence (see above) but also gets a “here’s my name!” panel.
These are very convenient for bloggers with pages like this.
From here, it’s a pretty standard–but fun!–story about the creature eating a bunch of Gods until Thor punches him a bunch of times and gets him to spit them out.
Demogorge appears once more, in the Atlantis Attacks! Thor Annual.