Five Easy Pieces

Can YOU

Name This Marvel Villain??

A thorn in the side of the West Coast Avengers, Master Pandemonium popped into their affairs periodically, to look for his lost soul--or rather, pieces of it, in a bizarre search set into motion by the demon Mephisto. Found critically injured at the site of a car wreck, movie actor Martin Preston made a deal with the devil to restore his arm that had been torn off by the accident. It was a wish Mephisto granted, though with some grisly revisions:

Thus, Pandemonium, whose name appropriately means "the abode of all the demons," began the search for the five missing pieces of his soul--with his limbs now replaced with demons, and also able to unleash from his chest a horde of demons called the "Rakasha" at will. And even the Avengers can have trouble with a virtual demonic army:

Pandemonium's story came to a head with his abduction of Thomas and William, the two children of the Scarlet Witch, believing them to be two of the missing fragments of his soul:

Eventually, though, we learned that--shock of shocks--Mephisto hadn't disclosed to Preston the whole truth of the reasons behind his transformation to Pandemonium. Reasons which had their origin in an earlier battle with the Fantastic Four:

Ignorant of this in his battle with the Avengers, Pandemonium begins to suspect that he may have been used as a pawn when he's reminded that Wanda's children were born before his encounter with Mephisto. But in a state of denial, he continues to battle the team until the Human Torch shows up and mysteriously offers him two missing pieces of his soul--which Pandemonium, in his mania, can't help but seize. But instead of making him more complete and increasing his power, the act instead completes the chain of events Mephisto had set into motion:

As for "Thomas" and "William," it turns out they were indeed the missing pieces of a whole, though not of Preston's soul. Instead, they were part of the essence of Mephisto, and now rejoined with him. Fortunately for the Avengers, Agatha Harkness is present to offer an explanation:

Miss Harkness also wiped Wanda's memory of her ever having these "children," in order to spare her the trauma of this experience. Pandemonium, however, was vortexed back to Mephisto's tender mercies to experience a whole new level of "trauma." He would eventually escape and have further demon-related conflicts--but I'll mostly remember him as a memorable WCA villain under Steve Englehart's care, before being usurped by John Byrne to be a factor in his retcon of Wanda's parenthood.