He already thought he was a demon once, it wouldn't take much to convince him he was dead.

Even though it's not inside this issue, I swear there was a house ad with the cover for this one; but I hadn't read it until just now! From 1982, Thor #325, "A Deal with Darkoth" Written by Doug Moench, pencils by Alan Kupperberg, inks by Jim Mooney.

Darkoth wasn't even a bad guy, but does fall into the familiar villain trope of seemingly dying, a lot: he was apparently killed in Fantastic Four #194, but instead had been grabbed by Mephisto, who wants to use him against that goody-goody Thor: they had fought recently in Thor #310, and Mephisto didn't think he could get better than a stalemate directly. But, Darkoth had been test pilot Desmond Pitt, an old friend of Ben Grimm's; who tried and failed to infiltrate Dr. Doom's intelligence operation against NASA. Doom had taken Pitt, ruined his name, faked his death, made him a rather baroque cyborg, convinced him he was actually a demon, but abandoned Darkoth when he turned on him. Darkoth may or may not have been "dead" at this point: Mephisto might just be lying, about giving him enough life for this chance to kill Dr. Blake and be reunited with his son.

Refusing to murder Blake or Thor, Darkoth is eventually turned evil by Mephisto, but Thor manages to free him, at least momentarily. Darkoth begs Thor to kill him, to free him from his half-life slavery, and Thor obliges. Mephisto is furious over the loss of Darkoth's soul; and Thor smites a ton of Mephisto's lackey demons. I feel like Darkoth would've said his son's name as he died; not "my son..." like a Borat bit. Later, Dr. Blake makes arrangements for his new secretary to adopt Desmond's son, so sort of a happy ending? Even though I still think Thor and Darkoth got fooled there; and Darkoth still wasn't dead; he'd turn up in 1991's Excalibur #38.

Also this issue: another "Tales of Asgard," as Loki again steals the golden apples of immortality and the goddess Idunn. I don't think I've read the previous issue (with a fight against perennial punching-bag Graviton) but Loki seems like he thought Big Daddy Odin was maybe cheating on his adopted mom Frigga, and took extreme steps to retaliate, which included giving most of the apples to the Midgard Serpent, Jormungand. Loki maybe realizes his error, but will have a hard time convincing Tyr to come off it...("The Golden Apples of Immortality" Written by Doug Moench, pencils by Alan Kupperberg, inks by Jack Abel.)