Marvel has always strove to be the “world outside your window”, doing their best to tell stories that are as grounded as possible in reality. Well, as grounded as you can get in a universe where radiation gives people powers and not terrible cancers, and a Norse god walks around talking like he’s in a Shakespeare play. However, unlike their distinguished competition, Marvel doesn’t have heroes who are basically gods in spandex flying around everywhere. Marvel characters have powers that fit their world, and while someone like Spider-Man is unbelievably strong, he can’t match the strength of some of the more common DC characters. Marvel’s power levels have always been more grounded than DC, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of overpowered heroes and villains in the Marvel Universe.
There are obviously levels to this. A god should be strong and powerful. Cosmic beings should be powerful. However, there are loads of Marvel characters who definitely fit the definition of the word overpowered. They’re the ones who can do insane things with their powers, and are basically just regular people. These seven Marvel characters are the most overpowered around, their power levels far outstripping what they should be.
7) Jean Grey
Jean Grey has been one of the most powerful mutants on Earth for a very long time. She’s an Omega level telepathy and has extremely powerful telekinesis. She was trained from a young age by Professor Charles Xavier, mastering her powers as the years went by. However, the whole situation got out of control when the Phoenix Force got involved with Jean Grey. Over the years, Jean’s relationship with the Phoenix Force has been redefined multiple times; she’s now basically the perfect host for the Phoenix Force, able to use its powers at the highest level. Current Jean Grey is ridiculously powerful. She has access to seemingly the whole power of the Phoenix Force, allowing her to control matter and energy at molecular levels. She can contain stars going nova and redirect the energy to anything she wants. Her telepathy has gotten so powerful she can communicate nearly instantaneously with her husband Cyclops across the depths of space. At the end of the Krakoa Era, she was able to battle against a Dominion, a force beyond space, time, and gods, and empowered multiple mutants with the Phoenix Force to help with the fight. Jean Grey has gone from really powerful to supremely, ridiculously powerful.
6) The Hulk
The Hulk has been far beyond overpowered for a long time. The Hulk is the strongest one there is, his exposure to gamma radiation giving him titanic strength, invulnerability, and a healing factor that can heal anything bad enough to hurt him quickly. The madder the Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets, and this means that the limits of his strength are basically infinite. The Hulk’s power level continues to ramp up as he gets angrier, making him stronger and stronger. It was recently revealed that Hulk’s power came from The One Below All, and that he’s basically become the embodiment of entropy and will destroy everything in the universe. The Hulk is the kind of enemy that even someone like Thanos fears, which is saying something. Readers have seen futures where the Hulk becomes a space-faring Galactus-like titan, smashing planets with one mighty fist. The Hulk regularly creams entire teams of the most powerful heroes and villains whenever the fancy strikes him, and has lifted entire mountains. The Hulk is easily the most overpowered A-list Marvel hero by a wide margin.
5) Wolverine
I know what you’re thinking. Wolverine doesn’t have amazing reality altering powers. He can’t detonate stars with a thought and he isn’t a gamma powered titan who will one day evolve into a universal force of entropy. However, for what he is, Wolverine is ridiculously overpowered. Let’s look at his powers and then compare them to the things he’s survived. Wolverine has super senses, a healing factor, foot-long bone claws in his forearms, an adamantium skeleton, enhanced strength and speed, and a feral mindset that gives him berserker rages. That’s impressive for a lower-level hero. However, just look at all the things he’s done. Wolverine has been able to fight the Hulk somewhat successfully, and different versions of Wolverine have killed Hulks. He’s survived having the metal in his body pulled out through his pores. He can stab Thanos in the chest with his claws, and sink them all the way in. He constantly finds himself fighting hordes of ninjas and surviving. He’s survived being burnt down to his adamantium skeleton. Wolverine’s popularity have seem him thrown into situations that he has no business being in, and then surviving them. Wolverine is a hundred percent overpowered.
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4) The Sentry/The Void
Marvel has created many Superman pastiches, but one of the most powerful is the Sentry. The Sentry was created to give the Marvel Universe their Superman, but because this was Marvel, he was given the kind of foibles that Marvel characters are known for. In the Sentry’s case, that was various mental health conditions, like agoraphobia, dissociative identity disorder, bipolar, anxiety, and addiction, which would be added later as the lies of origin were brought to light. The Sentry was Robert Reynolds, who found a super soldier serum while searching a lab for drugs. Thinking it was some kind of meth derivative, he injected it, and gained the power of a million exploding suns. This power broke his mind and he developed a second personality, that of the Void, which was all of the worst aspects of himself. The more he used his powers, the more the Void would manifest, trying to destroy the world. The danger of the Sentry was so great that the heroes had to erase the memory of his existence from the entire world to keep the Void from eating the planet. Since then, his memories have been restored, and his powers have been expanded on. Beyond all of the typical Superman powers, the Sentry was also revealed to have high level mental powers, could control molecules and regenerate his body from any kind of injury, and could manipulate reality itself. There was even the idea that the Void was a manifestation of the Angel of Death. The Sentry was always powerful, but he’s now so powerful, it’s kind of hard to figure out a way to credibly defeat him without mental health shenanigans.
3) Legion
Legion is the son of Charles Xavier and Gabrielle Haller. Young David was always going to be powerful as the son of Xavier, but he basically became a young god. David suffered from dissociative identity disorder, and each of his alters got a different power. Legion has the highest level mental powers imaginable. He can manipulate and control basically anything with a thought, and can travel through time at will. Legion might have had a chance if Xavier had stayed in his life, but the loss of his father, who could have helped him learn to deal with his powers, exacerbated his conditions to an extreme extent. Legion’s powers were once more uncontrollable than they are now, which is both a good and bad thing. It means that David is able to keep control of himself and not start ripping things apart at a molecular level when ever he feels like. However, it also means that he has full control of a plethora of powers that no one person should have. Legion was able to create a place in his mind that people could go to and just hang out, doing whatever they wanted while they were in there. That’s a level of power that very few humans have ever experienced. It is supremely dangerous for someone as fragile as Legion to have that kind of power.
2) Molecule Man
Owen Reece was a lowly lab technician, desperate for someone to pay attention to him. He was repairing an atomic device, and an accident gave him the power to control molecules. Suddenly, Owen Reece became one of the most powerful beings in existence. As the Molecule Man, Reece could basically do anything he wanted. The building blocks of matter were his to control. Obviously, this level power of power drove him crazy, and he ended up fighting the Fantastic Four and other heroes. The turning point for Molecule Man was Secret Wars and Secret Wars II, when he got involved with the Beyonder and was revealed to be the only person who could actually stand against the omnipotent power of the One From Beyond. Molecule Man would eventually become an important part of the Multiverse; he was a being who had tapped into a power vastly larger than him, and every version of Owen Reece across the Marvel Multiverse was needed to contain the kind of power he had accessed. Molecule Man’s power is basically infinite, and he’s become an actual capital G god as the years have gone on.
1) Storm
Storm started out as a mutant with weather control powers. She was powerful, but it was a power that made sense. It earned her the goddess appellation, but she was still very much human. Then it was revealed that her bloodline was a magical one. Then that she could lift Mjolnir and was given her own Asgardian hammer. Then, her control of her powers grew to the level that she could manipulate electromagnetic energy — the source of many different kinds of weather phenomenon and one of the forces of the universe. Storm was called a goddess for ages, but it seems like creators in recent years have gone out of their way to make her into a legitimate god. She’s even been given the power of Eternity, putting her into a power level on par with her friend Jean Grey. However, Storm doesn’t need the power of Eternity to be overpowered. Storm was inducted in the Thor Corps, a group of beings who all can tap into the powers of gods. She and Magneto made a near unbeatable team because of this abilities. Storm is basically power given flesh at this point, progressing to level of powers that not even the biggest Storm glazers (which includes creators like Chris Claremont) could have predicted.
What Marvel characters do you think are overpowered? Sound off in the comments below.
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