Bigger isn’t always better, but it certainly makes for an imposing villain. David versus Goliath, Gandalf versus the Balrog -- giant villains make for epic encounters. Marvel has a whole host of towering baddies that invade the panels of their comics. There’s something to be said for big villains. Sure, bad guys like Norman Osborn and the Leader are powerful, but it’s their minds that are their most potent weapon. Being towered over by a Celestial that’s thousands of meters tall is a whole other kind of intimidating. A sociopathic, raving madman with an evil plan would cower before the rage of a seven-and-a-half-meter tall mutant chicken like Chtylok.
We love seeing these gigantic baddies bite the bullet. Honestly, you can’t call yourself a superhero until you take down bad guy that could crush you under their boot. Aliens, demons and mythical creatures are all par for the course when it comes to Marvel’s giant villains. In this list, we’re going to be looking at villains anywhere from two and a half to 6000 meters tall. That’s a big gap, but all of these bad guys have towered over puny heroes and squashed them into the ground. Good villains come in big packages.
20 ONSLAUGHT
What do you get when you merge the consciousness of two of the most powerful mutants in existence together? Nothing good, we can tell you that. Onslaught is an incredibly powerful sentient psionic entity. Professor Xavier uses his power to put Magneto into a catatonic state, finally fed up with his terrorist methods. During the mental contact, all of Magneto’s anger and negative emotions permeate Professor Xavier’s consciousness and mix with his suppressed negative emotions. This results in a separate personality known as Onslaught, that resides within Xavier’s mind.
Now a psionic entity encased in armor similar to Magneto’s, he is free to wreak havoc across the Marvel Universe.
Typically standing at around 3-meters tall (although his height is variable) his size is the least of the Marvel heroes’ worries. First off, he has the powers of both Professor X and Magneto. Having the powers of one of the most powerful telepaths and the Master of Magnetism is unfair. Add to that the realty altering powers of Franklin Richards and Nate Grey’s psionic powers that rival Dark Phoenix. Now you have Onslaught, a virtually unstoppable creature able to absorb mutants to augment his power. Altering reality, telekinesis, telepathy, magnetism and astral plane tapping make Onslaught a psionic entity not to be trifled with.
19 THE MANGOG
Behold, hatred in corporeal form. The Mangog is the physical manifestation of all the hatred of a billion beings from a race that was wiped out by Odin and the Norse Gods. Hatred is a very powerful emotion, which in turn creates a very powerful villain. One of his aliases is even "The Hatred Who Walks". He lives only to gain vengeance against the Asgardians. What’s interesting, is the Mangog draws all of his powers and abilities from psionic energies manifested from negative emotions. His power is augmented by feelings of hatred and vengeance, felt by himself or the people around him.
Magog’s main ability is his Sin Empowerment -- he's fueled by an insatiable amount of hatred and malice. He can further increase his strength by tapping into the anger of others and become massively powerful if he absorbs the vices of particular deities. His size is dependent on Sin Empowerment, ranging anywhere from three and a half to seven and a half meters tall. Having the strength of one billion beings grants him physical power that easily exceeds powerful Asgardians like Thor. In fact, the only deterrent for Mangog ends up being the sun. Jane Foster binds Mangog in incredibly powerful chains, ties them to Mjolnir and then hurls it into the sun, dragging the monster in tow.
18 FIN FANG FOOM
Don’t be fooled by the innocent sounding name that could easily be a character in a kids show. Fin Fang Foom is 13.5 meters of nasty shape-shifting alien. He hails from the world of Kakaranthra as one of the Makluan race. He looks like an anthropomorphic Chinese dragon, but he is never celebrated as one. Originally from a peaceful planet, Foom, along with a couple other like minded Makluans, left their home world to chase aspirations of being interstellar conquerors. Foom and his comrades literally shoot for the stars in the hopes of achieving their dreams.
Being of Makluan physiology, he has a host of powers attributed to the alien race.
Although it’s impossible to know how his powers compare to other members of his race, he’s definitely proved himself to be very powerful. His power well exceeds the 100-strength class and his scaly hide is highly resistant to most forms of attack. Bullets and explosions are mere gusts of wind against his body. He can also survive in the vacuum of space, shape shift into a human form and spray highly corrosive/combustible acid from his mouth. He’s a deadly dragon through and through. His only weakness is an unidentified Chinese herb that can put his to sleep for long periods of time. Good luck finding it.
17 SURTUR
There’s something about fire that makes the most terrifying of creatures even more so. Take Ghost Rider -- a skeleton in a leather suit on a demonic motorcycle is scary. Add the flames and people are sure to run away. Enter Sutur, the 305-meter-tall fire giant, and mortal enemy of the Asgardians, especially Odin and Thor. That size isn’t just for show. Even Thor and the Allfather himself find defeating this monster incredibly difficult. Originally from the extra-dimensional plane of Muspelheim, Sutur isn’t like any other villain -- he’s more of a natural disaster than a physical foe. Possessing the power of 1000 blazing suns, he is composed of ‘living’ flame that makes him as powerful as he is large.
His physical traits like strength and durability far exceed those of Thor. His flame is so powerful he can affect the temperature of earth from Asgard. Sutur also has the ability to manipulate cosmic energy in a number of ways. He utilizes concussive forces, levitates, manipulates his own molecules and teleports between dimensions. His pyrokinesis allows him to create and manipulate intense heat and flames to his will. If you like your Asgardians cooked well done, Sutur is the guy to go to.
16 YMIR
The polar opposite of Sutur is the much colder, but just as formidable Ymir. Ymir came into existence on Niffleheim and is the oldest and most powerful of the ice giants. Supposedly, many millenia ago, warm air from Muspelheim, the realm of fire, crossed dimensions to the location of the Well of Life. Literally tons of ice, from the ice realm of Niffleheim, formed over top of the well. Over a period of time, the warm airs caused the ice on the well to melt, giving birth to Ymir. A complicated, long and interdimensional origin story, we know. But good things come to those who wait, like the terrifying power Ymir now wields.
If Sutur is a raging wildfire, Ymir is the ice age.
His size alone grants him immense strength and durability. Ymir's cryokinesis allows him to generate intense cold from his body capable of instantly freezing anything he touches, from water to air. His one weakness is intense heat, aka Sutur, which would cause him to melt. Luckily for Ymir, he has a loophole. Cryokinesis inhibition can effectively cancel out other elemental powers such as fire, granting him some defense against his only weakness.
15 EXITAR
Exitar the Exterminator is just about as big as they get in the Marvel Universe. He is a member of the Celestials, a group of insanely massive and powerful space gods -- six kilometers tall. Being that tall and nothing else would make him a ridiculously powerful enemy, as we imagine that six kilometers of muscle probably packs quite the punch. Add onto that massive frame a host of god-like abilities and you end up with a Celestial. They are all incredibly strong, but even by Celestial standards, Exitar is a powerhouse. He outmatches most of the space gods in terms of size, power and authority.
It’s impossible to calculate just how physically powerful the Celestials are, especially one as dominant as Exitar. The same goes for his endurance and stamina. A full power punch from Thor just barely managed to put a hole in his armor. There really aren’t many who could force a Celestial to fight with full power. Exitar is capable of altering reality on a universal scale, rearranging matter and controls vast amounts of energy within his body. Like all Celestials, he can teleport himself and other objects over long distances. In true god-like fashion, he can destroy a planet with relative ease. He far outclasses other world destroyers like Galactus.
14 NEZZAR THE CALCULATOR
Nezzar the Calculator is the nerd of the Celestials, but don’t tell this giant blue god that. He was one of the Celestials that participated in the four visits, which saw the Celestials perform genetic tests and experimentation on the humans of earth. As the calculator, Nezarr’s main function within the Celestials is to examine and catalogue all the data brought to him about the experiments. He then produces his findings to the leader of the Celestials, Arishem the Judge. He’s smaller than Exitar but at over 600 meters tall, he still towers above most on this list.
Like all Celestials he possesses a number of traits that are so powerful that they can’t be calculated.
He has overwhelming physical strength, durability and stamina which makes trading blows with him a fool’s errand. Although near invulnerable, the Celestials can still be hurt. However, the injuries never last long and they patch themselves up in a matter of seconds. For instance, The Asgardian Destroyer has his power enhanced by Odin and manages to sever Nezzar’s arm completely with the Odinsword. Just a few moments later, Nezzar’s arm fully regenerates. Nuclear bombs, planet destroying punches and even some gods themselves are just mere nuisances in front of the awesome power of the Celestials.
13 GALACTUS
Devourer of Worlds. The Great Destroyer,. The Monster of All Worlds. These are just a few of the names given to this world-eating entity, and all of them fit perfectly. Originally a mortal named Galan, he is approached by the embodiment of the Sixth Infinity, the Sentience of the Multiverse, as the cosmos is reaching its natural end. The two merge their essences to survive the renewal of the multiverse, reborn as Galactus, Devourer of Worlds. This purple and blue clad cosmic entity towers above his adversaries. While typically standing at around eight and a half meters tall, his height is largely variable. He gets much, much bigger.
Galactus wields the Power Cosmic and is regarded as one of the most powerful beings in all of Marvel. While wielding the Infintiy Gauntlet, Thanos determined he is around the same level as Odin, Zeus and the Celestials. Galactus is undoubtedly god-like in his abilities. His power is directly proportionate to the amount of energy he can absorb from planets. If he doesn’t keep a steadily regimented diet of planets, he’ll run out of energy and starve to death. For a brief overview of his powers, he’s immortal, has god-like strength, stamina and speed, can restructure molecules and create sentient beings seemingly from nothing. He may not be a god, but he has all the powers of one.
12 GROTTU
There’s always been speculation about what would happen to our world if certain species were larger. Imagine the skies infested with mosquitoes the size of condors and giant water bugs that pray on great whites. However, it’s a widely known fact that ants are proportionately the strongest insects on the planet. There’s no telling what could happen if one grew to massive sizes. Well, Marvel set out to see just how destructive one could be with the debut of the villainous Grottu in Strange Tales #73. Grottu is the result of nuclear tests gone bad (who would have seen that coming...), as the leader of the Deviants, Kro, conducted several tests in the Mombassa Desert, which gives rise to this radiation enhanced super-ant.
At over seven and a half meters tall and weighing over 1800 kilograms, this is one ant you won’t be able to fry with a magnifying glass.
Along with his massive strength, the radiation grants him human level intellect, which makes him that much more deadly. Power and intellect are a dangerous combination. If you’ve ever been bitten by an ant, you can only image how painful a chomp from this guy would be. That is if it doesn’t just cut you straight in half.
11 CHTYLOK THE CHE-K’N
Grottu was just the beginning when it came to anthropomorphizing animals. In 1997’s Sensational Spider-Man #13, the chicken-like monster Chtylok burst into the scene. After hibernating for centuries in an area of the Antarctic just outside the Savage Land, a hole in the ozone layer melts the ice, forcing Chtylok to wake up. He travels to the Florida keys where he meets Hulk and begins to throw down with the Jade Giant. This seven-and-a-half-meter tall chicken-bovine-mutant hybrid towers above the Hulk and their fight proves that their power levels are about equal. In fact, they battle against each other for days on end until Hulk finally gains the upper hand.
Chtylok’s main power is his massive strength. Anyone who can throw fists on equal footing with the Hulk is crazy strong. His power is further augmented by some of his animalistic traits. He has a very sharp beak and talons that can slice through superheroes like hot butter. His legs are bovine in appearance with giants hoofs that look capable of caving in skulls with ease. On top of all this strength, he can fly, unlike most chickens. But of course, he has that one classic tell that always lets us know there’s a villain -- those beady red eyes.
10 BUSHMASTER
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger -- even quadruple amputation apparently, if you ask Quincy McIver, aka Bushmaster. He becomes an amputee when he loses all of his limbs in a boating accident while evading the police. You’d think maybe such an unfortunate accident would bring about a change of heart, but McIver jumps right back into a life of crime. Albeit with a few major changes. Shortly after the accident, the Roxxon Oil company equips him with a pair of bionic arms and a snake-like tail in place of legs. As Bushmaster, he’s been part of villain groups like Serpent Solutions, Army of Evil and the Thunderbolts.
Although he doesn’t have superhuman strength, Bushmaster is near peak human condition.
But it’s his bionic enhancements that are what make him a powerful foe. His bionic arms are equipped with 20-centimeter, venom laced metallic fangs. It’s not enough to just impale someone. Apparently, you have to poison them too. But it’s the four-meter-long cybernetic tail that makes Bushmaster so big. The tail allows him to move at speeds upwards of 64 kilometers per hour, leap two stories and has enough power to crush steel pipes. His weakness? He can’t really do much of anything if his bionics aren’t attached.
9 THE ADVERSARY AKA SEFAKO THE TWICE RISEN
This guy is just unnecessarily evil. He’s over three and a half meters of ancient mystical entity who seeks to destroy the entire universe just for the sake of making a new one, which kind of seems a little counter intuitive on our end. Among his aliases is the Great Trickster, for his penchant of using deceit to achieve his goals. He was born in a dimension that was completely chaotic which feeds his villainous nature. He likes to create chaos and disrupt order just for the sake of it. He’s certainly one of the evilest looking villains on this list with his ghoulish skin, glowing eyes and foreboding headdress.
It may seem like a bit of a cop out, but as far as the comics have shown, he appears to be capable of pretty much anything he wants. The Adversary, on top of superhuman speed and durability, wields a virtually unlimited amount of magical energy. He is a high caliber demonic entity which makes him essentially invincible. His only weaknesses are magic more powerful than his (which there is very little of) or iron. Good luck getting close enough to stab him though. He also has the ability to enter and leave dimensions as well as summon lesser demons to do his bidding.
8 JUGGERNAUT
Here comes the living embodiment of Newton’s first law of motion. Once he gets moving, Juggernaut is nearly impossible to stop. At almost three meters tall and weighing 862 kilograms, this bulky beefcake’s muscles aren’t just for show. Before he was Juggernaut, he was Cain Marko, serving in Korea in the same unit as Charles Xavier. During a shootout, Marko flees to a cave that contains the lost Temple of Cyttorak and grabs the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak.
After reading the inscription, he transforms into the ball of muscles we love, becoming the unstoppable force known as Juggernaut.
As Juggernaut, he is the Avatar of Cyttorak, a vastly powerful demonic entity. His physical strength is great enough to knock out the Thing with three punches and he routinely smashes the powerhouse Colossus into a pile of scrap metal. His body is incapable of feeling fatigue which means he can go full speed and full strength for the duration of a fight. The magical energies he possesses are all he needs to sustain himself. They replace the need for food, drink, sleep or breathing. All this is compounded with the fact hardly anything can stop his movement. In another life he could have been a great football player, but villainy seemed for more palatable to Marko.
7 THE WENDIGO
For everyone who thinks Canadians are over polite, the Wendigo is the result of an Ancient Canadian God’s curse. The curse makes it so anyone who consumes the flesh of another person will be cursed to wander the Canadian wilderness as a massive beast. The Wendigo is just under three meters of feral, furry Canadian fury. The first Wendigo, appearing in Incredible Hulk #162, was originally Paul Cartier, who along with his friends, is attacked by wolves while hunting. They manage to escape to a cave but one of the party dies and Cartier, on the verge of insanity, decides to eat him.
So was born the first Wendigo, a nearly indestructible force of nature. They possess incredible physical power, enough to go toe-to-toe with an enraged Hulk. That power is accentuated by the feral nature of the Wendigos, making them even more deadly. They also have a near instantaneous healing factor, meaning mortal wounds aren’t enough to stop them. Supposedly, decapitation or removing the heart might be enough of a deterrent. But the only surefire way to get rid of the Wendigo is to release the curse, which is easier said than done as it involves a sacrifice to the Elder Gods of Canada.
6 POST (KEVIN TREMAIN)
He may be small compared to the Celestials, but at over two and a half meters tall and tipping the scales at 912 kilograms, Post is still a very big boy. Before becoming Post, he was known as Kevin Tremain. He was still a mutant, but no where near as powerful as he becomes in the future. Tremain had a simple mutant ability of superhuman strength and durability. He managed to tank the combined attacks of Storm, Cyclops and Iceman with little damage, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. However, after a severe injury, his only way to survive is to receive a blood transfusion from Cable which he survives, but the transfusion and his powers are enhanced by Cable’s techno-organic virus.
Along with enhancing the powers he already has, the virus turns Tremain into a mutant cyborg much like Cable.
One upside to the virus is it grants the host superhuman intelligence, allowing him to use his abilities in more deadly ways. As Post, he outfits himself with T-O Armor Platelets -- several detachable armor plates which grant him a number of bionic features on top of his mutant powers. The T-O armor grants invisibility, teleportation, they can form into a variety of ranged energy weapons and a sensory array a la Jarvis. He’s a big beefy cyborg and the lowest of Onslaught’s emissaries.
5 ISAAC JAVITZ
Javitz is another one of those characters who doesn’t have much going for him other than size. Like Kevin Tremain, before his transformation into Post, Issac Javitz’s mutant power just makes him big, strong and tough. At a little under three meters tall, Javitz is a truly imposing figure with his V-necked spandex and hairy man pecs. Although, we feel like his attire is a little better suited for a career in professional wrestling, he still made a name for himself as one of Magneto’s Acolytes. Unfortunately, not too much is known about his past, but according to him he’s been watching the X-Men go about their business for years.
He has a very particular bone to pick with Cyclops for some reason. Out guess it that he’s just jealous of the fact that Cyclops has a relatively original power. His run as a villain was short lived, spanning from May of 1993 to August of 1995. There’s only so much room for gigantic macho men in comics, so eventually, some of them have to be killed off. Javitz died at the hands of the mutant Holocaust. We bet the second those plasma blasts touched Javitz’s forest of chest hair, he went up in flames like the Hindenburg.
4 BLOB
We know there are bad guys much bigger than Blob, but we can’t have a list of the largest villains without including the one who is known for being grossly corpulent. He’s not very tall, but his width is truly something to behold. This chunky monkey tips the scales at over 230 kilograms! Blob, aka Fredrick Dukes, isn’t known for his intelligence. In fact, he has no idea he’s a mutant until meeting Xavier and the X-Men. Before that, he just thought he was a super strong freak which gained him a position in a travelling carnival. That fat on his body isn’t extra calories -- it’s an extension of his mutant abilities.
He’s more than your average oversized brawler, as his mutant powers grants him an incredibly powerful defense.
The fat tissue that makes up his skin is durable enough to absorb the impact of all sorts of blows. Punches, rifle bullets, bazookas: all of them are nullified by the super tough fat of Blob. He is almost completely impervious to physical attacks. His great size gives him strength by proxy, but his main mutant ability is how much physical punishment he can take. If he was in an RPG, Blob would be the ultimate tank class.
3 HEMINGWAY
Nope, that’s not Doomsday. It’s Hemingway and no, not the author. What’s worse than being almost two and a half meters of insane super strength mixed with razor sharp bony protrusions? If you want to use those protrusions to commit crimes against the human race. Hemingway is one of the Morlocks, a subterranean group of outcast mutants who live in the tunnels beneath New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The Morlocks were targeted by Mister Sinister in an event knows as the Mutant Massacre, where a huge amount of Morlocks were killed. On the anniversary of the event, Hemingway surfaces, and along with the Gene Nation, vows to kill 100 humans for every one Morlock life that was taken. Yikes.
We don’t condone mass murder and what goes around comes around. Hemingway ultimately lost his life at the hands of Zero, after the agent goes on an act of vengeance to destroy every remaining member of Gene Nation. Along with his bony exoskeleton, Hemingway’s mutant power also allows him to increase his size to huge proportions, vastly increasing his strength because that’s just what we need: A genocidal mutant getting bigger, stronger and meaner. As if he wasn’t scary enough already, his alias is Pain.
2 EGO
You’re probably wondering at this point: just how big can a character get? Well, it seems that even planet sized is feasible in the Marvel Universe. Ego is literally a living planet, given life when a scientist merges himself with a planet as its sun goes supernova. So how does a living planet survive? Well, it turns out they have to do some pretty villainous things. To sustain himself, Ego begins to absorb space vessels and even entire worlds, while he plans some interstellar conquest. We would too if we were his size and why shouldn’t he?
Ego is a sentient planet with control over his entire mass -- down to the very last molecule. He uses this ability to give himself a humanoid face when addressing powerful beings. He puts the man in the moon to shame. At his most powerful, he can generate psionic energies that rival a hungry Galactus -- more than enough power to destroy entire worlds. He can generate organic tentacles that extend from his body, excite massive plant growth and create an almost infinite amount if organic humanoid vessels that share his consciousness. He can also shape his surface to appear like any kind of planet he wants, such as a barren uninhabitable wasteland. Good to keep those pesky vacationers away!
1 SHUMA-GOROTH
If the Neversoft eyeball and the Kraken ever had a child, this would likely be the result. His appearance may not scream dangerous, but he is one of deadliest creatures in all of Marvel. Shuma-Gorath is one of the Old Ones, ancient eldritch beings who predate earth, and some even predate the universe itself. They have been described as “extradimensional demons”, which is just as dangerous as it sounds. He’s so powerful that at one time, he ruled hundreds of dimensions all by himself.
He is considered to be one of the primal powers of chaos and lives across multiple planes of existence.
His size is directly related to his power. He’s never been too massive while on earth but that is only because only a small amount of is essence is manifested when he is invoked. In his home dimension, he is absolutely gargantuan. In his most powerful form, he has the ability to erase galaxies through his aura alone. Destroying a galaxy is ridiculous, but Shuma-Gorath takes it one step further. He can completely destroy realities by harnessing his power into a ball of energy. He can transmute on a planetary scale and has mystical powers beyond comprehension. This is one ball of tentacles to steer clear of.