When companies like Marvel Comics grow and expand as the years go on in their continuity, there are often times where new heroes and new teams emerge onto the scene. Some prove to be truly powerful and become icons all on their own, while others are either comedic or not taken seriously by the superhero community.
One team that falls into this category is the Great Lakes Avengers. A team operating in the Great Lakes areas, this team was introduced in the pages of the West Coast Avengers. Let's take a look at the ten most powerful foes the Great Lakes Avengers have faced.
10 Dr. Nod
One of the first villains to face the Great Lakes Avengers that needs to be shown is Dr. Nod. This villain was a scientist who wanted to create the ultimate beauty accessory, a pill that would allow a person to change their body weight with a mere thought, giving them control of their looks.
He lured Big Bertha, one of the Great Lakes Avengers, to a “modeling gig”. Dr. Nod however trapped her and took her genetic material, as Bertha had this gift naturally. He created pills to accomplish his task, but in battling the Great Lakes Avengers he ingested too many of the pills, becoming a monstrous giant blob.
9 Jen
This next foe is quite minor in the grand scheme of things but was perhaps even more nefarious thanks to the fact that her act of betrayal was the catalyst for many of the problems the Great Lakes Avengers faced against Dr. Nod. This villain was Jen, Big Bertha’s assistant who was secretly working with Dr. Nod to begin with.
When Bertha learned of the attack, she tried protecting Jen, but it was Jen who tranquilized Bertha and gave her to Dr. Nod in the first place. This act of betrayal was the catalyst for the battle between the two foes.
8 Pitchfork
In the last few years of Marvel Comics, several new characters have been introduced into the main 616 continuity. Some have been truly fleshed out characters with deep backstories, while others have been more one-off and unexplored for the most part. One great example of this is the 2016 Great Lakes Avengers villain Pitchfork.
With a relatively unknown background, Pitchfork was one of several villains hired by councilman Dick Snerd to cause chaos and destruction in the slums of Detroit. With no nose, neck or visible ears to speak of, the villain has a giant pitchfork attached to each wrist.
7 Asbestos Man
With a name like Asbestos Man, fans wouldn’t think much of them. However in the world of Marvel Comics, nothing turns out the way we think. Asbestos Man is Dr. Orson Karloff, a brilliant analytical chemist whom many consider the foremost expert in the field.
After a failed attempt at being a thief, he develops a flame-resistant armor out of super asbestos and challenges Johnny Storm to battle. Surprisingly he wins but loses later on. He desires to return to crime during Fear Itself, but the Great Lakes Avengers talk the villain down peacefully before things take a dark turn.
6 Grasshopper Skrull
Many times during major comic book events, the chaos, and destruction from the main event will trickle down to other series that aren’t as heavily invested in the story but still feel the effects one way or another. One team that saw this happen was the Great Lakes Avengers during the major crossover event, Secret Invasion.
This was the event that revealed many heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe had secretly been replaced by Skrulls, the alien shape-shifting race of beings at war with the Kree Empire, and one of the team’s members, Grasshopper, proved to be one of them. Along with Gravity and Catwalk, the G.L.I. was able to stop the villain during the invasion.
5 Fin Fang Foom
As the Great Lakes Avengers do not have quite as wide an array of villains that are specific to their comic book, the team often faces heroes and villains alike from the larger Marvel Universe. Even one of their own reserve members, Deadpool, was once a foe they faced in battle.
One major foe the team faced was Fin Fang Foom. A shapeshifting alien from the race known as Makluans, the large being that looks like a dragon was a longtime foe for the Fantastic Four and Iron Man but faced the Great Lakes Avengers while challenging Squirrel Girl in combat like so many others before him.
4 Graviton
A truly powerful foe the Great Lakes Avengers went up against was Graviton. Otherwise known as Dr. Franklin Hall, Graviton was a scientist who was working on a practical teleportation device when an accident saw graviton particles combine with his molecules, allowing him to mentally control gravity at will.
After becoming Graviton and having many battles with various Avengers teams, he was trapped in a dimension where he was revered as a god but the beings there had limited intelligence. He was rescued by Techno and Baron Zemo and attacked the Thunderbolts and Great Lakes Avengers, who had been used to give Techno time to release the villain.
3 Terminus
There are some villains so powerful that it takes the combined might of the entire Marvel Universe of heroes to stop it, and even then it’s not always enough. That occurred when the Great Lakes Avengers joined the other heroes to battle the villain known as Terminus.
What makes Terminus so unique is that it is an engineered life-form of the Terminex, an alien race wiped out by the Celestials millennia ago. Beginning as microbes that infect organic beings and turn them into robots, Terminus faced opposition from the heroes of Earth, including the Great Lakes Avengers, on several different occasions.
2 Maelstrom
This next villain was a major Marvel villain who had a deep impact on the Great Lakes Avengers personally, and that villain was Maelstrom. The villain was the son of an Inhuman scientist and Deviant woman, which was against the law of the two races. After his mother had her life taken and he was put into a Deviant Slave Pit, his father rescued the boy.
Years later, he and his father searched to get revenge on both the Inhumans and Deviants. With enhanced strength, speed and longevity on top of other powers, he battled the Great Lakes Avengers long into his career, ending the life of Great Lakes Avenger Dinah Soar until being stopped by Mr. Immortal.
1 Dr. Tannenbaum
Just in time for the holidays, the number one villain of the Great Lakes Avengers happens to be their arch-nemesis and the Yuletide Terrorist known as Dr. Tannenbaum. A genius obsessed with destroying Christmas and everything the holiday truly represents, Dr. Tannenbaum has been a longtime foe of the team.
From giant robot snowmen to animated pine trees, the villain has launched several attacks on the team and the holiday as a whole. His secret lab in Christmas Mountain was once overtaken by the terrorist group AIM, who were using the inebriation wave powered by Dionysus at the time, and the team found him tied up in a closet in the facility.