A consistent trope that comes up in comic book adventures is the quest for power. Heck, it is a standard trope in popular fiction period. There are many notable characters whose pursuit of power is their defining trait. Of course, where there is a pursuit of power there is also the fear of being corrupted by that power. As the famous saying goes, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." That has often been the case in comic book adventures, as well, where characters have not known what to do when they suddenly find themselves in possession of massive amounts of power. In other words, what do you when you become a god?
Over the years, this has been a question that a number of comic book characters have had the chance to answer. Some of them were able to say that they handled their stint as a god a lot better than others did in similar situations. Here, then, we will count down 20 comic book characters that transcended mortality and essentially become gods. We will see who handled the change with honor and who was absolutely corrupted by their newfound god-like power.
20 HANDLED IT: WOLVERINE
In X-Men Annual #11 (by Chris Claremont, Alan Davis and Paul Neary), Wolverine was having a hard time dealing with the anniversary of his former fiancee, Mariko Yoshida, dumping him at the altar. It was later shown that she was being manipulated by the villainous mutant, Mastermind, but even after he was defeated they remained broken up. So Wolverine drowned his sorrows for the night and came home to the X-Mansion just as a powerful being known as Horde arrived and kidnapped the X-Men and brought them to a bizarre cosmic labyrinth.
Horde wanted the X-Men to get through the labyrinth and retrieve a powerful crystal at the end for him or else he would just kill them there. One by one, the X-Men fell to the traps of the labyrinth, which tempts people with their secret hidden desires. Ultimately, it came down to just Wolverine. Logan reached the crystal, but then Horde arrived and killed Wolverine. However, a piece of Wolverine's blood hit the crystal and that was enough for Wolverine to gain the omnipotence of the crystal and re-form his body. He quickly saved all of the X-Men and all the other beings captured by the labyrinth over the years and then gave up his newly obtained omnipotence to destroy the crystal to remove its temptation from the universe.
19 COULDN'T HANDLE IT: RED SKULL
The Cosmic Cube was originally created by the evil group of scientists known as Advanced Idea Mechanics (or A.I.M.). They did not realize that all they were really doing was inventing a sort of container for the cosmic energy that powered the Cosmic Cube, but in any event, they soon realized just how powerful the Cube was. So what did this evil group do? They went out of their way to try to keep it away from the Red Skull. That's how bad the Red Skull is, the evil scientists who invented the Cosmic Cube did everything they could to not let him have it! If evil scientists are scared of you, that's typically a really bad sign.
Sure enough, when the Skull got a hold of the Cube, he re-made the world with himself as the god of all existence. Luckily for the world, the Red Skull's arch-rival, Captain America, was able to trick the Skull by feigning subservience. When Cap bowed down before the Skull, he surprised the villain by suddenly knocking the Cube out of his hands, sending it into the ocean. The Red Skull has pursued the Cosmic Cube ever since. He even temporarily became part of the Cube himself!
18 HANDLED IT: SUPERMAN
One of the fascinating things about Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All Star Superman was that it circuitously also set up a Morrison comic book crossover that the writer had worked on years earlier at DC Comics. You see, All Star Superman is about Superman being exposed to a deadly blast of solar radiation that essentially overloaded his cells, slowly poisoning him even as it temporarily super-charged his superpowers. He had only a year to live. He managed to do a number of major things in that year, but in the end, his enemy, Lex Luthor, who was responsible for the poisoning in the first place, de-stabilized the sun, causing Superman to fly into it and become one with the sun to fix the problem.
Well, in Morrison's early storyline, DC One Million, the heroes of 1999 were visited by the Justice League of the 853rd Century (the time that the #1,000,000 issue of Action Comics would be released if it was released on a monthly basis). They wanted the earlier League to travel into the future to see the return of Superman from the sun, where he had been for 15,000 years. Superman-Prime came out of the sun and soon resurrected Lois Lane and all of Krypton in a wonderfully happy ending for the crossover.
17 COULDN'T HANDLE IT: THANOS
Almost as soon as he debuted, Thanos was seeking out ways to gather as much power as he could so that he could impress Mistress Death, the Marvel Universe's personification of Death itself. His first major attempt was to get a hold of a Cosmic Cube. He succeeded in essentially merging with the universe itself. However, Captain Marvel was able to destroy the Cosmic Cube to defeat Thanos' plan.
Years later, after dying in an attempt to use the Infinity Gems to power a giant Cosmic Egg, Thanos was resurrected by Mistress Death to once again try to do something to impress her. He once again collected the Infinity Gems, but this time he wore the gems on his gauntlet, which then became known as the Infinity Gauntlet. In one of his first acts, he snapped his fingers and erased half of the universe from existence! Later, he also repelled an attack from a combined group of the world's most powerful superheroes and Doctor Doom. He killed most of them. However, despite his seeming all-powerful state, deep down, Thanos felt that he was unworthy of the power of the Gauntlet, so he kept on sabotaging himself while wielding its power, allowing others to gain access to the Gauntlet.
16 HANDLED IT: ADAM WARLOCK
The key point in the Infinity Gauntlet series where everything fell apart for Thanos was when he transcended his own body after being betrayed both by his lackey, Mephisto, and his love, Mistress Death. The problem for the Mad Titan is that meant the Gauntlet was laying back at his old base. His granddaughter, Nebula, who Thanos had been torturing throughout the story, took this moment to grab the Gauntlet, fix herself and take over the universe. Luckily, Adam Warlock was still connected to the Soul Gem, one of the Infinity Gems that made up the Gauntlet. He used it to disrupt her connection, causing her to lose it.
After a mad scramble by all of the heroes present, Adam Warlock found himself in possession of the Infinity Gauntlet. He used its powers to reverse everything Thanos had done with the glove. This included resurrecting half of the universe. The others did not trust Warlock with the Gauntlet, either, but he did not care. Soon after, he proved his worthiness by once more splitting the gems up among people that he trusted to protect them from ever being united again. They called themselves the Infinity Watch. They obviously did not do a great job of keeping watch, though, as the Infinity Gauntlet has been re-formed a number of times since. They even did it themselves once during Infinity War!
15 COULDN'T HANDLE IT: JEAN GREY
In X-Men #100, the X-Men traveled to a space station to rescue their kidnapped teammates, Wolverine, Banshee and Jean Grey, from the deranged Stephen Lang, who had turned the station into a factory for mutant-hunting Sentinels. He even created robot versions of the original X-Men for the All-New, All-Different X-Men to face off against. After defeating the villains, their only problem was that the station was falling apart and their only ride home, a space shuttle, had a damaged front end. This was an issue because it meant that whoever piloted the shuttle would be exposed to deadly radiation as the ship returned to Earth. Jean Grey valiantly sacrificed herself by absorbing the knowledge she needed to fly the shuttle from the ships's pilot and then locked the rest of the X-Men were it was safe.
After the shuttle crash-landed on Earth into a bay off of New York City, Jean burst from the water as a new being known as Phoenix! Eventually, though, the evil Mastermind manipulated her in an attempt to use her to get himself named to the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club. His machinations broke her mind and she became the Dark Phoenix. In this form, she destroyed a planet of billions. After the Shi'are Empire tried to kill her, Jean sacrificed herself so that she could never turn into the Dark Phoenix again.
14 HANDLED IT: DOCTOR MANHATTAN
In 1959, Jon Osterman was working as a nuclear physicist in Arizona when he and one of his fellow researchers, Janey Slater, went on a trip back to New Jersey to visit their family back home. While on a date at the Palisades, Janey's watch was damaged. Jon's father was a watchmaker and when Jon was younger, he planned on becoming a watchmaker, as well. So he was able to repair the damage to Janey's watch and planned on presenting the watch to her when they went back to work. He forgot the watch in his lab coat at work, though.
When he went to retrieve it, he did not realize that the jacket -- and now himself -- was right in the middle of an intrinsic field experiment test chamber. The intrinsic filed seemed to disintegrate Jon. However, a month later, he slowly re-constituted himself and revealed that he had survived but had become, in effect, a god who could control reality itself. He was named "Doctor Manhattan" after the mainstream media saw him in action, working as a government superhero for the United States. He mostly was able to keep from getting too caught up with humanity after this point, despite continuing to work for the government. After his former fellow hero, Ozymandias, faked an alien invasion to unite the world against a common threat, Manhattan left this reality entirely to find others where he could experiment further.
13 COULDN'T HANDLE IT: DOCTOR DOOM
In Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, a powerful being known as the Beyonder pulled a selection of superheroes and supervillains from the Marvel Universe and dropped them on a planet that the Beyonder had created (later dubbed "Battleworld") and told them to fight, with the winner getting whatever they desired. The villains, for the most part, fell right into step with the Beyonder's plans and attacked the superheroes. Doctor Doom, however, quickly broke from the rest of the villains. While the others heard "Win and I will give you your heart's desire," Doom heard "I have the ability to give you your heart's desire, so you should come after me." Doom did just that and found a way to steal the Beyonder's power. In the end, it was too much for him, though, as indecision crept in and messed with his head.
Years later, when the Multiverse was crumbling due to the interference of the Beyonder's race of people, Doom stepped in once again and saved the Multiverse by putting various universes together on a new, much bigger Battleworld where Doom was considered to be God. As you would expect, the whole thing was a mess and a handful of heroes and villains who survived from before the Battleworld merger occurred teamed up to defeat Doom.
12 HANDLED IT: MISTER FANTASTIC
One of the most important heroes to survive from the destruction and Doom-led re-assembly of the universe was Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four. He was Doom's greatest rival and with Reed seemingly dead, when Doom re-assembled the Multiverse, he literally adopted Reed's family, gaining Sue Richards as his wife and Franklin and Valeria Richards as his children. That's one of the things that made it clear that Doom had no business being a "god," as if one of the first things you do is something borne out of petty jealousy, then that's a good sign that you're meant for this line of work.
When the assembled heroes and villains began their attack on Doom, led by Black Panther wielding a version of the Infinity Gauntlet, a weakened Doom retreated to the place where the Molecule Man was hidden. It was the Molecule Man who ultimately gave Doom the power to save the Multiverse and Reed had found where Doom had him hidden. Doom and Reed fought and in the battle, Doom inadvertently admitted that Reed would have done a better job saving the Multiverse than him. Hearing this, Molecule Man gave the "god" powers to Reed, instead. Sure enough, Reed began putting things back to the way they were before this whole mess began, dedicating his life to fixing as many of the destroyed realities as he possibly could.
11 COULDN'T HANDLE IT: HAL JORDAN
It is funny to think what a simple change in creative teams can bring about. During the Superman crossover, "Reign of the Supermen," four new superheroes showed up, each seemingly suggesting that they might be the resurrected Man of Steel. As it turned out, one of them, the Cyborg Superman, was actually a villain working with Mongul of Warworld to take over Earth. Their first act was to blow up Hal Jordan's former home, Coast City. In the last issue of Green Lantern written by Gerard Jones, Hal came to terms with the loss of his hometown.
Editorial, though, wanted to go another direction, so they brought in new writer, Ron Marz, with a new mandate. Hal was now so despondent over the destruction of Coast City that he became obsessed with "fixing" it by changing reality itself. So he destroyed the Green Lantern Corps to absorb the power of the Central Green Lantern Power Battery. He became Parallax, a powerful being who could possibly alter time itself. He planned on doing a new "Big Bang" and recreating the Earth in his image, bringing Coast City back in the process. Earth's superheroes defeated him. Later, Hal sacrificed himself to save Earth's sun after it had been drained of its power. Even later, we learned that Hal acted the way he did because he was possessed by a yellow fear demon called Parallax.
10 HANDLED IT: KYLE RAYNER
After Hal Jordan destroyed the Green Lantern Corps, all but one of the Guardians of the Universe merged together to form one last Green Lantern ring, with the surviving Guardian taking it to New York and giving it to the first person he could find. That person turned out to be Kyle Rayner. Here's the thing, though, a ring powered by all of the Guardians of the Universe should be a lot more powerful than a traditional Green Lantern ring, right? And yet Kyle's ring mostly acted like a normal Green Lantern ring, except it did not have a yellow impurity.
It turned out that it was because Kyle was subconsciously cutting off much of his power. This became a problem when that cut off power personified itself as a villainous being known as Oblivion. Kyle defeated Oblivion when he accepted that the villain was caused by Kyle's own subconscious and so he absorbed this extra power into himself. At the same time, after Hal sacrificed himself to restart the Earth's sun, he left a lot of residual power out there. Kyle absorbed this, as well, and became a god-like being known as Ion. Ultimately, Kyle's humanity won out and he gave up to the power to recreated the Green Lantern Power Battery and restarted the Green Lantern Corps.
9 COULDN'T HANDLE IT: JOKER
One day, Superman woke up and found that he and the rest of the Justice League were criminals and they were hunted down by a "Justice League" consisting of supervillains. The fugitive Man of Steel finally ran into his old foe, Mister Mxyzptlk. This whole scenario seemed like something that Mxyzptlk would come up with, although much darker than normal. So Superman confronted Mxyzptlk about what was going on. As it turned out, Mxyzptlk had been tricked by the Joker into giving the Clown Prince of Crime 99% of Mxyzptlk's powers! Joker was now the most powerful being in the universe!
Joker, now calling himself "Emperor Joker," would spend every day torturing Batman to death. Then, the next day he would bring Batman back to life. However, the Dark Knight would remember the pain of dying the previous days. This proved to be too much for even Batman's psyche and he just crumbled. In the end, though, Batman was the key to defeating the Joker. Superman mocked the Joker and explained to him that Batman still had power of him, since he couldn't get rid of Batman even though the Joker theoretically had the power to eliminate the Batman from existence. So no matter how powerful the Joker got, he would still think of himself in relation to Batman. A distracted Joker was then defeated by Mxyzptlk, working with the Spectre, to get his powers back and fix everything.
8 HANDLED IT: BETA RAY BILL
When Walter Simonson took over writing and drawing Thor in the early 1980s, it had been a while since the series was one of Marvel's "hot" titles, but Simonson changed that all right off the bat. You see, Thor's hammer had always said, "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor." No one, though, had explored the idea that perhaps there was someone else out there who was worthy other than Thor. Simonson addressed this concept right away, showing a strange-looking alien dressed as Thor, destroying the Thor logo on the cover of Simonson's first issue of the series.
Beta Ray Bill was part of an alien race that lost their planet, so they loaded their entire race into a convoy of spaceships, with the people sleeping in cryogenic storage. Bill would occasionally come out of storage whenever things needed to be dealt with. He was also security for the convoy. When the convoy came too close to Earth, S.H.I.E.L.D. asked Thor to look into it and that led to a fight with Bill, who thought Thor was attacking his people. During the fight, Bill got a hold of Thor's hammer and turned out to be worthy, so he turned into a version of Thor. Odin ultimately gave Bill his own version of Mjolnir called Stormbreaker and Bill has used it well since.
7 COULDN'T HANDLE IT: CYCLOPS
During House of M, the Scarlet Witch used her reality-altering powers to reduce the number of mutants to roughly a thousand on the planet. The first mutant born after the Scarlet Witch was sent into the future to be raised by Cable. She returned to our time as Hope Summers. She also appeared to have some connection to the Phoenix Force and earlier, she had seemingly sent off a "spark" that brought a few new mutants into existence. So when the Phoenix Force was seen heading for Earth, Cyclops felt that it was here to merge with Hope and return the mutant race.
The Avengers felt that the Phoenix Force needed to be stopped because of the whole "Dark Phoenix" possibility. They tried to destroy it, but instead split its power into five pieces, which possessed Cyclops, Emma Frost, Namor, Colossus and Magik. The "Phoenix Force" used their powers to seemingly make the world a better place, but they were slowly but surely becoming tyrannical in the process. When Namor was defeated, his powers went to the other four, making them stronger. When Colossus and Magik were also defeated, Cyclops decided to defeat Emma himself so that he could get all the power. It was too much for him and he went full "Dark Phoenix Cyclops." The X-Men and Avengers teamed up to defeat him. By the way, the Phoenix Force did end up possessing Hope then and she did bring back the mutant race, for whatever that's worth.
6 HANDLED IT: JANE FOSTER
One of Thor's most devastating foes was Gorr, also known as the God-Butcher. Gorr was a powerful being, who went around murdering the gods of various planets, with the intent of gaining enough power to one day kill all the Gods in the universe. What made Gorr so devastating was the fact that he was not just strong, he also seemed to have "right" on his side, as Thor knew that Gods could be just as selfish and cruel as Gorr described. Still, Thor had to fight him and he managed to stop Gorr and Gorr's "God-Bomb." Gorr told him, though, that the universe was worse off because of what Thor did that day. Later, during the crossover, Original Sin, the new Watcher, Nick Fury, whispered to Thor that "Gorr was right." This shock caused Thor to determine that he was no longer worthy of wielding Mjolnir.
So Thor's former girlfriend, Jane Foster, became the new wielder of Mjolnir, which altered its inscription to say "If she be worthy." Jane was an excellent Thor. Even when she learned that she was slowly losing her mortal body to cancer, she continued to help protect Asgardia. Ultimately, she gave her life to save all of the Realms from the evil Mangog.
5 COULDN'T HANDLE IT: KORVAC
Michael Korvac was born in the future. When his system was invaded by the evil alien race known as the Badoon, Korvac betrayed the human race and began to work with the Badoon. They rewarded him by transforming him into a powerful cyborg. Korvac wanted more power, though, and after he was transported to the present (his past) as a pawn of the Grandmaster, he returned to the past again to gain more power. He found a way to absorb some of the Power Cosmic from Galactus and was reborn as just "Michael."
The Collector had been preparing to take on a Cosmically-enhanced Thanos, so he soon turned his sights on Michael instead. He sent his daughter, Carina, to spy on Michael. Instead, she fell in love with him. Michael then killed the Collector. Michael and Carina seemed willing to just live in obscurity together, but later retellings of their stories have made it clear that Michael was bound to use his powers in a poor fashion. Thus, the Avengers were right to track them down and fight them. Korvac and Carina killed many of the Avengers until Korvac realized that Carina was beginning to see him the same way that the Avengers saw him -- as an inherent threat. So he killed himself, resurrecting the dead Avengers in the process. He has returned as a more traditional villain in the years since.
4 HANDLED IT: THE JUSTICE LEAGUE
The end of Geoff Johns' run on Justice League was the epic "Darkseid War," with artists Jason Fabok and Brad Anderson. The war was between the Anti-Monitor, in his original Mobius form, versus Darkseid with the Justice League caught in the middle of their conflict. During the storyline, the various members of the Justice League found themselves becoming gods. Batman got the Mobius Chair and became the God of Knowledge. The Flash merged with the Black Racer to become the God of Death. Superman had his powers restored by Apokolips' negative energy, turning him into the God of Strength. Lex Luthor merged with the Omega Effect to become the God of Apokolips. Shazam, meanwhile, found his powers came from a new group of gods as he became the God of Gods.
By the end of the story, though, all of these heroes were able to divest themselves of their godhood to help save the day. One of the coolest ways this worked was when Jessica Cruz was possessed by Volthoom, the being who powered her Power Ring. Jessica was chosen by Volthoom to become the new Power Ring because of her great fear. That fear caused her to let him take control. However, she knew that the only way for the Flash to break free of the Black Racer was to kill her. So she willingly let him kill her. Luckily, it instead killed Volthoom!
3 COULDN'T HANDLE IT: MOLECULE MAN
The Molecule Man is a fascinating study in the effects of ultimate power on a person's psyche. Owen Reese was a low-level technician at a nuclear facility who was angry and fearful of the world as a whole. One day, an accident mutated Owen and gave him the power to control molecules, effectively turning him into a god. Reese, though, was so filled with self-hatred that he assumed his powers were limited to affecting inorganic matter and he also believed that he needed a "power wand" for his powers to work.
He was initially a traditional supervillain, but after realizing that his power was not limited to just inorganic material, he came to a crossroads in his life. He did not know how to deal with being a god. He began to get psychiatric help and seemed to try to live as normal as a life as he could with his girlfriend, Marsha, who he met during the original Secret Wars event, when he was one of the group of "supervillains" brought to Battleworld by the Beyonder. Over the years, though, Owen has been unable to handle his great power. It has been too much for his mind and he went insane. Luckily, even an insane Molecule Man was able to be convinced to lend his powers to Doctor Doom to save the Multiverse. After Spider-Man helped him regain his sanity, Molecule Man gave his powers to Mister Fantastic to fix the damage Doom had done to the Multiverse.
2 HANDLED IT: SOLAR
We have not mentioned him yet, but someone that has connected a number of these entries is a writer, Jim Shooter, who created the Beyonder and was the writer who had Korvac and Molecule Man both become, in effect, gods. Over the years, Shooter has regularly returned to the theme of how do people handle ultimate power. In the early 1990s, Shooter launched a new comic book company, Valiant Comics. The first two properties in this new company were licensed from Gold Key Comics -- Magnus, Robot Fighter and Solar, Man of the Atom (the Gold Key version was called Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom).
In Shooter's version of Solar, nuclear physicist Phil Seleski tried to stop a nuclear reactor meltdown and instead gained the ability to alter matter, essentially becoming a god. He took on the form of Solar because he grew up a fan of the Gold Key comic book. He tried to make the world a better place by getting rid of all nuclear weapons on the planet. The world's governments turned against him, though, and he could not handle their attacks. He lost control of his powers and destroyed Earth by mistake. He then went to a new reality to try to change the events of the past. He then became a more traditional superhero.
1 COULDN'T HANDLE IT: GENIS-VELL
In 1993, Marvel's Annuals each introduced a brand-new character. Nearly all of these characters never amounted to much, but one of the few exceptions was Genis-Vell, the son of Mar-Vell, who took on the superhero name, Legacy. Eventually, Legacy took on his father's mantle of Captain Marvel. During Avengers Forever, Genis-Vell merged with Rick Jones and became a more cosmically-enhanced version of Captain Marvel. During this time, he gained "Cosmic Awareness." This slowly drove Genis insane, as he knew everything that ever happened in the universe plus everything that could have happened.
All of that knowledge also came with it a lot of power. Eventually, the children of the cosmic being known as Eternity manipulated Genis into destroying the universe itself! He did so, but in the after-effect, the lack of a universe also meant that there were less things to be aware of, and his sanity slowly returned. He got Eternity's kids to go along with a plan to bring back the universe, with just a few slight changes. So, in the end, Genis worked things out, but unlike Solar, who accidentally destroyed the universe, Genis flat out went along with the idea, so we think that makes him land in the "couldn't handle it" category.