A God Am I / Comic Books

Kneel before Doom!

Comic Books are full of good guys and bad guys with godlike powers, and one difference is that the bad guys aren't afraid to admit it.

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• Rughal in The 99 attempted to become godlike by absorbing all the knowledge of the noor stones. It didn't end well.
• 2000 AD:
  • Nero attempts to become a new deity in Aquila by having seven priests of seven gods killed (as well as a couple of actual gods). Of course, the readers know he'll fail.
  • The Ten-Seconders: Double subverted by The Scientist, who taunts Malloy that there's no such thing as Gods, but once he's absorbed all of the star energy, he'll be the closest thing to one.
• Black Moon Chronicles: When Wismerhill asks Haazheel Thorn if he is truly a demigod as his followers say, Haazheel says he might as well be. In fact, he is the son of the most powerful demon in Hell.
• In The Books of Magic, Timothy Hunter may become this in the future, and we catch glimpses of it. The first story arc of the series involves various magicians in The DCU trying to decide what to do about this.
• In The Boys, the Homelander develops this mindset after being driven insane by pictures of himself (actually his clone Black Noir dressed up as him) committing horrific crimes like baby-eating and rape, crimes that he doesn't remember committing.
• Chick Tracts: One tract features one of these, an approximately 8-year-old boy who decides that he's a god after his mother explains to him the point of atheism — thus, he concludes that if there is no God, he can become one. Hollywood Atheist? What else do you expect from Jack Chick?
• The First in CrossGen comics ("We call ourselves the First, but you would call us gods."). Somewhat justified in the fact that they really do possess godlike powers and a murky sense of their own origins that leads them to believe that they created the universe. Their actual creator Solusandra also adopts this attitude sometimes, or even flat-out declares herself above gods (having created a lot of them after all).
• The DCU:
  • Batman:
    • Max Zeus is one of the "so mad he thinks he's God" versions; although he doesn't possess any superpowers himself, he's managed to delude himself into believing that he is Zeus, All-Powerful Lord of Olympus. His last name doesn't help matters. Nor does his lightning cannon. It should be mentioned that "Zeus" isn't even his last name, but an alias that he uses exclusively. Max's actual surname is the much less godlike "Zlotski".
    • Another Batman villain with ambitions of godhood is the Scarecrow, at least during the three-part "God of Fear" story arc during the much larger Knightfall saga. A student of all the world's mythologies, Dr. Jonathan Crane becomes annoyed that there is no historical record of a god of fear,^note Ignoring gods like, say, Phobos and Deimos — Crane may be a genius in psychology, but he clearly flunked mythology even though that should be the most obvious god because fear is what sustains the gods. Determined to halt the modern world's "flight from religion", he kidnaps several students from the psychology department at the university where he once taught, drugs them until they are totally stripped of their will, dresses them in scarecrow costumes, gives them plastic skulls containing fear toxin and has them use them to spread chaos throughout various parts of Gotham City, creates an enormous hologram of himself that he projects against the sky to make himself literally look like a god, and orders the Gothamites to officially recognize him as a god or he will destroy the entire city with an entire tanker truck full of his toxin (when in fact he plans to empty the tanker into the city water supply, thus poisoning everyone who uses tap water). While negotiating with him on the phone, Commissioner Gordon tries to get the Scarecrow to see how insane he is acting, pointing out that he is a human being and that, even if Gotham City did declare him a god, he still wouldn't be one. This only enrages the Scarecrow, who, working from completely backward logic, says that as a god he is incorruptible, and therefore can't possibly be insane. (That's right: the Scarecrow is so insane, he doesn't even know he's insane.)
  • Gotham City Garage: Given the number of people swearing by Lex and reiterating that Lex loves them and the fact that years are counted from the called "Luthorrise", it looks like Lex Luthor has taken his narcissism and megalomania to the extreme.
  • Blume, the giant floating head from Green Lantern, tries to pass himself off as a "God of Hunger" so he can con aliens out of their valuables. The trick doesn't work very well on Larfleeze.
  • In Justice League Dark (vol. 2), the Wonder Woman villain Circe becomes this at the conclusion of the series' first arc. Posing as a Friendly Enemy, she manipulates Wonder Woman and JLD into killing the Goddess Hectate so that Circe will end up inheriting her powers and become the new Goddess of Magic.
  • Element Lad becomes this in the Legion of Super-Heroes storyline "Legion Lost". After getting lost through a time/space rift, he transmutes himself into living mineral to survive, becoming immortal, and starts altering life on developing worlds to pass time, eventually creating whole civilizations of Scary Dogmatic Aliens. By the time that his time-displaced friends find him again billions of years later, his powers have grown a thousandfold; he's lost all sense of morality and murders one of his former comrades on a whim.
  • The Multiversity: In Pax Americana #1, Captain Adam of Earth-4 veers into this territory, but he also has plenty of humanity left to realize in horror when his actions cross the line and opts to have himself put on heavier medication to limit himself.
  • New Gods: Even though (Depending on the Writer — originally and frequently, they really are) the New Gods aren't really gods per se, rather being highly advanced aliens, Darkseid has always held himself to be a dark god in the flesh and is indeed worshiped as such by the people of Apokolips. He is the unquestioned ruler of his planet, has highly advanced powers and the only opponent who can stop him even temporarily is Superman. Some notable quotes by him:
    "I am many things, Kal-El. But here, I am God."
    "I. AM. THE. NEW. GOD."
    "Darkseid does not do. Darkseid IS."
  • A... different example is Snowflame from The New Guardians, a villain whose power source is cocaine. After snorting a massive amount of it, he declares himself "a true god" — never mind that he has made it expressly clear that he worships cocaine itself as his god. Then again, cocaine and logic haven't always been the best of friends. Mind you, in some traditions, there are deities or deity-like beings that do worship the higher god in the pantheon, but a villain whose power source is a drug probably is just insane.
  • Doctor Destiny from The Sandman (1989) when he briefly acquires one of Morpheus' artifacts. He actually does manage to cause mass chaos in both the real world and the dream world, and almost destroys the dream world entirely... until he accidentally gives the Lord of Dreams a power-up.
  • Superman:
    • Thankfully averted by Superman himself, who never thinks that his powers should grant him privilege and worship. Batman does note while observing Superman lifting up buildings that it's sometimes hard not to think of Clark as a god — and that people are very lucky that Clark never does. Superman himself discusses this trope on occasion when justifying the often-debilitating strictness of his pacifism: the immensity of his power means he doesn't dare risk Slowly Slipping Into Evil at all for fear of falling right into the dark side. It helps his case that Supes shares a setting with actual gods, many of whom are as far above him as he is above us, and as such could stomp his ass if he ever got too uppity. Exactly how far is Depending on the Writer, many of whom tend to treat Supes as a genuine god in denial. Wonder Woman and the various gods of the pantheon tend to think of Superman as a demi-god. In supplementary material for Justice (DC Comics), Batman states in his files that Superman is a god — and thankfully doesn't think of himself as one.
    • Interestingly, Lex Luthor has tried to fulfill this trope on on behalf of Superman. A John Byrne story establishes that Luthor knows how extremely likely it is that Clark Kent is Superman, but he refuses to believe that someone as powerful as Superman would deign to pretend to be a normal human.
    • Borderline example: Evil Kryptonians like General Zod tend to see themselves as above everyone due to their incredible power. At least Zod is smart enough to realize some people can threaten them, urging his Mooks to learn decent fighting skills and battle tactics.
    • In The Black Ring, Luthor merges with a Phantom Zone entity and becomes a massive godlike Energy Being. He uses his new power to halt entropy in all of existence and grants everyone immortality and eternal bliss while reveling in his godhood and flaunting it in the face of Superman. Then his Loisbot informs him that the zone entity made sure that Luthor couldn't do anything negative with that power such as killing Superman. He can't refrain from trying, and so squanders his power in self-destructive pettiness.
    • In Superman: Godfall, Lyla manages to drain a portion of Superman's power into herself, and she quickly goes to Metropolis and demands worship. She is quite surprised when the people don't comply.
    • During The Death of Superman, as the Eradicator and Steel are fighting, one of the many Cults approaches the Eradicator, cheering him on, leading to the deluded metahuman to start acting this way. It certainly doesn't endear him to Steel at all.
  • Tales from the Dark Multiverse jabs this trope at The Judas Contract, in which the events within the Dark Multiverse went awry compared to the original events of the aforementioned comic book. It shows that Terra, instead of dying at the hands of Beast Boy, manages to survive and manages to kill Slade Wilson (her mentor) and acquire his superhuman serum, and using her upgraded powers, manages to decimate the Teen Titans and ravage the Earth, leaving a handful of survivors to rule over the broken dark Earth that is located within the Multiverse.
• There's a curious heroic version of this trope in the final Eighth Doctor comic strip in Doctor Who Magazine; the Doctor merges with the space-time vortex in order to defeat the Cybermen, becoming a being of practically godlike omnipotence in the process. Although he remains benevolent, his omnipotence distracts him; he's so enthused about how he can see everything and feel everything that he doesn't notice that his companion remains on the Cybermen's rapidly decaying space ship and is about to fall to her death. Then, as the Doctor's about to say goodbye to her forever, he notices her about to fall to her death... and instantly gives up godhood without a second thought so that he can catch her before she falls.
• Winnowill from ElfQuest has some very distinct ideas about The World How It Should Be — including her own unquestioned dominion over earth and space, and the non-existence of the main cast. Her Love Martyr Rayek suffers from the same malady, to a somewhat lesser extent (not that much lesser, though). He really goes over the top with it when he acquires the power of the Gliders' spirits, but once he arrives at the Palace they abandon him, leaving him (temporarily) a bit deflated.
• Eric Forster of A God Somewhere is discovered to be the first documented human being with superpowers. This causes him to become more religious and believe that he has been chosen by God, but this belief quickly develops into megalomania as Eric begins to consider himself a real god and treat regular people accordingly.
• The Great Power of Chninkel: The great crime of the ancient Chinkel king N'om was to have himself worshipped as a god in place of the Almighty Creator god O'ne. The whole chinkel race has since been forced to live in bondage to atone for this and N'om himself was imprisoned in the interdimensional void and his soul split up into three immortal tyrants waging a Forever War amongst themselves.
• In the Groo the Wanderer story arc "The Fray of the Gods", Groo has to deal with a king who wishes to promote himself to godhood and displace the other gods. Some scenes are set on the plane of the gods, where the new "Star God" proclaimed by the king attempts to assert himself, only to find that his power waxes and wanes with the number of his worshippers.
• Subverted in Lilith: Roman emperor Commodus talks a big game about the divinity of his authority, has renamed after himself the months of the year and Rome itself, and when he's told that the people wouldn't stand for a woman in the gladiatorial games he replies that HE decides what is acceptable or not, but the moment he mistakes the time traveler Lilith for a goddess he asks for her name so he can worship her.
• Marvel Universe:
  • The Avengers:
    • Ironically subverted during "The Korvac Saga". Korvac, a supervillain, accidentally gains cosmic powers and knowledge... and, realizing that humanity is at the mercy of uncaring cosmic beings, decides to help free the universe from them. Unfortunately, he is tracked down by the Avengers (who had no idea what had happened to him) and is exposed, ruining his plans. In the end, he commits suicide out of despair. This story has been retconned later to make it seem that Korvac was still villainous and that the Avengers were right in opposing him, but anybody who reads the original version can clearly tell that this wasn't the case.
    • The Scarlet Witch has attained godlike powers on occasion, which naturally proves highly detrimental to her sanity. Birthing children with an android probably didn't help.
  • In one two-part story in Captain America, the Red Skull obtains the Cosmic Cube and becomes this. He demonstrates by making himself a suit of golden armor and generating a Golem for Cap to fight. Eventually, Captain America knocks the Cube from the Skull's hand, and the Skull presumably dies while diving into the water after it (and being weighed down by his aforementioned golden armor).
  • During the end of Peter David's run of Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics), Genis, the then-Captain, becomes Cosmically Aware and empowered. He is driven mad by being suddenly conscious of every event and being that exists throughout the universe at once, then subsequently goes about erasing all of reality within a meager few pages. Reality gets better later, though. He later goes on to harass preachers and Asgard in an attempt to force his self-declared godhood on the rest of the world.
  • Doctor Doom is the unsurpassed master and monarch of this trope. "I want that power. By right, it is mine. For ultimate power is the ultimate destiny of Doom!" And, in fact, Victor von Doom has come within a fraction of a hair's width of securing Real Ultimate Power™ several times in the past. He has built a siphoning device that has allowed him to successfully steal not only the Power Cosmic of the Silver Surfer and Galactus but also the Beyonder's apparently omnipotent abilities in the course of the Secret Wars (1984) story arc, as well as that of a renegade watcher. Naturally, he is beaten in the end once again, but still...
    • Doom's God complex is impressive enough that he can use it to No-Sell mind control. Other people exist for Doom to order about, not the other way around.
    • In one particularly literal case, Dr. Doom tries to claim Thor's hammer to gain his power.
    • In Mark Millar's run of Fantastic Four, he gains godlike powers at a level strong enough to kill a Watcher. This was evidently forgotten/ignored by later writers.
    • In the X-Men: Chaos Engine Trilogy of novels, Doom rebuilds the siphoning device and uses it on Roma, Guardian of the Omniverse, to try to claim her throne. The titular Chaos Engine itself is a (faulty) Cosmic Cube that grants Doom whatever he wishes within its power — he uses it to Take Over the World, rewrite history,^note Or so he thought and secretly control Magneto's mind to make him into a genocidal monster to be his new Arch-Enemy (after he finally defeats that accursed Richards) because Victory Is Boring. He does not quite claim godhood... but, apart from making himself King of the Earth, he does think that he has the right to kill everyone on the planet when he realizes that the Cube was killing him.
    • Ultimately, all of this is just a warmup for Secret Wars (2015), in which Doom succeeds in the biggest, most absolute way possible: saving the entire Marvel Multiverse from falling into oblivion, putting all the broken pieces together into one sole existence, and placing himself at its head as its God-Emperor. Forget ruling just a single universe, Doom now rules literally everything ever that exists in Marvel. Kneel before Doom, indeed.
  • Doctor Strange, despite being Earth's Sorcerer Supreme, averts the trope. Many of his dimension-hopping adversaries fall into it, though. At this point, claiming godhood is a guaranteed method of not impressing him.
  • The Skull of Earth X has the power to control the minds (or at least bodies) of every human being on Earth. Not surprisingly, he declares himself to be God. Ironically, he's more of a pawn of the "real" gods of the setting, the Celestial Host.
    Skull: You wouldn't even eat if I didn't remind you to. Fall down. You wouldn't bathe if I didn't get sick of your stink and make you. I'm God.
    Captain America: Then I'm Nietzsche.
  • The Incredible Hulk:
    • In the Planet Hulk storyline, the Red King claims to be God in the flesh while fighting the Hulk in a mecha suit (yes, it was a mecha) — then the Hulk gets really mad and strongly begs to differ.
    • Hiro-Kala, the teenage son of the Hulk, gave us a really badass example, telling a whole army that:
      Hiro-Kala: I am the chosen, progeny of Hulk the Green Scar and Caiera, shadow mother of all Sakaar. I am he of shadow, the life-bringer and world-breaker. Upon my planet I was known as Hiro-Kala. You will come to know me as GOD.
  • The Mighty Thor: The reason why Thor was first banished to earth and bound to the human host Dr. Donald Blake is that his father, Odin, thought he was getting dangerously close to this and needed to learn humility. Ironic, considering that Thor and Odin actually are gods, and Odin himself displays the arrogance of this attitude quite often.
  • In Thunderbolts #120, Norman Osborn loses his shit, resulting in the following exchange;
    Swordsman: You can't treat me like this! I'm a baron!
    Green Goblin: I am God!
  • Ultimatum: The Ultimate X Men version of Magneto always had delusions of grandeur, but this time he has gone too far, comparing his action with the Biblical great flood. Xavier has to point it out: Magneto is not God.
  • Warlock (1967):
    • Adam Warlock has encountered a mad future version of himself called the Magus who not only believes that he's a god but also has his own vastly powerful church of fanatical followers sweeping across the galaxy in a Crusade. It doesn't help clear up matters when Warlock is crucified, dies, and comes back to life.
    • When he has all six Infinity Gems in The Infinity Gauntlet and declares that "I AM GOD!" in big red letters, it's really hard to argue with him (at least until one of 'em proves to be a forgery).
    • Every other appearance by Thanos has him stealing an artifact or power source that gives them godlike power. This was most obvious when he acquired the Infinity Gems.
    • The High Evolutionary is an Evilutionary Biologist who artificially evolved himself into a higher state of being. He often claims to be the apex of human evolution, a boast which doesn't quite bear out when one considers his frequent tendency to devolve back into human or even sub-human states (more than once he has been reduced to a literal ape).
  • In X-23: Innocence Lost, Dr. Sarah Kinney muses to the rest of the genetics team that scientists have only just figured out cloning with sheep and cats and have yet to attempt cloning on humans. Meanwhile, they're in the process of attempting to clone Wolverine. She explicitly invokes this trope.
    Sarah: Gentlemen, welcome to godhood.
  • X-Men:
    • Perhaps the single best-known example is Jean Grey, who, as Dark Phoenix, goes to star-eating levels before committing suicide. (However, later retcons serve to confuse the issue.)
    • Wolverine narrowly avoids this during the story "Lost in the Funhouse". After being imbued with the power of the issue's MacGuffin, he briefly revels in the thought of what he could do — before realising that if he starts using it, he'll never be able to stop and end up like the villain of the issue.
      "I'm talkin' like God... only I ain't God. That was Horde's trip."
    • Another X-ample is Apocalypse, who claims to have masqueraded as various gods during his millennia-long life. In the '90s cartoon, he delivers a great line to Graydon Creed: "I am as far beyond mutants as they are beyond you! I am eternal!" At times, Apocalypse has expressed the idea that he's beyond godhood and considers even gods to be lesser beings.
    • Selene has been plotting this since Roman times at least, and in recent years has made it very clear that she was now aiming straight at godhood, with an attempt at a form of ascension being the driving point behind the Necrosha arc of X-Force (2008), in which her dragon Eli Bard uses the Techno-Organic virus to resurrect the dead mutants of Genosha for her to drain... all 16 million of them. Well, not before making her enemies suffer and pay for having impeded her — or after. She's not overly picky.
    • Interestingly averted with Exodus, who despite being an omega level mutant on par with Apocalypse himself reminds his followers that he is not God. Makes sense, considering that he's a former Templar and a devout Christian.
    • Nate Grey a.k.a. X-Man, the Age of Apocalypse counterpart of Cable and likewise an Arch-Enemy of Apocalypse, is initially violently against this attitude — a point he makes extremely clear when beating the above-mentioned Exodus to a pulp, before sealing him in a crevasse. Even after being more or less worshipped and referred to as New York's 'Street Messiah', he rejected it. However, over the years he started slipping into a more and more judgmental attitude, "separating the innocent and the guilty", which evolved into this upon his return to full power in Uncanny X-Men (2018), when he more or less effortlessly flattened a team of X-Men that included his mother Jean Grey, Iceman, Storm, and Psylocke, while simultaneously keeping Apocalypse in chains and Magneto on his psychic leash. As he points out to Jean, with his power, where exactly is the difference between playing God and being one? However, it's left a little ambiguous how much he means it when it's revealed that he's playing the part to try and save Earth-616 before it is destroyed/destroys itself, the same way his world was. Ultimately, he confirms that he doesn't believe it — even though, having created his own reality, he has a pretty good claim to be one.
• Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja : Alfie O'Meagan often proclaimed himself to be the most powerful and most generous being in the universe — about the sort of attitude you'd expect from a Reality Warper Psychopathic Manchild.
• Paperinik New Adventures has a few examples.
  • The first is Xadhoom, who became a Physical Goddess (she has basically the same powers as Doctor Manhattan minus the ability to see the future, and a lot more firepower) in the attempt to find an eternal energy source for her homeworld of Xerba (then on the verge of an energetic crisis due their sun slowly dying) and makes clear she has no reason to return normal before performing her Heroic Sacrifice and an improvised stint as The Chessmaster that will start legends of her as a vengeful goddess ready to show up every time the surviving Evronians do anything funny.
  • The Evronian scientist Zoster managed to get his hands on a record of Xadhoom's memories and was told how to obtain her power. As soon as he does it he orders the whole universe to kneel before him... Before dissolving into nothingness as Xadhoom's memory gloats that without control her absolute power will dissolve its wielder, Just as Planned when she decided to play Chessmaster.
  • Evronians of the imperial subspecies tend to imply being gods who know everything happening in their realm. Thankfully, they don't have the ability to back up these claims.
  • The Galactic Conqueror Moldrock, introduced in the relaunch stories, claims to be all-powerful when outside the Pentadimensional world he was sealed in by the Coronians. Differently from the Evronian emperors, he can back it up (Word of God is that he's the most powerful enemy Paperinik will ever face), and has proven it by turning Corona from a desert planet to a lush garden world as soon as he got his powers.
• In Powers, the storyline "The Sellouts" revolves around a Superman Substitute who has lost his mind and believes himself to be a god. The results aren't pretty.
• Sherlock Holmes and the Horror of Frankenstein: During his Villainous Breakdown, Mad Scientist Dr. Pretorious starts screaming at the monsters to obey him, ending in this trope.
  Frankenstein's Monster: We are not insects, we are the Adam Eve of your labours!!
  Dr. Pretorious: I am your god!!... And you will obey me!
• Star Wars IDW: Much like his Prime Universe counterpart, Gary Mitchell becomes this due to his exposure to the barrier and subsequent increased intelligence.
• In Sonic the Comic, this happens twice to Robotnik. The first time, in the "Robotnik Reigns Supreme" storyline, he manages to absorb the power of the Chaos Emeralds and has reality completely at his whim until he gets outwitted by Sonic and drained of his powers. Much later he is hooked up to an alien machine supposed to drain the life force out of the planet and into his body, which gives him a brief moment of god-like powers until he is defeated again.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • Hopping up on Chaos energy tends to do this to Echidnas; both Enerjak and his descendant Knuckles have attempted to warp reality to their own design after being supercharged by the Master Emerald.
  • In an alternate reality's future, Knuckles did succeed in altering the world as he saw fit, crushing all real resistance with ease and tearing out the souls of the most talented opponents (main cast included). However, in a twist of irony, he became so bored without a challenge he let the Freedom Fighters continue to exist for entertainment value. Then, in an aversion of this trope, he has his power taken away and absorbed by his daughter, who doesn't let it go to her head, but instead intends to use the power to undo the damage that the alternate Knuckles did before giving the power up.
  • Knuckles is almost the most susceptible to this trope, he fell into this again during his stint as Enerjak.
  • In a non-Echidna example: Feist is essentially God within the Special Zone, and anyone who goes there has no choice but to abide by his rules.
• The title character from the pre-Alan Moore run of Supreme absolutely believes that he, himself, is a god, or possibly the God — he is known to quote scripture when implicitly referring to himself. The Norse god Thor, who is a recurring antagonist, objects to this idea, saying that gods are born while Supreme was created by science.
• Transformers:
  • In a Marvel UK The Transformers (Marvel) story, Galvatron fits a massive energy collector to a volcano and keeps telling everyone present that as soon as he absorbs all the energy, he'll become a god. He fails, but just barely.
  • In the US series, Starscream is successful in gaining godlike powers when he absorbs part of Cybertron's Underbase, and he proceeds to threaten several Earth cities as a demonstration of his newfound power. He fails, but manages to decimate the combined ranks of the Autobots and Decepticons in the process. Optimus Prime comes to realize that the only way to beat Starscream is to allow him to absorb the rest of the Underbase, so that its full energy will tear Starscream apart. It does, just as Starscream is threatening to utterly disintegrate Optimus and Scorponok.
  • The Decepticon Sunstorm often does this because he's a Walking Wasteland, and he assumes this makes him unbeatable. In the Dreamwave continuity (and, to a lesser extent, his Universe profile) this is taken somewhat seriously; in other G1 continuities, he's just another Mauve Shirt Seeker.
  • In The Transformers: Dark Cybertron event, Shockwave actually does briefly ascend to practical godhood, with the ultimate goal of destroying the universe. Optimus Prime manages to break through the brainwashing and convince him to shut the machine doing this down, which unfortunately involves killing himself.
• In Transformers/G.I. Joe, Cobra Commander declares himself a god after obtaining the Matrix and observing its destructive power.
• Toyed with in Watchmen, as, when Jon experiments with creating life, he becomes more god-like than most of the examples on this page, and yet he pointedly avoids thinking of himself in such terms.

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