Doctor Strange, Depending on the Writer, can go from "merely" one of the stronger Earth bound heroes to perhaps the most powerful superhero in mainstream comics. His powers enable him to do almost anything — at his best/worst, he isthe Wizard who does it — as he has learnt to command the most primal eldritch energies permeating the universe and is backed up by a host of otherdimensional magical patrons. But in his own titles he needs that level of power, because his Rogues Gallery is also one of the most powerful in mainstream superhero comics, consisting of multiple Evil Sorcerers, The Legions of Hell, at least one nigh-omnipotent Omnicidal Maniac, and demonic Dimension Lords whose mere presence in our reality constitutes a doomsday event, amongst other diabolical horrors and cosmic menaces. Strange has collected and inherited artifacts that amplify his powers even further or protect him from numerous mystical dangers, and on top of all that he is a trained martial artist and a retired world-class surgeon. Put simply, there's a reason he's called the Sorcerer Supreme.
Franklin Richards, son of the heroes Susan and Reed Richards, suffers from intermittent omnipotence, including at one point creating a universe in his hands out of boredom. In the many times Franklin has been given a temporary Plot-Relevant Age-Up, he for whatever reason always gets weaker after growing up. Supposedly, he's more powerful as a child because he doesn't know that half the things he does are supposed to be impossible. Or that they're probably bad ideas. In at least one Alternate Timeline, he marries the X-Men's Rachel Summers, another major winner of the lottery, and has a son. His son, Jonathan/Hyperstorm, of course far eclipses both his parents - or at least, what they were capable of. In another, Franklin becomes the next universe's Galactus.
The post Secret Wars (2015) incarnation was, for a while, basically God. As in, he repopulated the multiverse with literally millions of universes (albeit with his father's guiding hand helping him out).
Franklin's weakness is that he can be burned out by using his powers to their fullest. Most future versions of him come from after a time he's had to do this, making him a more manageable character (as Psi-Lord, he's basically non-Phoenix Jean Grey.)
The Super-Skrull has all the powers of the F4, the Skrulls' natural ability to shapeshift and his own hypnosis based powers.
The Invisible Woman originally started out as the most useless member of the Fantastic Four. Then she developed the ability to create force fields. Seems impressive enough but then she was able to create more complex shapes like swords, battering rams, discs, darts and bullets. She can, as she stated in the movie, create a force field inside a body and expand it with lethal - and messy - results. She also has the ability to make other people and objects invisible, as demonstrated when she once tricked Dr Doom into crashing into a mountain she made invisible. She was even able to kill a Celestial because her powers draw from the same source that made up the Celestial's armor. Today, Susan Storm is considered the most powerful member of the Fantastic Four and is surpassed in power level within her family only by her son Franklin.
Galactus, Silver Surfer, and any of G-diddy's other Heralds. The Power Cosmic lets them accomplish basically anything he wants, up to and including massive scale reality manipulation. Since Galactus is the primary holder he can bestow or revoke the PC as he pleases.
The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk has unlimited strength, accelerated healing, the ability to breathe underwater, dynamic durability, and the ability to leap as high as Superman, and unlike Supes he has a high resistance to Mind Control. He also has a number of minor abilities like absorbing gamma radiation and seeing ghosts and astral forms. As a bonus, Bruce Banner is one of the smartest men in the Marvel Universe, to the point where Norman Osborn decided he preferred fighting the Hulk. Come Immortal Hulk, he adds Resurrective Immortality to the list. Note that most of these powers are directly proportional to his anger level, which will normally steadily increase over the course of a fight. The standard rule of thumb when fighting the Hulk is to hit him with everything you've got immediately and hope you can end the fight before it starts, because his powers will increase with every passing second that the fight continues.
The Red Hulk had a very similar power set to the green Hulk as well as the ability to absorb any type of energy such as cosmic rays. When he was infected by Cable's techno-organic virus, he was able to control his body heat to burn the virus out of his system. He also does not revert to human form when rendered unconscious unlike the green Hulk.
Skaar and Hiro-Kala, the sons of Caiera and Hulk, inherited their father's gamma mutate powers and their mother's connection to the Old Power, a form of cosmic energy that grants the user enhanced physicality and control over terrain. Hiro-Kala took it to even more absurd levels, being able to fire energy blasts, project force fields and manifest a water-like substance. Eventually, Skaar had his Hulk powers taken from him by his father's Doc Green persona and Hiro-Kala has since forsaken the Old Power in favor of using his Hulk form.
Black Bolt, the King of The Inhumans, is probably the ultimate example of this in the Marvel Universe. A basic listing of his powers includes a supersonic voice that, at max power, can destroy a planet (and, amplified by technology, has split open reality itself twice); telekinesis; superhuman strength; matter and energy manipulation; transmutation; and flight. In nearly 50 years of existence, he's never lost a real fight, at worst being stalemated (or limited by circumstances). The only significant class of superpower he doesn't possess is telepathy, and that's because he's The Voiceless. It is stated in World War Hulk that he is that second most powerful hero, beaten only by The Sentry, so when Hulk, who is more angry than he as ever been before, shows up and gives him a beating, the Avengers know that they are in big trouble.
Crystal, Black Bolt's sister-in-law, is no slouch in this department either, being able to command the four classical elements of water, fire, earth and air.
The Mighty Thor: Thor, whose list of powers is pretty long even without including Mjolnir; and if he has full access to the Odinforce that week, then he's a full-blown Reality Warper. Also, the majority of other name Asgardians; even the weaker name ones tend to have a wide variety of physical powers, a magical weapon or two, and at least one schtick power. For what that matters, Loki, Thor's adoptive brother and arch enemy, who is a master in sorcery and manipulation and even in his "Squishy Wizard" interpretation is still capable of lifting up to 30-50 tons with his bare hands - and that's '30-50 tons' as Marvel's relative power scale, meaning that he's actually capable of lifting far more than that. Killer Movies even has a list of his powers.
In Runaways, Nico Minoru's Staff of One lets her do anything (with the apparent limit of resurrection being off-limits)... but only once per effect. Lately, she's gained some measure of magic ability on her own, at least enough to fly around on her own power.
She also found out that, in a cross over with the Young Avengers, she can recast a spell if she says it in a different language. Go count how many languages there are out there, and then look at that "weakness".
Though at times the staff is surprisingly literal, and if she casts a spell from a word with multiple meanings, there's no guarantee which one will take effect.
Avengers Arena has basically confirmed that nothing is off limits for the Staff of One, provided the blood sacrifice is big enough. For example, when Nico is bleeding out, she's able to cast one last spell... that brings her Back from the Dead.
Thanos the Mad Titan is one of Marvel's archvillains for a reason. He's one of the Eternals mentioned above, and while he's from a weaker offshoot of the Eternal population, he's also a mutant with a Deviant-like appearance which granted him even more super strength and toughness. These are just his natural powers. He's also got a fiendishly cunning mind, access to advanced technology, and he has a tendency to seek out powerful cosmic artifacts like Cosmic Cubes and the Infinity Gems. The only weaknesses he has are purely psychological ones: his obsession with Death and his subconscious self-defeatism.
Thanos' son Thane may be even more powerful than his father. He has two powers: he can warp reality with his left hand, and trap people in a state of "living death" with his right. To put things in perspective, he was able to easily defeat his father Thanos with the second power without any practice. His only weakness is that he can't fully control his powers. Yet. However, it turns out that he's not up to his father in psychological combat, and so even the power of the Phoenix doesn't help.
Ultron may be one of the most overpowered supervillains ever. His entire body is made of Adamantium and Vibranium, which means he's Made of Indestructium to the point where even The Mighty Thor struggles just leaving a dent in it — before he repairs himself anyways. He's shown more durability than freaking Thanos, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. His energy blasts, at max, can wreck planets no problem. He treats some of the heaviest-hitters of the Marvel Universe as an annoyance, and went toe-to-toe with The Sentry and took no damage in the fight. His Technopath abilities deserve mention, as he could enslave the techno-organic Phalanx race through sheer force of will, and then used that to conquer the Kree Empire. He's so feared that even Doctor Doom (himself a lottery winner) has stated Ultron is the most terrifying thing that ever lived, a more than valid claim.
The Scarlet Witch is pretty much all-powerful at this point, thanks to her initial Power of Probability being redefined by writers into a Reality Warper by apparently haunted by Laplace's demon.
Jean Grey/Phoenix gets this, but she went mad with power. Now Jean didn't actually have god-tier power immediately after she fused with the Phoenix Force, but then she suddenly is more powerful than ever before, and more dangerous: Jean Grey alone can lift upwards of twenty tons with her brain (and, based on her displayed showings, this is a drastic underestimate). With limited Phoenix power, she can use external objects as a sense of touch and recompose matter at a molecular level (as in, turn anything into anything else by using her telekinesis at such a fine-tune level that she can take it apart atom by atom and make different molecules out of those atoms. Imagine performing several quintillion surgeries, so fast that it takes mere seconds.) Unhinged, she can teleport anywhere in the universe at will and devour stars. Then it turns out she has one more level beyond that where she can exist outside of reality proper and has total control over space and time itself. On top of all that, if you kill her she comes back basically whenever she feels like it. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
Jean and Cyclops' daughter, Rachel Summers, is arguably every bit as powerful as her mama, if not more so - for instance, she didn't need the Phoenix to master molecular manipulation, she's mastered Time Travel to the point of being able to travel across millennia, and she's effectively the only person to consistently and successfully control the Phoenix Force, to the point of being called 'the One True Phoenix'. Needless to say, she gets nerfed a lot, but she's still fairly impressive, flattening an entire Avengers squad in one shot during Avengers vs. X-Men.
Wolverine, through the effects of power inflation, has reached this point. In older stories, an injured Wolverine actually required medical treatment when his healing factor could not regenerate fast enough. Modern stories feature him being burned down to a skeleton and having his skin and organs grow back, or regenerating an entire body from a drop of blood. One storyline brought his regenerative abilities back to a more believable level, hand-waving all its previous exaggerated exploits with magic.
Iceman at his full potential is not just An Ice Person, but has full control over moisture itself. This includes absorbing bodies of water to increase his size, teleportation (not quite, but close enough) by traveling through water vapor, physical immortality, since he can reconstitute his body from any source of moisture, and he even killed a villain by drawing the water from her body.
Then there's Nate Grey, the Age of Apocalypse's Laser Guided Tyke Bomb answer to Cable (and thus son of Scott and Jean, brother to Rachel), with all Cable's potential and then some. Even as a barely trained teenager with an inbuilt flaw in his powers, he: crushed AoA!Apocalypse and left him to Magneto's lack of mercy; repeatedly treated Apocalypse's Omnicidal Maniac son (a vicious Person of Mass Destruction) as a passing annoyance even when only his telekinesis was working; accidentally resurrected two people; beat the below-mentioned Exodus to a pulp (the latter was draining his powers - Nate sensed the Apocalypse connection, promptly went berserk, and overloaded him); repeatedly resurrected himself; and beat waves of superheroes. Following some training and the genetic flaw getting fixed, he treated the multiverse as his personal step ladder, reality as his play-thing, death as a passing inconvenience, and time as an optional extra. He later got a boost from the Life Seed. Since the Life Seed is the Good Counterpart (broadly speaking) of the Apocalypse-creating Death Seed, capable of making AOA Wolverine into a Physical God, the results were... spectacular. As in, he casually warped the world, effortlessly flattened multiple teams of X-Men (including a significant number of the characters on this list) while simultaneously keeping Apocalypse as a prisoner and Magneto (among others) on a psychic leash, flattened Legion (a Reality Warper in his own right) in less than five seconds after a calm Breaking Speech, and then held off all of the above minus Legion, while carrying on a calm psychic chat with Jean, and taking everyone present out in one shot, taking them to his own plane of existence.
Cable himself, with most of his power going to hold back the techno-organic virus that's consuming him. When he's been freed from it, he's shown Phoenix-grade power. Needless to say, he doesn't get to stay that way for long.
The previously mentioned Exodus, Bennet du Paris, has Psychic Powers on such a scale that he could take on Apocalypse (ironically, the one who activated those powers in the first place) and entire teams of X-Men, and call himself "Magneto's heir in spirit and power" with perfect justification. He once boasted that his powers - which primarily include telepathy, telekinesis, and teleportation - were so vast that Rogue couldn't steal more than one. He was technically right about that, too. When Wolverine and Rogue asked their resident Blind Seer what he could do, the answer they got was "Whatever he wants". And while his powers fluctuate based on faith in himself, they magnify exponentially based on how much others have faith in him. In at least one alternate future, this turned him into a Cosmic Entity so powerful that he had a Phoenix host perched on his shoulder like Tinkerbell.
Hope Summers, as the 'Mutant Messiah', technically lucked out power-wise - she's like Rogue, but she can copy as many powers as she likes, without draining those she's copying and dealing with their pesky thoughts in her brain, and she might well be an Omega Class telepath and telekinetic on top of that (if Stryfe is to be believed, anyway). Oh, and she's a former host of the Phoenix. Of course, if she's not around another mutant, her powers are largely reduced to being a Badass Normal trained by Cable.
A more recent addition is Darwin, whose power is to grow new abilities based on the situation at hand. His powers were initially supposed to be purely defensive, but apparently the situation then grew out of hand, and writers started adding offensive to overpowering. For instance, when fighting the Hulk, his powers merely teleported him into the next state for his protection... but that same fight saw one of the first offensive uses of his powers, when Darwin sucks the gamma radiation out of the Hulk.
Sage started as just a secretary with photographic memory, but experienced Power Creep, Power Seep until now she's telepathic, super-intelligent, more badass than Wolverine, able to control minds, and even able to enhance other mutants' powers.
Occasional Big BadApocalypse's mutant powers were really defined in 2023 as total control of his atomic structure. As a result of this, he's generally portrayed with immortality, super-strength, laser beams, shape-changing, regeneration (when he doesn't have Nigh-Invulnerability), telekinesis, technopathy, and super-intelligence, and he once demonstrated minor intangibility. Essentially he has every single physical superpower. Most of his higher-end powers though come from taking advantage of Celestial technology that he discovered long ago. His default powers seem to be immortality, super-intelligence and his bizarre skin colour; he also still had superhuman strength, speed, durability, endurance and healing, not to mention he was something like 12 feet tall, but they were nowhere near as nerfed as he is nowadays.
Depending on the Writer, Magneto really lucked out where superpowers are concerned. He went from menacing the X-Men with girders to controlling the entire electromagnetic spectrum, which should make him pretty much unbeatable (after all, he controls one of the four fundamental forces of the universe). And at times he was virtually unbeatable, being ranked as the most powerful being on Earth-616 in 1993. He's now officially classed as an Omega-level mutant, settling him on the high end.
In general, any Omega-level mutant falls to this, with the possible exception of Mr. Immortal. Essentially, an Omega-level mutant has no upper limit to whatever specific thing their powers control. Note that many famously ultra-powerful mutants like Magneto and Apocalypse were not officially classified as Omega-level for a very long time (Magneto now is). Let's not think about Squirrel Girl.
Then of course, there's Mimic, who is basically All Your Powers Combined personified. He can copy up to five other mutants at a time, but only gets half their power. Sounds kind of weak, until you realize that the different powers interact. In his first appearance, he'd mimicked Wolverine, Beast, and Colossus, among others. Yes, his claws were bone, and only half as long as Wolvie's. Yes, he was only half as strong as Beast. But when he turned himself into living metal, those claws became much deadlier, and his animalistic strength got taken up to eleven. This is a guy who can rig the Superpower Lottery.
The "normal" Marvel Universe version of Mimic also gets this to some degree. He has permanently taken on the abilities of the original five X-Men, and can take also on the powers of anyone else he's around. He returned after a long absence by proving to be comatose... until Wolverine stood too close. It hasn't happened yet, but he could easily hit god level if he has their full potential instead of being stuck at the level the powers were when he got them. Unfortunately, unlike Exiles Mimic, he is not entirely stable. note No, really, think of what each X-Man's greatest feat has been, and imagine him or her being able to operate at that level all the time easily. If Mimic's powers are as expandable for them as they proved to be for the original wielders, even Jean's full non-Phoenix potential could move mountains and control matter at a molecular level, as well as giving him influence over every mind within (an ever bigger) range. Scott's eyebeams can amp up to "stagger the Juggernaut or disintegrate a Sentinel" class. The full physical ability of the Beast could make him Spidey-class agile and nigh-Colossus class strong, Iceman's full ability, as an Omega, would be unlimited control of both water and temperature as well as turning to ice rendering him Made of Air (think a colder Hydro-Man), and even Angel's maneuverability at its maximum could make him all of the above... and impossible to hit. Death from above. If this happened when he was on the 'evil' side of the Heel–Face Revolving Door, he could become worse than all the Big Bads combined if the writers didn't have this unfortunate tendency to forget he exists for decades at a time.
At last count, Legion had a thousand powers, with more developing. The thing is, each power is under the control of a separate personality, and they're the only ones who can use it (although there are ways around even that). A sane and functional Legion would be a reality warper of terrifying scale. As it is, he still caused the Age of Apocalypse and the Age of X.
Meggan Puceanu a.k.a. Gloriana won pretty big: she's got standard flying brick powers up to class 50, she's an extremely powerful shapeshifter who can take on the abilities of whatever she changes into (as shown when she turned into a female version of the Silver Surfer) and might be The Ageless because of it, a powerful empath who could sway demons in the Hell Realms (they ended up becoming her Badass Army in her conquest of and escape from Hell) and an elemental who can touch off volcanoes. The only two caveats are, 1) she's powered by magic, making her rather less powerful outside of Britain, 2) until recently, her shapeshifting was at least partially dictated by the perceptions of others, and it was implied that this extended to her emotional state - for example, her husband Brian was worried when she came on to him one time because he thought that she might not be making the choice of her own free will (as it turned out, she was), 3) equally until the late 2000s, she was something of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, making it a little difficult to get her to focus.
Rogue's mutant power is using her touch to absorb memories and abilities — and that includes powers, be they mutant or not. This, for instance, is how she was a Flying Brick in The '90s: she had absorbed the original Ms. Marvel's powers while she was a member of the Brotherhood. Throughout the years, this has brought plenty of trauma to her, putting quite a damper on her relationship with Gambit (at least until Xavier helps bring her powers under control). Though her Power Copying abilities are usually balanced out by Power Incontinence and the psychological trauma that sometimes comes along with absorbing other people's powers, there have been times where she has had complete control over her abilities, and even briefly having the ability to use any power of anyone she had EVER touched. Simultaneously. That list of people includes nearly the entire extended roster of the X-Men and the Avengers just for starters.
Vulcan, emperor of the Shi'ar and the infamous "Third Summers Brother", plays with this. While he was born with a very powerful Energy Absorption ability, and technically was always an Omega-level mutant, originally he was not as crazy strong as he would later become — rather, like other mutant Superpower Lottery winners described above such as Iceman and Jean Grey, his potential initially laid fallow. But then M-Day happened, depowering several million mutants, and the energy backlash work him up while being trapped inside a dead evil mutant island floating in space (it's a long story). The sum total was that Vulcan busted out of that evil mutant island turned space rock with his powers heightened a hundredfold — and a major case of With Great Power Comes Great Insanity going on. After that, it took the entire Shi'ar Imperial Guard (mainly Gladiator, a high end Flying Brick) or a sun-dipped Havok to put him down. Even Black Bolt screaming at full volume only slowed him down. And this is all despite the fact that he's barely trained, incredibly arrogant, and moments of cunning aside, a bit thick. However, when he got in an energy manipulating contest with fellow Omega, Storm, he got a brutal lesson in the difference between raw power and skill.
Betsy Braddock as Psylocke has historically been a powerful telepath, telekinetic and ninja, especially after getting upgraded by the Phoenix Force Jean from an alternate dimension. Then she gains the power of the Amulet of Right, the artifact that powers her twin brother Brian to become Captain Britain, and takes the title. Keep in mind that she still retains her innate mutant powers (whereas her brother wasn't a mutant and thus had no powers beforehand), all while she has the vast powers of Captain Britain. This means she effectively has two different sources of power: her mutant abilities and her magical empowerment. For the former, she's the third most powerful telepath in the world, can create powerful forcefields, psionic weapons, read minds, control minds, and use a variety of special TK-based abilities. For the latter, she can fly at vastly superhuman speeds, benchpress over 500 tons, is practically Nigh-Invulnerable to most forms of normal damage, and can manipulate a nigh-indestructible forcefield for both offense and defense. She's even more overpowered than her brother!
Ororo Munroe aka Storm. Her power of Weather Manipulation has made her one of the most powerful mutants in existence granting her control over water, ice, air, heat and lightning. She has also demonstrated the ability to control natural forces that include cosmic storms, solar wind, ocean currents, and the electromagnetic field. She has separated water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen via electrolysis, allowing her to breathe underwater. While in outer space, she was able to affect and manipulate the interstellar and intergalactic media. Storm can alter her visual perceptions so as to see the universe in terms of energy patterns, detecting the flow of kinetic, thermal and electromagnetic energy behind weather phenomena and can bend this energy to her will. She also has the Required Secondary Powers that grant her immunity to the effects of her abilities. This isn't even getting into her mastery of martial arts and thievery, telepathic resistance and magical potential due to her ancestry.
Young Avengers: William "Billy" Kaplan (Wiccan) takes after his mother, who happens to be the Scarlet Witch. He has both magic and the ability to warp reality at will. Although he's only in his teens, his power is so immense that it's pretty much just his inexperience and human squishiness holding him back from being a Physical God - and he's destined to go beyond that and become the multiversal Cosmic Entity, Demiurge. Thus far, he's managed to access his full power (or close to it) exactly once. He proceeded to use said power to instantly destroy an Eldritch Abomination and then step outside of his own universe to make adjustments at will, and he did it all with about as much effort as most people use to edit a text file. He's also going to form Utopian dimensions from scratch at some point in the future, so not only can he warp reality, he will one day be able to create it.
Due to bombardment by extra-dimensional energies, Monica Rambeau can transform herself into any form of energy within the electromagnetic spectrum. Among the many energy forms she has assumed and is able to control are cosmic rays, gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet radiation, visible light, electricity, infrared radiation, microwaves, radio waves, and neutrinos. In many of these forms she can turn invisible and intangible and in human form can project the energies she transforms into in the form beams for offense. If she encounters a new or unfamiliar form of energy, she can duplicate it if given enough time for analysis, as seen in a Marvel/DC crossover when she duplicated Kyle Rayner's ring energy. Avengers: No Road Home has revealed she is also immortal.
The Blue Marvel, being a Superman Substitute, also fits this trope. In addition to the standard Flying Brick powers, he is a powerful and skilled energy manipulator (thanks in part to his PhD in Theoretical Physics). He can manipulate matter at a molecular level which not only allowed him to heal Monica Rambeau (mentioned above) but boost her powers as well. His physiology also allows him to age slower than normal humans.
James "Jimmy" Marks, aka Hybrid, introduced in Rom: Spaceknight. A Half-Human Hybrid of human and Dire Wraith, he inherited his father's Voluntary Shapeshifting power, but rarely bothers to use it. He prefers to rely on his powerful affinity for Black Magic, Telepathy and Telekinesis, the latter of which is implied to stem from his having inherited an X-Gene from his human mother. He has shown an ability to do virtually anything he can imagine, from controlling people like puppets to manipulating the weather to aging people into dust to driving them absolutely insane to "basic" telekinetic attacks by controlling his environment. Worse, try to fight him and you'll find he's Nigh-Invulnerable, both from inherent Super-Toughness and the ability to telekinetically reinforce his own molecular structure, and if you somehow destroy him, then he can literally will himself back to life, even if this means reconstituting himself from scattered molecules. Given that one of the last people who vaporised him was the above-mentioned Nate Grey, after one hell of a fight, this is no mean feat.
Holders of the Star Brand, either in The New Universe, the Marvel Universe or beyond, are winners of this trope bar none. With the power of the Star Brand, one is virtually omnipotent, limited only to their imagination. However, the stupid thing is also an Artifact of Doom as various attempts to pass the power has lead to some really explosive results.
