Something often avoided in traditional superhero comic books is the existence and idea of a
“God.” It’s very murky waters you’re treading there and I honestly don’t blame
most writers for wanting to avoid the subject. Besides, when you’re writing stories about
just that, super people, what’s the point in grasping for possibly nonexistent straws
anyway?
But, I say, screw all that, I bet there IS a God in the Marvel universe and today we’re
gonna find Him today dammit!
Hello and welcome to the Show With Issues, I’m Auram, and let’s start with a question;
what makes God a god? How do we know that any one being is technically “God?” What
I’m getting at here is this; what criteria does a character in the Marvel mythos need
to meet to be considered its God? For this, let’s try not to start a war in the comments
and dive briefly into religion. Most religions attribute omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence,
and omnibenevolence to their God. Traditional “gods” normally have some hand in the
creation of the Earth and/or the universe as well. Of course these traits vary from
religion-to-religion especially when you consider polytheism, but when you’re thinking God,
this is probably what you’re getting at.
So with that being said, where to start on our quest to find said God? First thing that
comes to my mind is the race of aliens known as the Asgardians, who are often considered
and called “gods.” You know them; Thor, Loki, Lady Sif, Odin, the list goes on. The
Asgardians in the Marvel mythos are heavily based on the gods of our world’s Norse Mythology.
In fact, one of the main components of Norse Mythology is that these gods came down to
Earth thousands of years ago and interacted with us lowly humans; in the Marvel universe
this is 100% the truth.
This is actually explored heavily in Jason Aaron’s Thor: God of Thunder which details
the days of a young Thor pre-Mjolnir. He flies down to Viking-town, spins up some lightning,
has his way with some of the locals, and chugs an ale or two. To simplify things, let’s
take the aforementioned Thor as the “pure” case of an Asgardian and compare him to our
godly attributes mentioned earlier. Honestly, he really doesn’t compare here. Sure he’s
extremely powerful, but, as Black Widow so eloquently put it in the Avengers, “These
guys come from legends, they’re basically Gods,” he’s only basically a God. So basically,
Thor and the Asgardians are almost gods, but not exactly.
Jumping away from that, but still in a similar vein, is the Olympians! The Olympians are
a race of beings who lived in a small pocket dimension that existed next to Earth. Now,
the reason these guys are similar to the Asgardians is because they were also worshipped by humans
way back when, because apparently we can’t get enough of our false god-types. Anyway,
the Olympians had access to Earth through a sort of nexus point at the top of Mount
Olympus in Greece. Some Olympians you might know, from the Marvel universe anyway, include
Ares, Hercules, and Aphrodite. If those names sound familiar, it’s because (and I really
hope you caught onto this before me shoving it down your throat) the Olympians are based
on, once again, the real-world equivalent.
So at this point we have Asgardians and Olympians, two races of extraterrestrial beings that
we mere humans simply mistook for gods since our simple minds couldn’t comprehend their
existences at the time. But, in this age of Hulks and Iron Men, we’ve become pretty
wise to the fact that they’re just that, extraterrestrial beings; nothing godly going
on here.
But, what about terrestrial beings whom the Marvel universe has worshipped as gods? One
that immediately comes to mind is En Sabah Nur, the Eternal One, also known as Apocalypse.
Apocalypse, once again based on real-world origin to some extent, was an omega-level
mutant whose powers were unfathomable at the time of his inception. See, Apocalypse is
theorized to be the first mutant in Earth-616 with his name even literally translating to
“The First One.” I don’t think it would be too far off for people to think of him
as some sort of god figure, especially seeing as there was no one else like him around.
It also helps that he had his posse of horsemen to back him up. There’s a boy band joke
here somewhere, but I’m way too lazy to piece it together.
So, is Apocalypse God? Well, if you really think about it, the only thing that Apocalypse
has going for him in the God-department is how powerful he is, and that’s not saying
much. If we are basing God-status on just power, then that blows open the doors for
so many more characters to qualify, and when everyone’s God, does God really exist? I
actually did a video a while back touching on this subject in relation to Doctor Doom,
click that card up in the corner to check it out! Anyway, I would argue that the Asgardians
and Olympians are better cases than our Eternal One in this department seeing as they at least
are otherworldly, another attribute commonly associated with God.
I think it’s time we moved on from Earth and its common residents and dived deeper
into the far reaches of space; it’s time to get cosmic! One of the biggest bads of
the cosmic universe is Thanos, the Mad Titan and sure he’s pretty damn powerful on his
own, but when you add his staple Infinity Gauntlet to the equation then he reaches the
Godlike powers we’re looking for. The Infinity Gauntlet is made up of six Infinity Gems (or
stones if you’re coming from the MCU); Space, Mind, Soul, Reality, Time, and Power. Each
gem either enhances the abilities of or gives the user control over their respective concepts.
For example, the Power Gem grants the user unlimited power. How far these gems go and
how easily they break is really up to the writer and because of this, we can pretty
much write these guys off as a potential source for Godlike power, especially seeing as it’s
just an object granting that power and isn’t inherent.
But this is the cosmic realm, there’s gotta be someone or something out there that’s
more powerful than six mere rocks, right?! Well, not exactly (more on that later), but
we do have our next potential candidate; Galactus, Devourer of Worlds. Galactus has a very confusing
origin, so here’s the gist of it; Galan, a space explorer of an old universe, gains
some kind of cosmic power before the universe’s destruction and wakes up in an incubator in
the new universe that gives him ungodly amounts of power. He eventually starts to become starved,
the only thing to satiate his hunger being full planets. Now known as Galactus, the man
went across the galaxy feeding on uninhabited planets, until his hunger got so strong that
he couldn’t find them in time and fell to “eating” completely busy planets.
Ok, so here’s where things get tricky. Galactus is EXTREMELY powerful, I’m talking 26 entries
for powers on the Marvel wiki powerful! The thing is, we don’t really know the limits
of this guy. Just like the Infinity Gauntlet, he’s used as mostly a plot device, and is
just as powerful as the writer wants him to be. In fact, there was a story told just before
the Ultimate Universe’s end where Galactus, from 616, invaded. I’d be willing to bet
that this story only happened because Marvel didn’t know what to do with Galactus at
the time and wanted to get rid of him somehow. But, of course, he came back to 616 shortly
thereafter, and in Marvel’s new “Prime Universe,” he’s known as the Lifebringer,
because of reasons that relate to his origin and the Ultimates. He’s the opposite of
the Devourer of Worlds now; he gives life to planets, instead of taking it. This is
important because, well, this is kinda the first character on our quest that can just
straight up create sentience out of nothing. I’m almost sure the Infinity Gauntlet has
done that before, but seeing as it’s mostly wielded by Thanos or similar villains, I’m
willing to write that one off.
Now we’re gettin’ into the juicy stuff, the “big goods” if you will. So, sure,
Galactus has taken and given life, and is even technically not from this current universe,
but that doesn’t excuse the fact that he didn’t create that initial Big Bang. He’s
not the start of it all, nor does he comply with all of our “God requirements” mentioned
earlier. But, and prepare for a super clunky segue, do you know what else Galactus is?
The embodiment of one of the three essential forces in the universe, Equity.
And Galactus isn’t alone here, his, arguably more powerful, brothers and sisters are also
“entities” of the Marvel Universe. These are known as Infinity, Eternity, Death, and
Oblivion. Infinity and Eternity represent necessity and the concepts of time and space
respectively, while Death and Oblivion both represent vengeance and the absence of all
things. Think about that for a second, these beings are literally the personifications
of concepts. They don’t just control those things, they are those things. So that’s
it, everyone go home, we just solved the case! Nothing is more powerful than the literal
concepts that make up the universe...! Right?
Well, wrong, there are actual multiple things; the Infinity Gauntlet, with all of the gems
of course, being one of them. I guess if you really think about it if you have a gem that
can control time vs the concept of time, they kinda cancel each other out… or something…
Anyway, the point is this; THERE ARE THINGS IN THE MARVEL MULTIVERSE MORE POWERFUL THAN
THE LITERAL PUZZLE PIECES THAT MAKE IT UP!
So, who is this all-powerful being that rests outside Marvel’s multiverse? None other
than the Living Tribunal! Wait, you don’t know who that is? Right, no one does; let
me explain. The Living Tribunal is a multiversal cosmic entity that exists only to bring balance
to the for- wait that’s not right; the multiverse, bring balance to the multiverse. His resume
includes things like preventing a certain universe from amassing more power than another,
keeping the yin-yang of good and evil intact, and being one of the only beings in existence
that has ZERO alternate counterparts. He doesn’t belong to one specific universe, he’s just
kinda there and he’s always been there. In fact, he complies with pretty much all
of our prerequisites to graduate from God-school; except for the fact that he was murdered.
Yes, the Living Tribunal was killed by a rogue group of cosmic beings known as the Beyonders
who we aren’t going to go into today, because they are super convoluted and we really never
got the full scope of their power anyway.
So, God is dead, or at least our biggest potential candidate so far. But, if we go by the idea
that God can’t die, or that to have life and death you need to have been created at
some point, we need to look further. It’s time to find the Father to our Son, the Arceus
to our Lugia, the return address to our package. Ladies and gentleman, meet the One Above All.
This dude is, in every sense of the word, GOD. He just kinda shows up every now and
then and fixes things. He’s described as being the creator of the omniverse. Not the
universe, not the multiverse, the fucking omniverse. Marvel claims that this dude created
us! Also, side note, he resembles famous Marvel creator Jack Kirby a lot of the time; so,
is Marvel saying that Jack Kirby was God?!
The One Above All is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omniversal; he created the
Living Tribunal who oversees the literal building blocks of each universe among Marvel’s multiverse
in the form of Eternity, Infinity, Galactus, Death, and Oblivion. We’re at the top of
the food chain here, folks. Nothing goes higher than this guy. Sure, you could ask the question,
“but who created the One Above All,” but according to Marvel lore, no one did. He just
was and is.
Besides that, what’s interesting to me though is that you could literally interpret anyone
as God if you twisted the definition of the word a bunch. Sure, we found the traditional
iteration of God in the One Above All, but, like I said earlier, you might consider God
to just be this super powerful being that just happened to have the idea of creating
a universe; or maybe he or she didn’t create the universe at all and just kinda dicked
around with power forever.
But, what do you guys think? Do you agree with me that the One Above All is most definitely
Marvel’s God? Do you think he’s just too powerful to even exist? Let me know in the
comments! And, yes, I know I left out some potential gods in this video, but when you
have over 75 years worth of stories, those candidates add up quick. I tried to present
the most coherent version of the stepladder up to ol’ Jack Kirby, but feel free to talk
about stuff like the Phoenix and the Celestials in the comments as well.
And one last thing before I let you go, along with the premiere of Season 2 I redid an episode
of the Show from Season 1 over on ComicDrake’s channel. It’s the one about whether or not
Deadpool actually breaks the fourth wall and is one of my favorite videos I’ve ever done!
Click that card and go check it out. And of course, be sure to subscribe so you get updated
when I do a new thing! That all being said, thank you so much for watching! Next time
I eat a bunch of cosmic eggs for breakfast, which somehow turns me into Galactus...or
something. The point is Galactus has cosmic eggs in his origin, I don’t know what that
is.