Who is the most powerful Marvel villain?

Thanos’ most famous powers with omnipotence were in the Infinity Gauntlet, the comic that became the backbone of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. During the build-up to the “Thanos Quest” mini-series, Thanos collected the six Infinity Gems that control the universe (sometimes called Soul Gems) and placed them together in the metal gauntlet, allowing him to wield their power simultaneously.

The MCU, of course, turned the Infinity Stones from a plot device into a multi-movie MacGuffin fetch quest, giving each individual stone and its power much more weight. But the ending was the same: Thanos gathered the Six and annihilated half of life, even if he was doing so for the sake of cosmic “balance” rather than trying to co-opt Death with mass sacrifices in its name.

But Victor Von Doom was claiming divinity in the pages of Marvel Comics when Thanos was just a glimmer in Mr. Starlin’s mind’s eye. One of the most famous storylines in Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s original “Fantastic Four” movie is in issues #57-60, when he steals the Power Cosmic from the Silver Surfer and wreaks havoc.

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This was poorly adapted in the 2007 film “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.” (“Let’s all go for a ride!” Death makes no puns!)

In the original 1984 Secret Wars by Jim Shooter, the Marvel Universe’s greatest heroes and villains are brought to Battleworld by a god-like figure called the Beyonder, who desires them to fight for his amusement. Doom eventually steals the Beyonder’s powers and becomes the final villain in the series. This story, right down to God Emperor Doom, is of course the basis for 2015’s “Secret Wars,” even if it’s the last a lot better.

Prior to the Secret Wars remake, Hickman also explored Doom’s realization of divinity in Fantastic Four. In the epilogue to “FF” #16 (drawn by Steve Epting), Doom claims two Infinity Gauntlets from the destructive interdimensional “Council of Reeds” and instead build a “Parliament of Death” composed of their own variants.

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“Fantastic Four” #611 (written by Hickman and Ryan Stegeman) continued this. Drawn into the universe from which the Gauntlet first came, Doom finds a void and fills it with creation, explicitly recalling the Book of Genesis. But Doom’s creations took him down. (“It was then, on the seventh day, that Doom realized that a mistake had been made. He had made a universe in his own image.”) Doom eventually needs the Fantastic Four to save him, and concludes that ruling as a god was “beneath him” after all.