10 Comics Villains Who CHEATED Their Powers

8. Doctor Doom Stealing The Silver Surfer's Powers - Fantastic Four #57

Riddler Batman
Marvel Comics

If there is one constant in Doctor Doom's life, it is doing whatever he has to in order to secure more power for himself, and it always biting him in the ass. And this grand tradition originally started with Fantastic Four #57, when Doom accomplished the unthinkable: stealing the power cosmic from the Silver Surfer.

While the FF are off dealing with their own BS from last issue, Doctor Doom lures Silver Surfer to Latveria. Once he's in the castle, Doom proceeds to distract him by just, well, talking to him. Look, Surfer's lonely okay, cut him some slack.

Anyway, when he's been distracted for long enough, Doom uses a device to steal away all of the Surfer's powers for himself, granting him near godlike power the likes of which he wouldn't know until Secret Wars over a decade later.

Of course, this is Doctor Doom we're talking about, so it doesn't take long for this underhanded scheme to backfire on him HARD, but for a solid second there, Doctor Doom had cheated his way to the top of the food chain.

Contributor
Contributor

John Tibbetts is a novelist in theory, a Whatculture contributor in practice, and a nerd all around who loves talking about movies, TV, anime, and video games more than he loves breathing. Which might be a problem in the long term, but eh, who can think that far ahead?