10 Times Professor X Outsmarted Everyone
5. Defeating The Shadow King - Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 4) #3-6
Having already outsmarted Red Skull from the afterlife, Charles Xavier gets yet another chance to outsmart people from beyond the grave when his spirit is captured by the Shadow King and trapped in the Astral Plane, where the villain intended to have himself and Xavier fight it out for eternity, using the X-Men as their pawns.
Giving Professor X access to his superhero team is never a winning superhero plan, though, as Xavier does what he does best and begins to elaborately control each one of the X-Men in question, eventually managing to outdo the Shadow King and take him down before he even fully realises Charles has begun to fight against him.
The whole thing is perhaps the scariest look into Xavier's mind we've had yet, as at one point he calmly explains to his X-Men that he is with them, projecting false versions of each of them elsewhere to distract the Shadow King, and recruiting more people to his side simultaneously.