10 Underpowered Characters Who Shouldn't Have Beaten Major Comics Villains

Of all of the possible people in the Marvel universe to take down Galactus, the very last you would expect on that list has to be, without a shadow of a doubt, famous physicist, Galileo Gallilei.

Galileo is an interesting choice because firstly he's an actual real person, and secondly, it marks the beginning of the controversial decision in the 2000 S.H.I.E.L.D series to have a series of famous philosophers as the ancestors of the secretive military organisation. Whether you like this decision or not, it does lead to Galileo building an old-school laser cannon to take out Galactus.

The fight isn't directly shown to us, but given that Earth wasn't totally destroyed, we can only presume that whatever he did worked. While it's extremely weird that this moment gets buried in the rest of the comic's elaborate shenanigans, the iconic panel of the first historic encounter with Galactus is truly worth remembering - if only because Galileo seems so totally underpowered for the fight.