SPIDER-MAN

For a few months in 1989–90, Peter Parker was quietly becoming the most powerful hero on Earth and had no idea why. During the Acts of Vengeance crossover his strength kept ballooning out of proportion — in The Amazing Spider-Man #328 (1990) he traded blows with the Hulk and knocked the Jade Giant clean into orbit. The explanation arrived in The Amazing Spider-Man #329 (1990), by David Michelinie and Erik Larsen: the Uni-Power of the Enigma Force had chosen Spider-Man as its next Captain Universe.

The power had a purpose. The Enigma Force had foreseen the Tri-Sentinel — three Sentinels fused into one monster by Loki — marching on the Amity Point nuclear power plant, and it needed a champion in place before the meltdown started. Ironically, it took an enemy to finish the transformation: Sebastian Shaw's scientist Dr. Lubisch fired a device meant to strip Peter's strange new abilities, and instead it unlocked them completely, starfield suit, cosmic senses and all.

Peter spent that borrowed omnipotence like a neighbourhood hero rather than a god. Mid-battle he turned his back on the Tri-Sentinel to reseal a cracked containment tower with his bare hands, then poured every scrap of the Uni-Power into a single blast that disintegrated the robot — and fainted as the power left him and the sirens rolled in. The strongest Spider-Man who ever lived existed for one job, and the job was saving a power plant.