Superheroes That Have Defeated Thor

The Mighty Thor is unquestionably the strongest warrior in all of Asgard. Blessed with command over storms and the mystical uru hammer Mjolnir, he's felled countless frost giants, mythological foes, and supervillians, both on his own and alongside the Avengers. But that doesn't mean he's never lost a fight.

Sure, the bad guys might have a hard time defeating him, but when Thor was matched up with other superheroes, he took plenty of losses. So whether it was exactly the gamma-powered bruiser that you might expect, a cyborg from the depths of space who beat him so bad that he took his powers, or even a girl with the superhuman abilities of a squirrel, these are the superheroes who've defeated the Son of Odin one way or another.

You may already be familiar with the first fight between Thor and Beta Ray Bill, which famously ends with Bill hefting Mjolnir and getting the power of the Thunder God for himself. What you might not recall is that they actually had a second fight in the next issue that was just as brutal as the first.

With Bill actually proving his worthiness—and with Thor always in need of another lesson in humility—Odin decreed that the two warriors would face off in the fiery realm of Skartheim for a no-holds-barred battle to the death that pit Thor's gods-given power against Bill's sci-fi cybernetics. The thing is, Bill started his life as a resident of the Burning Galaxy, which made him far more suited than Thor for a fight that involved exploding volcanoes and rivers of lava. In the end, Bill won a narrow but decisive victory over his Asgardian foe. Rather than allow him to die, though, Bill decided that Thor, the finest opponent he'd ever faced, was far too brave to die in Skartheim, and carried him back to Asgard.

He did not, however, become the new Thor. Instead, Odin rewarded him with similar powers and a new costume, along with a new enchanted hammer called Stormbreaker. As for Thor, he accepted his defeat with the humility that allowed him to finally ditch his human secret identity, and he and Bill have been allies and "oath-brothers" ever since.

It probably doesn't come as a surprise that Thor and the Hulk have thrown down several times over the years, and usually, it's a fight that ends in a standstill. In Incredible Hulk #300, for instance, a mindless, savage Hulk lays waste to an entire team of Avengers until Thor steps up—and even then, they wind up throwing punches (and hammers, and cars) for a few pages until the Hulk uproots a giant adamantium statue of himself and starts swinging it like a baseball bat. Even that titanic tussle ends with the Hulk being whisked off to another dimension by Dr. Strange's magic, leaving the true outcome of the fight in doubt.

But in Hulk: Let the Battle Begin, a 2010 one-shot that tied into the "World War Hulks" storyline, the two characters face off once again, and the Hulk smashes his way to a definitive victory. See, while the Hulk can't lift Mjolnir, he can grab onto Thor's hand while he's holding it, and from there, the god of Thunder basically found himself in the middle of a classic schoolyard bully game of "why're you hittin' yourself?"

It's worth noting that Bruce Banner isn't the only one who employed this tactic against Thor, either. When "Thunderbolt" Ross became the Red Hulk and took a tour of the Marvel Universe to punch out everyone from the Silver Surfer to Uatu the Watcher, Thor was high on his list of targets. The Red Hulk grabbed Thor, jumped high enough to get to space, and with Mjolnir momentarily weightless, knocked him out with his own hammer.

As the strongest representatives of their respective pantheons, Thor and Hercules have had a rivalry that stretches back to the early days of the Marvel Universe. In fact, Hercules was Thor's opponent in the first issue of Thor—which was actually Thor #126, because comics.

Either way, it was an inauspicious start to a superheroic career. With Odin once again off on a tear about teaching his favorite son a lesson, Thor was cursed to grow weaker and weaker over the course of a fight that saw the two gods tearing their way through a construction site and hitting each other with bulldozers. While he never quit, Thor wound up weak enough that Hercules knocked him out with a solid right hook, leaving him facedown in the dirt in front of a crowd of bloodthirsty spectators.

They would, of course, have a couple of rematches over the years, but the most interesting came when Hercules was impersonating Thor in order to stop an invasion from Asgard's dark elves. When Thor found out, he started impersonating Hercules, leading to an all-out brawl where "Thorcules" took on "Hercuthor." If it sounds confusing, it is, but the punchline is that after a brutally slapstick brawl, "Thor" loudly proclaimed that he had been truly defeated once and for all by the mighty, incredible, and dashingly handsome "Hercules." But really, if any fight deserves an asterisk in the record books, it's that one.

Originally created by Will Murray and Steve Ditko as a one-off weirdo in 1992, Squirrel Girl defeated Doctor Doom in her first appearance, and wound up being defined as Marvel's most unbeatable hero. That's all well and good when she's on the side of justice, but when an exact duplicate who was just as unbeatable decided that squirrels should probably be ruling the Earth instead of humans, she took out every hero in the Marvel universe—including Lady Thor.

After zapping an entire team of Avengers with a massive jolt of electricity, the evil Squirrel Girl dropped them into the Negative Zone and went on about her plan to take out everyone else. Sure, it might seem unusual that electricity could take out the Goddess of Thunder, but as she helpfully explained on the next page, Thor's lightning is direct current, while she used alternating current to overwhelm her. Also, it's comics, and if you can accept gamma rays giving someone the ability to bench press Manhattan, you can probably accept this.

It's worth noting that the evil Squirrel Girl's plan involved taking equipment from each hero she defeated to use on the next one, and that the book even includes a handy flowchart of which equipment trumps which hero, if you ever want to play the world's most complicated game of rock-paper-scissors. One weapon she didn't get, though: Mjolnir. Turns out plotting worldwide squirrel domination makes you just a little unworthy of the power of Thor.

Yeah, we were surprised, too.

In one of comics' greatest "wait, really?" moments, perpetual third-stringer and part-time Avenger Simon Williams, better known as Wonder Man, holds an undisputed victory over the God of Thunder. And he did it in his first appearance.

It happened in 1964, when Stan Lee and Don Heck introduced Wonder Man as a pawn of the Masters of Evil. Over the course of the issue, he wound up trouncing all of the original Avengers, including Thor, who he separated from his hammer long enough to turn him back into Don Blake and keep him out of the fight. Having established himself as a heavy hitter, Wonder Man then immediately died, and wouldn't return for over a hundred issues. Not bad for a guy primarily known as the Beast's drinking buddy.

Angela's route to the Marvel universe is a strange one indeed. She was created in a 1993 issue of Spawn by Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane, but a legal dispute over who actually owned the character that included a 2002 lawsuit finally came to an end in 2013, when Gaiman received full ownership of the character... and then promptly imported her into the Marvel Universe.

While her original character concept was an angelic bounty hunter sent to hunt down demonic forces like Spawn—Angel-a, get it?—the Marvel version of the character was revealed to be the long-lost child of Odin and Freya, who was kidnapped from the Nine Realms by the angels of an exiled tenth realm: Heaven. After being finally restored to the mainstream Marvel Universe and briefly joining up with the Guardians of the Galaxy (because once you have a talking raccoon and a tree on your team, a Norse angel who used to fight Spawn doesn't seem that weird), she finally got to face off against her more famous brother in the pages of Original Sin.

In their first encounter, Thor gets severely wrecked. Not only does Angela prove she's fast enough to dodge Mjolnir and strong enough to beat him into unconsciousness, she's seconds away from slitting his throat with the edge of her axe when she's commanded to stop by Heaven's new chief strategist: Loki. In the rematch, Thor manages to get the win, and writes off this utter defeat as a result of just being tired that day. Sure, buddy. Sure.

Of all the superheroes who've managed to knock out Thor, none are more famous than Superman, who took on the Odinson in the pages of Kurt Busiek's JLA/Avengers.

Thor had previously encountered one of DC's heavy hitters in the pages of the 1994 DC vs. Marvel crossover, where he got a victory over Captain Marvel (a.k.a. Shazam) by redirecting his magic lightning bolt. This, however, was the main event, the centerpiece of a throwdown that included the entire rosters of the Justice League and the Avengers. While other heroes like Green Lantern and Iron Man battled around them, Thor and Superman went at it until the Man of Steel caught Mjolnir barehanded and sent Thor flying with a punch that could've leveled a mountain—but the fight left him so battered that, after seeing their biggest gun taken out of the fight, Iron Man, She-Hulk, Wonder Man, the Vision, and Hercules were able to pummel Superman so badly that Aquaman had to come to the rescue on a giant sea monster.

It worked out well, though. Once they'd made it through the "fight" portion of the usual "fight, then team up" formula, Superman earned Thor's respect, to the point where he was trusted with Mjolnir at the climax of the story. So if we've learned anything from Superman and Beta Ray Bill, it's that if you really want to get your hands on Thor's hammer, you just have to hit him 'til he likes you.

Whether Conan the Barbarian actually qualifies as a superhero is up for debate, but assuming that we're going with a definition along the lines of "a relatively good person who stars in a comic book and fights evil wizards," he counts. Besides, this one is too awesome to pass up.

It happened—or didn't happen, depending on how strict you want to be with continuity—in Alan Zelenetz and Ron Wilson's What If #39, which asked what would happen if Thor met Conan in the distant past of the Hyborean Age. As you might expect, the answer was "they'd beat the hell out of each other." The thing is, with Thor cut off from Asgard and "bereft of full measure of godly strength," it's a much closer fight than any mere mortal like Conan could've expected from a tussle with the God of Thunder.

Encountering him on a mountaintop, Conan mistakes the fair-haired Asgardian for an enemy, kicking off a brawl that finally ends when everyone's favorite Cimmerian realizes that his opponent is a whole lot stronger than your average barbarian. From there, they end up adventuring together, and Thor even meets Crom, who casts him off a mountain rather than return his divinity. In the end, Thor is finally killed by enemies, and Conan winds up bearing Mjolnir into an age undreamt of.

The Champion is another one of those characters who might not technically qualify as a superhero. As an Elder of the Universe, he's beyond petty concerns like "good" and "evil," and exists only to experience the thrill of battle—which is exactly what led him to being one of Thor's strangest opponents.

After challenging the heroes of a hundred distant worlds, the Champion of the Universe made his way to Earth in Marvel Two-In-One Annual #7, recruiting Earth's strongest heroes for a series of boxing matches. The roster would eventually include Colossus, Sasquatch, Namor, Wonder Man (that guy again?), and, of course, the Incredible Hulk, and the Thing would wind up being the star of the story. The first one to actually step into the ring against the Champion, however, was none other than the Mighty Thor.

There's just one problem: the fights were meant to be boxing matches, but Thor refused to give up his hammer, and was even swinging it around while wearing boxing gloves. When he found himself unable to land a solid punch, he tried to use Mjolnir, only to have the referee boot him out for bringing a magic hammer to a fistfight. With that, his brief opening contest against the Champion became the first and only time the God of Thunder lost a fight by an official disqualification.

Ah, now here's the trick: we didn't say which Thor we were talking about, now did we? With Norse mythology being in the public domain for the past 1,000 years or so, anyone can make a comic about the God of Thunder—just as long as it's not Marvel's specific version. The result is that there have been plenty of Thors in comics who have gone up against various superheroes and been found wanting.

One of them, though, bears special mention. In Adventure Comics #75, the Sandman found himself dealing with what appeared to be a resurrected Viking god who emerged from the distant past into the modern world of 1942 and promptly started robbing banks. While he originally appeared indestructible, and was definitely strong enough to put the Sandman's sidekick, Sandy the Golden Boy, into the hospital, the Sandman eventually rallied the police and they put a stop to this particular Viking crime wave. With that done, it's eventually revealed that the wild-haired Norseman wasn't the real Thor at all, and was instead a somewhat creative monster named "Fairy Tale" Fenton, who came up with an invisible bulletproof suit and decided that cosplay crimes were the best way to put it to good use.

So what makes this version of Thor worth noting when other assorted knockoffs aren't? The creators. This story was the product of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, whose names you might recognize as the creators of Captain America. Twenty years after this was published, Kirby would team up with a pair of writers named Stan Lee and Larry Lieber to introduce a new twist on an old Viking in the pages of Journey Into Mystery, and the result would be the version of Thor that appears in every other entry on this list. And now you know... the rest of the story.