Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-2059440-20170218191540/@comment-3581997-20170221230018

A god or supreme being can work if used responsibly. Seal them in a can, have them be too un-invested to care what happens one way or the other, have them be the wild-card that can go one way or the other, or just use them as a Greek choir, something that exists mainly for the audience's sake and that the character only get to observe not fight./ The One Over-All in Marvel, AKA Stan Lee, is pretty much there to just narrate to the audience or push the heroes on the arc or deus-ex a super-villain who is getting far too much fuel as the main writer's pet, so forth.

For me this goes too far when a character cartwheels out of control. Doctor Doom used to be a scientist who ruled his own country and had a root understanding of magic cause his mom was a witch that allowed him to either make magi-tech or if he really concentrated cast a spell since he tries to keep up on the study in his spare time. That was all a decent balance, he spun a lot of plates in the air and tries to keep them all up through great effort. But then someone decided, "Hey Dr.Doom is magic, that means I can make him do anything." Now he can swap bodies without so much as a hand-gesture, tear open reality by pointing, or summon gods "because he is just that awesome". It is the Chuck Norris problem, characters who were not originally envisioned as all-mighty but making every last piece of substandard writing cannon means you have less characters than memes. Worse still because they were made to be main pillars of conflict that means you now have fan-argument wet dreams trampling around in mortal skins taking a wrecking ball to every aspect of the actual story.

To keep with Dr.Doom as one of the worst examples of this, When a guy, who only studies magic in his spare time and is stuck ruling a country full time and whose main tie to magic is his mom was a practicing but nothing special witch, can outshine a guy who practiced is fully, has used it for years and has inherited the title of Sorcerer Supreme, -that- is when it goes too far. When it seems the writer has not only forgotten to balance said character but that a world exists beyond them. Also see Superman and Apocalypse

There is a certain point where a specific power/skill set is obviously no longer in use as much as having the writer on your side.