I’ve got the issue with the LT’s first appearance, and it was well after Ditko had left the title.
In the old Ditko Doctor Strange comics, Strange would invoke the Vishanti the way a Catholic would call on saints. The Vishanti were a trinity of beings composed of the All-Seeing Agamotto, the Omnipotent Oshtur, and the Hoary Hoggoth. (Hoggoth also commanded hoary hosts, which Doc also invoked from time to time.) You can interpret that as the Christian trinity, the Hindu trimurti, New Age woo, or anything you want.
There is a famous comic in which Mephisto tries to get the Silver Surfer to sell his soul. In the early scenes, Mephisto is observing Earth and humanity, and he states that he needs a big harvest of souls “so that final victory shall be mine, on the day of Armageddon.”
In one of the Tomb of Dracula comics, Dracula finds himself fighting against a mysterious person with golden skin and glowing eyes. Dracula mortally wounds the being, who runs into an old abandoned church. Dracula enters the church. His enemy has vanished, but there is an icon of Jesus on a wall, whose eyes are glowing.
Actually, it’s implied he may be in part. Apparently he and some of the other baddest of the bad demon-lords may have been parts of the original primal evil, and may one day remerge to be so again. And there apparently is an actual, literal heaven in both the DC and Marvel universes.
A hilarious note about Green Arrow from DC
[spoiler]When the former Green-Lantern-turned-new-Specter resurrected his dead friend Green Arrow, he found the one thing he didn’t have authority to do was to get Oliver Queen’s spirit back. He also had made Ollie’s body and mind as it had been well in the past - a more idealistic and optimistic hero. This led to a hilarious scene where the soulless but intelligent body visited his own soul in heaven, where questions such as “But when I die, what happens to me?!” where the answer was, “Don’t worry, we already made it to heaven so we’re good on that front!”
Quotes not exact or anything. It was the implication from the setup.[/spoiler]
Heh.
I remember an issue where the X-Men were fighting a vampire. Nightcrawler was able to repel the vampire with a cross because he was a devout Christian - but the cross didn’t work for Colossus or Wolverine because they didn’t believe in it.
And didn’t Kitty Pryde’s Star of David also burn the vampire when he touched it?
Apart from the Crusader, which Bryan Ekers linked to, I don’t know of any character whose powers are granted directly from Yaweh. But there are plenty of references to the Christian (myth / history).
In Ghost Rider #9 (1974), a powerful,Jesus-y looking character referred to as “The Friend” helped Johnny Blaze fend off the Devil, but it was later retconned to be the Devil playing tricks.
In Thor #293 (1980), writer Roy Thomas tied the Norse gods’ Ragnarok cycle to the Christian Nativity, going so far as to show baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the stable in the final panel.
Fantastic Four #212 (1979) showed the Sphinx character recalling stories from the Bible, claiming to be the force that turned Ramses staff into a snake despite seeing “the divine power that was [Moses’].”
The first issue of the 1985 Eternals miniseries provides some background on the Eternals and Deviants, in which it claims the “Great Flood” (showing two panels of Noah and his Ark) was caused by the Celestials destroying the Deviant’s continent of Lemuria.
The Holy Grail featured prominently into a Union Jack miniseries from 1998.
It’s probably not “in-continuity,” but there is a Howard the Duck miniseries from 2002 in which Howard visits God (who suffers from a “tripolar disorder”) at a bar called Job’s Place in which he tells Howard the meaning of life.I think it’s almost custom-tailored to the Dope’s sensibilities.
A recent Ghost Rider mega arc (2008-2010) that had shades of Garth Ennis’ Preacher, suggested the Spirits of Vengeance were created not by the Devil but by God. The story involved the angel Zadkiel who sought to overthrow God and take his place in Heaven. In the story was a psychotic bad guy called the Deacon as well as an order of combat nuns called Sacred Heart Convent for the Sisters of the Holy Sepulcher.
Dark Avengers #13 (2010), draws a vague connection between the Sentry’s evil alter-ego The Void and the plague God sends to Egypt on Passover.
The Thing might qualify as a God powered superhero. Although his powers initially came from cosmic rays, wasn’t he resurrected and re-thingified when the Fantastic Four met God in the form of Jack Kirby?
Just to expand on my earlier answer, Doctor Strange later squared off against Baron Mordo, who’d robbed the Vatican’s archives; said villain promptly grants power to one of his pawns – “I christen you Azrael, after the Hebraic angel of death” – and set out to “reverse the seven days of Genesis, one gate to a day … The second gate counters Genesis’ sixth day. Its demon will destroy humanity – along with every other living thing on Earth.”
Doc saves the day – in large part by repeatedly invoking the seraphim – and in the tie-up-loose-ends adventure that follows, our hero gets the win by once again calling on “the name of the Tetragrammaton! O great unmanifest, hear my plea!”
Yes but only when she wore it (it didn’t work for someone else who wasn’t a Jew, I think Wolverine) - OTOH, for her a cross didn’t work. Both in that arc and in vampire stories from the kind of one-shot publications that eventually became graphic novels, the actual weapon is the believer’s faith, not the bit of metal or wood.
Not Christian, but:
Golem is a humanoid creature that was made in the sixteenth century by Judah Loew Ben Bezalel. It was made from clay and protected the Jewish people from persecutors in Prague. In recent years it was reanimated by Professor Abraham Adamson’s life force as Adamson died, in the pages of Strange Tales, 1974. Golem later became a member of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Howling Commandos Monster Force.
Ben Grimm’s also Jewish.