Mister Terrific vs. Mister Fantastic: Who’s the Smarter Hero?

Superheroes are often defined by their showier abilities. If asked, readers will cite flying, god-like strength, and super speed as qualities inherent to being a great superhero. Rarely will fans volunteer a hero’s superior intelligence as their defining feature, and rarely do comics offer up such characters without something a little flashier to make them feel iconic. Such is the case for Mister Fantastic, the stretchy leader of Marvel’s Fantastic Four, and Mister Terrific, DC’s tech-genius master of all trades.

But while Mister Terrific may be orbited by his futuristic T-spheres and Reed Richards can lick his own elbow, today we’re asking which of these genius-level intellects is larger. In short, when you strip away their teams, their unrelated abilities, and their alternate-universe achievements, does DC or Marvel have the smarter hero?

Comic Book Origins

Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic, was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961. Fantastic Four #1 depicts Reed as a scientific genius who has constructed a spaceship capable of faster-than-light travel. When Reed and his wife, brother-in-law, and best friend are exposed to mysterious cosmic rays on the spaceship’s maiden voyage, they gain superhuman abilities and become the Fantastic Four. Inspired by DC Comics’ Plastic Man, Mr. Fantastic shares the same stretching abilities as his pliant predecessor, but is far more intelligent.

Mr. Terrific was created by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake in 1997 for Spectre #54. Michael Holt adopts the alias after the Spectre talks him out of suicide in the wake of his wife’s death. Possessing no superhuman abilities, Holt utilizes his technological prowess to invent floating spherical devices he calls “T-Spheres”. The T-Spheres and his T-Mask render Mr. Terrific invisible to electronic detection and allow him to fly. After stepping down as chairman of the Justice Society of America, Michael Holt would later found his own superhero group called the Terrifics, a DC pastiche of the Fantastic Four. So, those are the heroes, but who’s smarter?

Major Achievements

Reed Richards has 18 Doctorates from such prestigious institutions as the California Institute of Technology, the University of Vienna, MIT, Harvard University, and Columbia. Richards has studied and mastered nearly every scientific field, winning multiple Nobel Prizes. Accordingly, Reed is considered the smartest man in the Marvel Universe, having traveled to and mapped other galaxies and dimensions. His major accomplishments include creating the Bridge, which allowed him to access other dimensions (Dark Reign: Fantastic Four #1), inventing unstable molecules (Fantastic Four #6), and recreating the Marvel Multiverse after its destruction in 2015’s Secret Wars. He’s also been shown to have created a teleporter than can reach the afterlife, a clone of the Norse God Thor, and an anti-matter injection bomb capable of destroying entire planets.

Michael Holt has a genius-level intellect and has earned 14 PhDs in various fields from multiple highly respected institutions. Holt has an eidetic memory, meaning that he has photographic recall and is incapable of forgetting facts. While not as accomplished as Richards in any one field, Mr. Terrific has a wider range of capabilities, and is a skilled Olympic-level athlete, surgeon, spy, and businessman. He was the White King of the DC spy organization Checkmate (in the DC series of the same name), runs a successful business empire, and is currently investigating interplanetary war crimes in Tom King and Mitch Gerads’ Strange Adventures. Considered the third smartest human of DC’s Earth, Holt is a former leader of the JLA and the man heroes call when they have a problem they can’t solve themselves.

Terrific or Fantastic?

At the level of intelligence under discussion, it’s difficult to parse differences, especially in terms of a science specialist versus someone who excels in so many different ways. Despite this, it’s reasonable to award the title of smartest hero to Reed Richards, and here’s why.

While Mr. Terrific is an athlete, inventor, spy, doctor, and scientist, he tends to top out at being one of the best in the world at whatever he chooses to do. In contrast, Reed Richards is defined by reaching beyond what’s possible. On Earth, in space, and in other dimensions, Richards has developed countless inventions that surpass any other specialist in his fields of interest, from robotic helpers, to miracle drugs, to unheard-of energy sources, to new teleportation tech, and even into the realms of cloning, time travel, and interdimensional warfare. In The Mighty Avengers #30, DC scientist Hank Pym meets Eternity – a manifestation of all that is – and is named the Scientist Supreme. But even in this moment, Eternity clarifies that Richards is the smarter hero:

He is smarter than you. I don’t deny that. Richards is the explorer. For him, science is about pure discovery. More than any of my other aspects, he has the capacity to learn, comprehend, and apply all there is to know.

By saying this, Eternity confirms that Reed is not just the smartest man on Earth, but the single individual in all of existence most able to learn and apply that knowledge. This was borne out by Reed’s discovery of the Council of Reeds – different versions of himself from many different realities who had banded together to solve problems on a multiversal level.

While Mr. Terrific is capable of doing things Mr. Fantastic is not – and has shown himself to be far, far more able to split his attention over different fields (Reed’s scientific pursuits often lead him to neglect his family, let alone become an Olypian and a spymaster), he’s simply never pushed any of his many disciplines as far as Reed pushes his own – which, lest we forget, includes most schools of modern science. To top it off, DC haven’t established Holt as even the smartest man on his planet, let alone in all of eternity. Happily, if Mr. Fantastic and Mr. Terrific were ever to meet, both are smart enough to see the difference in their intellects as the non-issue it is. As either of these geniuses could tell you, they’re playing for the same team – and fantastic and terrific are synonyms.

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