Smartest Characters in the Marvel Universe

[A.J.Rimmer(BSC)]

Again I say the Tinkerer

 

[Artistsean]

I say the smartest human on Earth, not counting Surfer or Thanos, has to be Reed Richards.

Tony is smart and invents many things but seems to also have other focusses. Something about him strikes me as more average than Reed.

Same with Bruce, he is a brilliant scientist and an expert in radiation but he hasn't invented many things like Reed (that i know of).

Pym is brilliant but is like a tortured artist almost. He also doesn't strike me as being as smart as Reed.

Doom knows he isn't as smart as Reed, which is one of the reasons he hates Reed ( I think).

Reed Richards seems like the smartest man alive in Marvel comics.
The other guys mentioned, who rank as the top, to me, are geniouses too. But Reed seems to be unearthly genious. He seems like his intellegence was effected by the cosmic rays or something. Does anyone else get that feeling? Not saying that it happened but he feels that way. He invents impossible devices that look alien, he also experiments in all fields of science and not just one. I don't know, he just seems like he is the smartest.

who would be second, I don't know.

 

[tyciol]

Does anyone remember playing the Overpower games? There, cards later got an 'intellect' statistic. The max stat was 8, and several people had it, but it would at least allow us to rank that group above those who got 7. Examples:

8s:

7s:

For lower: Captain America ranks 6, Rogue and Venom are 2s.

Come to think of it, I think a lot of collectible card sets (I think an X-men set I have somewhere) also gave out stats. I'll check sometime.

This may seem overly simplistic, but you have to imagine that in trying to figure out what stats to give characters, that the people at Fleer consulted the people who made the comics.

The Contemplator. He's spent his entire life studying the nature of the universe and existence, and he's almost as old as the universe itself.

Time contemplating isn't intelligence. Maybe wisdom. Intelligence is raw processing ability. When I feel smarter, I can puzzle stuff out fast. When I'm running dumb for the day, it takes me a long while to puzzle stuff out.

Would rather go on accomplishment rather than time.

forge.. he can build anything hes like the mac guyver of marvel give him a paper clip and he'll build u a teleportation device to another galaxy

The question is whether or not Forge knows what he's doing. Nightcrawler likely doesn't know the physics behind his teleportation, it just works for him. Magneto really doesn't have to understand magnetism either.

 

[pr0xyt0xin]

Gah... theres so many intellectuals in the Marvel universe!

Excluding villains, I'd say these are the top five (order is debatable):
Reed Richards
Henry Pym
Bruce Banner
Tony Stark
Stephen Strange

 

[JulietCapulet]

Reed Richards
Tony Stark
Peter Parker
Bruce Banner
Hank Pym

Marvel is rife with super geniuses, these five are my favorite.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Marvel already ranked them:

1. Reed Richards
* Valeria Richards
2. Dr. Doom
3. Hank Pym
4. Bruce Banner
5. Tony Stark
6. Hank McCoy
7. Amadeus Cho
8. T'Challa

 

[pr0xyt0xin]

Marvel already ranked them:

1. Reed Richards
* Valeria Richards
2. Dr. Doom
3. Hank Pym
4. Bruce Banner
5. Tony Stark
6. Hank McCoy
7. Amadeus Cho
8. T'Challa

source?

 

[hippie_hunter]

source?

The various Marvel comics.

Greg Pak's run on the Hulk books have given the various characters rankings like Reed Richards and Dr. Doom being officially being the two smartest ranked, the way Marvel has always treated them. Hank Pym was given the title of Scientist Supreme in Mighty Avengers #30 by Eternity and was stated that in a lot of ways that he was better than Stark and Richards; Norman Osborn stated that Bruce Banner was the fourth smartest man in Dark Reign: The List - Hulk; Amadeus Cho was introduced as the seventh smartest person in his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15; and T'Challa stated that he was the eight smartest person in Black Panther: The Man Without Fear #516.

Tony Stark and Hank McCoy were never numerically ranked the way the others were, but Pak put them in the top eight and through process of elimination and how Marvel treats the two characters, Stark and McCoy belong in positions #5 and #6 by default.

And then there is also the issue of Valeria Richards, where while most know that she inherited her father's enormous intellect, most don't know that she is almost on par with Reed already. Fantastic Four #558 states that she's almost at the level of her father in terms of intelligence.

 

[pr0xyt0xin]

Thanks! really cool information. I guess that settles it. My guesses were pretty dern close. I guess Strange is just a specialist.

Gah... theres so many intellectuals in the Marvel universe!

Excluding villains, I'd say these are the top five (order is debatable):
Reed Richards
Henry Pym
Bruce Banner
Tony Stark
Stephen Strange

Marvel already ranked them:

1. Reed Richards
* Valeria Richards
2. Dr. Doom
3. Hank Pym
4. Bruce Banner
5. Tony Stark
6. Hank McCoy
7. Amadeus Cho
8. T'Challa

 

[KangConquers]

With the exception of Cho, the real question being asked is "Who are the most intelligent characters among Marvel's top 50 most famous." If you stick MODOK in the top 10, people stop caring.

It's like when people ask "Who are the strongest characters". Most characters like Thor or Hulk have villains who were created specifically with the purpose of being more powerful than them, but when people ask "Who's the strongest?" They don't want Kurse the Dark Elf as an answer.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I do.

Anyway, people like the Surfer and Thanos always bugged me regarding this question. I don't know if I'd class the Surfer smarter by default simply because he knows how more advanced tech works; he grew up around that advanced tech in an advanced alien society. It'd be like saying we're inherently smarter than anyone from the Renaissance because we grew up with electricity. But I could never actually conceive of and build a toaster from scratch, even though I know what a toaster is and (roughly) how it works. Someone like, say, Leonardo Da Vinci, on the other hand, would probably have come up with incredible new technologies if he'd had the benefit of starting at a higher technological level to begin with. For all we know, the Surfer's of average intelligence for Zenn-Lavians and Reed Richards, if he'd been born on Zenn-La, would've made advances the Surfer could never dream of. So it's an uneven playing field in a lot of ways when we incorporate aliens and beings from other cultures into the equation.

 

[Havok83]

Marvel already ranked them:

1. Reed Richards
* Valeria Richards
2. Dr. Doom
3. Hank Pym
4. Bruce Banner
5. Tony Stark
6. Hank McCoy
7. Amadeus Cho
8. T'Challa

I know Valeria is smart but is she really on par with Reed, smarter than all those other individuals?

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Yep. Reed's admitted that she has the potential to be smarter than he is. She just hasn't had the time to learn as much.

 

[KangConquers]

I do.

Anyway, people like the Surfer and Thanos always bugged me regarding this question. I don't know if I'd class the Surfer smarter by default simply because he knows how more advanced tech works; he grew up around that advanced tech in an advanced alien society. It'd be like saying we're inherently smarter than anyone from the Renaissance because we grew up with electricity. But I could never actually conceive of and build a toaster from scratch, even though I know what a toaster is and (roughly) how it works. Someone like, say, Leonardo Da Vinci, on the other hand, would probably have come up with incredible new technologies if he'd had the benefit of starting at a higher technological level to begin with. For all we know, the Surfer's of average intelligence for Zenn-Lavians and Reed Richards, if he'd been born on Zenn-La, would've made advances the Surfer could never dream of. So it's an uneven playing field in a lot of ways when we incorporate aliens and beings from other cultures into the equation.

It's tough to gauge the intelligence of those from more advanced societies. That's why I think it's best to keep this sort of list to Earth born (No Thanos, Silver Surfer), 21st Century (No Kang), non-mutate characters (no Leader or MODOK.)

 

[Havok83]

Yep. Reed's admitted that she has the potential to be smarter than he is. She just hasn't had the time to learn as much.

Potential or is she actually smarter than him at the moment? Bc I mean she is still a kid and has room to grow but Im talking more about her current status. Also is she a mutant or something bc being that intelligent at such a young age, isnt normal even for the most top child geniuses out there

 

[BoredGuy]

I'd imagine she has a higher IQ than Reed, but lacks the knowledge he has

Also, where would young X-man Prodigy rank?
Didn't he have super smarts, but lost his powers and kept all his knowledge, or something like that? I imagine that would make him pretty damn smart, being around so many other super-geniuses

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Pretty sure she's a mutant like Franklin, yes. I don't know exactly how she and Reed stack up. She may very well already be smarter than he is, but he still manages to outsmart her on some things. He saw the morally ambiguous plans she had unfolding and managed to stop her from carrying them out, for one thing. So I don't know. It seems to shift as the story requires.

 

[Havok83]

I'd imagine she has a higher IQ than Reed, but lacks the knowledge he has

Also, where would young X-man Prodigy rank?
Didn't he have super smarts, but lost his powers and kept all his knowledge, or something like that? I imagine that would make him pretty damn smart, being around so many other super-geniuses

Its a shame he is never used bc even though he's lost his powers he has all that knowledge and skills. A super smart human with numerous fighting styles under his belt could make him a pretty effective X-men. I just wish after New X-men, other writers had actually utlized him and emphasized that instead of throwing him in the background

As far as how does he rank, I wouldnt put him up there with the rest of the guys. He has that knowledge bc he mimiced it. Its one thing to regurgitate facts, but to actually think critically and process that info is another thing. I dont think he necesarily understands everything he knows

 

[The Englishman]

Where does Brian Braddock rank, he's a Scientist/Inventor?

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Probably not in the top 10 or even 20. A lot of characters are scientists that just haven't really distinguished themselves in any comparable way to the likes of Reed "I come up with 13 patents before breakfast" Richards. The Black Knight's also an accomplished scientist, yet he's never actually done a demonstrably amazing super-sciencey thing, so he's probably not in any smartest lists either.