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The Smartest Comic Book Superheroes Of All Time
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Reed Richards was a genius long before he became a hero. During a mission into space, exposure to cosmic rays gave Richards the ability to expand his material body, but still, his expansive mind remains the most fantastic thing about him.
Richards attended college at the young age of 14, earning four degrees by his 18th birthday. As one of the world's premier minds, he was recruited for the Illuminati, a collection of the world's greatest and most powerful heroes. As an Illuminati member, his greatest invention was the Antimatter Injection System, a detonation device the Illuminati could use to destroy incoming Earths during a multi-dimensional incursion. The Illuminati wasn't the only group of intelligent individuals Reed worked with. He also built an inter-dimensional portal known as the Bridge that allowed him to contact the Council of Reeds. This council was a group of Reed Richards that had met up and begun to take over all of reality.
After Secret Wars, Reed used his vast intelligence to help Molecule Man and Franklin Richards recreate the entire universe. As far as achievements go, rebuilding the universe isn't too shabby.
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Tony Stark, adopted son of billionaire industrialist Howard Stark, was a genius at a young age and attended MIT at only 15 years old. After being taken by terrorists, Tony used his mental prowess to develop the first version of the Iron Man armor.
Tony Stark is an incredible mechanical engineer. He's Marvel's answer to Batman in the sense that he's a brilliant tactician and strategist, once taking on Mister Fantastic in five simultaneous games of chess and winning. Alongside mechanical engineering, he's an incredible software engineer, as he has developed multiple incredibly advanced artificial intelligences.
What was possibly Tony Stark's most impressive achievement came after he magically lost all his morals (read Axis for more info on that). He created an app called Extremis 3.0, which could turn anyone into a perfect physical specimen, curing all of their ailments. The "lack of morals" part? He initially gave it out for free, got people hooked, and then charged $99.99 a day for continued usage. Pretty clever!
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The name "Brainiac" may not conjure images of heroism, but his distant relative in the future, Queri Dox, was a longstanding member of the Legion of Superheroes. Dox took on Brainiac's name in an attempt to atone for the original Brainiac's sins, and so far, it's definitely been working.
While most heroes are considered geniuses among humans, Brainiac 5 is considered to be a genius even amongst his race of android geniuses. He is a 12th-level intellect. All of Earth, even in the 31st century, is only a ninth-level intellect, and other members of his race are typically only 10th-level intellects.
As a member of the Legion, Brainiac 5 puts his brains to good use. For starters, he's the inventor of the famed Legion Flight Ring, a small ring that, as its name implies, grants its wearer the ability to fly.
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Bruce Banner has a doctorate in nuclear physics from Caltech and is the world's foremost expert on gamma radiation. Banner worked for the military, where he created the world's first gamma bomb, which eventually turned him into his monstrous alter ego, the incredible Hulk.
Norman Osborn considered Banner to be the fourth smartest person in the world (although he didn't specify who took the other spots on that list). Typically, Banner doesn't get a ton of time to prove his intelligence, as he's constantly trying to hide far enough away from mankind that Hulk can't do any damage. However, in one storyline, Banner finally found time to clean up his act and acquire scientific funding from S.H.I.E.L.D. With the proper space to finally flex his scientific muscles, his inventions shocked even the likes of Tony Stark - the most impressive of which was his Catalytic Converter, a device that could nullify carcinogens in practically anything (effectively curing cancer).
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Bruce Wayne was born into one of the wealthiest families in the world. What should have been a happy life was turned into a tragedy after he was forced to bear witness to the demise of his parents. From there, he dedicated his life to honing his mind and body into becoming the best crimefighter known to man, eventually earning the title of the world's greatest detective.
In the DC Universe, the two smartest men are unanimously considered to be Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne. Bruce has earned this title through his constant inventions, cases that he's solved, and strategies he's planned. One of the best (and most famous) of these fabled strategies was his contingency plan to take out the other Justice League members. In the storyline Tower of Babel, it's revealed that even though Batman is the only member of the JLA without any powers, he could take out any of the other members thanks to extensive amounts of planning and strategy. This isn't something Luthor has been able to do, so it seems fairly clear how those top two spots are filled out.
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Thanks to his father's radiation exposure, Henry McCoy is a rare mutant who has shown signs of his mutation from birth. Henry is both brawn and brains, and he grew up with a super-human intellect to match his animal-like strength, reflexes, and agility. McCoy was one of Xavier's first recruits into the X-Men.
McCoy has six degrees and is considered to be one of the eight smartest people in the world. His achievements in science range across all subjects, including curing the Legacy virus, creating a more advanced version of Cerebro dubbed Cerebra, and building a time travel machine.
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Henry Pym is known across the world for the discovery of the Pym Particle, which can increase or decrease an object or person's size. He used this discovery to become a founding Avenger known as Ant-Man.
Henry Pym is a man known for his failures as much as his successes. A prime example of both is Ultron. Pym's brilliant mind created the most intelligent AI on the planet, dubbed Ultron, which then tried to wipe out humanity (again and again and again). And while that's obviously a pretty big failure, the sheer power, strategy, and inability to be terminated showcased by Ultron all lead to the same conclusion: Henry Pym is a genius inventor.
In Mighty Avengers #30, Hank Pym received his highest accolade yet. The personification of Eternity called Hank Pym to stand in his presence, where he informed Pym that he was the other side of the Doctor Strange coin. Meaning, Henry Pym is the Scientist Supreme of Earth.
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Michael Holt has been a genius his whole life, and after the demise of his wife and child, he decided to put that genius to work, becoming a business mogul by day and Mister Terrific by night. Michael Holt was able to simply decide to be Terrific because he has 14 doctorate degrees, an IQ of 179, and perfect recall. He's also an Olympic gymnast and is a master of six different forms of martial arts. According to DC writer Geoff Johns, after Lex Luthor and Batman, he's the smartest person in the DC Universe. In a cheeky meta-response in the pages of Heroes in Crisis, Mister Terrific said, "When you lap the field in a race, for a while you look like you're behind. So, it seems to people from the outside you're in, let's say, third place. When in fact, you're just biding your time until you lap them again."
For a more concrete look at his genius, look no further than his floating invention, the T-Sphere. This computer possesses an advanced AI system and can float through the air effortlessly around Mister Terrific.
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Valeria Richards is one of the few beings that can rival her father's intellect. Valeria seemed normal at first, but when she was just a few years old, her intelligence took a quantum leap. She initially hid this from her parents, but once they found out, she quickly put her brains to good use. One of her earliest inventions was a trailer for the Fantasticar, modeled after the Tardis, that was 200 times bigger on the inside than it was on the outside.
She may be a little biased, but according to Valeria in Fantastic Four #573, she was already smarter than her dad (even though she was somewhere between the ages of 3 to 5 years old).
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Raymond Palmer was a physics graduate student whose extracurricular experimentation with a white dwarf star fragment led him to invent a device that allowed him to shrink his size. While the initial discovery of his powers required a little bit of luck, Palmer's genius has been constantly on display throughout the years.
While Batman is known for his base of operations inside of a cave (literally just a computer in a cave), Palmer built a base inside of the microverse (dubbed his "nucleus"). In one of his most important missions, Ray managed to save not just his reality, but the entire multiverse from a fatal virus (the cure was developed by a different version of Palmer, but was distributed by the main-reality Palmer, so it all counts to his credit).
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Amadeus Cho was a genius teenager whose entrance into a fake intelligence contest earned him the title of seventh smartest person in the world. Sadly, this contest also put him on the radar of the jealous contest commissioner, which ended with the demise of Cho's parents. While on the run, Cho became involved in the Hulk's life, and his genius proved to be a problem for famed geniuses Reed Richards, Tony Stark, and their registration regime. Cho managed to hack the Baxter building and discovered the Illuminati and their plot that sent Hulk off-Earth. Eventually, Cho was asked to join the Illuminati.
Cho managed himself well amongst the heroes even without powers, but similar to Stark before him, he eventually fashioned a suit that augmented his abilities and allowed for short-term flight. Later, when the Hulk was in distress, Amadeus used his brilliant mind to develop a way to cure Banner of the Hulk, transferring the ability to become the Hulk to himself. While that wasn't the ideal way to deal with the Hulk solution, curing Banner of the Hulk in any meaningful way is something no other mind in the Marvel Universe had been able to do.
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T'Challa is the leader of the most technologically advanced country on Earth. Naturally, he's incredibly intelligent. He was raised as a young boy to one day take over the throne and has studied around the world, including earning a Ph.D. in physics from Oxford. He is considered to be among the top eight smartest people in the Marvel Universe.
When the Illuminati first gathered in the Marvel Universe, Black Panther was the only member intelligent enough to walk away from the group, knowing the damage they would eventually cause. Later, he joined the super-smart supergroup the Ultimates and took part in solving cosmic-level problems, including turning Galactus into a life-bringer instead of a world devourer.
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Ted Kord was a brilliant student who began attending college at only 16 years old. At 19, he was making revolutionary breakthroughs into nanotechnology, developing drones the size of an insect that were impressive enough to garner the respect of Lex Luthor. Ted Kord has a genius-level IQ of 192. While his New 52 origins are a little obscure, in the original telling of the story, he became the Blue Beetle after the scarab's original owner, one of Kord's professors, passed.
Other than his drones, one of Kord's most impressive inventions is his vehicle, the Bug. The Bug is a solar-powered, all-terrain vehicle and aircraft.
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Blue Marvel
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Adam Brashear was an intellectual prodigy at a young age and graduated college with two doctorates. Later in life, he worked for the military as a scientist and was the lead on Project: Perseus. The project's goal was to create an unlimited source of clean energy through a negative reactor that would make a bridge to the Negative Zone. An explosion during the process turned Brashear into Blue Marvel.
Brashear continued to use his powers and intellectual ability as a member of the Mighty Avengers. Reed Richards believes that Brashear is a genius on the level of Doctor Doom. At times, though, Brashear has proven that he might even be smarter than Richards himself. One such time was when he cured Galactus, turning him into a herald of life instead of a devourer of worlds.
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Barbara Gordon is the daughter of police commissioner Jim Gordon. As a young girl, she was inspired by Batman to become the best crimefighter she could be. At a young age, she began to hone her body and mind, just like Bruce Wayne before her.
After a tragic accident involving the Joker forced her into a wheelchair, she became a greater asset to the Bat-Family than ever before. Working under the alias Oracle, she became the go-to woman-in-the-chair for all costumed crimefighters in Gotham. As a genius with perfect memory and computer hacking abilities, she's the perfect person to be in a superhero's ear.
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Riri Williams
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Riri Williams was certified as a genius at the age of 5 and received a full scholarship to MIT at 15. As a teenager, Riri managed to reverse engineer the Iron Man suit to create a suit of armor for herself. This included N.A.T.A.L.I.E., a hyper-intelligent AI creation of her own. For a time, when Tony was in a coma, Riri (again, as a teenager) fully stepped into the role of Iron Man. Although she's a fairly new hero in the Marvel Universe, she has already managed to topple the Latverian dictator in one adventure and helped overthrow the Hydra US takeover in another.
According to one Iron Man writer and Riri's creator, Riri is "smarter than Tony."
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Lunella Lafayette (Moon Girl)
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Lunella Lafayette is an incredibly intelligent human/Inhuman hybrid whose tendency to daydream about science earned her the nickname Moon Girl. She's often paired with Devil Dinosaur, a dinosaur transported to the present day through an accidental usage of a time-travel device Moon Girl created.
Moon Girl is widely considered the smartest person in the Marvel Universe. Amadeus Cho once handed her a test (dubbed the "brain omnicompetence examiner") that was supposedly impossible to complete. To his shock, she handed it back so quickly that he assumed she didn't want to do it - when, in fact, she had already completed it. Amadeus was so thrilled, he proclaimed that she was the smartest person in the world. For reference, Reed Richards tried to solve this same test for over an hour and eventually gave up.
Moon Girl once called Richards "the smartest [she's] ever seen, not counting the million times [she's] looked in the mirror."
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Tomek Ovadya Morah was inspired by his parents' love of sci-fi to explore the world of science and futurism. He developed an invention that allowed him to peer 100 years into the future, fully earning his name. He is considered the world's foremost expert on robotics and created the android known as Red Tornado.
While his original incarnation was a bit villainous, in the New 52, he's a full-on hero. He helped to turn Victor Stone into Cyborg.
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