If Reed Richards is no longer the go to go for science who is?

[MichaelC]

I hate that lazy writers have over the years made the genius level guys know everything about everything.

It's necessary, for the same reasons you get http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EconomyCast

Basically, the story is ABOUT certain characters. That's why you can have a story about a couple of vice detectives, and yet they will be involved in every aspect of police work from homicide to SWAT hits, very specialized roles they would hand-off in real life. The story is ABOUT them, so realism is fudged for the sake of them being involved.

Happens all the time in comics. Hulk doesn't become irrelevant in story about flying characters with long range powers. Those characters inexplicably fly relatively close to the ground and zap him from 20 feet away.

Captain America, an infantry guy from WWII, can plan land, sea, air, and space assaults.

And the team science guy can do any science he needs to do.

The story is ABOUT the main cast, so realism has to take a back seat. It's just a little more obvious for the science guys, wheras people don't tend to think very hard about why the ranged flyers are coming so near Hulk, or why Cap can plan assaults way out of his bailiwick.

[Master Planner]

He's a pig who beats his wife. So does richards but we don't need to replace one wife beater with another and we certainly don't need to give the wife beater demographic a superhero to look up to.

I know what the reaction to the above is going to be but no matter what you say there's no right way to beat up your spouse

Pym was a genuine wife-beater only in Ultimate Universe.In regular 616,Pym hit Jan only once and that wasn't mentally stable.Hell,even Jan used his problems in order to get married with him.

As for Reed,he only hit Sue when she was under mind-control/alternate personality.You can accuse Reed for being ignorant to his wife sometimes,because he was focused to his scientific projects.Still,in the end it's family before everything.

[scribbleMind]

I'd be shocked if he didn't know all that already, or if he ignored all the things that Pym did to make up for his incident. Like it or not, Pym is one character that actual grows from his mistakes, and doesn't just atone, reset, and make the same mistakes over and over like some other characters. People are going to believe what they want, like the whole Loki/Scientist Supreme thing, and that's fine. I suppose the important thing is that we don't start judging each other for it.

[Silvermoth]

Pym was a genuine wife-beater only in Ultimate Universe.In regular 616,Pym hit Jan only once and that wasn't mentally stable.Hell,even Jan used his problems in order to get married with him.

As for Reed,he only hit Sue when she was under mind-control/alternate personality.You can accuse Reed for being ignorant to his wife sometimes,because he was focused to his scientific projects.Still,in the end it's family before everything.

It doesn't matter how many times he does it.

[Silvermoth]

In what world has Pym's transgressions ever been glorified?

He's an avenger who has been treated as if he has value

[mugiwara]

He's an avenger who has been treated as if he has value

So has been Spider Man (wife beater), Wolverine (murderer), Rogue (mind rapist), Black Widow (murderer), Thor (murderer, probably rapist enabler), Hercules (murderer), Scarlet Witch (terrorist, murderer), Quicksilver (terrorist), Iron Man (weapon maker, life endangering drunk), Spider Woman (boyfriend beater), Captain Marvel (life endangering drunk) and I'm probably forgetting a lot.

Do you think all those people should be cast away, or only Hank Pym?

[Godlike13]

It doesn't matter how many times he does it.

Ur focusing on the wrong thing. The point is not about how many times he did it, but why he did it. He was not in his right mind when he hit Jan. His mind broke.

Plus, quite frankly it doesn't really matter if u like him or not. He's still the best answer. He's qualified, and the most available and easy to use. He works rather well in a Q role for books, and they wouldn't need to worry too much about what else he has going on.

[Captain Haddock]

It doesn't matter how many times he does it.

It really does. Him lashing out once, when in a really bad place and not in total control of himself is a bad thing, that is true. But it is nowhere near the same as him regularly beating up his wife because it makes him feel better about himself. Peter Parker once hit MJ, Reed once hit Sue but they don't called 'wife beater'. Making him a domestic abuser because he hit Jan ONCE is like saying someone is an alcoholic because they got drunk once. It just isn't true.

[robreedwrites]

T'challa is smart, but he is NOT on Reed's level

wait a second when did people start saying adam brashear is on reed's level.....the creator said he was smarter then reed llike 4 years ago, but has shown nothing to prove that

T'challa is NOT on Reed's level when it comes to pure science

he's not......t'challa is not on reed's level in pure intelligence..


reed has so many more feats then t'challa its like comparing einstein to a baby

R-E-L-A-X. It's going to be fine. The question of the OP is if Reed was removed from the table, who would be Earth's go-to science guy. In response to that question, posters (including myself) have presented T'Challa and Adam Brashear as viable options. Others have posited Valeria, Hank Pym, heck, some have said Doctor Doom.

You have not presented a response to the OP's question, but have instead repeatedly tried to dissuade people from their opinion that T'Challa and Blue Marvel would be viable replacements.

[Random4]

R-E-L-A-X. It's going to be fine. The question of the OP is if Reed was removed from the table, who would be Earth's go-to science guy. In response to that question, posters (including myself) have presented T'Challa and Adam Brashear as viable options. Others have posited Valeria, Hank Pym, heck, some have said Doctor Doom.

You have not presented a response to the OP's question, but have instead repeatedly tried to dissuade people from their opinion that T'Challa and Blue Marvel would be viable replacements.

i hope you are not insinuating that I am doing that because of a racial bias..... i don't think anyone can compare on earth to the top 2 intellects which are Reed and Doom


but i guess T'challa is not a bad option in theory



what i don't understand is the Blue Marvel hype......the creator mentioned him being "smarter then reed" like years ago...and has shown NOTHING to prove that he is on Reed's level.... or even Tony, Pym and T'challa level

[Mary Jay]

Ur focusing on the wrong thing. The point is not about how many times he did it, but why he did it. He was not in his right mind when he hit Jan. His mind broke.

Plus, quite frankly it doesn't really matter if u like him or not. He's still the best answer. He's qualified, and the most available and easy to use. He works rather well in a Q role for books, and they wouldn't need to worry too much about what else he has going on.

It really does. Him lashing out once, when in a really bad place and not in total control of himself is a bad thing, that is true. But it is nowhere near the same as him regularly beating up his wife because it makes him feel better about himself. Peter Parker once hit MJ, Reed once hit Sue but they don't called 'wife beater'. Making him a domestic abuser because he hit Jan ONCE is like saying someone is an alcoholic because they got drunk once. It just isn't true.

I've only selected those two posts, but there were several others that echoed what I would have written, and much better than I would have. Thanks, guys

And there's the other side of the medal also: people with mental illnesses are often ostracized and judged based on their actions at the time of their most unstable periods. It's extremely difficult to live with a mental illness, and even more difficult to live with the repercussions of what they have done while not in control, and I for one think that throughout comics history, they have shown Pym as someone who acknowledged profoundly what he had done, and made amends many times over, while still never forgetting it. He showed immense remorse and still never used the excuse of "I was sick at the time, it's not my fault" unlike others have.

So, bottom line, it's okay not to like a character, but that dislike shouldn't be based on incorrect information. But as I already said, I'm not trying to make anyone change their minds here. I have characters that I don't like, and I don't think anything anyone could tell me would make me change my mind

[robreedwrites]

i hope you are not insinuating that I am doing that because of a racial bias..... i don't think anyone can compare on earth to the top 2 intellects which are Reed and Doom


but i guess T'challa is not a bad option in theory



what i don't understand is the Blue Marvel hype......the creator mentioned him being "smarter then reed" like years ago...and has shown NOTHING to prove that he is on Reed's level.... or even Tony, Pym and T'challa level

I wasn't insinuating anything. I was merely questioning why you had repeatedly tried to downplay those two characters without even presenting your own alternative. It would appear that you view Doom and Reed as on a level above everyone else, which would lead me to believe (I may be wrong) that your answer to the OP's question would be Doom, by a wide margin. If so, the number of people answering with Pym should also draw your ire. Because he's not on Reed or Doom's level.

In terms of Blue Marvel, he does not have the publication history to approach any of the other characters in terms of number of feats, but in his few appearances, he's been presented as a scientist who was a project lead in attempting to harness the energy of the anti-matter in the Negative Zone, as well as a manipulator of the energy in the Neutral Zone (which, though I may be misremembering is a plane he discovered). He also has an undersea base of his design that exists at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. To me that puts him at least on Tony, Pym, and T'Challa's level by pure quality of feat, even if he is lacking in quantity.

[Mary Jay]

Don't forget guys... the poll is about "If Richards wasn't around, who would you go to for the science stuff?". It's not necessarily about "Hey, that character is smart too, why isn't he on the list?".

T'Challa is really smart, it's canon. But as for being accessible... that's another thing. And would he be willing to help? As someone already said, he's pretty insular.

Blue Marvel... honestly, I really don't know him that well. Honestly, I know he exists, but I had no idea he was supposed to be genius-level smart. So I wouldn't have the reflex to go to him.

[Iron Maiden]

Civil War?

First off, she joined up with Captain America's underground group. She did go to Namor for assistance and admitted the attraction. But it's not like they hopped into bed together. In any case, CW was full of bad writing of characters by Bendis and Millar. Reed building a Negative Zone prison for people who never even got due process, the Thor clone, etc. The fact that Sue would even leave the children behind is where I began to realize they had no idea who they are writing about.

[Doc Omega]

How is the obvious choice not on the poll?

Dr. Sheldon Cooper (Bazinga)