Originally posted by ODG
Minus Hickman, I'd still put them really close. Hickman just had Tony get back into the weapons-building business with a vengeance. He's been a futurist and plot-device engineer before Hickman with S.P.I.N. Tech, power drainers, temporal transposers, time machines, terraformers, armors that can go against Skyfathers and Abstract forces, etc.Frankly, Val's more like Tony. And she seems elevated far more by lip-service than actual achievements. What has she built again? A light saber? Not sure why you hold her in such high regard given your objections with Hickman's treatment of Tony. 👆
True he is smart, and his Phoenix Killer suit is probably the height of that. And the Thorbuster was good though a little bit of a gift from Thor due to power.
Though you contrast that with shit like the Anti Galactus Suit, the controversal map of the universe feat where he guided proper restoration, and shit like black hole closing guns and Celestial killing weapons (using Hickman's F4). Hell even the Quasar construct guiding to depower Galactus. Screwing up date indexes for the TVA. As well as shit like the zeno room where nothing can cross (but sound) being simple builds. And in Fraction's run Reed pretty much had a TARDIS that had iirc pocket dimensions on the inside and it could travel through time and space. Guy went to the big bang.
And other random shit along those lines.
I'm not saying Tony is stupid, but I think the emphasis of him straight up being Reed level and above it in a lot of ways is a little drastic. To me at least it seems to have come out of left field and based primarily on the dyson sphere. Had the dyson sphere not existed Tony wouldn't have done too much this entire run. Though it's not like Reed's done better... I don't even know what Reed's done. Meh
Honestly based on statements from Hickman's run Tony might as well be smarter than Reed. He's a better builder, he's a better multitasker, and he's only fractionally dumber than Reed and worse at single focus. That... doesn't feel right. 😬
She's solved shit Reed couldn't figure out a couple times. The latest being the last issue of F4. She was walking Doom through ways to live and get unlimited power. She also seems to know pretty much how to survive this latest ordeal without any real outside help.
And pretty much every time her and Doom or her and Reed are shown to converse she seems a step ahead.
If Val put her mind to it, she'd come up with some next level shit. Though admittedly this is due to a lot of discussion between characters and not so much on tech. She knows things but doesn't apply it directly.
I'd say top in Marvel go like this:
Galactus
Doom (now)/Maker
Val/Doom/Reed/Thanos
Tony
Pym/Black Panther
Might be some missing but that's the jist of it. Hickman Thanos is not smart at all though.
