If you take Gladiator's feat of supposedly crossing entire galaxies in the blink of an eye, it's probably the fastest. Because galaxies are very far apart.
So even if you just assume that it's two galaxies, you're talking about an average of 10 million light-years crossed in the blink of an eye, which would be a fourth of a second.
That's 40 million light-years in a second, or over a quadrillion times the speed of light, which puts even the greatest Flash feat to shame.
But Mjolnir has traveled the entire universe and back in 60 seconds and Surfer couldn't even catch it.
Also, when Thor threw Mjolnir around the sun to kill a builder, Glads wasn't even able to tell what it was. Considering his senses and everything else he should have been able to recognize it for what it was... granted, that's a far far reach.
Originally posted by Astner
If you take Gladiator's feat of supposedly crossing entire galaxies in the blink of an eye, it's probably the fastest. Because galaxies are very far apart.So even if you just assume that it's two galaxies, you're talking about an average of 10 million light-years crossed in the blink of an eye, which would be a fourth of a second.
That's 40 million light-years in a second, or over a quadrillion times the speed of light, which puts even the greatest Flash feat to shame.
Then you also have feats like this:
Where Surfer is casually surfing backwards (not that it matters in space, I guess) and Gladiator isn't fast enough to keep up.
And here:
Where Thor is specifically disorientated by travelling FTL.
Gladiator has best speed feat. Surfer has best speed.
And as much as comic writers like to have incredible distances crossed in an impossible time, it's rare that they ever commit to a "multiple times the speed of light" thing. I'd be curious how many times they actually had multiple times the speed of light? Not saying it's the best speed feat as it's completely unquantifiable but Remender actually confirmed it was actually far above light speed along with it being many light years away which is neat. That little attention to detail is missed in a lot of these feats.
Realistically people with these speed feats shouldn't be blitzed except by people like Flash, but Marvel loves a good street leveler and Hulk.
Technically, if I give you [i.e. current reaction time and the ability to somehow see even though light is moving slower than you in a comic book way] the ability to fly at a billion times the speed of light, and I tell you to go to cross the galaxy, you'd be able to do so without hitting anything, easily. I know it sounds pretty weird, but the Universe is absurdly empty.
I think Gladiator's feat is the best out of them all, easily, in terms of distance traveled in such a fast time but -- like you I assume, I don't think in 99% of cases he's portrayed as that fast. As in the Nova case, for example. Or a shitload of others. You can head-canon it as him needing time to reach his top speed but eh.