When talking about the smartest characters in the Marvel universe, most people leave out Beast even though He has some impressive feats of intelligence.

So Is Hank McCoy's Intelligence underrated?

While he may not be top 5 smartest, he's so underrated!

bigots , just keeping the mutants down .

I think there's a lot of fans who don't think of Beast as being very smart because he seems to have poor judgement in terms of how to apply his intelligence. Even fans who consider him really smart often say that he's smart, but not Reed Richards/Tony Stark/Hank Pym/etc smart, even though all of those characters also have plenty of displays of poor judgement as well.

It sort of seems like the ability to portray a character as especially intelligent comes down to the writer, and how many comic book writers really know what it's like to be a scientific genius? Probably not many, which is probably why we're continually exposed to the so-smart-it-impedes-judgement trope..

@oldnightcrawler: TBH if poor decisions finding the wrong reasons hinder a characters intelligence. then Hank Pym should not be the scientist supreme. He is not the top tier of smart, but he is in the top 8.

But it was explained in Mighty Avengers that Pym's the Scientist Supreme for his intelligence alone, not how he's applied it; that's why he was chosen over Richards or Stark (both of whom have plenty of poor decisions under their belt).

In my mind, what Stark or Pym are to the Avengers, or Richards is to the FF, that's what Beast (and Xavier) is to the X-men.

Measuring any of those characters' intelligence against each other is pointless; they're all the smartest one in their group and they're all as smart/careless as they need to be to tell the story.

@oldnightcrawler: I know that Pym is Smart I never denied this. My point was saying Beast is less smart because of his bad decisions is pointless. because Pmy is smart and he makes the worst decisions

yea it always seems to be like beast is considered one of marvels elite "think tank" typically included when big problems show up. Maybe alot of people dont mention him cause his actual mutant power gives him an unfair edge over people like richards and stark? IMO the most under rated smart guy in the MU is Bruce Banner people care more about his smash then his brains lol. Its also what his solo series a couple of years was about so that might have changed since then but i kind of doubt it (dont read a ton of comics outside x men so lol) Also maybe parker? in the grand scheme of things is left out of the think tank a little cause hes busy being spiderman, avengers and x men can sideline people while they have people like beast and iron man try to figure out problems and other people do the smashing for them. Solo heroes like hulk and spiderman have to do both at once idk lol

As far as I'm concerned, Beast's especially high level of intelligence is meant to be part of his mutation, but I really can't see how that gives him an "unfair" advantage over someone who can literally change the size and shape of his brain or dude that can just upload his mind into nanobots..

Banner's supposed to be smart as hell, but it's just easy to overlook that when he's on a team with Stark or Pym. Banner's got smart and the Hulk, next to guys who kind of only got smart, right? so if you play up his intelligence too much, it sort of leaves the whole group effort thing just making the other smart guys looking bad :/

I think the same sort of applies to PP as well. Stark and Pym have powers and stuff based on how smart they are, but Spidey's got powers and smarts. PP naked in the Savage Land makes out just fine, Stark maybe not so much. He kinda just makes the others look bad if you put them together acknowledging that he's just as clever and resourceful. And a nicer guy.

There's also the thing where he's kind of humble around those guys, like, he looks up to them because he was just a kid when they were the Avengers. Of course, the same should apply for Beast, since he and Spidey were kids at the same time, but I guess he's been an Avenger for so long people forget that.

Y'know who's intelligence almost never gets mentioned though (outside of a Peter David comic)? Quicksilver; that guy should be able to leave them all in the dust.

I feel like if Hank's specialty was more often stated, or if he had to prove it by going toe to toe with another mind in the field of genetics (Mr. Sinister/Dark Beast) then maybe he'd get more respect. I mean Beast has made the Legacy Virus his $%&@# over the years...but it doesn't really fight back.

Given his actions in recent years I'd say his intelligence is overrated.

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