Batman is seen by a lot of comic book readers – especially those who are fans of his in particular – as a character who can beat absolutely anyone. That notion applies in particular when it comes to scenarios in which the Dark Knight gets time to prepare.
Seriously, in the eyes of some fans, Batman could defeat God himself if given the time to prepare for it – but that really isn’t close to being the case.
There are a number of characters in comics who could easily out-prep Gotham’s hero – and that’s without taking into account their own baseline power levels. Essentially, there are a countless characters who are just outright more intelligent than him and can prepare more potent plans than him – and this article will list five of them (of varying power levels) from Marvel Comics alone who could do so.
Reed Richards
Such is the level of the intelligence of Reed Richards AKA Mister Fantastic, his preparatory skills are considerably more important to the Fantastic Four – the team he leads – (and indeed the universe) than the physical powers of his team-mates the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and the Thing.
His own superpower – the ability to stretch his body and shrug off pretty much all blunt force attacks with ease – is often the source of jokes, and that in itself is far more useful than people seem to realise, but it is undoubtedly his mind that is his most powerful tool. In fact, such is Reed’s intelligence that Galactus considers him a peer and often asks him for help.
Some of his greatest feats of prep and intelligence include using his tech to find the Ultimate Nullifier (which was lost in an unknown location in the vast cosmos) in just a few hours, manipulating the date index of the Time Variance Authority within mere seconds (the Time Variance Authority is something that operates on an omniversal scale and can repair entire omniversal timelines across the entire omniverse) and turning Galactus into a human by siphoning his vast cosmic energies using a device he had made himself.
Most impressively, the being known as the Alien Entity (an omnipotent cosmic creature who believed he could find the very meaning of life) used information stored in Reed’s mind to recreate the entire Marvel universe (including every timeline) and its history – simply put, that places his mind on an entirely different plane to Batman’s.
