Warning: contains spoilers for The Avengers #1!In Marvel Comics, Tony Stark aka Iron Man, and T’Challa aka Black Panther, are among the world’s smartest mortals, but who is the bigger genius? While Tony is an inventor without peer, T’Challa has also made huge scientific breakthroughs, all while simultaneously running an entire country. Now, Carol Danvers has an answer for fans wondering who’s actually smarter.
Officially calling out their differences and strengths in the first issue of the relaunched The Avengers comic, by Jed MacKay and C.F. Villa, Captain Marvel recruits Tony and T’Challa to her new team of A-list heroes. Mulling over her first pick, Tony Stark, Carol explains how Tony’s futurist perspective defines him and the way he acts as a hero, as Iron Man obsesses over building a better tomorrow. Meanwhile, when seeking out T’Challa, Carol tells the former King of Wakanda that he’s smart, but “Not the same way that Tony’s smart.” Going on to say, “You’re canny, cannier than any of us.”
Captain Marvel Knows T’Challa & Tony Have Different Specialties
Captain Marvel throws a wrench into the Tony vs. T’Challa debate, as she essentially singles them out as possessing different – if overlapping – types of intelligence. Decades of comics back Carol up, as Tony Stark is the master of seeing what might be, and T’Challa is the master of seeing what is. Tony is the supreme futurist, dreaming up new possibilities and then working to make them real, while T’Challa is the world’s greatest tactician, with unique insight into how a situation can be turned in his heroic favor.
Carol’s Avengers Need Tony AND T’Challa
Of course, each hero’s intellect also comes with unique advantages and drawbacks. T’Challa’s incredible tactical mind can lead him to make callous decisions, and he only initially joined the Avengers to spy on them, with the recent revelation that he had Wakandan spies working on ways to defeat them. However, T’Challa also assesses every angle of a situation before acting, unlike Tony’s “move fast and break things” mentality, which often sees him throwing his weight behind new ideas without worrying about the fallout. Most notably, in Civil War, Tony went to war with his fellow heroes in an effort to reach an endgame that never actually came together.
It can’t be denied these iconic characters will always stand on equal footing as heroes, but Captain Marvel confirms they’re very different kinds of genius. Tony is a reckless inventor who desperately wants to fix the world to make up for past sins, while T’Challa is a calculating tactician who understands that his decisions ripple out across the entire world – which version of genius is better is up to fans, but what’s clear is that for her new Avengers roster, Carol Danvers needs both.
The Avengers #1 is now available from Marvel Comics.
