Mister Terrific

36 years ago - Michael Holt is born.

30 years ago - 6-year-old Michael finishes reading the combined work of Bohr, Einstein, Plank & Feynman.

22 years ago - 14-year-old Michael earns his first PHD.

18 years ago - 18-year-old Michael discovers J'onn J'onzz's identity & begins working with Martian technology.

17 years ago - 19-year-old Michael first meets Paula.

16 years ago - 20-year-old Michael develops the technology used by the newly formed Justice League, consults with Iron Monro on the construction of their satellite, and forms his company Cyberwear Tech.

15 years ago - 21-year-old Michael marries Paula.

14 years ago - 22-year-old Michael begins corresponding with Pieter Cross, a doctor with Starlab, and wins the olympic gold metal for the triathlon.

12 years ago - 24-year-old Michael sells Cyberwear Tech to Waynetech.

11 years ago - 25-year-old Michael gains limited access to Thanagarian tech when Carter & Shiera Hall allow him access to their weapon vault.

10 years ago - 26-year-old Michael begins to contemplate suicide when Paula is killed by a drunk driver.

9 years ago - 27-year-old Michael conceives of the new Justice Society when the Justice League collapses. he first uses his longtime nickname as a superhero identity, becoming Mister Terrific.

8 years ago - 28-year-old Michael deduces the connection between Jim Craddock and Carter & Shiera Hall's Nth Metal Armory. They return his pistols, and are able to sever their connection, allowing him to move on.

6 years ago - 30-year-old Michael steps down as Justice Society chairman, instead focusing on his role as technologist & strategist.

3 years ago - 33-year-old Michael helps design the Watchtower.

2 years ago - 35-year-old Michael and Karen Starr begin their relationship in earnest.

1 year ago - 36-year-old Michael repurposes Mageddon's planetary signals through the floating city of Superbia, along with Buddy Baker & Scott Free, to temporarily empower everyone on the planet to join in the attack on Mageddon.

We've debated this quite a bit but arguably, only two modern reinterpretations of Golden Age heroes have really surpassed their predecessors. Doctor Midnite is one, although just barely... the modern character just seems to execute the concept better. Mister Terrific, however... while the original character is a fine nugget of Golden Age fun, Michael Holt is far and away one of the most impressive pieces of character design in the past several decades. He's a brilliant execution of a classic scientist superhero archetype, using applied science to fight crime like a modern day Doc Savage. This, combined with a strikingly unique design makes him a character we always want more of.

Mister Terrific's Comic History

The original Mister Terrific debuted as a backup story in 1942's Sensation Comics #1, Wonder Woman's first starring series. It's honestly a pretty interesting premise; It starts by introducing Terry Sloane, a kid who is so smart that the navy selects his designs for a new seaplane, and winds up fighting off some thugs who try to steal the plans. He's just really good at everything, and as he grows to adulthood excelling at athletics and education and business, he becomes more and more bored with it all. He actually plans to commit suicide before meeting a woman who's little brother was in a group of kids that were getting in trouble with some unsavory criminal types, so he adopts a superhero identity to show them a better way. He opens the 'fair play club', serving as a sort of boy scouts by way of super-heroics. It's a pretty accessible, likeable, self-contained superhero story, although it's very much a product of its era.

Terry's backup stories continued for the first several years of Sensation Comics, ending somewhere around issue #60. He didn't really make any further appearances until the 60's, after the introduction of the Multiverse, when Earth-2's Justice Society appeared every few years in the pages of Justice League of America. Terry would appear in several of those issues, a retroactive addition to the Society, until issues # 171 & 172 in 1967, whose stories centered around the mystery of his murder.

Terry made a few flashback appearances in some of the All-Star Comic series of the 80's, but in 1997 during his series the Spectre, John Ostrander introduced Michael Holt, another brilliantly gifted man for whom all things came easily... and like Terry, also found himself contemplating suicide, although in his case it was after the tragic death of his wife. The Spectre introduced him to the memory of Terry Sloane and the idea of becoming a hero who works with kids on a street level. Holt chooses to become a new Mister Terrific in that issue, but isn't quite yet the character we all know. He appeared one more time in the final issue of the series, and then didn't make another appearance for a few years.

Michael Holt didn't join the reformed Justice Society right away in the 1999 series by James Robinson and Geoff Johns. He showed up for the first time in issue #5. The character was basically the same, but he clearly had been refining the idea of what it meant to be the new Mister Terrific. He had a new costume that was absolutely brilliant; easily one of the best new costume designs to appear in comics that entire decade. He used his advanced scientific skills to become invisible to technology, and created his information- gathering T-spheres, giving him a surprisingly prescient bit of applied tech. He moved away from focusing on street crime and instead became one of the foremost scientific minds of the superhero community. It wasn't long before he was elected the new chairperson of the Justice Society.

Holt was synonymous with the Society for the next decade, making regular appearances in lots of series but remaining a main character of all Justice Society series as long as they were published. In 2011, when DC underwent it's new 52 continuity reset, Mister Terrific was actually one of it's first founding series. It only lasted for 8 issues, but he transitioned to the new Earth-2 books, to the series the Terrifics, to the Justice League, and continues to appear in prominent roles across the DC landscape.

Our Mister Terrific Story

I hope you weren't holding out for us to include Terry Sloane in our timeline; as much as we like his old Golden Age stories, our main goal here is to get Michael Holt, as he really is one of the best designed and used characters in modern comics. We all have a deep love for characters that focus on applying their scientific and technological genius, and Mister Terrific is one of the all-time best.

He doesn't need to be changed that much. Other than being inspired by Terry Sloane, we didn't really remove anything from his story. Instead, we actually brought him in much sooner, giving him a relationship with the superhero community long before he ever decided to become one of them. He starts out by becoming an early ally of Martian Manhunter, and helping to design the technology of the original Justice League Satellite,

From there, we make what is perhaps the biggest change to his storyline. After the destruction of the satellite and the end of that era of the Justice League, when Michael Holt sees a need for a new group of superheroes, he chooses to step up and build one. A student of history as well as science, he takes his cue from the original wartime Justice Society and builds a new version of the team, adopting his role as Mister Terrific to lead them. Even when he steps down as the Society chairperson, his career as a part of the superheroic community is always based around the team he helped found.

Mister Terrific's Future

As much as we absolutely love Mister Terrific, his current role is so perfect for him that it's actually hard to imagine what larger role he could play, when being one of the leaders of the Justice Society is so clearly where he belongs. The New 52 comics toyed with the idea that he and Power Girl were in the beginnings of a relationship, and we absolutely loved that idea. Given that they are essentially the leaders of the Justice Society which is positioning itself to focus on mentoring legacy characters, he gets to be a part of the training of whole groups of new young heroes.

If anything, in order to really build up what Mister Terrific's role in the world is, you have to do the same thing with the whole Society. With more and more superhero teams in the world, someone is going to have to step up and orchestrate them all, and Holt is clearly the guy for the job. Meanwhile, his own technology-based adventures can take him to places that no one else can go, and that's clearly the recipe for one of the best modern DC heroes.

Allies & Teams