When two great minds meet up, one would hope for brilliant strategies that might improve life on Earth to come pouring out of the mental pairing. Unfortunately, Rick Sanchez rarely seems to be interested in that. His knowledge of the multiverse has put him in a place where virtually nothing matters.
If one reality dies, there's always another one waiting. Reed Richards, on the other hand, has similar knowledge that he actually tries to put it to good use. That being said, usually gets bogged down in really high-level science. You'd hope these two would be friends but it's more likely that they'd find each other annoying.
11 REED RICHARDS: Malleable Body
This one needs to be dealt with immediately because it's Reed's biggest and most obvious advantage in any fight. When exposed to cosmic radiation with the rest of his crew, Reed Richards gained powers so incredible that he took on the name Mister Fantastic.
His malleable body allows him to perform awe-inspiring feats of elongation and shapeshifting. Richards can make keys and weapons, contain explosions or turn into a near liquid state. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to options for this hero.
10 RICK SANCHEZ: Brilliant
Rick's mind is both his greatest gift and his biggest burden. There seem to be very few ideas or concepts he can't understand and improve upon, no matter how abstract or complicated they appear to average people.
Because of this, Rick is capable of developing intricate plans that play out over hours, weeks or, in some cases, even years. He's not someone you want to make angry because he holds a grudge and does not give up. Rick also has the brain to back that up.
9 REED RICHARDS: Super-Genius Intelligence
Even without his actual superpowers, Reed Richards would have been important to the world. His level of inherent intelligence is staggering, so much so that there has often been speculation that his genius might actually be a mutant power.
Richards can see what's going to happen 20 steps down the line when confronting an issue or an enemy. Simply put, there are few problems Reed Richards can't think his way out of.
8 RICK SANCHEZ: Superb Engineer
In addition to coming up with brilliant ideas, Rick has the skills to put them into action. Some people really seem to underestimate his skills as an engineer, which are key when building the nightmarish inventions he keeps coming up with.
Ideas are important to the process but making them functional in the real world is an entirely different story. Rick built a spaceship out of random garbage he found lying around. That's just impressive.
7 REED RICHARDS: Judo Master
One thing that rarely gets talked about when it comes to Reed Richards is the fact that the man is a Judo Master. He is an expert at a variety of body striking techniques, which he has incorporated seamlessly into his super stretchy fighting style.
It's easy to write him off in a fight as he usually relies on his big brain over fisticuffs but that doesn't change the fact that he can throw down when he needs to.
6 RICK SANCHEZ: Actually A Good Fighter
Much like Reed Richards, it would be easy to assume that Rick Sanchez isn't much of a fighter. That's the kind of assumption that has gotten a lot of asses kicked all over the multiverse. While Rick might not have any formal training in hand-to-hand combat, the man is a very capable a street fighter as you're going to find.
He's got a ton of gadgets and weapons to bring, let alone the fact that he's more than happy to kick someone in the crotch before trying to pop their eyes out with his thumbs. Honestly, the man is outright vicious.
5 REED RICHARDS: Allies
Possibly the biggest thing that Reed has that Rick doesn't is friends. First and foremost, Reed has the backing of the rest of the Fantastic Four but it doesn't stop there. He has friends on the Avengers, the X-Men and a variety of other teams.
That doesn't even include the fact that he could probably convince Doctor Doom to help fight Rick in exchange for the first crack at the technology he left behind. If you think Doom wouldn't put his differences with Richards aside to get his hands on a Meeseeks box, you are sadly mistaken.
4 RICK SANCHEZ: Meeseeks
Unlike Reed Richards, Rick does not have a lot of friends or allies backing him up in a fight. It's a side effect of being an unrelenting jerk for the vast majority of his life. But what he does have are Meeseeks boxes, a never-ending source of disposable beings who will quite literally do anything their creator asks.
Rick might not have the backing of the Fantastic Four or the Avengers but he can overwhelm them with a seemingly endless stream of indestructible blue people.
3 REED RICHARDS: Divinely Focused
While this could be considered a weakness as much as it could be a strength, few people have the focus of Reed Richards. He has been known to conduct experiments that require his undivided attention for days at a time, to the point that it has put his marriage in jeopardy more than once.
But once Reed is focused on something, he doesn't take his attention off of it until he is done. That's very bad for Rick if he's hoping Reed will just walk away.
2 RICK SANCHEZ: Genuinely Doesn't Care About Anything
The thing about Rick is that he genuinely does not care about anything. Well, almost anything. Once he starts fighting Richards, he'll be willing to make any sacrifice to win. That includes his life, the few friends he does have and even his reality.
Again, he knows nothing is unique or special, and that everything is replaceable. It's easy to not care when you know nothing matters. The only things he seems to put any value in are his daughter and grandchildren.
1 Who Would Win? RICK SANCHEZ
Rick Sanchez is winning this fight simply because he has the killer instinct that Reed Richards lacks. He once engineered the annihilation of almost an entire team of superheroes in a drunken stupor just to prove a point.
Rick wouldn't blink twice at wiping out Reed Richards and the rest of the Fantastic Four, and he is more than capable of doing it. Unfortunately for Richards, he's just insufferable enough that Rick would take him out just so he didn't have to share the multiverse with him.