WARNING: The following contains spoilers for X-Men: The Trial of Magneto #1, now on sale from Marvel Comics.
The Marvel Universe has plenty of impressively fast characters, but its fastest characters don't interact anywhere near as much as the members of DC's Flash Family. While some like the Silver Surfer have proven capable of transversing the galaxy in a fraction of the time it would take others to do so, others have showcased their sheer speed through more ground-based moves.
In X-Men: The Trial of Magneto #1 by Leah Williams, Lucas Werneck and Edgar Delgado, Northstar ends up revealing just how fast he is by catching Quicksilver by surprise, more or less confirming that Northstar is the fastest X-Man in Marvel Comics.
The death of the Scarlet Witch has already drawn the attention of Krakoa away from their recent achievements and has risked bringing pure chaos to the mutant island nation. Notably, Xavier has informed the Avengers of her demise (which has been teased to cause the Earth's Mightiest Heroes to come to Krakoa looking for a fight) and Magneto has been confronted about his potential connection to the crime by the unified X-Men, X-Factor and X-Force teams. However, the most furious response yet to her loss was the one Quicksilver went through. While interrupting the battle between the mutant heroes and Magneto, Quicksilver unleashed a torrent of blows on Magneto that, according to Jean Grey, came close to killing the Master of Magnetism.
However, Northstar -- the current leader of X-Factor -- was able to intervene and drag the enraged Quicksilver away from the scene of the beat-down. On top of his other abilities and mutant attributes, Northstar has recently reconfirmed that he's among Marvel's most powerful speedsters.
Although the Marvel Universe generally lacks speedsters on the same caliber as DC's Flash family, there are a handful of characters who are extraordinarily quick on their feet, such as Quicksilver. Quicksilver is typically portrayed as being capable of reaching speeds of Mach 10, or ten times the speed of sound -- moving at such a rate that even someone as prepared as Doctor Doom is left being sick from the experience of running with him. Quicksilver's most impressive feats are genuinely shocking at times, but they don't quite measure up to Northstar's top speeds.
But Northstar is able to catch up to Quicksilver and move him away from Magneto in record time before Quicksilver even really realizes what's happening. This tracks with other recent acknowledgments from the former Alpha Flight star about his full potential. During a conversation with Prodigy's boyfriend Speed in X-Factor #7, by Leah Williams, David Baldeon, Israel Silva and VC's Joe Caramagna, Northstar explains that he's able to move at 189,299 miles per second -- which is faster than the speed of light. If Northstar were to fully unleash his powers, he would kill himself in the effort -- and do almost irrevocable damage to the planet Earth in the process.
By catching Quicksilver before he could further beat Magneto -- and holding him back with relative ease before embracing the heartbroken Avenger in a hug -- Northstar hints that his capabilities are in fact more impressive than Quicksilver's. Considering Quicksilver's place as one of Marvel's top non-mutant speedsters, it's clear that Northstar is both the fastest mutant and the fastest X-Men member in the world. And if nothing else, Northstar's proven that he deserves to be in the conversation of who is Marvel's premiere speedster, especially considering the importance he's increasingly achieved recently on Krakoa.