The men of a thousand talents have a thousand accomplishments to their mutual name as well!
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The Golden Age Mister Terrific — Terry Sloane
- Let's start with his origin. After finding life pointless due to easily accomplishing everything he tries, Terry is about to drive his car off a bridge. Seeing a woman about to commit suicide as well, he rescues her and learns that her young brother and his friends had fallen in with a small-time gang of mobsters, leaving her with nothing left to live for. Deciding to have one last wheeze, Terry makes a costume for himself, finds the kids' clubhouse as Mister Terrific and tells them to follow him to the mobsters' hideout, where he single-handedly kicks the the thugs' asses—including grabbing the gun from one's hand and smashing him in the head with it—before confronting the leader, who hucks an easily-dodged knife. After Mr. T knocks the leader down with one punch, one of the kids notes that the leader was supposed to be smart (if not strong), so he grabs the guy and writes a complex addition problem on a nearby fence, challenging him to solve it. The leader not only fails, but makes hilarious math errors while counting out loud, to the kids' jeers. Terry easily solves it, then tells the leader to take a hike, with the kids mocking him as he goes. Terry then leads the kids back to the shack they were using for a hideout and tears it apart with his bare hands in front of them. telling them to come back the next day. When they do, there's a brand-new, huge, clubhouse with all kinds of cool stuff in it standing where the old shack used to be. The kids are turned off of a life of crime permanently, and Wanda Wilson gratefully visits Terry, thanking for saving her life so she could see her brother go back to being the innocent kid she raised. Terry himself notes how quickly life can change, and a superhero is born.
- Let's give one to Wanda Wilson herself who in the very second story startles Terry by telling him she's perfectly aware that he's Mister Terrific, and promises to help him any way she can. She even does a bit of light footwork in Terry's stead, scoping out a boys' home which seems to be in peril.
- After Snitz has a violin player, a champion boxer, and a circus strongman doped in order to keep them from performing at a charity show for aforementioned boys home so he can foreclose on the mortgage, Terry, disguised, performs in the stead of each, and alters the direction of the cannon he's being shot out of as the main event so he lands directly in front of Snitz (changing into costume in mid-air and sticking the landing, of course). Grabbing the corrupt banker, Terry leaps up to the trapeze and forces Snitz to rip up the mortgage in front of the crowd.
- He mentions having read "By His Bootstraps" and really liking it when he first meets the time-traveling Hawkgirl and Mr. Terrific II in the modern JSA series, and later in the story sends the 74th Century conqueror Black Barax packing when he claims that he used the JSA's Time Spectacles to look into the future and see that he was Barax's ancestor, threatening to shoot himself if Barax doesn't cease his attack and go home. After some heroics by his future counterpart briefly delay him, he gets the gun again and starts pulling the trigger—Barax goes home. Also, the JSA doesn't have Time Spectacles.
The Modern Age Mister Terrific — Michael Holt
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