This looks like a job for Superman Mister Terrific. Before James Gunn’s Superman movie gets up, up, and away in theaters on July 11, the DC Studios co-chief is sharing a look at Edi Gathegi’s human dynamo in honor of the character’s anniversary. (Mister Terrific, a.k.a. Michael Holt, was among the first heroes Gunn teased for the rebooted DC Universe back in 2023, when he posted a comic book cover depicting the Man of Steel with The Terrifics: Mister Terrific, Phantom Girl, Plastic Man, and Metamorpho.)
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“Happy Anniversary to Mr. Terrific, who has long been one of my favorite characters,” the director captioned a new behind-the-scenes photo from Superman, which shows Gathegi in costume wearing Mister Terrific’s iconic “Fair Play” jacket and T-shaped face mask. “It’s been a joy bringing him to the big screen for the first time with my pal Edi Gathegi.”
The Michael Holt version of Mister Terrific first appeared in The Spectre #54, originally published on April 30, 1997. The issue, written by Suicide Squad‘s John Ostrander and penciled by Firestorm‘s Tom Mandrake, sees the ghostly Spectre, Jim Corrigan, appear before Michael Holt as he attempts suicide. The Spectre tells Holt of his old friend and fellow member of the Justice Society of America, Terry Sloane, a Golden Age superhero who was murdered by a villain known as the Spirit King.
“Mister Terrific served a purpose and that purpose isn’t filled by Superman or Batman or even the Spectre,” Corrigan told Holt. “He worked at the street level. He reached kids who might otherwise have gone bad. He replaced ‘gangsta’ role models with one that stressed ‘fair play.’” (It was the ’90s.)
As part of DC’s New 52 initiative, 2011’s Mister Terrific run by Eric Wallace and Gianluca Gugliotta depicted Holt as the CEO of Holt Industries and a gold medal-winning Olympian with a net worth of over a billion dollars and more degrees than the faculties of Harvard and Yale combined all before the age of 30. From his T-Sanctuary in the Ninth Dimension, Holt used his scientific and technological genius to fight for a better tomorrow as Mister Terrific.
Gathegi’s Mister Terrific appears in Superman alongside Anthony Carrigan’s Metamorpho, an element-powered metahuman shapeshifter; Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner, a member of the will-powered Green Lantern Corps; and Isabela Merced’s high-flying heroine Hawkgirl, who appear to be sponsored by Stagg Industries.
DC Studios’ Superman — written and directed by Gunn and starring David Corenswet as the Man of Steel, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor — soars into theaters July 11.
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