Super strength, super hearing, super vision…but isn’t he also super intelligent? Are there any stories about this aspect and/or how smart he is compared to other DC characters?
Silver Age/Golden Age Superman has superintelligence as a power.
I’m thinking that being able to complex equations in your head but not being able to figure out Lex Luthor’s “lead box filled with Kryptonite” type traps makes him at best an idiot-savant.
Nowadays, he’s still smart - frex, he built a cell specifically to hold the Cyborg Superman, using an exotic material he’d discovered on another mission, a few issues back, meaning he had to figure out the material’s qualities and how to properly work it - but not ‘super-intelligent’. He’s well behind Bruce Wayne, Lex Luthor or Michael Holt, all of whom are baseline humans (albeit pretty much as smart as humans can get).
Silver Age was super-intelligent. Superboy Prime being ‘silver age’ still was superintelligent. Creating an amazing piece of tech to escape the Speed Force.
Is it possible he’s not actually super-smart, but can simulate it by thinking at super speed? I imagine an intelligent person would seem like a genius if they could think much faster than normal.
One of the things I liked about silver age Superman as a hero was that not only he was smart, but his opponents were, too. Very little “I’m going to punch you out, Superman.” Most of the villains knew better than to challenge him directly (without kryptonite), but would try to outsmart him.
Exceptional intelligence may have been attibuted to him, but it sure wasn’t in evidence.
He would destroy any IQ test or Final Jeopardy question you could think up.
Too bad he’s such a goody-two shoes and busy that he’s won’t cure disease or set up an ideal form of government.
Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom already did stuff like that.
Remember silver age supes has near total recall and has access to Kryptonian tech.
Yep, superintelligence, at least in the Silver Age. He “invented” an element (Supermanium), learned how to perform heart surgery (on Lois) in under 10 minutes, etc. On TV he was able to use his amazing mental powers to divide himself into two Superman in one episode, and to control his molecular structure so he could walk through walls in another. He still reads specially designed books for him: they look like ordinary books but the pages are filled with "micro-data " or “nano-data” that contain entire libraries of information, which he reads using microscopic vision. I think Batman makes them for him.
In Lois & Clark his super willpower made him immune to super hypnotism. Thinking faster probably doesn’t explain that (although it might make the effect wear off faster).
That cuts both ways, though: he will, as if the plot required it, get in over his head during a challenging situation designed by someone brainy and evil; and then, when the chips are down and our hero needs to think his way out, he manages it.
He was smart enough to foil Luthor’s mad scientist schemes, but not quite smart enough to figure out how to build a prison Luthor couldn’t escape from.
On the other hand, he lived among a population of humans who never noticed he looked exactly like Clark Kent, except without glasses and with a spitcurl on his forehead.
Seanbaby on the subject…sorta. Ok, not really, but it is funny anyway.
As far as I know, that doesn’t work in the comics. His vulnerabilities are magic and things that affect his mind. Either could be relevant with that style of hypnotism. Superman not being in control of himself is a common trope to create a very difficult to stop bad guy.
I know that George Costanza once riffed on this, but would Superman be super funny, too? He’d be like Dennis Miller in his prime, always making smart pop culture and political references. He’d never have a word just on the tip of his tongue. He’d never lie in bed in the middle of the night and, only then, finally think up the perfect comeback to that zinger directed at him. I bet he’d be good at impressions, too.
To be fair, it’d be a lot easier to learn heart surgery if you grew up with x-ray vision.
What author was it who pointed out that it would have been difficult for him to learn that objects have surfaces?
Silver Age Superman got absurdly powerful, and gained any power needed for the plot, under a couple of editors (I called it the “Julie ‘N’ Mort Super Sideshow Spectacular!”) who basically said “Nothing’s too outlandish, make up a power, then forget it next month. Who needs continuity, these are funny books for kids.”
They’d also commission a cover and say "Ok, how 'bout a Lion-Headed Superman, and an Ancient Superman, and a Super-Brainy Superman, um, From The Future, and they’re all from Krypton… oh, that blew up, well, there’s got to be a way around that… and it’s not a supervillian making these guys, it’s Jimmy Olsen, with… a 1950’s style space alien ray gun, but he’s not in a space suit, no he still has his green suit and bow tie. Think I could make stuff like that up?
They’d send the cover to the printer, then they’d make Cary Bates* write an entire story around that.
*or another writer (one who wouldn’t rebel and say “Look, I can buy a Lion-Headed Superman, but a young professional wearing a bright green sportcoat and pants in the late '50s? That’s too much, I quit!”)
I dunno, but it seems to me that with a broad array of heightened senses, it should never occur to Superman to rely on basic eyesight alone to recognize people or things. His mental image of anyone he’s ever met should be a hodgepodge of their personal scent, the rhythm of their heartbeats, the pattern of their blood vessels, etc. He should be able to walk into a room and instantly identify everyone there, whether they’re in his line of sight or not. It certainly shouldn’t be any challenge to tell Bruce Wayne is Batman, for example. Possibly having this degree of insight of how flimsy a “secret identity” actually is allows him to change himself in subtle ways when he becomes Clark Kent, making the disguise far more effective than it would seem.
During times when he loses his powers, he should display a degree of confusion comparable to face-blindness. Having to rely on just visible light to recognize people; that’s barely 1% of the information he would normally and automatically gather. Being reduced to just that would put him in a virtual fog.