Except, of course, for that whole tricking-General-Zod thing I mentioned. (Not that the films are meant to be canon, of course.)
I’m trying to remember the end of a story with Superman facing off with Batman and saying something along the lines of “Don’t patronize me, Bruce. I’m not an idiot. I’m every bit as smart as you are.” Anybody else remember this?
Dick Grayson. Age Twelve.
How old was he again? Can’t seem to keep that in my head.
I always thought Superman was kinda dim, mainly because of the horribly inefficient way he uses his power. Dude, you have super-speed. You could knock them unconscious without them ever knowing you were even there.
In Red Son, the alternate timeline where Superman lands in the Soviet Union rather than America, it is shown that
Superman is Lex Luthor’s descendant from billion of years in the future sent back in time, and all his descendants are super intelligent. But Brainiac still outsmarts Superman and Lex Luthor outsmarts them both, so there.
(Spoiler box probably unnecessary, but meh)
I’ll give Batman deduction, since that’s his shtick, and I like John Byrne’s rule about a hero always getting to be the best at the thing he specializes in.
Although even then, I’ll note that in the issue where Batman sneaks into the Fortress of Solitude to surprise Superman on his birthday, Superman notes that he’s built a sophisticated crime-solving computer to help Batman. Also, Superman figures out Batman’s trick and then himself tricks Batman into thinking that they’re both going to die.
I disagree that Superman was not clever. He routinely came up with elaborate and highly improbable - yet successful nonetheless - tricks and schemes to maintain his secret identity or when he felt that his friends needed to be taught a lesson.
An example that comes to mind is when Clark Kent was recruited by the FBI and he has to come up with a bunch of ways to mask the fact that he has super powers.
What’s more, he rarely solved his problems by brute force and quite frequently displayed a knack for strategy. I’m thinking here of when he tricked Kil-Lor (the Kryptonian criminal with powers equal to Superman’s) into triggering an atomic reaction that turned the meteor Kil-Lor was standing on into Kryptonite, killing him.
So yeah, I’d say that Superman was actually very clever and crafty, his scientific acumen aside. I’d say that even if his deductive powers were not the equal of Batman’s, it’s only because flight, super speed, and X-Ray vision render Batman’s detective skills obsolete.
I will agree that Superman was not devious. He was, if anything, trusting to a fault. That winds up getting him killed in the imaginary “Death of Superman” 3-part novel.
Of course, when you’re as invulnerable as Superman, you can afford to give people the benefit of the doubt.
What I want to know is how did “X. Age twelve.” not become an internet meme. It just seems perfect for it.
Maybe because some of us spend too much of our brain power convincing ourselves that some of the X we see on the internet is age 18.
I was sure somebody would link to Superdickery in response to this post, but astro found something just as good.
Likely because it was lost next to the meme-orific glory of the goddamn Batman.
It depends on what you mean by “smart.”
Currently he’s written as having an eidetic memory and lightning calculation skills (the latter being an application of super-speed). But he doesn’t have the creativity of a Lex Luthor or Mr. Terrific, or Ray Palmer; he’s said, without any false modesty or uxorial flattery involved, that Lois Lane has better pattern recognition skills than he does.
On the other hand, he has considerably more emotional intelligence thatn Lex or Michael. I left out Batman because there are retarded gerbils with more emotional intelligence than Bruce.
As long as he’s smart enough to throw fruit pies at the villians he’ll do ok.
Of course. After all, you get a big delight in every bite of Hostess® Fruit Pies.
But are the gerbils as grim, as determined?
As prepared?
They should be, they have their own archvillain.
Richard Gere
Most of those just prove how much smarter Batman is, though. Remember the time he made the Joker pull all of those boners?
No. Partly because their superior emotional intelligence has allowed them to get lives, and partly because they’re freaking gerbils.