Did they ever mention what this Legionnaire’s IQ was? Was he the smartest boy ever to live? Sorry if this seems trivial.
Trivial? Phaw. This is the only time my area of expertise will ever come up on this board, I imagine (no, not the Legion, lots of people here know more about the Legion than me–just Brainy 
)
I don’t remember a number off the top of my head. They gave him the meaningless “12th level brain, 6th level being normal” status, but it’s hard to say what kind of scale that is. I remember postboot, at least, that Vril Dox I supposedly had a 10th level intelligence, higher than any previous Coluan, and that the Computer Tyrants raised it to 12th. And Coluans are supposed to be the brightest humanoid race in the known universe. So since Brainy’s 2 levels above the prior-to-Brainiacs highest known Coluan, if he isn’t the smartest boy he’s pretty close.
Evolvo was said to have a 10th level intelligence postboot, too.
I run a small Brainiac 5 site at http://www.planetcolu.com/brainy/ , the “Library” has a bunch of quotations on Brainy from old resource books. Maybe if you can compare the Mayfair INT or Mind skill to other characters, you could come up with a number…
Actually, I don’t know that 10th level was never seen before, just that it was unusually high. I’d have to reread some of my L.E.G.I.O.N. books to check on that…
But LSH v4 #77 says that 12th level was “previously unheard of” so… yeah.
It might make a difference, depending on if you mean preboot or postboot Brainiac 5, too.
“Smartest boy alive,” probably. Maybe not the smartest ever to live at all, since his ancestors were just as smart. It’s hard to say if Metron of the New Gods is smarter, since in the Fire in the Sky storyline he’s overpowered by Brainiac 1.
I wish I could edit posts for once. I keep posting, then thinking of something extra. Well, it’s 6 AM here, I’m not thinking great. 12th level intelligence isn’t me.
According to L.E.G.I.O.N. annual #1, Vril Dox II (his also-12th-level ancestor) had “A potential I.Q. of well over 300.” So there’s a nice, I.Q. number for you.
I’ll, uh, I’ll quit posting now. Aheh.
Interesting, since I understand a 300 IQ (from a thread in GQ) as being smarter than 10 ^ 40th people. Since it’s the future where Brainiac 5’s from (thus more people around), it’s likely that that’s an accurate estimate.
Oh, and thanks a lot for the replies.
One thing I was thinking, though. If Brainiac 5 is that smart, wouldn’t he kill himself out of pure boredom? Surely he would need one of like mind for him not to go insane. And to hijack my own thread, what would Superman’s IQ be? I know that he’s supposedly super smart, but just how super is his intelligence?
xvxdarkknightxvx:
He’s young; he’s so far found enough things to occupy him.
Since the beginning of the current Legion series, he’s also learned a thing or two about social and emotional relationships, which should keep him from getting suicidally bored even when he’s older.
Also…perhaps he’s too smart to think that non-existence is better than boredom?
That’s the last time I try to reply to a thread before I’ve finished my coffee. Aw, man, look at all those smilies…
Brainiac 5’s also been portrayed on occasions as able to carry on multiple full trains of thought at a time–so rather than 300 points of IQ focusing on one project, he could be thinking about a physics problem, composing an opera, contemplating his horrible love life, and rewriting the United Planets constitution all at the same time.
Still, to be honest, the books rarely if ever portray him as much more than a regular comic book genius. Rather than being on a completely different level of existance and knowledge, he’s more like a couple steps ahead of Invisible Kid, the other Legion scientist. Sometimes they plug Brainy’s head into computers to make the number crunching go faster, but the comics never really address the fact that everyone else he knows would have to seem less than retarded to him. And he’s almost never portrayed as having any genius interest in anything other than science and engineering… not art or music or even playing complicated games.
In LSH v4 #77, they showed his subconcious viewing the other Coluans as apes… but it didn’t go anywhere with that idea, really. It makes his attraction to even less intelligent non-Coluans mystifying… but he’s definitely been sexually attracted to at least a few of these ‘apes’ in the past.
I suppose it’s a little like the way Superman’s always conviniently forgetting half the powers he’s got at his command. It’s easy to say “Brainiac 5 is smarter than anybody ever!” to make it a superpower, but then the character becomes crippled by such an overwhelming idea and the writer has to scale it down for him to become a practical member of the team and an interesting guy to empathize with.
He’s smart, but he’s no Cecil Adams.
:dubious:
Like whacking off to pics of Supergirl.
Or has he overcome that little obsession?
Didn’t Superboy and Bouncing Boy find more pics in the last issue?
And the issue of viewing the other Coluans as apes versus the sexual attraction thing, well… are the sex centres of his brain also 12th level? And what else is he going to be attracted to?
As awful as it sounds, lots of guys like stupid partners, Brainy has no choice but to like stupid partners, cos there’s no other option!
Superman is a sixth level intelligence, ie about the same as a very intelligent human. His mind works very fast, and he has some technical expertise, but he isn’t at the same level of intelligence as the big brains of the DC universe, Hector Hammond, The Thinker, Luthor, or good guys like Ray Palmer or Batman or the scientists at STAR labs. His mind does work amazingly fast, though I’m not certain that it’s a function of his super speed, like the Flash, or something that he can do all of the time.
I’ve always assumed that Brainiac’s level 12 intelligence was the same kind we now measure with IQ tests; ie, it’s book learnin’ type smarts. This doesn’t neccessarily translate to artistic ability, social skills, or emotional intelligence. The guys with the 200 IQ’s are usually the ones in the labs writing code and developing vaccines; it’s the ones who understand and deal with people who run the companies. Which isn’t to imply they aren’t smart; just that it’s a different kind of smart. Think of Data; massive amounts of information, immense calculating power and speed, often barely able to function in society because he’s emotionally inert.
As for being able to interact with humans and so forth, well, there are very smart humans who prefer spending their time with animals.
I’m going waaaaayyyy back here (very pre-crisis) but Superman wasn’t abnormally intelligent, but his mind could do calculations incredibly fast. There was a comic that was an ad for a home computer in which two kids had to radio answers to Superman when he lost this ability. For instance they had to tell him how many calories of heat vision to use to evaporate floodwaters without roasting the street below and things like that.
Ok, it wasn’t exactly cannon, but you get the idea. He needs to be able to make incredibly fast calculations to do some of the stunts he does, but he often admits he needs Batman’s detective abilities to figure out mysteries.
That sounds more like the kind of instinctive intuition you’d have when you’ve had superpowers long enough to know what they can do.
Lex Luthor’s considered extremely smart? I always thought he was more the clever type.
He’s not stopped whacking off to Supergirl, he’s just been whacking off to a lot of other Legionnaires too, apparently. Well, he’s a teenager, so not all that surprising.
Pre-crisis Lex was an evil genius. I can’t speak much for post-crisis, I don’t read a lot of Superman. But the impression I got was very much of him being more like the Kingpin or something.
Silver age Lex was a tech genius, able to build all kinds of machines, armor and such to vex Superman. Post-Crisis Lex is a business genius with a lot of tech savvy, though recently they’re taking him in more of a silver age direction. But I suppose maybe he doesn’t belong on that list if you’re only thinking of technical genius.
Just wondering, but are you all serious about Brainiac 5 wacking off to pictures of the female Legionnaires? Is this in the new Legionnaire series or something? I didn’t even know they had one.
There’s been several Legion of Superheroes and Legionnaires series over the years. There’s several versions too… they ‘rebooted’ during Zero Hour, and the “preboot” Brainiac 5 was a little different from the current rebooted version.
The current Legion series is just called “The Legion,” and follows a set of maxiseries called “Legion Lost” and “Legion Worlds.” And the last issue of The Legion did indeed feature Brainiac 5 being revealed as collecting images of the female Legionnaires. It didn’t show us what he does with them, exactly, at least that was left to the imagination… It was a pretty silly and over the top issue, though–it’s not something usually dwelt upon in his character. In the past, Brainiac has been revealed to have a major interest in females with blonde hair, but that might not be entirely true now since it was related to issues he had with his mother.
He might not just collect pictures of the female Legionnaires, either. The writers have been playing around with the possibility of revealing him as attracted to Invisible Kid, the other Legion scientist and a guy. Brainiac 5 kissed him on the cheek at one point, and in a list of the people Brainiac 5 had pictures of, it cut off at “In–” leaving the completion up to the imagination of the reader. Several years back there was a female Legionnaire named Inferno, though, so it’s still inconclusive.