In the Marvel universe, human geniuses are abundant: Tony Stark, Reed Richards, Forge, the mutant kid that was good at math but basically a Red Shirt, etc. etc. Genius villains also tend to be on the human side, e.g. the Red Skull, Baron Zemo, the Tinkerer, etc. Humans hit by radiation or gamma rays tend to get smarter as well (the Leader, Modok, etc.)
However, I realized (this morning actually, while I was meditating on the throne,) that DC geniuses tend to be aliens. Other than Batman and Lex Luthor, the smartest people tend to come from outer space: Brainiac 1-5, Superman, Martian Manhunter, the Inhumans, etc. etc. etc.
I almost said that, having observed that in real life most people aren’t geniuses and in fact they’re pretty damn rare DC might be more realistic in that sense… then I remembered we were talking about comic books.
Really, it’s probably just a matter of whose the the big editor at the company. Marvel also has many more heros without a secret identity (starting, if I recall correctly, with the Fantastic Four). DC has many more “golden age” and “silver age” versions of the same character. It’s just stylistic/editorial choice.
Your knowledge of the DCU is lacking is the only answer that I can think of.
Major geniuses in the DCU (not all major characters in their own right, but if not they’re in the background of a major character): Lex Luthor, John Henry Irons (Steel), Mr Teriffic (both), Rex Mason (Hourman), Ted Knight (Starman), Wes Dodds (Sandman), Will Magnus, Ted Kord, Niles Caulder, the Joker, the Scarecrow, Dr Rodor, Dr Erdel (the scientist who built the device that brought J’onn J’onnz (who is NOT a major brain in the DCU) to Earth), Rond Vidar (since you opened the 30th/31st centuries), Silas Stone (father of Vic Stone, and the one who turned him into a cyborg), Rip Hunter… These mostly off the top of my head, and not including well-respected scientists and engineers who didn’t create or advance something that’s restricted super-hero science.
To ‘alien geniuses’… The Coluans, the Psions, the Kryptonians, the Dominators, and the Oans…almost all species, rather than characters (the Brainiacs, Jor-El, Zor-El…that’s about it.)
The Inhumans are a Marvel group, so I don’t know what you’re thinking there.
I’m no DC expert, but I think there’s more human geniuses than imagined.
The Atom (Both Ray Palmer and Ryan Choi) are certainly genius scientists and engineers.
Mr. Terrific has a bajillion Ph.Ds and invented an AI and cloaking device.
Toyman
Oracle
Calculator
And Superman as a top 5 in DC intelligence? He’s certainly no dummy, but I don’t think he comes even close to Bruce Wayne, let alone Brainiac or The Martian Manhunter.
…and on preview, I see that Tengu said all this and more.
(Sorry for the double post…wanted to edit, but the board slowed to a crawl. And the post expanded a lot more than expected.)
… Or Prankster. Or Trickster (James Jesse, not the new twerp). Or Pied Piper. The Brain. The Thinker. The Mad Hatter. Mento. Kirk Langstrom (Man-Bat). Trident (one of them, anyway).
I don’t know if he’d be top 5, but pre-Crisis anyway he had super-intelligence as a power. This also trickled down and explained why super animals like Krypto were so much smarter than earth animals and could basically do anything a human could except talk.
Inhumans are Marvel (Black Bolt, Crystal, Medusa, etc), were you maybe thinking of the New Gods (Orion, Darkseid, etc)?
The genius scientists on Oolong Island were, for the most part, humans. T.O. Morrow, Will Magnus, Sivana, etc.
Niles Caulder is pretty smart. Hank Henshaw (Cyborg Superman) as well. Barbara Gordon and the Calculator are both up there. The woman who built the Purple Ray, Paula von Somethingorother. Is Doc Savage DCU?
Anarky (Lonnie Machin) is genius enough to have begun his masked career at age twelve, and by his early 20s pulled off a scheme that involved tricking Darkseid.
Interesting question. I don’t think the Doc is ‘in continuity’ with the DCU but they appear to have his comic publishing rights. There was a three way Batman/Doc Savage/Spirit crossover special last year. It ws set in 1930’s.
The DCU is ripe with human geniuses, the only difference with Marvel is that DC’s characters aren’t as well known among the general populace.
Not so! It’s set in the present, though with a vague and inconsistent, sometimes anachronistic, sometimes not, aesthetic*. It’s clearer in the First Wave mini and Doc Savage and Spirit ongoings than in the special, but the First Wave universe has got mostly modern technology, plus some minor sci-fi elements. There are cell phones (as well as push-button cordless phones), CDs, colour television (including holographic projections in the studio!), fighter jets (the Blackhawks take one into Central City to menace the Spirit at one point in First Wave), personal computers with flatpanel displays, etc.
Every aesthetic element is all over the place - men in suits to an abnormal, by modern standards, extent, and women in '30s style dresses mingle with women in jeans and sports jerseys, and kids in hoodies. (And then there’s Monk…) Car designs seem to be mostly from the 40s and 80s. What interior design we’ve seen has been fairly generic, and whether it’s old looking or not-so-old looking seems to depend on the book - Spirit tends toward anachronism, Doc Savage toward the modern, First Wave blends them.
[Edit - but to answer the question that prompted this - no, he’s not DCU, although he fits within the DC Multiverse…somewhere.]
Hmm, I must confess that I haven’t read the First Wave mini nor any of the Spirit ongoing, though I do own the original oneshot. That’s the only one I’ve read and I may have deduced it’s setting inaccurately. There’s probably a setting ‘timestamp’ in the book that I completely ignored.
I do get the sense that there is an overt recognition or promotions of mental genius as some kind of specific meta-human “superpower” in the Marvel Universe to the point that there is even a Scientist Supreme now to go along with the Sorcerer Supreme, whereas in the DC Universe it’s simply more of a means to an end for the ambitions or actions of the character.
Lex Luthor even makes a point of this in several recent stories over the past few years about how how his genius is much more “human” and authentic, and he is a much better avatar and champion for the striving human race vs Superman, who uses his unattainable (for humans) God like “alien” powers to fix everything vs encouraging self development and self reliance. HIs argument is almost compelling in context.
There’s a few, though it’s not necessarily ‘now’, just ‘relatively recent’ - the bar where Gordon and his buddies are drinking has a colour TV (from the design, looks like 70s or 80s vintage), the Gotham Gazette newspaper that Bruce is reading is priced at 75(!) cents (the Toronto Star, a fairly typical broadsheet was 3 cents in 1938), Batman tries to steal a compact cassette tape (not invented until 1958) from Savage, Savage has what appears to be a cell phone (a largish flip-phone), when Rennie calls him on the roof…then there’s the talk about the Blackhawks in the First Wave previews, which clearly puts it decades after WWII. (Although, even that’s problematic - it mentions Hendrickson’s in his 60s, meaning he’d have been born in the 40s, now - he should be in his 80s.)
It’s not shown to be clearly the PRESENT until the Justice, inc backup in Doc Savage, which has a character’s cell phone as a plot point, and shows it as a (generic) smartphone.
I think Professor Ivo deserves mention as well: he’d come up with the formula for an immortality serum, but couldn’t afford the ingredients – and so he slapped together a robot servant who could get the supplies for him, effectively reverse-engineering Green Lantern’s power ring and putting it on the hand of a superstrong android that could match the Flash’s speed and duplicate Aquaman’s marine telepathy. For him, that was the easy part.
Anyhow, the serum worked, and Ivo promptly settled down to (a) building any number of super-powered androids who’ve defeated any number of superheroes before he started (b) collaborating with T. O. Morrow on projects like Tomorrow Woman and the Red Volcano.
