Bobby Fisher Kinda went a Little Nuts There...

What is superintelligence? We see character in comic books with it all the time, but then we see other characters in the book who seem to be if not just as smart, at least smart enough that the practical results are similar. For example, the Legion of Super-Heroes has Brainiac 5, Querl Dox. His power is superintelligence. I used to talk about this with regard to Karate Kid. His fighting ability is so extreme it's a power. How do I know? Because Batman and Lady Shiva and Richard Dragon are nice little martial artists, but none of them would last a second against a Kryptonian. Karate Kid could. Val could hold a Keyptonian. Val could train other people to fight Daxamites, as seen by Cham throwing a Daxamite around during the Great Darkness Saga. His fighting skills are a power because they are as effective as the powers of other people.

Intelligence presents a different issue. Is Brainiac 5 smarter than Reed Richards? Well, yes, and I got it straight from Jim Shooter's lips at a con, but so what? Reed Richards can still do things like MacGuyver weapons and escape plans. He still builds interdimensional gateways. He still makes strategies. Occasionally, people act like he has a superintelligence power, but the Marvel Universe is just silly with similar types of guys like Dr. Doom, the Mad Thinker and even people who are meant to be smarter like the High Evolutionary. The fact is that in Marvel comics Hank Pym and Tony Stark and Bruce Banner are all supposed to be geniuses, and the difference between them and Reed on a practical build-me-a-laser-suit level is minimal. And let's not even talk about people who are geniuses only when it suits the story like T'Challa and Spidey.

But back over at DC, even with Brainy, you have Lyle Norg and Lex Luthor. As a teenager, Lex Luthor built a time machine and took on the LSH. Is that level of intelligence a power or not?It occurs to me that it might not matter that much on a story level. Superman is strong enough to move the planet out of orbit and shrug off a supernova. Clearly he has superstrength and invulnerability, but usually he's just punching out criminals and letting bullets bounce off his chest. The fact that Brainiac 5 has a twelfth level mind and is smarter than Lyle Norg might not have anymore practical consequence than his being able to prove some esoteric theory about fractal geometry that no one else can understand. I was annoyed in one Levitz era story when they showed Brainy being frustrated by not understanding Gil'dishpan technology, because that's what Brainy is for. He should be able to at least understand anything that was built by a mortal. (I once tried to convince a LSH writer who was also writing New Gods that B5 should worship Metron. That's how he knew about Darkseid after 1,000 years. Same religious pantheon.)

But it's not just comics. Among other characters that de facto have superintelligence are Mr. Spock, the Time Lords, some Stargate characters,Data, and maybe Wesley Crusher. But there are other characters you are just plain geniuses like Will Hunting. Part of the way to get around this might be that some of those people are just really smart people, like Lyle Norg, whereas others are smart because they are not humans and Time Lords and Vulcans are just smarter than human beings the same way that gorillas are stronger than human beings, and that's all there is to it.

On the other other, hand superintelligence is just story telling short hand for "Hey, wouldn't it be neat to have a super scientist character in LSH? We'll call it superintelligence, and we won't think how that is different than what Invisible Kid can do." Because when you get right down to it, it does matter if you can prove that 1+1=2 in order to build a stun ray to take on the Legion of Doom. Maybe you "only" have to be as smart as Peter Parker for most stuff that superheroes actually do every day.