The 5 Smartest People in the DC Universe

The DC universe is literally jam-packed with smart people left and right. I think you need to be fairly intelligent to fight crime and save the world on almost a daily basis. But that doesn’t mean that some people are more intelligent than the rest. These are the five people that through whatever means and reasons are the smartest of the smart, a League of Intelligent Men. This list will give a brief summary of the character and just how exactly smart they are and what separates them from the rest of the DC universe.

Ted Kord

Theodore Kord graduated from high school at the age of 16, developed drones the size of insects at the age of 19, stopped the world from being taken over by his insane uncle while he was in college, revamped his fathers dying industry soon after and became the tech powered superhero known as the Blue Beetle. He’s a brilliant scientist, a genius engineer and an all around nice guy to be around.

Ray Palmer

While studying at Ivy University in Connecticut, young Raymond Palmer found a piece of a white dwarf start that had fallen to earth. After this discovery his interest in matter suppression grew and he deduced that if he made a focused lens from the dwarf star material and shown an ultraviolet ray through it, he could shrink anything, and it did. He learned how to shrink matter in his first couple of years in college, leading to the construction of PalmerTech and The Atom suit and his ability to shrink at sub atomic levels and study atoms very, very closely.

Michael Holt

At a young age of 6, Michael Holt would read the works of Bohr, Einstein, Planck and Feynman in order to gain a greater understanding of the world of science. Growing from age six he studied space and time. Michael himself admits to having “a natural aptitude for having natural aptitudes.” Before he began his superhero career of being Mr. Terrific he already had 14 Ph.Ds. Soon after he developed T-spheres (allowing one to be completely invisible to all technology), he was a self-made multi-millionaire, owned his own company and was a gold medal Olympian. As a superhero he plays a vital role in solving the worlds problems and is the chairman of the Justice Society of America.

Bruce Wayne

“Sometimes I think of Bruce as a man in a costume. Then, with some gadget from his utility belt, he reminds me that he has an extraordinary inventive mind. And how lucky am I to call on him.”

Superman

As a young boy Bruce would tear through old literature ranging from Dickens to Tolstoy, he was always searching for something new to learn. After Bruce Wayne saw his parents gunned down in front of him, he swore an oath to protect his city that was tearing itself apart. At age 14 he would attend seminars and courses at Cambridge, the Sorbonne, and universities across Europe. He traveled the world for nearly a decade in order to reach physical and intellectual perfection training in everything including but not limited to: Chemistry, Forensics, Escape Artistry, Martial Arts, and Disguise. He trained with Kirigi the Japanese ninja to learn stealth, Nepalese monks to learn healing, man hunting from the Frenchman Henri Ducard, hand to hand with World Class Boxer David Cain, and even trained in archery under Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow. He was soon to join the FBI at age 20, but deduced that he would not get to fight crime in Gotham the way it needed to be done. Bruce may not know as much about astrophysics as Michael Holt, or shrinking technology like Ray Palmer, but he has made it a priority to become proficient enough at literally everything in case it was ever needed in his crime fighting.

Lex Luthor

Alexander Luthor was born in the poverty stricken neighborhood called Suicide Slums in Metropolis. His parents were abusive and living the slums instilled aspirations to become better, somewhat. He dedicated his life to bettering himself and as a teenager orchestrated the death of his parents in order for him to gain a large life insurance from their deaths. With this money he created LexCorp. He would build this company from the ground up until it owned every media corporation in Metropolis, and was creating technology for the betterment of man. By the time he was a young man he was sitting atop a throne he had built himself. If anyone got in his way, he had blackmail on them. He kept the gangs of Metropolis active by selling them weapons and then striking the gangs down as a philanthropist, making himself appear as a hero. Everything he has was because of himself and nobody else. This is perhaps why he hates Superman so much. For as long as Lex has lived everything that has happened to him was through his own hard work, his own smarts, and here comes Superman, everything given to him from birth. Because of this, Lex developed Kyrptonite technology in order to keep Superman at bay. When Gotham was destroyed by an earthquake and abandoned by the government it was Lex Luthor who poured his funds into fixing the broken city. All in all, it shows the darker side of being the smartest man in the world, the one where he uses his smarts to gain advantage for himself. It’s a shame that the smartest man in the world is a very crooked and bad man, but in the more recent comics he is portrayed as more of an anti-hero, even teaming up with the Justice League at times to save the world and his own empire. Too bad the only thing he can’t seem to invent is some form of working hair growth serum.

Who’s your favorite DC smarty pants character? Let us know in the comments below!