I actually prefer this interpretation of the characters myself. I like that Brainiac 5 treats everyone except Dream Girl the way he does. He is the smartest man in the room (except when Batman is around of course) and he would have little patience for fools.

Heck, noone who posts on this site has any patience for fools and we're not near as smart as Brainiac-5 is supposed to be. Maybe I'm alone on this though. Who else feels that the Legion would be better off if they would stop arguing all the time and do what he tells them to? Hasn't it been his plans that have ultimately defeated the big bads in these arcs. Wasn't that the way it was in the old days too, except he was a bit nicer because, for some reason he felt guilty about what evil robot Brainiac had done in the past? This Brainiac has no guilt complex and feels no need to be nice or give in when he knows he's right.

As for Lightning Lord being a bit more grey than evil in this reboot, I've always felt that's the way the character should be portrayed. They are doing a similar take on the cartoon with him being selfish and short-sighted but not necessarily evil.

Amen!

[To Jason]

First of all, Brainiac 5 is way smarter than Batman. I don't care if Batman travelled the world and studied at the feet of Richard Rorty and Richard Feynman and other really smart guys named Richard. He still ain't a Coluan. Don't get me wrong -- Batman's smart, and he certainly knows a lot more about 20th Century Terran Crimefighting tecniques than anyone, including Brainiac 5. But general smartness? No way.

The "everyone should just be Brainy's meat puppet" idea is a common one (c.f. every Justice League story in the past decade in which the Martian Manhunter links everyone's minds and Batman tells them all what to do). It makes for extremely lame storytelling, and I suspect that the whole "Brainy as jerk" thing is done as an excuse for the characters not to want to listen to Brainy.

The reality is that 1) smart people can have people skills, too, and 2) being really smart -- even Brainiac 5 smart -- shouldn't mean that when the Time Trapper shows up, you can off-handedly come up with a fool-proof plan, impatiently explain to Element Lad that he needs to cover Cosmic Boy in a fine layer of iron filings while Lightning Lad zaps him, and then go back to your oh-so-important experiment knowing that everything will work out properly.

Let's see a Brainiac 5 who is a team player and who realizes that the work the Legion does is important. Let's see a Brainiac 5 who is smart, not simply a deus ex machina with an attitude problem.

As for nuanced and conflicted villains, I'm all in favor of that. But at the end of the day, the villain shouldn't be more heroic than the hero.

I talked about this some when it came up in Christopher Bird's "I Want to Write the Legion" series.

Sure, smart people can get impatient with stupid people. But lots of smart people (especially scientists) get really enthusiastic about their work, and get really enthusiastic about explaining it, because we want you to be excited about it, too.

And surely Brainy doesn't seem that intelligent if everything he does pisses everyone off.

But perhaps most importantly, being short-tempered and impatient with stupid people isn't fun to read.

Let's see a Brainiac 5 who is a team player and who realizes that the work the Legion does is important. Let's see a Brainiac 5 who is smart, not simply a deus ex machina with an attitude problem.

You know, like this guy called Paul Levitz used to write him.

(not sarcasm)

I don't so much have a problem with Brainy not having good social skills, like in the Giffen/Bierbaum run, I just don't like him as a total jerk. This has been done before with Tom Peyer: I didn't like it then & I don't like it now. SIGH. I mean, when Robot Brainy in the LSH cartoon is more likeable then the comic version (& I really have to give the cartoon credit for making me like Robot Brainy), there's something wrong here.

I agree in principle--Brainy should be more heroic than Mekt--but I disagree that we've seen anything different here (I presume we're talking about S&LSH #32, right?).

For one thing, Brainy's legitimately busy with other stuff. For another, a lot of what he's accused of is just that: stuff that Mekt accuses him of because Mekt is paranoid, or stuff that Star Boy accuses him of because he's frustrated. For another, okay, maneuvering control of the Legion out from under Supergirl isn't particularly admirable, but it doesn't make him worse than Mekt...

...who, based on this issue, seems to have murdered the entire original Validus cult on Winath and is perfectly ready to do the same thing to Tenzil Kem.

Brainy can be obnoxious. Every version of Brainiac 5 (original, reboot, threeboot, animated) has had to struggle (in different ways) with his role on the team, with accepting that the Legionnaires aren't just his staff. But this Brainy hasn't yet had that moment like reboot-Brainy had when the Legion was trapped in the timestream and Invisible Kid raked him over the coals. Doesn't mean he's not a superhero.

If I may make the observation: If Brainiac 5 is so smart (and he should be) then regardless of whether or not he suffers fools gladly, he should realise that occasionally he will have to suffers fools, period. Therefore he should have a good working relationship with his teammates. Not necessarily buddy-buddy or 'Hey Brainy we're going to shoot some pool, you want in?'. Rather, having a reserve of good will built up, and definitely avoiding having everyone ticked off at him because they think he's a arsehole. This would mean that when an emergency crops up he can suggest a response and the others will go along with it with a minimum of (probably oversimplified) explanation. Being in the situation where the others dislike him so much that they may well do the opposite of what he suggests out of pure antagonism is counterproductive. And if Brainy himself doesn't have much in the way of social skills, and he can recognise that within himself, then cultivating a persona with a reputation as a distant, somewhat distracted, and occasionally 'spacey' science nerd to cover that lack should be within his wherewithal.

And if you want character conflict, then at some point down the line one or more of the other Legionnaires realises that Brainiac's been playing with them in this way, and then you can split the whole friggin' team on whether to trust him.

See, my take on Brainy is that

1.) He has to have some severe emotional damage simply because of who he is
2.) Which means, yes, he's a bit of a dick
3.) But "bit of a dick" does not mean "continuous raging asshole," and the absolute worst thing about the Threeboot Legion (well, one of several, but I digress) is that Brainy never gets his redeeming character moments which explain why the hell he's in the Legion to begin with; surely, if he simply wanted a vehicle for societal change, he could have done something on his own.

Waid wrote that "Querl" in Coluan means "idealist" - I'd like to see that applied for once.

FWIW, we seem to be seeing Mekt on his way to becoming Lightning Lord, he still has some idealism (if twisted) and heroism (if misplaced) left at the moment.

"If Brainiac 5 is so smart (and he should be) then regardless of whether or not he suffers fools gladly, he should realise that occasionally he will have to suffers fools, period."

IMHO, if he's getting annoyed, it implies that he's only able to handle one train of thought at a time. If he were really that smart he'd make better use of the time it takes for his peers to catch up by thinking about other things for a few moments.

It's basically a pedagogical problem. Brainiac's like a teacher in a classroom. After a while of dealing with a particular teammate/student, he'd probably learn their particular deficiencies and learning styles, be able to anticipate where they'd have trouble, and would devise strategies for that person. Maybe he'd figure out that some of his teammates do better with a visual explanation, and he'd come up with a way of providing that.

Is there any reason to think Brainiac 5's intelligence would not extend to pedagogical problems like this? If he were inclined to get annoyed with people less intelligent than he, I'd think that annoyance would spur him to do this kind of problem-solving.

Jon (at #11): A very good point.

The only possible problem that occurs to me that would invalidated both our conjectures is that in some way it's not just a matter of being intelligent, but of also being wise. As in, perhaps Brainy recognises the problem, has multiple continigencies mapped out so that he can deal with people in an efficient and non-abrasive way (no matter how he really feels about lesser intellects), and for the most part they work. But this is still a response from an outsider who is maniuplating the social interactions between himself and others, rather than someone who belongs and understands the social rules intuitively. And every now and then some random piece of cultural ephemera which Brainy just doesn't get and can't reduce to a mathematical formula trips him up and he has a cranky attack. And then maybe you get a rehash of the 'Brainy goes nuts and unleashes Omega in order to gain control of the UP' storyline or something equally bizarre as he overcompensates in an attempt to get things back into equilibrium.

There is the theory that this version of Brainy is considered mentally retarded on Colu, and his reaction to his teammates is due to finally being in a situation where he can intellectually lord it over others.

Was going to ask Waid about it at San Diego, now that he's no longer on the book (previously he'd been coy about the possibility), but as mentioned elsewhere he had to bow out of attending at the last moment.

"There is the theory that this version of Brainy is considered mentally retarded on Colu, and his reaction to his teammates is due to finally being in a situation where he can intellectually lord it over others."

Kind of like George W. Bush as President. Only not so much with the *intellectually* lording it over others.