There are several Marvel animated universes. Marvel’s been making cartoons since the 1960s and amongst all of the various films, TV series, reimaginings, and reboots they’ve highlighted quite a few super-geniuses. However, not every smart character resembles Tony Stark or the Leader.
Intelligence and genius are hardly the same things, especially in comics-inspired media, but quite a few of Marvel’s smarter characters can’t seem to get past their innate laziness. It’s complicated since most of these characters have traumatic pasts and might have untreated mental conditions. Still, being smart but lazy isn’t always a bad thing, since it means an individual excels at finding the easiest ways to do the hardest of tasks.
10 J. Jonah Jameson’s Privilege and Amorality Make Him Lazy (Spectacular Spider-Man)
J. Jonah Jameson is Spider-Man’s civilian nemesis and the publisher of the Daily Bugle in almost every version of Peter Parker’s life. Whether it’s the 1967 Spider-Man series or 2008’s Spectacular Spider-Man, he’s reliably angry, underhanded, and obsessed with the Wall-Crawler. However, he’s clearly a smart guy and he has the business acumen to run a tabloid newspaper in good times and bad.
Unfortunately, Jameson’s personal wealth and lack of accountability hold him back. He values achievements, like his son’s career as an astronaut, but stopped caring about real journalism ages ago. Jolly Jonah is always looking for the easiest way to sell papers, only thinking in the short term, never looking to earn anyone’s trust. He doesn’t lack courage and if he’d let himself be the publisher his paper deserves everyone would be better off.
9 Star-Lord Won’t Expend The Energy He Needs To Grow Up (Guardians Of The Galaxy)
Many fans see Star-Lord as nothing more than a man-child, but he leads the galaxy’s most chaotic team of heroes. He’s a quick thinker, understands tactics and strategy, and has the emotional smarts to reach his teammates in a crisis. However, he doesn’t have the wherewithal to step up and take responsibility long-term.
Peter Quill isn’t stupid; he just doesn’t want to invest the required energy into developing himself emotionally. Things like learning to steal and fight were fun for him so he embraced them, but getting in touch with his feelings? Sounds hard, dude.
8 Why’s Thunderball Hanging Out With The Wrecking Crew? (Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes)
The Wrecking Crew are supervillainous muscle in a lot of Marvel stories, including Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Three of the four are standard thugs with impressive superhuman strength and endurance. However, Thunderball is a former nuclear physicist who was once Bruce Banner’s peer.
Thunderball still serves as the Wrecking Crew’s brains, though they hardly ever listen to him. It’s hard to get out of a career as a supervillain but the fact the animated version of this character isn’t looking for a way out reflects poorly on him. It’s one thing for him to stay in touch with prison buddies but it’s another to let them define his life.
7 Not Every Hulk Is Smart, But This One Has Brains (Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.)
Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. features an all-Hulk team of heroes, including She-Hulk, Red Hulk, and Rick Jones’ A-Bomb. In a group that includes a military tactician and a former lawyer, it’s strange to see the original Green Goliath take the reigns. However, despite his taciturn nature, the series makes it clear that this version of Bruce Banner’s Hulk — not Professor Hulk or even Joe Fixit— is a smart leader.
Buried under that muscle, this Hulk has brains but he’s dangerously unwilling to use them. He seems invested in a monosyllabic identity that lets him rampage with impunity. Even so, he keeps a close eye on his less trustworthy teammates and even has the wisdom to turn foes into friends.
6 The Purple Man’s Power Discourages Self-Improvement (Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes)
Zebediah Killgrave, aka the Purple Man, is most famous for his role in Netflix’s Jessica Jones. However, in Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes he not only escaped from the Raft but briefly conquered the world. Getting close enough to Tony Stark to use his mind-control on the Avenger took brains, but after that he delegated everything.
Unfortunately, delegation is an unwanted side effect of the Purple Man’s abilities. All he has to do to get anyone to do anything for him—rub his feet or proclaim him their eternal god-king— is ask. He’s never had to get smarter or better, and it shows.
5 The Watcher Can’t Be Bothered (What If…?)
The Watcher, Uatu to his friends, is an immortal giant with almost unlimited knowledge. His insatiable intellect keeps him observing various realities for variations on superhuman themes. He seems sympathetic to the plights of the Multiverse’s best and worst but always claims he’s sworn an oath to never interfere in mortal lives.
However, when Infinity Ultron brings the fight directly to Uatu in the What If…? series, he immediately manipulates his own super team into a confrontation with the unstoppable synthezoid. In the process, he willingly changes the course of several timelines. This is ostensibly to protect the Multiverse, but the fact that Ultron has the Watcher in his sights is the catalyst for his actions.
4 The Thing Eternally Rides Reed Richards’ Coattails (Fantastic Four)
Benjamin Grimm, the Fantastic Four’s ever-lovin’ Thing, doesn’t always get the respect he deserves. However, he tends to mope around the Baxter Building when the team isn’t actually confronting Doom or exploring another universe. Even in the various Fantastic Four cartoons, he lets Reed Richards pay his bills out of guilt since the wealthy inventor trapped him in an inhuman body.
The Thing is a smart problem-solver, which lets him punch above his already considerable weight, and he’s canonically one of Marvel’s first citizen-astronauts, showing that he has vision and brains. There’s even a reality where, after his erstwhile family died in a spaceship crash, he became Doctor Grimm, his universe’s version of Iron Man.
3 Howard the Duck’s A Classic Underachiever (What If…?)
Steve Gerber’s Howard the Duck has been kicking around Marvel Comics since the 1970s. Howard has always been a smart guy, and he’s received training offers from almost everyone, from Gwenpool to Doctor Strange, but he’s always turned them down.
Howard’s laid-back attitude was on full display when he appeared in Disney+’s What If…? and assisted T’challa’s Star-Lord. He had the layout of the Collector’s base memorized and was clearly a talented marksman but he got distracted by Knowhere’s bar. Howard seemed to like his life of leisure in the Collection.
2 Dad-Bod Spider-Man Keeps Trying To Give Up (Into the Spider-Verse)
Into the Spider-Verse‘s Peter B. Parker is a sharp guy, just like all of the various Spider-Men. He invented his own web-shooters, he can memorize complex passwords at a glance, and he clearly knows his way around the superhero game. He even makes a solid mentor for Miles Morales when the teenage hero needs one most.
However, it’s clear that Peter is exhausted from sacrificing himself for the world’s benefit. Part of this is a fear of failure, spawned after he lost his marriage to MJ to his own insecurities, but it’s clear that this Spider-Man has decided that his default position in life should be horizontal. Even when a dimensional wormhole opens up over his cot, he barely considers investigating it before he’s sucked inside.
1 Future Ultron Is Resting On His Laurels (The Next Avengers)
The Next Avengers animated film posits a universe where Ultron destroyed the Avengers and humanity is barely clinging to existence. When a new generation of heroes rises up against him, they face traps laid out by the android overlord decades ago and are constantly dodging his Iron Avengers. However, Ultron himself is slow to respond to their challenge.
This Ultron promised to replace humanity with something better, but he spends most of his time filling up his trophy rooms with artifacts from his greatest victories. Delegating security to his Iron Avengers may be efficient up to a point, but Ultron can inhabit infinite armored shells. When he gets involved late in the game, it’s his laziness that loses him the battle for Earth.
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