Where do the smart badass villains like Dr. Doom and Professor Moriarty keep getting their degrees from?

From online courses-? heh heh : )

Lately, I have been itching to read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. I shall then keep in mind this inquiry as to Professor Moriarty’s school of choice.

Smart villains. Tyrion Lannister and Peter Baelish.

I’m not a comic aficionado, but I always had the impression that most of the evil geniuses turned evil later in life, after being wronged in some way.

Not sure about Dr. Doom, but Professor Moriarty (I’m talking about the original Moriarty, not the BBC one) did attend university and was nominated professor. But then he got expelled since he was so bad. But he was a real genius, at the age of twenty-one he wrote some math research article and the article was very well-received over Europe.

Victor Von Doom and Reed Richards went to university together. They were friends as well as rivals. At some point, Doom felt slighted by Richards (for some reason I can’t remember) and became his sworn enemy. Later, due to separate scientific accidents, they became Dr. Doom and Mr. Fantastic, respectively.

@hearkat has it right, most genius villains were educated first, then went all evil.

Other, super intelligent villains include Lex Luthor, Norman Osborn (the green goblin), Curt Connors (the lizard), Otto Octavius (Doctor Octopus).

Dr. Hannibal Lector too.

I always figured Moriarty went to Heidelberg. But most evil geniuses of the British persuasion went to Oxbridge.

Lecter was first arrested in Maryland, he was part of Baltimore society, so he probably went to Johns Hopkins.

Well Doom rules his own country, so he can probably get an honorary degree from half the universities in Europe.

(As an aside I’d just like to say that one of Stan Lee’s most annoying traits, as far as I’m concerned, is how lazy he tended to be with character names.)