He's about as smart as Batman, who can think three steps ahead of everybody else...except you add total insanity and disregard for human life.
Also, my beef with events is several things: one, a single creative team could tell the story much better. Having too many cooks in the kitchen means everyone has a different way to tell the story and it doesn't always work out well. It sometimes does (52, for example), but it's incredibly rare. Two, events are very rarely collected together properly. Civil War, for example, is a really good example of this. You can't just read the main "Civil War" trade on its own without needing to read other ancillary volumes as well. In the long-term, that's bad business.
Three, the most damning thing about crossovers, is the constant bullshit of "everything will change forever" or "nothing will ever be the same again" or "everything you know is a lie." Which is bull because in a year (or even sometimes in a few months), it'll be either completely undone or just forgotten when the next creative team comes along. Worse, especially in Civil War, characters are written out of character just to push the story further. Tony Stark and Reed Richards are prime examples of that, who were borderline evil in that arc.
Also, I never believe when a writer says that you don't have to read the other titles to understand the story. They said that about Blackest Night, and yet Hal Jordan disappears early in, then returns with six new characters. Where did they come from? Why, the Green Lantern title, of course! But for people who hear about Blackest Night and just pick up the trade, they're going to be confused as all hell.
