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This trope has been well known recently in the animated series Rick & Morty which depicts a mega-space habitat populated by millions of Ricks ruled by a Council.

The Council of Ricks

I don't know of many precedents for this idea. From what I recall, there is a very similar situation in several issues of Jonathan Hickamn's version of Marvel's Fantastic Four comic from about 2009, where Reed Richards, arguably the smartest human in the Marvel Comics Universe encounters a large organization of Reeds from alternate Universes.

Some members of the "Council of Reeds"

When and where, in comics or television, film or F&SF literature, was this idea first published?

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    The trope you are looking for is "Alliance of Alternates"; you can search there for the earliest. The council of the Reeds above is noted, as is the Rick & Morty council.
    – DavidW
    Commented Jun 22, 2021 at 22:00
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    @davidW this also specifies that its a) a smart character and b) an actual organisation
    – AncientSwordRage ♦
    Commented Jun 22, 2021 at 22:51
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    @DavidW TV tropes articles tend not to be very complete, especially when it comes to older fiction, so you can't trust the earliest on one of their lists is the actual earliest. I know Alan Moore used the tropes of meetings of alternate selves in various works not listed on that page, like the many versions of Darius Dax in Supreme or the Captain Britain Corps first seen in his story "Judgement Day" from The Daredevils #6 (1983).
    – Hypnosifl
    Commented Jun 22, 2021 at 23:12
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    @DavidW I agree we probably won't find an example of this trope outside comics especially given the 'most intelligent individual' criterion, but the Darius Dax example wasn't on the TV Tropes list (I see now that the Captain Britain Corps was), and that might actually fit the OP's criteria since Darius Dax was a Lex Luthor pastiche and therefore depicted as extremely intelligent. And that example debuted in 1999 so it may predate any of the TV Tropes examples that involve super-smart characters.
    – Hypnosifl
    Commented Jun 23, 2021 at 15:17
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    "The Man Who Folded Himself" is a 1973 science fiction novel by American writer David Gerrold. Due to the way time travel works there are dozens if not hundreds of the protagonist that get bored and choose to spend time with variants of themselves in an exclusive resort . It's not really an answer because it's probably not first - and the main character is not the smartest. But it would be like if the Ricks decided a Rick-orgy wasn't gay if it was just another Rick. And Morty was Rick in the past - and so were his parents. And in some timelines Rick is a woman.
    – lucasbachmann
    Commented Jun 24, 2021 at 1:49

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