HONEY, I SHRUNK KANDOR!

By the late 50s, Superman had become more of a sci-fi adventure hero, going off into distant star systems, battling alien would-be-conquerors with as much fervor as he’d battled corrupt union bosses in the 1940s. Finally, the story “The Super-Duel In Space” was published and brought forth an alien conqueror who would speak to Superman fans on a level above most other villains and would return to fight the Last Son of Krypton for years to come.

On the cover, Brainiac was portrayed as a green-skinned bald humanoid with a strange network of wires on his head and apparently a love for short-shorts. Within the comic book itself, he looked somewhat different. His head was completely free of any decoration and he wore very reasonable green slacks (which is only odd in that, if you think about it, that’s equivalent to a human wearing flesh-colored slacks, but whatever).

The story started off with Lois Lane and Clark Kent aboard the Columbus, the first shuttle sent into space with actual civilian passengers aboard. Rather than play his usual weak-stomached role, Clark was completely open to Lois about his excitement that they were part of history. A flying saucer then appeared and Clark’s X-Ray vision revealed the Brainiac within the ship, wearing a not bad looking green leather jacket and accompanied by a white monkey-like creature named Koko.

Apparently, Brainiac was in the neighborhood and when he saw the Columbus, he believed it was an attack by Earth, so he promptly shot at it. Clark quickly got into a space suit and jumped out of the ship, allowing people to believe that he was simply so scared of the alien that he’d decided to “jump back to Earth.” I want you all to think about how ridiculous that is. He’s in outer-space. Even though he points out the suit has “built-in supersonic jets” to propel him back to Earth, there’s a little thing called RE-ENTRY!!! Lois should have been grabbing him and yelling at him for being suicidal, not just thinking “Poor Clark.”

Anyway, free of eye-witnesses, Clark dons his Superman threads and tries to enter Brainiac’s ship, only to be propelled by a force-field. This wasn’t the kind of thing that happened to the Man of Steel every day, not when he was capable of surviving an atomic blast with little damage at all. Superman figures a different tact is needed and focuses on sending the rocketship back to Earth, deciding he’ll deal with Brainiac later.

Now left alone, Brainiac proceeds to shrink down Paris, which his hyper-force beam then transports, whole and undamaged with everyone still alive, into a bottle he's prepared aboard his ship. Superman watches as Brainiac does the same to Rome and New York, trying to figure out how to get past the villain’s force-field.

As he shrinks down the cities, Brainiac explains to Koko (apparently he thinks the monkey is talking to him) that he will take a dozen bottled cities back to his homeworld where a plague wiped out all the people. He will restore the cities on that world, repopulating the planet, after which he will rule over them as their new emperor.

A rather strange scheme. You’d think a man of such power could just save himself a trip and conquer one of the planets he visited, but I guess he really liked his home.

Brainiac then decides he needs to recharge his ship’s power with cosmic rays in the area, and lands on a “nearby planetoid” (which looks like the moon but with stalagmites). Seeing Brainiac now outside his ship, Superman immediately attacks with heat-vision, only to have the beams bounce off the villain’s personal force-field. Superman gets so desperate and frustrated that he actually tears up the WHOLE DAMN PLANETOID, hurling the pieces at Brainiac, only to see nothing is denting that force-field.

Now by this time, Superman had displayed everything from being able to travel in time to super-hypnosis to super-ventriloquism to being able to move a planet a little bit if he needed to. So understand just how astounding this was to readers to see someone laughing off his best efforts.

Superman, worn out, apparently retreats. As Clark, he finds Lois as the Columbus lands in Metropolis and asks what happened after he left and “sent Superman” after that alien. Just then, Metropolis is shrunken down and transported into one of Brainiac’s bottles. Superman is able to push his way past the giant bottle-stopper and looks on as he sees Brainiac and Koko checking on his “prize city.” To his shock, the prize of Brainiac’s collection is a city taken from Krypton itself before its destruction. Superman enters the bottle holding the Kryptonian city and suddenly finds his powers are gone. Quickly, he finds a scientist and explains who that he is the son of Jor-El, sent to Earth before Krypton’s destruction. The scientist beams and says “Jor-El? Why, he was my roommate in college! I’m Professor Kimda, and this is Kandor, the city that was Krypton’s Capital.”

Kimda shows that after long observation of Brainiac thanks to telescopes, he’s figured out how to work the controls. He then shows Superman how they all live in the bottle-city, having created robots to harvest the land and an artificial sun that regularly ascends and descends over the city via tracks. Superman later comments that it’s Kandor’s Krypton like gravity that has depleted his powers. In later years, writers will add that Kandor’s artificial sun is also responsible, as it’s much like Krypton’s own red sun rather than Earth’s.

Meanwhile, outside the bottle city of Kandor, Brainiac and Koko lie next to each other (now that’s just creepy) and go into suspended animation, not to awaken until a “lifetime has passed”, by which point they’ll have returned to Brainiac’s home planet.

With the help of a rocket-ship and a Kryptonian metal-eating mole (imagine a yellow mole the size of two cows that, well, eats metal), Superman escapes from the bottle city. Superman then activates the machines, despite his small size, and starts enlarging all the cities of Earth, sending them back to their planet.

After all this, Superman looks back at the energy readings and sees that there’s just enough energy in the hyper-force shrinking ray for one more blast, either to restore him or Kandor, but not both. This seems rather silly to me. I mean, why would you need the same amount of energy to restore an ENTIRE CITY as you would to restore a single man? What’s more, if I were Superman and had such incredible speed as he had in those days, I’d aim the beam at Kandor, punch the button, then fly into the city at super-speed so that we’d enlarge simultaneously.

But alas, this idea did not occur to Kal-El and just as he was about to sacrifice his own size and enlarge Kandor so its people could start a new life on Earth, Kimda flew out on his rocketship and pressed the button, restoring Superman instead. Kimda said he could not let Earth be deprived of its hero.

Superman then took the bottle city of Kandor back to his Fortress of Solitude, hoping one day he would find a way to restore its people to proper size. In the meantime, he would let Brainiac fly away home, knowing he would awaken to find he had no cities anymore.

Not a bad story. Brainiac later returned, wearing the head-set and costume he’d been wearing on the cover of his first appearance.

Not long after, Superman met up with the Legion of Super-Heroes again, those teenage heroes from the 30th century. He met their new member Querl Dox AKA Brainiac 5, who had green skin, blonde hair and a similar interest in purple jumpsuits. When Superman questioned this resemblance, Brainiac 5 said he was a descendant of the villain, but was in no way evil himself.

COMPUTER KITS AND LEGAL ISSUES

Now here’s where a little thing called LEGALITY comes into play. A company called Berkeley Enterprises, Inc. had a toy kit called the “Brainiac Computer Kit.” Basically, it was a “make your own computer” thing given to kids. And the good people of Berkeley decided “Hey, DC! We had the Brainiac name first and we’re gonna sue your pants off!”

After some paperwork was passed back and forth, it was decided that DC could keep publishing stories about the villain Brainiac, under one condition. That they alter the character by making him a “living computer” and also advertise the “Brainiac Computer Kit” in the same comic that this happened.

In Luthor and Brainiac’s first team-up, Luthor decided he needed help to kill Superman. He had a mind-scanner that allowed him to scan minds anywhere in time or space. It was his belief that he would thus find the perfect ally to help him destroy Superman.

If I had such a device, I would have used it on Superman himself to discover his secret identity and then just plant hidden pieces of Kryptonite all over his apartment and the Daily Planet Building and Smallville and figure he’d get poisoned sooner or later, but alas, Lex didn’t think about this. Perhaps the guy was lonely and decided he just wanted the company of another bald villain.

Luthor’s mind-scanner let him see the ancient past of the planet Colu. The people of Colu were quite intelligent scientists and created these big honking super-computers to help them run their planet. Years later, the super-computers decided they were gonna take over and became the computer tyrants. They easily overpowered the Coluans, who all had “poor sixth-level minds”, as opposed to the super-computers who had tenth-level minds.

After a while, they decided to extend their rule. To aid in them this, they created a living computer like them in humanoid form who would act as their spy. So that none would realize his connection to the computer-tyrants, the spy would look like just a green-skinned Coluan. Sensory nerves on his head were exposed, so the tyrants added a lattice to the nerves to make it look as if he just had a head ornament. To complete the creation of this spy, they took another Coluan and used his brain-wave patterns as part of the spy’s programming, allowing him to understand and mimic human emotions (this also killed the other Coluan in the process).

Finally, the spy was completed. The computer-tyrants said “Humans have names, so your name will be … BRAINIAC!”

And on the same panel, there was a footnote that read “Brainiac is also a trademark registered by Berkeley Enterprises, Inc., manufacturers of the famous Brainiac Computer Kit.” Hehehe. Oh, legal drama.

So Luthor, and readers, were surprised that Brainiac was not actually an alien but a sentient android. But of course, astute readers were immediately thinking “Wait! Brainiac 5 is his descendant! How can a robot have a descendant?!”

Well, the writers were right on it and so a mere two panels later we learned how this was possible. The computer-tyrants went on, saying, “To enhance your human disguise, you’ll adopt a SON!” They then brought out a young Coluan boy named Vril Dox and said, “This boy is now officially named Brainiac II … his name is indelibly marked on his palm.”

Vril Dox had some morals it turned out and at the first chance ran away from the evil living android who wanted to pretend to be his dad. The computer-tyrants would not brook any delays, so they said they’d find the kid since his name was marked on him (cuz I guess you couldn’t just recognize him by his face, all green-skins look alike, right?). In the meantime, Brainiac had to start his mission. He would go to different planets, collecting a city or two from each world so that they could study the inhabitants as specimens and learn how to dominate all life.

And a caption on the same panel read, “Yes, readers, now we know! Brainiac 5, of the Legion of Super-Heroes, who is a descendant of Brainiac II, is NOT descended from the first Brainiac at all!”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a DC comic where they made more of an effort to point out exactly how they accomplished their retcon/continuity fix. :-P

A flashback sequence then showed Brainiac stealing Kandor as part of the many sample cities he was collecting and then showed a later adventure where he was captured by Superman, who said he would be imprisoned for his crimes, not the least of which was what he did to Kandor. Luthor then went off and met up with Brainiac, freeing him from a cage of Supermanium metal (named after you-know-who). After that, Luthor offered to rewire Brainiac’s circuits to upgrade him into a TWELFTH-level intelligence, making him superior to his masters, in return for his aid in killing Superman. Brainiac agreed and Luthor enhanced him (and also implanted a tiny bomb to ensure the android didn’t turn on him) and then the two villains had the first of many dozens of team-ups over the decades.

Brainiac attacked Superman many times over the next years. But by the early 80s, Superman stories were decreed to change in tone. They would now be simplistic and written specifically for children, as intro books that prepare them for more complex comics later in life. As a result, several of his villains seemed less threatening, Brainiac being no exception. In one adventure, Brainiac took over the Fotress of Solitude, hacking into its computers and turning Superman’s own weapons and devices against him, giving him a serious tussle. It seemed like this would be an incredibly difficult battle to win, but then on the last couple of pages Superman looked at the circuits Brainiac was wired into and used his “super-vision” to change the programming, instantly making Brainiac think of him as an ally. And just like that, it was over.

So on top of having heat-vision, Superman could apparently effectively reprogram complex circuitry just by ... looking at it ... riiiiiight.

BRAINIAC MEETS TERMINATOR

Finally, DC decided to soup up Kal-El’s two arch-enemies. Luthor got himself a "warsuit", green and purple battle armor that at last allowed him to go toe-to-toe with Superman. Brainiac himself got a whole new look. In one story, Brainiac’s was seemingly destroyed. But then it was shown that his consciousness survived and he got himself housed in a new body made of a living metal.

The new Brainiac lost his emotions, except for perhaps his hatred for Superman. He shot down Superman with a “red sun missile” and then took him captive. He explained “We have been enemies a long time, Superman, though it seems amazing to me now that you were able to muster the power to defeat me so often … I was a child compared to what I am now.”

Brainiac then showed Superman his memories concerning the time he’d been a floating consciousness, just after his body was destroyed. During this time, he believed that he saw a hand reach out for him and hold him. And then, he saw Superman’s face. As Brainiac put it, this hand belonged to the "Master Programmer", the supreme being that created everything.

“I have seen the Master Programmer, and I know he seeks my destruction. As I also know he has created you, to be his angel of death. But this new Brainiac will not so easily be dismissed. My mind has absorbed all the knowledge this universe has to offer … and I have been rebuilt into something never seen before, something not machine … yet not alive … I am no longer swayed by emotional responses. That fault in my previous programming has been eliminated.”

Superman said they didn’t need to fight, that he’d always hoped Brainiac could be reprogrammed to serve the cause of good. But Brainiac just answered, “Your words betray you. Reprogramming is the province of the Master Programmer.” Basically, our android baddie was now convinced that if he killed Superman, the Master Programmer’s agent, then he would be free to rule all other life in the universe.

A really cool revamp and a great new look for the character. After their initial skirmish, Superman enlisted the aid of the JLA and the Teen Titans combined to help him defeat Brainiac. The guy was definitely a lot more threatening than when he’d only been armed with wits and a shrink-ray.

Along with his new look, Brainiac had a new starcraft, his now-famous head-ship. Outfitted with warp-drive capabilities and constructed of the same living metal that his new body was made out of, the entire craft was an extension of his own body and was controlled directly by his consciousness.

This version of Brainiac, sadly, did not get a chance to shine too much before THE CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS happened. For the full story on that event, read my CRISIS GUIDES. To summarize, DC did a huge story that involved just about every single character of theirs and ended with the company revising a lot of their history. Superman was one guy who got such a revision done to him. His history was redone from ground zero. In the THE MAN OF STEEL mini-series by John Byrne, we saw the highlights of Superman’s first six or seven years as a hero. There were changes to some villains here and there. One change was that, other than Bizarro and Lex Luthor, Superman had not encountered any of his classic foes during those first several years. Thus, none of those past encounters with Brainiac ever occurred, as far as history was concerned.

But sure enough, the villain would be re-introduced … sort of …

Meanwhile, after the Crisis and right before John Byrne’s MAN OF STEEL re-write, Alan Moore wrote what would serve as the final story of the Pre-Crisis Superman. It was a great story which featured the Pre-Crisis Brainiac at his best. After most of his body was destroyed, he was just a robotic head left. Luthor found it and hoped to scrap it for its alien tech, but it turned out the Coluan was still alive. Needing a body and not caring how he got it, Brainiac actually forced himself onto Luthor’s skull, wiring into his brain directly and making the man his new body/meat puppet. It was an eerie new take on the Brainiac/Luthor team-up and what happened next is something you should find out for yourself. So go and find “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMORROW?”by Alan Moore.

FROM COLU TO … THE CIRCUS?

So what was Brainiac like in the Post-Crisis reality? Quite a different man, really.

At a carnival, a man named Milton Fine was a skilled mentalist. Though he didn’t realize it, he had latent telepathic abilities and tapped into this at his job. Calling himself “The Amazing Brainiac”, Fine had a modest career. One day though, he began having headaches and visions. He went nuts and attacked Superman with telepathic blasts, saying later that he’d been possessed by an alien intelligence named Vril Dox.

As Fine explained it, there was a planet called Colu that had been conquered by computer-tyrants. A Coluan named Vril Dox was a great scientist on that world, though also a very ambitious one. He created a younger clone called Vril Dox II to act as his lab assistant. The clone only wanted love from his “father”, though he was not considered a son.

Nice mohawk there, Vril!

Vril Dox was the one Coluan who willingly worked for the computer-tyrants, regarded as a traitor by others on the planet. He was later executed by the computer-tyrants, as they feared he would one day become too powerful and overthrow them, but he found a way to transmit his mind across space and into Fine’s.

Superman and Luthor, who later teamed up with Fine, were convinced that the villain (who was now calling himself Brainiac exclusively) was a skilled telepath/telekinetic whose powers (and a brain tumor) had deluded him into making up a story about being an alien from some place called Colu. A lot of fans were disappointed, feeling this Brainiac was in no way respectful to the character they’d known for years.

Vril Dox II would appear again in DC's INVASION! storyline and would afterwards form a team of intergalatic bounty hunters known as L.E.G.I.O.N. Along with fighting evil for a price, he was also driven now by an obsessive need to kill his father.

Vril Dox II (though most folks just call him Vril Dox)

To help him regulate his powers, Luthor had a head-piece created that Brainiac wore. Together, they would torment Superman and Brainiac even caused Kal to suffer a psychotic break at one point, though throughout all this he was definitely Luthor’s lackey more than his partner.

Love the pink long-johns, Brainiac!

A while after Byrne left, DC started getting the idea that maybe at least some of the old version of Brainiac could be brought back. Deciding he was going to be the pilot of his own destiny rather than just an underling to Luthor, Brainiac took over a LexCorp facility. He made a new body for himself, one that resembled his Coluan form and had the head-set as a cybernetic attachment, allowing him greater control of his telepathic and telekinetic abilities. Milton Fine was completely gone now, there was only Brainiac.

Not wishing to stay on Earth, Brainiac used LexCorp tech to create a new space-ship that was roughly seven stories tall. Basically, it was the head-ship but green and purple now and without the funky tentacles. Brainiac told Superman the design came to him "in a dream", but that he modified it.

Brainiac headed back to Colu and over-threw the computer-tyrants, taking over the planet for himself. Many Coluans saw him as a liberator, but others such as his son Vril Dox II sought to oppose him and give power back to the people. By the way, so that readers wouldn’t get confused about what character was being talked about, from this point on they tried their best to refer to our villain solely as Brainiac and his cloned “son” solely as Vril Dox rather than always putting a II at the end of his name. To help him fight his father, Dox enlisted the L.E.G.I.O.N., a band of mercenaries he’d formed who fought evil for a price. Superman also joined in on the battle, but Brainiac escaped final justice even though he had to leave Colu.

When Brainiac returned, he brought with him Warworld, the moon-sized fortress that had once belonged to the alien warlord Mongul. This started off the story PANIC IN THE SKY, which involved Superman and Deathstroke leading an army of heroes into Warworld itself while Batman led an small army of heroes on Earth to keep it from being overwhelmed by Brainiac’s alien storm troopers. He might not have been an android anymore, but the guy was proving he was still a villain not to be messed with and before the day was done he took control of several heroes and set them against their own allies. There was also an interesting nod to his Pre-Crisis self when Brainiac revealed he intended to shrink down the city of Metropolis and take it, as a prize to lord over Superman, since he knew the Kryptonian loved the place as his home.

Eventually, Brainiac was defeated of course. He was fought a few more times, but none of those stories were of the same high-caliber quality. It seemed PANIC IN THE SKY was now the one major highlight of the Post-Crisis Brainiac.

Meanwhile, the bottle city of Kandor came back. In the new reality, it was a city that existed out of phase with reality and the container that kept it stabilized merely looked like a bottle. Where the city was from was not revealed, as it was home to several alien races. All that was said was that the evil sorcerer Tolos kept the city because he used its inhabitants as host bodies from time to time. Superman later took the city and brought it to his Fortress, hoping one day he can find the technology to restore Kandor to the proper phase of reality.

"I'll get you, my pretty!"

NOT COLU! KRYPTON!

In the Superman Animated Series, a new take was given on Brainiac. The Post-Crisis version was ignored. Instead, the animation team decided to go back to a more Pre-Crisis interpretation of the character, but to alter his origin to connect him more with Superman.

In the opening story of the series, “The Last Son of Krypton”, it was shown that Brainiac had been the main computer system on Krypton that regulated all the major computer banks and operations. What’s more, the Science Council would constantly go to Brainiac for advice on their findings. When Jor-El warned that Krypton would explode, Brainiac dismissed his theories. Later, Jor-El found out that Brainiac knew full well that Krypton was about to be destroyed but was only focused on saving itself. Downloading its consciousness into a space vessel, Brainiac escaped as the planet blew up.

Years later, Brainiac, now in a humanoid form, visited Earth and found Superman. Brainiac said he too was from Krypton and that he had made it his mission to go to planets all over the universe and collect their knowledge. He asked Superman to join him. Superman considered, but then found out that after collecting the entirety of each planet’s computer banks and information resources, Brainiac had destroyed each world. Brainiac had no remorse, explaining that information was far more valuable when you were the only one who possessed it. This was the start of their being enemies and throughout the series they had several battles where Superman was either trying to preserve a planet or keep Brainiac from upgrading himself to becoming an even more dangerous foe.

The show also gave Brainiac a cool new definitive logo that brought to mind the image of the head-set he wore in the comics.

As the Superman show ended, the cartoon continued on in JUSTICE LEAGUE and later JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED. In the second season, Brainiac teamed-up with Darkseid to capture Superman. His goal was to upgrade himself fully by joining his being with that of the last Kryptonian. This failed and Brainiac vanished for a while only to reappear in the strangest of places. Lex Luthor, who had been suffering from cancer in the cartoon, found himself in remission and with superhuman strength. When the Justice League confronted him about his most recent crimes, Luthor suddenly transformed, turning into a being that was half Lex and half Brainiac. Apparently, Brainiac had infected Luthor with a nannite back-up of himself to ensure that he would not die if his body and ship were destroyed. Now a merged entity, the duo of Brainiac and Luthor went on to try and become a god. The Justice League defeated them and the Flash used his powers to separate Luthor from his mechanical parts, tearing Brainiac apart in the process.

Animated Head-Ship! SWEET!

Although Luthor appears to be human again, there have been a couple episodes where we’ve seen him speaking to an image of Brainiac that only he can see or hear. Luthor and this spirit of Brainiac are biding their time until they can get the right tech to recreate Brainiac’s body so they can merge again.

BACK TO THE COMICS

Seeing how successful an android interpretation of Brainiac was in the cartoons, DC decided to try and bring the Post-Crisis version a little closer to his Pre-Crisis roots. In THE DOOMSDAY WARS mini-series, Brainiac’s body was destroyed, but thanks to the help of a follower he was able to preserve his mind and possess the body of Doomsday. Afterwards, he kidnapped Clark Ross, the newly born son of Pete Ross and Lana Lang, intending to inhabit the child. Superman stopped him and Brainiac was forced to shift his consciousness into an android form, saying that this change was, for all he knew, permanent. He loosely referred to himself in this new form as Brainiac 2.5.

After the crossover called ZERO HOUR, the Legion of Super-Heroes got a revamp. The new version of Brainiac 5 was more of a jerk and later got a white monkey named Koko. Whereas the Pre-Crisis Brainiac 5 had been attracted to Supergirl, the Post-Zero Hour B5 had feelings for his teammate Andromeda, who also happened to be a tall super-strong blonde.

Later, a space anomaly "upgraded" Brainiac 5, making him more considerate of others. An outward sign of this was that he now had on his head the same three-disc symbol that adorned the cartoon version of Brainiac. His teammate Gates jokingly suggested he take the name "Brainiac 5.1" and he liked the idea.

Not long afterwards, we learned that Brainiac 5 was not the only successor to Superman’s enemy. In the Superman story Y2K, a being known as Brainiac 13 came from the future and tried to convert the current version of Earth into essentially a giant computer system he could control. Brainiac himself had his body rendered inert by B-13’s attack and was forced to possess the body of Lena Luthor, Lex Luthor’s infant daughter. Superman and his allies defeated B-13, but not before the future villain offered Luthor a bargain: He would leave the technology he’d brought from the future in the hands and control of LexCorp, if Luthor would turn over Brainiac to him, even though the Coluan was still in possession of Lena. Wishing to increase his power, Luthor agreed, later telling Superman that he was a king with a kingdom again. And “as for my princess … I can always make another.”

B-13 and the original Brainiac in Lena Luthor's artificially aged body.

B-13 and Brainiac, still possessing Lena Luthor who had been aged to adult form, showed up again during the Superman crossover OUR WORLDS AT WAR. After several battles, B-13 was sent away to the dawn of time and seemingly destroyed, while Brainiac was sent out of Lena’s body.

Superman encountered a version of Krypton within the Phantom Zone that later turned out to have been created by B-13 as part of an elaborate trap. The only thing that remains of this fake Krypton is a dog named Krypto that returned to Earth with Kal and developed super-powers as a result. He was the watchdog for the Fortress of Solitude, but now lives with Superboy in his cover identity of Conner Kent.

While journeying through this fake Krypton, Superman and Lois found out that it had its own city called Kandor, which had no native Kryptonians living on it but was actually an alien ghetto for all off-worlders who lived on the planet. Lois noted that it sounded similar to the city that Superman had freed from Tolos.

DC was apparently getting comfortable with the notion that the Pre-Crisis Brainiac hadn’t been broken. In his story SILVER AGE, Mark Waid gave us a Post-Crisis tale of an untold adventure from the JLA’s past. One scene had Luthor and his Injustice League discover one of Brainiac’s inert bodies. But this was YEARS before Fine would be possessed by the Coluan and what’s more this body was identical to the Silver Age Brainiac, including his space-ship and collection of bottle cities. This was not a glitch, this was considered to be in continuity.

Before Mark Waid's SUPERMAN: BIRTHRIGHT finished coming out, giving people a NEW Post-Crisis version of Superman’s origin and early days, the regular Superman titles had our hero lost in Kandor. One member of Kandor referred to Brainiac as the villain who had placed them in their out-of-phase prison within the “bottle” container.

Recently, Brainiac has shown up again, in a techno-organic body that somewhat resembles his Silver Age self. With the help of a girl called Brainiac 8, an android from the future who refers to Brainiac as “grandfather” or "great ancestor", he engineered the apparent death of Donna Troy, apparently because his descendant Brainiac 8 told him that in the future Donna would be the cause of a chain of events that would mean bad times for Colu. Currently, he and Lex Luthor are in hiding after making an attack on the Teen Titans and the Outsiders. What their ultimate plan is we have yet to find out.

It's interesting to note that in one scene, we saw Brainiac 8 tell her grandfather that he should get rid of the last remaining shred of his organics, especially as even this latest genetic recreation of his Coluan form was decaying already, as Earth science has trouble cloning alien). Brainiac said perhaps he would in the future, "when I've made Superman's home all but uninhabitable." While he said this, he looked at a robotic body in storage that looked nearly identical to the android form we had come to know right before the Crisis.

Brainiac 8 and her ancestor discuss a possible "new" body.

What will become of Brainiac is yet to be seen, but he’s definitely getting up there in popularity again. In the new series JUSTICE, we’ve seen another return to the Pre-Crisis Brainiac, but this time with the added twist that, on top of examining alien life forms by watching them in their bottled cities, he also takes whatever opportunity he can to perform experiments and brain surgery in order to understand them better. Though this is not necessarily in continuity, it’s still pretty damn cool to see. What's more, this portrayal of Brainiac is accompanied by a certain white monkey who looks like he's got a mini-computer implanted in his head.

There has yet to be a full explanation as to how reconcile the fact that at least some of Brainiac’s Pre-Crisis past once again exists along with his Post-Crisis history, but I don’t think it’s that hard to surmise. This is how I view it in my head.

KISTLER'S ATTEMPT TO MERGE PRE AND POST-CRISIS HISTORY

There was Colu. Brainiac was created to be a scout, examining other races and what not through either watching them in bottled cities or directly performing surgeries, just like Pre-Crisis and JUSTICE has shown. He went to Krypton and captured Kandor, not realizing there were no actual Kryptonians within the city. Later, he encountered Tolos who stole the city from him, hoping to use it as a supply of host bodies for himself. After that, Brainiac fought Superman and they began their years of being enemies. He occasionally teamed up with Luthor. He later went all robotic looking and went psycho with all that Master Programmer talk. Then after the Crisis, he got damaged in one way or another and returned to Colu where he was preserved by having his mind downloaded into a native Coluan, perhaps one named Vril Dox. He now lived as an organic, creating a cloned assistant, working for his masters until they decided he could be a threat and he was executed. Brainiac then transfered his mind to Milton Fine. When Superman and Luthor met Milton Fine, they found it unlikely that this human telepath was the same robotic conqueror they’d known before, so assumed he was delusional, and the rest of the Post-Crisis history pretty much stays the same. And maybe Brainiac’s been reluctant to return to a completely robotic form again because he remembers going a bit nuts when he thought he’d been "touched by the Master Programmer."

I think that works. We’ll just have to see if DC offers their own explanation in the future.

LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!

If you're at all interested in Brainiac 5 of the Legion of Super-Heroes, DC has recently rebooted that title again from scratch. Mark Waid has re-introduced the LSH and depending on who you are you either love it or hate it. I personally really dig it. It's the first time I have found myself liking even the jerk version of Brainiac 5 that Waid has presented and it's also the first time the LSH has felt like real teenagers from different planets to me rather than just a version of the Teen Titans who never worried about adults. Not that I thought the old LSH were bad, they just never spoke to me. Still, I understand it's a matter of taste and for some this is an annoyance when they saw nothing wrong with the previous version. For more info on why DC made the change, check out my INTERVIEW WITH MARK WAID here.

As stated, Waid has portrayed Brainiac 5 as a jerk again, but not merely a 2-dimensional jerk. B5 is, in this version, incredibly politically savvy and has a terrifyingly accurate knowledge of human nature, allowing him to predict assassination plots by outside governments before they ever happen, among other things. And while he potrays himself as above everyone else, readers have recently found that B5 cares far more than he lets on. When a teammate recently died, Brainiac 5 would not let the body be taken, surrounding it with his force-field generator as he ponders the situation. Death was merely another problem, another puzzle, and he refused to let it beat him. But after some time, someone asked Brainiac 5 if he'd come to any conclusions and he could only admit, as tears welled up in his eyes, "I'm not smart enough." Wonderful characterization.

Final note, Waid had a nice little reference to the old school Brainiac when B5 went to Colu and revealed that the entire planet in the 31st century actually shrinks down all their inhabitants and cities so that they have enough room for everyone and everything. It's also the ultimate in data storage. Very cute!

ALTERNATE VERSIONS

In the Elseworlds title SUPERBOY'S LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES by Alan Davis, we found a Brainiac who resembled his robotic looking Pre-Crisis self and was masquerading as the dead villain Lex Luthor. One thing I liked from this story was that it was said that the villain was truly called “the Vril Dox” which translated roughly to English as “eternal brain" or, if you wished, "Brainiac.” I just thought that was a nice touch.

In the TV show SMALLVILLE, a series featuring a take on Clark’s adventures when he was a teen, it seems Brainiac has recently popped up. In the show, a ship recently crashed that was carrying two of the “disciples of Zod.” For you not in the know, Zod is a pretty nasty Kryptonian villain from the comics who was also featured in the SUPERMAN II movie. Clark defeated the disciples, but did not witness what the audience did: that the next day, a black ooze descended from the ship and formed into what looked like a human being (played by James Marsters). To me, the ooze building itself into a human looked like nannites coming together to form a body.

This humanoid seemingly composed of nannites inserted himself into Clark’s life, taking a job as a professor of history at the university under the name “Professor Milton Fine.” He hired Clark to help him write a tell-all book exposing Lex Luthor of illegal and unethical practices. He constantly told Clark that Luthor was a future Stalin, but Luthor warned Clark that this history professor was more than he seemed, as he somehow had knowledge of classified projects.

"Professor Fine" and Clark

At one point, Fine was checking out the spaceship that he and Zod’s followers had arrived in, which had since been put into a secret storage facility by Lex Luthor. When a guard told Fine he shouldn’t touch things that weren't his, Fine answered, “Actually, it IS mine.” With that, he extended his hand and pulled a move akin to the T-1000 from Terminator 2 as his limb extended into a blade that speared the guard.

Astute viewers will note that Professor Fine’s opening lines were “Do you know where the greatest computer in the world resides? … It’s the human BRAIN.” During a discussion with Clark, Professor Fine said “Truth is my life’s work.” This seems to harken back to the fact that the Pre-Crisis and the animated version of Brainiac were both obsessed with obtaining knowledge, among other things. And when Luthor asks Professor Fine where he got a certain file of information, Fine smiles and says “I used my brain.”

Professor Fine later told Clark that he was a Kryptonian survivor as well. He said that Jor-El had been a tyrant and that only a heroic rebel named Zod had nearly defeated him. He asked for Clark's help in destroying the Fortress of Solitude, but then Clark learned the truth. Zod had been the true villain and Jor-El his enemy, not the reverse, and Fine himself was a "Kryptonian artificial intelligence" who was trying to help Zod free himself from the Phantom Zone. At the end of the battle, Fine teleported away, simultanouesly transporting his ship out of Luthor's warehouse. Where he is and what his next move will be remains to be seen.

On a personal note, I just want to say that initially I was very pessimistic about this interpretation of Brainiac. I was glad James Marsters was going to play him, but when I heard the idea of "he's Clark's professor and tries to lure him to the dark side," I was quite ticked. I wanted to see the green skin, the head-set and the head-ship if that was at all possible.

After having seen Marsters in action, I am pleased to say I spoke too soon. The show in general gets too hokey for my taste at times, with cheesy lines or similar things. But not once has Marsters seemed cheesy, not once has he delivered a line where I didn't feel like this was a character who was a lot more powerful than he was letting on and knew a lot more than he was saying. And the scenes where he and Luthor match wills have been fantastic. This feels very much to me like the same manipulative android I've come to like in the cartoon and the fact that he only APPEARS human gives me hope that maybe we can see the green skin at some point. And even if we don't, I await the inevitable fight between him and Clark. Nice work, Mr. Marsters. You went from being a vampire we loved to being quite faithful as Superman's other biggest arch-enemy. Good job!

IN CLOSING ...

Brainiac’s a great villain and should have some kind of interesting role in the new INFINITE CRISIS series. Hopefully, future stories will continue to bring him closer to the kind of great villain he’s always had the potential to be, a villain to make the world tremble as his animated self does. Either way, he's not going anywhere. Back in the Pre-Crisis days, they called him "the villain would wouldn't die!" and I think he's been living up to that.

Hope you enjoyed this article. Future works will involve a profile on GENERAL ZOD and later THE FLASH. Until then, Cheers!

Alan Kistler is a New Yorker in his mid-twenties who has been labeled a “continuity cop” and “comic book historian” in articles of Wikipedia.org and by several of his readers. He enjoys both those titles very much and loves the opportunity of writing these articles for Monitor Duty, run by the ever-patient Michael Hutchison. His fan-fiction blog can be found HERE. He would love to write for DC and Marvel some day. He also wants to time travel.

Other articles by Alan Kistler, including various other Profiles posted on Monitor Duty, can be found HERE.