Alan Kistler's History of Brainiac
Friday, December 21, 2007 at 02:31AM This profile features one of Superman's arch-enemies. If you wish to learn more about Superman himself, check out my Superman Files.
OUR VILLAIN IN A NUTSHELL
The universe is teeming with life of all sorts across various galaxies and countless planets and moons. Some are good, some are evil, some are more complicated. But there is one creature from the depths of space who is terrifyingly simple in his motives. A green-skinned artificially created being who is incapable of having a conscience.
Created by living computers on the planet Colu, Brainiac was designed to learn everything he could about other life forms in the universe. But he broke away from his superiors and began pursuing his own agenda of obtaining ultimate knowledge and evolution, no matter what the cost to the organic beings he kept encountering.
With incredible technology and a "twelfth-level intelligence", this cold-hearted entity has made a habit of visiting other worlds and stealing entire cities, literally shrinking them and keeping them in bottles as specimens in a vast laboratory, allowing him to imprison
hundreds of millions of test subjects at his disposal for his various experiments. Afterward, he would destroy the planet he had taken then from, thus ensuring he was the only being in the universe to have access to that world's technology and culture, to its raw data.
To Brainiac, knowledge is power and he will increase his knowledge until he is convinced he is the most powerful being in the universe. And he doesn't care how many world he has to destroy. Many races have learned to fear his name and the appearance of his star ship, which has the ghastly appearance of a tentacled skull
To aid in his quest, Brainiac has created various probe androids to act as his eyes and hands, as well as nannites which sometimes infect beings, making them his avatars. Several of these different probes and avatars have fought Superman, who Brainiac covets since while Kal-El is alive then people of the universe continue to learn about Krypton's culture and science and that is something he will not allow to continue. Normally remorseless and fully dedicated to his programming, it is believed that Brainiac has actually learned to hate the Kryptonian and will stop at nothing to finally defeat him, even if he has to destroy a solar system to do it.
Labeled "the villain who wouldn't die", he has become one of Superman's major arch-enemies. And unlike Lex Luthor, he possesses not only incredible intellect but the physical prowess to directly challenge Kal-El in combat.
So let's see how he's evolved over the years.
HONEY, I SHRUNK KANDOR!
By the late 50's, Superman had become more of a sci-fi adventure hero, going off into distant star systems and battling alien would-be-conquerors with as much fervor as he’d battled corrupt union bosses in the 1940's. 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 covering a story 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 now a part of history.
The mood was disrupted when a flying saucer suddenly appeared and Clark's X-Ray vision revealed the villain Brainiac within, wearing a not bad looking green leather jacket and accompanied by a white monkey-like creature named Koko (because even super-villains need a pet!).
Apparently, Brainiac was in the neighborhood and mistook the Columbus for an Earth attack vessel. So he promptly shot at it. Reacting to the situation, Clark quickly got into a space suit and jumped out of the ship, allowing people to believe that he was simply so scared that he’d decided to "jump back to Earth" rather than take his chances with the alien attacker.
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 donned his Superman threads and tried to enter Brainiac's ship, only to be repelled 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 or injury. Surprised, Superman decided he'd get the people aboard the Columbus safely back to Earth and would figure out how to deal with Brainiac later.
Now left alone, Brainiac made his attack on Earth. With some kind of energy beam, he actually shrank down the entire city 
of Paris to the size of only a few inches, after which his "hyper-force" beam then transported the entire place, whole and undamaged with everyone in it still alive, into a bottle he's prepared aboard his ship. Superman was shocked to then see Brainiac do the same to Rome and New York. Our hero was powerless to stop this, repelled by the ship's force-field.
As he shrank down the cities, Brainiac explained to Koko (I guess because he was lonely) that he would take his dozen bottle cities back to his home world 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 save himself several trips and just directly conquer one of the planet's he came across, but I guess he really liked his home environment.
Brainiac then decided to recharge his ship's power with cosmic rays in the area, so he landed on a "nearby planetoid" (which looked like the moon but with stalagmites). Seeing Brainiac now finally outside his ship, Superman immediately attacked with heat-vision, which is a tad extreme but then again this was clearly a guy not to mess around with. So you can imagine Superman's shock and frustration when his heat-vision beams bounced off the villain harmlessly. The guy had a personal force-field too! The Kryptonian got so desperate and frustrated that he actually started tearing up the whole damn planetoid, hurling the pieces at Brainiac, only to see that nothing was getting past that field.
Now at this time in comic continuity, Superman had displayed everything from being able to travel in time to super-hypnosis to super-ventriloquism to being able to move a planet if he needed to. So understand just how astounding this was to readers to see someone practically laughing at his best efforts. I mean, who was this skinny green guy that he could laugh off Superman!
After wearing himself out, Superman apparently retreated. As Clark, he met up with Lois as the Columbus finally landed in Metropolis and asked what had happened after he'd left and "sent Superman" after that alien villain. Suddenly, Metropolis wound up shrunken down and transported into one of Brainiac’s bottles, with Clark in it!
Donning his cape again, Superman was able to fly up and push his way past the giant bottle-stopper that imprisoned his city. He then saw Brainiac and Koko checking on his "prize city." To his shock, the prize of Brainiac's collection was a Kryptonian city taken from Superman's home world before its destruction. Superman entered the bottle-city only to find his powers were gone (due to the bottle city's artificial red sun). Quickly, he found a Kryptonian scientist and explained he was the son of Jor-El, sent to Earth before Krypton’s death. The scientist beamed and said "Jor-El? Why, he was my roommate in college! I'm Professor Kimda, and this is Kandor, the city that was Krypton's capital."
Meanwhile, outside the bottle city of Kandor, Brainiac and Koko laid down next to each other (now that's just creepy) and went into suspended animation, not to awaken until a "lifetime has passed", by which point they’d have returned to Brainiac’s home planet.
With the help of a tiny rocket-ship and a Kryptonian metal-eating mole (imagine a yellow mole the size of two cows that, well, eats metal), Superman escaped from the bottle city. Superman then activated the machines, despite his small size, and started enlarging all the cities of Earth, sending them all back.
After all this, Superman looked back at the energy readings and saw that there was just enough energy in the hyper-force shrinking ray for one more blast. He could either restore himself or Kandor, 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 I'd be there and we'd enlarge simultaneously.
But alas, this idea did not occur to Kal-El and he decided to sacrifice his own size and enlarge Kandor so that its people could start a new life on Earth. But then, Kimda suddenly flew out on a tiny rocketship and pressed the button, restoring Superman instead. Kimda said he could not let Earth be deprived of its hero and so Kandor would remain as it was for now, locked inside a bottle.
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 to discover only upon his arrival that his prize collection was gone.
Not a bad story. Silly monkey aside, you had a villain with incredible intelligence, highly advanced weaponry, a connection to 
Krypton and who was able to defend himself against Superman's abilities (let's face it, Superman never actually did physically overpower or beat him). When Brainiac later returned, he was now wearing the head-set and costume he’d been seen with on the cover of his first appearance. He'd also gotten rid of the pet.
As the stories went on, Brainiac seemed colder now, more vicious. He was also more prone to attack Superman directly, using his vast arsenal and sheer cunning. Before, Superman had been in the way. But now, after having taken his bottle cities away, the Kryptonian was a target for revenge.
Not long afterwards, Superman met up with the Legion of Super-Heroes again, a group of teenage heroes from the 30th
century. The Legion was often expanding its ranks and one of its newest members was a green-skinned, blonde-haired teenage genius who had a familiar interest in purple suits named Querl Dox. Querl went by the code-name Brainiac 5. When Superman questioned this and the kid's resemblance to his own enemy, Brainiac 5 said he was a descendant of the villain, but was in no way evil himself. He proved himself time and time again and Superman was amazed and glad to find that the descendant of someone so vile would be a person who accomplished so much good. Brainiac 5 also befriended Superman's cousin Kara Zor-El AKA Supergirl and the two held an obvious romantic interest in each other.
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.
And so, in Luthor and Brainiac's first team-up, the story began when Lex 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."
A bizarre strategy and I'm not sure why the Computer-Tyrants were overly concerned with P.R., but whatever. 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 (I guess you couldn’t just recognize him by his face since 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 he could study the inhabitants, observing them and experimenting on them as specimens. With each new bottle city, he would expand his knowledge and eventually 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 continuity fix. 
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 80's, 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 Fortress 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 alien 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 body was seemingly destroyed. But then it was shown that his consciousness survived and he housed in a new body made of a living metal.
The new Brainiac lost his emotions, except for perhaps his hatred for Superman and some semblance of paranoia. 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 his experience as a disembodied consciousness, just after his body was destroyed. He believed that during this time he had seen a hand reach out for him and hold him. And then, he saw Superman's face. As Brainiac put it, the 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 over all other life in the universe.
A cool new motivation for the character. After their initial skirmish, Superman enlisted the aid of the JLA and the Teen Titans combined to help him defeat Brainiac and the army he had brought with him. With his new look and attitude, Brainiac had proven once again that any guy who can cause problems for Superman can also cause problems for the entire planet.
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. If Brainiac's body was destroyed, the ship merely built a new form for him to inhabit. It was also pretty damn creepy-looking, as it resembled Brainiac's skull with several tendrils extending from its base.
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 Files in this site's Table of Contents 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 mini-series The Man of Steel by writer/artist John Byrne, we saw the highlights of Superman's first several 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 had ever occurred, as far as history was concerned.
But sure enough, the villain would be re-introduced ... sort of.
Right before John Byrne's reboot of Superman's history, comic mega-star 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 and Curt Swan.
FROM COLU TO ... THE CIRCUS?!
So what was Brainiac like in the Post-Crisis reality? Quite a different guy, 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 that had made him do these things.
As Fine explained it, there was a planet called Colu where there lived a man named Vril Dox,
a great and very ambitious scientist who had a blonde mohawk for some bizarre reason (it was the 80's). Vril Dox was so cold and dispassionate that he actually cloned a younger version of himself just to have a lab assistant. The clone (named Vril Dox II) only wanted love from his "father", but his creator did not consider him to be a son.
When Colu was conquered by the artificially intelligent Computer-Tyrants, Vril Dox was the one Coluan who willingly worked for the new masters. But when they realized he meant to overthrow them, the computer-tyrants executed Vril Dox. Unbeknownst to them, he'd found a way to survive by transmitting his mind across space. His consciousness wound up in Fine's body. A side-effect of this was that Fine developed a brain tumor and also had his latent psionic abilities unlocked, now giving him (and Vril Dox) incredible telekinetic and telepathic abilities.
Superman and Luthor, who later teamed up with Fine, were convinced that the villain (who now called himself Brainiac exclusively) was a mutant whose powers and brain tumor had deluded him into making up a story about being an alien. A lot of fans were disappointed, feeling that John Byrne's Brainiac was in no way respectful to the character they’d known for years and, more importantly, was nowhere near as threatening.
Vril Dox II showed up again in DC's INVASION! storyline and afterwards formed a team of inter-galatic 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." Although working for the side of the angels, Vril Dox II often displayed a cold and callous attitude about life and was even openly hostile towards the Green Lantern Corps and others who performed good deed for free, thus cutting into his and the L.E.G.I.O.N.'s profits.
To help him regulate his powers, Luthor had a head-piece created that Brainiac wore. Together, they would torment Superman. Eventually, Brainiac actually caused Kal to suffer a psychotic break, resulting in the super-hero spending half of his time masquerading as the vigilante Gangbuster, blocking his memories of this hours later when he resumed his Clark Kent persona.
Not bad, but even with new telepathic abilities, Brainiac seemed a shade of his former self. In the past, Brainiac had
always been a guy who stood toe-to-toe with Luthor and who you knew would be able to pose a serious threat all by himself. Now, he looked like a normal bald human being (what is it with Superman and bald villains?) with a goatee and a ridiculous outfit who seemed incapable of plotting a really good scheme without Luthor's help. Very disappointing. But what do you expect when an psychopathic living robot is re-written as an alien fugitive inhabiting a circus mentalist? (Damn you, Byrne!)
A while after Byrne left, DC started getting the idea that maybe at least some of Brainiac's classic elements could be brought back. Fans were not reacting well to the new version and it was hard to make him seem like an arch-enemy for Superman when he had no space-ship, no arsenal and no world-conquering plans.
Deciding he was going to be the pilot of his own destiny rather than just remain as Lex Luthor's underling, Brainiac took over a LexCorp research lab, placing all of its workers under his mental command. Using these workers as puppets, he took over the facilities of the lab and grew a new body for himself, one that resembled his Coluan form and had the head-set grafted directly into the skull, allowing him greater control of his telepathic and telekinetic abilities. Milton Fine and his personality were completely gone now. Vril Dox was all that remained and now he referred to himself simply as 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 creepy tentacles. Brainiac told Superman the design came to him "in a dream", but that he modified it.
Brainiac used his new ship to head back to Colu, where he over-threw the computer-tyrants, taking over the planet for himself (now that sounds more like the alien bad-ass we used to know and love). 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. Anyway, to help him fight his father, Dox enlisted the L.E.G.I.O.N. and Superman also joined in on the battle later on. But despite all these efforts, Brainiac escaped final justice by fleeing 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 who didn't mess aroudn. 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. Not even the headship was seen again after that story, which is insane because it's one of the best-looking attack vessels in comics in my opinion. Poor, under-appreciated headship. Perhaps some day soon you will return to us and nuke a tiny country.
Meanwhile, the bottle city of Kandor was re-introduced into continuity. 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 originally was not revealed, but it was home to many people from several alien races. It was said that the evil sorcerer Tolos kept the city because he used its inhabitants as host bodies from time to time. This way instead of keeping a secret prison somewhere or a riding along in a prison ship, he could place the bottle city on a desk and rest assured that no one inside was going to get out. Superman later took the city from Tolos and brought it to his Fortress, hoping one day he could find a way to restore Kandor to the proper phase of reality and release its inhabitants.
"I'll get you, my pretty!"
NOT COLU! KRYPTON!
In Superman The Animated Series on the WB channel (before it became CW), a new version of Brainiac presented. The Post-Crisis version was ignored. Instead, the animation team decided to go back to a more Pre-Crisis interpretation of the character, but they also decided to alter his origin to give him a stronger connection to 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 series 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 a strange new altered form, joining with Luthor as they both joined on a quest for the achievement of ultimate evolution. Along with this, they created the animated series version of the head-ship, which was just fun to watch as the Justice League battled it.
BACK TO THE COMICS
Seeing how successful an android interpretation of Brainiac was in the cartoons, DC decided to try and bring the comic book version a little bit closer to his Pre-Crisis roots. In The Doomsday Wars mini-series, Brainiac's body was destroyed, but thanks to the help of a fanatical lackey, he was able to preserve his mind and possess the body of Superman's enemy Doomsday.
Afterwards, he kidnapped Clark Ross, the newly born son of Clark Kent's friends 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 android body as "Brainiac 2.5."
Now we've been spending all this time talking about the villain and I know some of you folks are wondering if his descendant went through as many revisions as he did. Well, yes, actually.
After the crossover called Zero Hour, the Legion of Super-Heroes got a complete overhaul of their history and characters. The new version of Brainiac 5 was more of a jerk and later got a white monkey named Koko, emulating the monkey that had hung out with the original Pre-C Brainiac. Whereas the original version of Brainiac 5 had been attracted to Supergirl, the Post-Zero Hour B5 had feelings for his teammate Andromeda, a Daxamite who also happened to be a tall super-strong blonde just like Supergirl.
Later, a space anomaly "upgraded" Brainiac 5, making him more 
considerate of others and finally less of a jerk. An outward sign of his change was that he now had on three discs on his forehead, 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 decided he liked the idea. He later dropped this in the Legion Lost storyline, claiming he had actually hated the title, and just called himself Brainiac 5 again.
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, 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 original Brainiac was exorcised from Lena’s body.
In the story "Return to Krypton", Superman encountered a version of Krypton that existed within the Phantom Zone. But on a return visit, he found out the planet and its inhabitants had been created by B-13 as part of an elaborate trap.
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. This city was actually an alien ghetto for all off-worlders who lived on the planet. Superman confirmed that there had been such a place in Krypton's history and Lois noted the coincidence that a Kryptonian city had the same name as the bottle city that Tolos had kept. So was the Post-Crisis bottle city of Kandor this "alien ghetto" from ancient Krypton? Or was it someplace else that had been named after Krypton's city?
DC was apparently getting comfortable with the notion that the Pre-Crisis vision of Brainiac hadn’t been broken and deserved to be brought back. In his story Silver Age, writer 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.
When Mark Waid's SUPERMAN: Birthright limited series came out, giving people yet another new version of Superman’s origin and early days, the regular Superman titles had our Kryptonian hero return to Kandor for a short time. During this adventure, one member of Kandor referred to Brainiac as the villain who had placed them in their out-of-phase prison within the bottle container. So it seemed that, although Tolos had possessed the bottle city when he met Superman, the place had originally been imprisoned by Brainiac. It was assumed by fans like me that Tolos met Brainiac at some point in the past and simply stole one of his bottle cities when he realized that doing so would give him an incredible supply of host bodies. Years later, writer Geoff Johns would confirm this hypothesis and further stated that the bottle city full of Tolos' prisoners was actually the SECOND city to be called Kandor, named after a Kryptonian colony.
Not long after Superman's brief return to Kandor, our favorite android psychopath showed up again in a cyborg body that resembled his Silver Age self (green skin, purple outfit, funky head-piece). With the help of a girl called Brainiac 8, an android from the future who referred 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.
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.
Brainiac then had Brainiac 8 infiltrate the latest version of the super-hero team called the Outsiders (calling herself "Indigo"), attempting to destroy its members while Luthor attacked the Teen Titans. Though both teams survived, the attack from the Brainiacs and Luthor left heavy marks on them. The Teen Titans later found out that Brainiac was, with Luthor's help, back in the business of growing new bodies for himself, both organic and robotic.
After the events of the story Infinite Crisis (a sequel to The Crisis on Infinite Earths), Brainiac showed up again to fight Superman and Batman. Although his body looks the same as the techno-organic form we saw him wearing just over a year before when he was hanging out with Brainiac 8, it was revealed that he was now entirely robotic again, his form actually composed of a complex array of nannites.
On a side-note, a few new alien baddies later broke into the Fortress, looking for Kryptonians. When they found the bottle city of Kandor there, they declared that this alien collection colony was not the "true Kandor" and smashed it. As this city existed somewhat out-of-phase with our dimension, what happened to the inhabitants is unknown.
Back back to our villain. It took us a while, but the real Brainiac seemed to be back, updated and more dangerous than before. But how do you reconcile some of the seemingly contradictory parts of his Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis history?
I had my own ideas, but recently Geoff Johns let us in on the truth.
"YOU'VE NEVER REALLY MET BRAINIAC ..."
In a recent story-arc in Action Comics, Superman was explaining the nature of Brainiac to Supergirl, referencing that the first time he'd met the villain, he'd been in possession of a carnival mentalist and that since then he'd been in many bodies, some organic, some robotic.
Supergirl then said that she knew all about Brainiac and that he had seemingly destroyed the Kryptonian city of Kandor soon before the planet's destruction. As she recounted the tale, she remarked that it had almost looked as if Brainiac's forces had actually taken the city somehow.
She also revealed that Brainiac was a creature who had attacked and destroyed many worlds and never left his star ship. Instead, he sent out probes, avatars, all of whom were programmed by nannites to follow his basic directives. Milton Fine had somehow been infected with these nannites, nannites which moved from one form to another. But the true Brainiac was out there and had never been to Earth.
This idea of Brainiac existing simultaneously in many forms was borrowed 
from his incarnation on the TV series Smallville (more on that in a bit). Essentially, Superman had never fought the true Brainiac, only his programming in different forms.
Superman no sooner learned this than he found himself a prisoner of the true Brainiac. To his shock, Brainiac had dozens of cities in bottle containers, the only remains of the worlds he'd destroyed. And among them was the "one, true Kandor" which was filled with Kryptonian survivors. He also kept several unique alien beings in individual chambers, all of them in some kind of hypnotic sleep.
Brainiac then approached Superman directly, claiming this was the first time he had been awake in the past three centuries. He explained that he sought to achieve ultimate evolution and so he went to different planets and absorbed its knowledge. In the process, he would steal a major city from each world and then destroy it by causing its sun to go supernova. This meant that he was now the only being with access to the culture, knowledge and technology of that race and so his power increased with each planet's death. When Superman demanded he free his millions of prisoners, Brainiac refused, saying they all belonged to him.
Recently, he had discovered that Superman had survived and had been living on Earth. This was unacceptable, as Superman's presence ensured that the people of Earth learned of Krypton's culture and saw examples of its technology (such as the Fortress of Solitude). He has sworn to take Superman and Supergirl to add to his bottles of specimens and wishes to add Earth's knowledge to his own.
Brainiac believes in physical evolution as well as mental, and so over the centuries he has developed his body to have such great strength and resiliency that he may actually be stronger than Kal-El himself.
Johns was motivated to cement Brainiac as an anti-Superman. Just as Luthor represented the worst humanity had to offer, he wanted Brainiac to represent all out fears of what alien life forms may be like. Cold, unwavering and without mercy. A great new take on the character. We can only wait and see what happens next with him.
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.
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 died, Brainiac 5 would not let the body be taken, surrounding it with his force-field generator as he pondered the situation. Death was merely another problem to him, 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.
On a final note, Mark Waid also snuck in a nice little reference to the old school Brainiac's habit of shrinking cities with his hyper-force beam. In one of Waid's issues, B5 went to Colu with a few of his fellow Legionnaires who were shocked to see what they believed to be an empty planet. Brainiac 5 then revealed that by the 31st century, the people of Colu made it a habit to shrink down all their cities (and likewise their inhabitants) so that they had enough room for everyone and everything and never overwhelmed their world's resources. B5 also referred to it as the ultimate in "data storage." Very cool idea, I must say.
Although Waid no longer writes the series, his version of Brainiac 5 continues to serve the Legion and remains popular among fans (he's also sporting a cool tunic now that has the cartoon Brainiac symbol on his chest).
ALTERNATE VERSIONS
In the limited series Justice (which takes place outside of continuity), Alex Ross did a take on 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.
In the series, Ross revealed that the robotic form Brainiac assumed just before the Crisis is actually what his original body looked like if you just peeled away the green skin and exposed what was underneath. 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.
In the new CW cartoon series Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes, different versions of B5 and his crew were introduced to TV audiences. In this series, Brainiac 5 is not a living 
being from Colu but an actual robot with extendable arms and legs. He is also pretty good-natured and friendl, idolizing Superman but also being careful not to let him know too much about his own future. He's also portrayed as much younger than we've ever seen Brainiac 5 be before. Cute little guy, actually, even if he's not as cool to me as the comic version (I like sarcastic characters, sue me).
This version of Brainiac 5's evil ancestor later showed up. In the episode, the child-like B5 journeys through history data-files to witness just what his awful predecessor had done and what chaos he'd wreaked upon the universe. He then met the "Brainiac 1.0" program who seemed to be existing in 
a closed off section of his computer mind. The original Brainaic said that he himself had studied the young 31st century android ever since he'd been activated. The evil Brainiac then offered his succesor a chip that would upgrade him and open up new possibilities for his mind and computing skills.
"The choice is yours," he said.
Brainiac 5 accepted this and downloaded the chip's program into his mainframe. But this was a trick and viewers saw Brainiac 5 then smile evily. What makes matters worse is that the cartoon had already established the possibility that Brainiac 5 would one day commit a horrible atrocity in his own future.
In the Elseworlds title Superboy's Legion of Super-Heroes by Alan Davis, we found a version Brainiac who resembled his robotic looking Pre-Crisis self and was masquerading as Lex Luthor (who naturally was long-dead by the 30th century). The story mentioned that the villain had been called "the Vril Dox" on his planet and that this was a phrase which translated roughly to English as "eternal brain." I thought that was a nice touch, personally.
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 movie Superman II. Clark defeated the disciples, but did not witness what the audience did: that the next day, black ooze descended from the ship and formed into what looked like a human being (played by James Marsters).
This humanoid seemingly composed of nannites inserted himself into Clark’s life, taking a job as a history teacher 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 and somehow had knowledge of classified projects.
Astute viewers noted that Professor Fine's opening lines in the TV series were "Do you know where the greatest computer in the world resides?" And then pointed to his own forehead before saying "… It's the human BRAIN.” And during a discussion with Clark, Professor Fine said "Truth is my life’s work." Both of these dialog bits were lovely nods to how the Pre-Crisis and the animated version of Brainiac were living computers obsessed with obtaining knowledge. And later when Luthor asked Professor Fine how he was able to obtain classified information from LuthorCorp computers, Fine smiled and simply said "I used my brain."
Professor Fine later told Clark that he was a Kryptonian survivor as well. He claimed that Superman's father Jor-El had been a tyrant and that only a heroic rebel named Zod had nearly defeated him. He then asked for Clark's help in destroying the Fortress of Solitude, Jor-El's legacy, but Clark finally learned the truth. Zod had been the true villain and Jor-El the hero trying to stop him. He also discoverd that Fine himself was not an organic being but a "Kryptonian artificial intelligence" who was trying to help Zod free himself from the Phantom Zone, a prison dimension. What's more, there were actually multiple versions of Fine walking the Earth, all linked to each other.
When Martha Kent went to the Fortress of Solitude and asked the recorded simulation of Jor-El about Professor Fine, Jor-El referred to the man as a "Brain Inter-Active Construct." Get it? BrainIAC.
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 and the head set. And even the headship if that were at all possible.
After having seen Marsters in action, I am pleased to say I spoke too soon. The show in general is too hokey for my taste at times, with cheesy lines or similar things. Bu Marsters did a great job of making himself seem to be 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 were great. 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 was at least a nice nod to his comic roots. And even though we didn't get to seem him don green skin or pilot a head-ship, it was entertaining.
Nice work, Mr. Marsters. You went from being a vampire we loved to being quite entertaining as Superman's other biggest arch-enemy. Good job!
IN CLOSING ...
No matter how many times you destroy his body, he's not going anywhere. Back in the Pre-Crisis days, they called him "the villain who wouldn't die!" and I think he's been living up to that.
Hope you enjoyed this essay. Cheers!
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