I’m not the world’s biggest Superman fan, I just read an occasional reprint of Supes’ greatest adventures. So, I’m rather confused by his various appearences.
One I’ve seen is a humanoid midgit. He collected cities from various planets, and kept them in bottles, including the city of Kandor from Krypton.
Then in Moore’s strip * Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow?* Brainiac is a metal skull with crab legs. He says at one point “I shrunk Kandor” so it seems to be the sdame entity. But why such a different appearence?
And thirdly, Superman is sometimes visited by a boy from the future also called Brainiac. This (I think) is an entirely different person. But is there any connection?
What’s the deal here folks? Are there any other Brainiacs around?
Brainiac originally was just an alien scientist who collected cities by shrinking them and placing them in bottles. He met Superman when he harvested a number of Earth cities, including Metropolis. While aboard Brainiac’s ship, Superman discovered the Kryptonian city of Kandor, harvested by Brainiac some decades earlier, before that panet exploded. While Brainaic put his ship on autopilot and himself in suspended animation (setting the controls for 100 years), Superman restored the Earth cities and kept the bottled Kandor, leaving Brainiac’s ship to continue on.
Since no comic-book premise can be left untampered, though, Brainiac was revived and plagued Superman intermittently. In a Supergirl story, she travels to the future to meet with the Legion of Super-Heroes (a late 21st-century superpowered scout troop, essentially) and encounters Brainiac 5, a good-guy descendent of her cousin’s enemy. Somewhere along the way, though, it was established that the original Brainiac was actually an android, making parenting issues complicated. This was explained by claiming he’d adopted a biological child and genetically enhanced him (and subsequently that child’s descendants) to have an intelligence comparable to Brainiac’s own. The Legion time-frame was later shifted to the late 30th century, but by then Brainiac 5’s name was established and it was left unchanged.
Also along the way, Brainiac greatly enhanced and upgraded himself, shedding his green-skinned humanoid appearance for a somewhat skeletal robotic form. Of course, all that was changed when the DC universe underwent a major revamp in the mid-eighties, but that’s when it starts getting really complicated…
We the readers have met, of only briefly Brainiac 1, Brainiac 2 (AKA Vril Dox), Brainiac 4 (in a flashback), Brainiac 5 (Querl Dox, 3 different versions, it was the second (who was eventually renamed Brainiac 5.1) who had the flashback we met 4 in), 8 (Damn that thing!), and 13.
They range from the villainous (1 and 8) to the pragmatic, but generally benevolent (2) to heroic (5). I’m singularly unfamiliar with 13, so I can’t say whether it was good or evil. 4 mostly just wanted to be left alone.
2-5 are biological. 1 is an AI, but he generally inhabits humanoids for some reason. 8 was an android. Again, I don’t know about 13, but 8 says by her time Coluans had given up humanoid form, so I assume 13 is an AI - either just a computer or an android. 2, 3, 6, 7 & 9-12 we know exist only because of the numbering of the ones we know.
I’m pretty sure Vril enhanced his own intellect, in his effort to overthrow the Computer Tyrants of Colu (who Brainiac had been created to serve).
That was post-crisis. Bryan’s description was pre-crisis.
Of course, then there’s Pulsar Stargrave who could have been Brainiac 4, or possible the first one, but was definately an android. (Matter Eater Lad bit his nose off and you could see circuitry)
Nope. I knew I read it in Legion either late 70s, or early 80s, but I couldn’t figure out which issue it would be - and I have about a 6-year window to sort through. On a whim, I checked out Brainiac and Brainiac 5’s entries from Who’s Who (1985 series - so both pre-Crisis and Pre-ZH) - Brainiac’s mentions Vril only in passing, and B5’s mentions that Vril enhanced his own intelligence in order to take down the Computer Tyrants (bringing himself 2 intelligence levels above the Tyrants). If I ever remember which issue this came up in (no doubt a Pulsar Stargrave appearance, but that’s still some sifting), I’ll post a more specific reference.
I don’t really read Superman from the era, so the story from Legion may be contradicted there at some point, but the Legion story is (for good reason) canon.
Stargrave was definitely Brainiac 1 - he referred to Vril when B5 ‘killed’ him. ‘Your ancestor, Brainiac 2, was my adoptive son.’ No mention there of who enhanced Vril’s intelligence.
I think the comic versions have been covered fairly well.
The animated series Brainiac is/was an AI created by Jor-El, which escaped the destruction of Krypton. It’s a nutbar, on a mission to collect things, and it regards itself as the last, best survivor of Krypton. So it wants to absorb Kal-El, the other survivor. Thus, the drama.
No mention of Colu in the animated series, as far as I am aware. There has been at least one on-screen appearance of a probable Brainiac 5 – at least, a guy with green skin and blond hair, wearing a purple outfit.
On the tv show “Smallville” they had Chloe use the term “brainiac” in the slang sense that it’s used in the real world, to mean an obnoxiously smart person. Bit of fun there.
In one of those “It’s astonishing I’ve remember this because it happened almost forty years ago” moments, I’ve just remembered why DC decided to change the backstory on Brainiac to make him an android. The name “Brainiac” was trademarked for a very primitive toy computer designed by Edmund C. Berkeley. The makers of it sued DC. DC agreed in a settlement (among other things) to turn the character into an android so the company could get some publicity from the comics. I just checked this on some websites to make sure I’ve remembered it right.