Brainiac is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino, Brainiac first appeared in Action Comics #242 (1958), and has since endured as one of Superman's greatest enemies.
Brainiac is commonly depicted as a superintelligent android or cyborg from the planet Colu who is obsessed with collecting all knowledge in the known universe. He travels the galaxy and shrinks cities to bottle size for preservation on his skull-shaped spaceship before destroying their source planets, believing the knowledge he acquires to be most valuable if he alone possesses it. Among these shrunken cities is Kandor, the capital of Superman's home planet Krypton, and Brainiac is even responsible for Krypton's destruction in some continuities. Regarded as one of the most dangerous threats in the DC Universe, Brainiac comes into repeated conflict with Superman and the Justice League. Although stories often end in Brainiac's apparent destruction, the character's artificial consciousness is resurrected in new physical forms, some robotic and others more organic-based in appearance.
The character has been adapted in various media incarnations, having been portrayed in live-action by James Marsters in Smallville and Blake Ritson in Krypton, Nikolai Witschl in Superman & Lois, and is set to appear in the DC Universe (DCU) film Man of Tomorrow (2027), portrayed by Lars Eidinger. Corey Burton, John Noble, Jeffrey Combs, Michael Emerson, and others have provided Brainiac's voice in animation and video games. The character's name, a portmanteau of the words brain and maniac, is believed by etymologists to be the inspiration for the informal noun brainiac, meaning freakishly intelligent person, which entered common use in the 1970s.
Fictional character biography Silver Age The first Brainiac/Kandor comic book story in Action Comics #242 (July 1958) was based on a story arc in the Superman comic strip from April through August 1958. In the comic strip story, Superman's foe was named Romado, who traveled the cosmos with a white alien monkey named Koko, shrinking major cities and keeping them in glass jars. The strip's Kryptonian bottled city was named Dur-El-Va. This cross-continuity conflict was not unprecedented; in 1958 and '59, editor Mort Weisinger used the comic strip to prototype a number of concepts that he planned to introduce in the book, including Bizarro and red kryptonite.
Brainiac is a bald, green-skinned humanoid who arrives on Earth and shrinks various cities, including Metropolis, storing them in bottles with the intent of using them to restore the then-unnamed planet he ruled. He was originally notable only for having shrunk the bottle city of Kandor with his shrinking ray and for using a force field. In his initial story, he also traveled with a white monkey-like alien named Koko; the monkey also appears in a 1960 Superman story retelling the story of Kandor's disappearance (Superman #141 (November 1960)). Koko was quickly dropped from Brainiac's stories, but a version of the character has made sporadic appearances as the villain's pet in the series Justice and the 2008 storyline "Brainiac" in Action Comics. The villain's descendant Brainiac 5 also had a pet named Koko for several stories in the 1990s.
In subsequent appearances in this early period, Brainiac was used mostly as a plot device rather than as a featured villain of the month. Brainiac's next appearance was mostly behind the scenes, when he tried to kill Lois Lane and Lana Lang, prompting Superman to give Lois and Lana superpowers. But the villain remained unseen except as a plot twist at the end of the story. Brainiac's next appearance was in "Superman's Return to Krypton" in Superman #141 (November 1960), in which the villain stole the bottle city of Kandor, the only city on Krypton that believes Jor-El's warning of doom for the planet, and which had already built a space ark within the city to save the population. Brainiac's next present-day appearance was in Action Comics #275 (April 1961), which showed the villain planning to defeat Superman by exposing him to red-green kryptonite, which he had created, giving Superman a third eye on the back of his head, forcing him to wear various hats to hide it. Superman soon defeated Brainiac and sent him off into the distant past. This was the first in-story appearance of Brainiac's iconic red diode/electrode-like objects atop his head, which had previously appeared on the cover of his first appearance in Action Comics #242 (July 1958), but were not shown in the actual story. In Superboy #106 (July 1963), an infant Superman meets Brainiac, and it is explained that Brainiac looks the same due to his 200-year life span. In Superman #93, Brainiac regenerates himself. It is revealed that he came from a planet called Bryak and, after a voyage in space, he returned to find everybody dead from a plague. He intended to get people from other planets (in shrunken cities to be enlarged with his growth ray) to repopulate Bryak, where he would rule them.
Brainiac's legacy was revealed in Action Comics #276 (May 1961), in a Legion of Super-Heroes back-up story. This story introduced Brainiac 5, who claimed to be Brainiac's 30th-century descendant. Unlike his ancestor, Brainiac 5 used his "twelfth-level intellect" for the forces of good and joined the Legion alongside Supergirl, with whom he fell in love. His home planet was given variously as Bryak, Yod, Yod-Colu, or simply Colu.Adventure Comics #356 (May 1967) 20th century Colu is a rim world found on the approach to the Magellanic Clouds.
In Superman #167 (February 1964), it was retconned that Brainiac was a robot created by the Computer Tyrants of Colu to spy on and invade other worlds. Brainiac's distinctive forehead diodes are explained as "electric terminals of his sensory nerves" necessary for him to function. To explain the 1961 introduction of the villain's living descendant Brainiac 5, the story reveals the Computer Tyrants provided the villain with an assistant, a young Coluan boy named Vril Dox tasked with masquerading as his "son" so others would believe Brainiac to be a trustworthy organic alien scientist with a family rather than a deadly robot. The young boy Vril Dox was designated "Brainiac 2". In the same issue, the letter column contained a "special announcement" explaining that the change in the characterization of Brainiac was "in deference" to the "Brainiac Computer Kit", a toy computer created by Edmund Berkeley and based on the Geniac that predated the creation of the comic book character.
In this same story, Lex Luthor discovers the Computer Tyrants could have given their robot villain a twelfth-level intellect but only gave him a tenth-level, the same as them, so he would not dominate them. Luthor frees Brainiac from imprisonment and increases his intellect to a twelfth-level one. He also implants a device to temporarily disable him or destroy him if necessary. The two join forces, but Brainiac later removes the device and blocks out Luthor's memory of his inner workings and the fact that he is a machine. This story becomes the first of many Brainiac/Luthor team-ups. Meanwhile, Vril Dox leads a revolt against the Computer Tyrants, eventually destroying them and freeing Colu. Brainiac sees a monument to this when he returns to Colu later on.
King Kull later enlisted Brainiac and Mister Atom of Earth-S to attack the city of Tomorrow and speed up the rotation enough for the people of Earth to fly into the air. They are defeated by Green Lantern of Earth-Two, Green Lantern of Earth-One, Flash of Earth-Two, Flash of Earth-One, Mercury of Earth-S, and Ibis the Invincible of Earth-S.Justice League of America #137 (December 1976). DC Comics.
30th century (Pre-Crisis) At some indeterminate point in time, Brainiac fled into the 30th century. Developing the ability to absorb and manipulate stellar energy, he remade himself as Pulsar Stargrave. He became a powerful enemy of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and once masqueraded as Brainiac 5's biological father until he is killed by his own blast.Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #224, 226 (February and April 1977),Legion of Super-Heroes #273 (1981). DC Comics. In current continuity, Brainiac's connection to Pulsar Stargrave remains an open question, one even Brainiac 5 has yet to resolve.Adventure Comics (vol. 2) #9 (late May 2010). DC Comics.
Bronze Age
After Brainiac was revealed to be a robotic being, some stories would end him seemingly being destroyed, only for him to appear again in a repaired body or having transmitted his consciousness into a new form. Since he was essentially a living computer program that could be housed in different forms if "killed", Brainiac was sometimes referred to on comic book covers as "the villain who won't die!".
In the 1980s, DC Comics attempted to re-define several aspects of Superman's stories to boost sagging sales. In Action Comics #544-546 (June–August 1983), Lex Luthor acquires a renewed sense of purpose and dons a high-tech warsuit, while Brainiac is reimagined by writer Marv Wolfman and artist Gil Kane and given a new appearance designed by Ed Hannigan. In a previous story, Brainiac had constructed a giant, computer-controlled planet to destroy Superman only to then be defeated and trapped in the planet's core. In Wolfman and Kane's story "Rebirth", published in Action Comics #544, Brainiac attempts to free himself by causing the nearby star, Epsilon 4, to go nova and utilize its energy. Instead, his body is converted into energy; his living program, his consciousness, experiences a strange journey before returning to his technology, where a new body is created for him over the next few months. As Brainiac recollects, during his journey he saw a great hand reach out from a void, ensnaring him briefly before releasing him. He also remembers seeing Superman's face at the same time. Reborn in a new body, the villain believes he has seen the Master Programmer, the divine force behind the universe's creation, and that this entity created Superman as an "angel of death" to destroy Brainiac. More determined than ever to kill and study Superman, Brainiac now has a colder, more merciless, and robot-like personality than before. He claims to lack emotions, yet shows signs of hatred and fear in regards to Superman. His new body is overtly robotic with a skull-like face and a reflective, iridescent honeycomb-patterned "braincase." He also creates a starship shaped like his new skull and adorned by metal tendrils, often referred to by fans and comic creators as the "skull ship." The ship acts as an extension of Brainiac himself. Brainiac retains this robotic appearance until after the Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries ends in 1986, rebooting DC Comics continuity.
This incarnation of Brainiac meets his final end in the "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" storyline that ended the pre-Crisis Silver/Bronze Age Superman chronology. Lex Luthor finds Brainiac's robotic head unit, with barely any power left. He hopes to team up with the evil living program again, only to become an unwilling host body for Brainiac instead. Fighting Brainiac's control, Luthor begs a superpowered Lana Lang to kill him, who complies by breaking his neck. Luthor dies and Brainiac retains control of the body for a short time until rigor mortis sets in. "Propelled by sheer malice", Brainiac's head unit leaves Luthor's corpse and crawls a few inches before running out of power.Superman #423 (September 1986)
Modern Age