History Of Brainiac

[Music] welcome to very we love comics more than I hope Krypton is a good show I'm your host Ayers quinones that's right Krypton premieres this week and if you've seen the trailers for the show you know that the main villain for the first season is none other than Brainiac who is easily one of Superman's coolest and most popular villains and I've got to say he looks and sounds absolutely amazing from what we've seen thus far with that said I see no better time to give you this guy's history than right here and now before I get into this I want to let you guys know there are several different versions of Brainiac for example there's Brainiac - Brainiac 5 Brainiac 13 and so on but for today's purposes I'll be sticking to the main og Brainiac that was created by writer Otto binder and artist al plasti no and first introduced to us in action comics issue 242 in July of 1958 a little fun fact is that the term Brainiac when referring to someone as a genius originated from the character Brainiac in the comics the word apparently didn't exist before Brainiac was created although some people do argue that the term came from the first computer ENIAC but like most people I side with the coming from the comics anyway binder and plasti know combined the words brain and maniac and bada-bing bada-boom you have an awesome name but now looks like a gander at how this villain set himself on track to become one of Superman's best villains in brainiacs first appearance in Action Comics 242 in 1958 we see Brainiac as a bald green skinned pink shirt and boots wearing humanoid alien who comes to earth and starts shrinking a bunch of cities like metropolis Paris and even Rome he then placed the shrunken cities and big glass jars we then find out the reason he's drinking all these cities is to restore a planet that he used to rule but before he does that of course he has to examine them first so he takes tweezers to a shrunken New York and destroys the George Washington Bridge he's literally like a kid taking a magnifying glass to an ant of course it's then up to Superman to save the day however it doesn't go over well for Superman at first when he first confronts Brainiac he finds out that Brainiac has an ultra force shield that makes him impervious to anything Superman throws at him long story short Superman willingly lets himself be shrunk in order to get past brainiacs ultra force barrier and onto a ship which back then just looked like a flying saucer anyway once Superman goes all ant-man he discovers a hidden bottle that Brainiac was hiding and in this bottle is a city from Krypton called candor which Brainiac shrunk in stole years before Krypton exploded at the same time that Superman is making this discovery Brainiac finishes collecting cities and returns to a ship to put himself into suspended animation we then go back to Superman who's still in the bottle that contains candor he meets his father's old roommate professor Kim da who helped Superman figure out a way to restore metropolis and the rest of Earth's cities but there's a catch by the time they restored all of Earth's cities there wasn't enough energy to restore candor so with only one charge left and Superman stole small Kim da flies his rocket into the button that triggers the Ray to hit Superman and he regains a normal size Kim Dodd did this because he said that candor could not let earth be deprived of its great superhero Superman then replies by saying something to the effect of you sacrificed your people for me I'm grateful but your city must forever remain tiny now so Superman keeps the miniature Kandor safe in his fortress of solitude and says perhaps I'll find a way to restore it to normal size and live with my people again someday who knows and just like that we have brainiacs first origin although it's not really much of an origin we just learned that he's an alien that shrinks in steel cities however the character was retconned in 1964 with Superman issue 167 and it's here where we find out that Brainiac isn't an alien at all he's actually a machine created by the computer tyrants of Kalu he acts as a spy for them so they can invade other worlds this is why he was given a non computer appearance the comic also tells us why he has those red diodes on his head they created him with electrical terminals on his sensory nerves that he has unable to function without so if you ever wondered why those things are on his head now you know we also learned that the computer tyrants could have given Brainiac a 12th level intellect but instead they gave him tenth intellect to prevent Brainiac from being superior and trying to dominate them pretty smart if you ask me DC decided to add this plot twist to brainiacs origin because of a copyright issue with a toy computer called the Brainiac computer kit but now it's time to move on to some story arcs [Music] after his first appearance Brainiac would every so often reappear to bug the heck out of Superman like the time he tried to kill Lois Lane in Lana Lang which let the Superman giving Lois and Lana superpowers in order to defend themselves then we have Superman issue 141 which is pretty important to Superman's history and mythos it's in this issue that we learned just how Brainiac stole candor and what's extremely ironic about him shrinking and taking candor before Krypton exploded is the fact that candor was the only city that believed jor-el's warning without Krypton's impending doom yet out of all the cities Brainiac could have taken on Krypton candor was the one he chose effectively dooming the remaining Kryptonians to destruction after that issue we get some pretty goofy stories involving Brainiac like the time you use red and green kryptonite on Superman which gave him a third eye on the back of his head forcing Supes to wear hats in order to hide it then you have the time Superman meets Brainiac as a baby it's just all kinds of weird but hey that's comics in the 50s and 60s for you now skipping some stuff here and there because remember I'm only talking about the juicy important stuff we stop next in the Bronze Age of comics when lackluster sales prompted DC to shake things up a bit and redefine several aspects of Superman's series it was during this time that DC gave Lex an updated look including his now iconic green and purple mech suit but they also redesigned Brainiac to make him look like a robot skeleton with a honeycomb looking brain case of sorts in Action Comics 544 in 1983 he was given his now super iconic skull ship as well which we're also gonna see in Krypton and it's one of the coolest ships in comics in my opinion so I cannot wait what's crazy about his starship is that it's just an extension of himself with the ship made to look like his skull with tentacle things coming from it anyway this version of the character lasted until after crisis on Infinite Earths because with this being comics we're talking about the new look for Brainiac didn't last either thankfully a ship stayed the same and that's a good thing jumping forward in the timeline yet again past stories like panic in the sky that again the Doomsday Wars and so on brings us all the way to a very important part of brainiacs history and that's the five issue Superman Brainiac story that took place from Action Comics 866 through 870 this story was written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Gary Frank the same creative team that's currently doing Doomsday Clock in this story Geoff Johns reckons Brainiac yet again and we learned that Brainiac stole Kandor 35 years ago and in current day is trying to shrink and steal metropolis amongst all this Superman is brought onto brainiacs ship where he's introduced to his new form which is definitely where the Krypton show is pulling its influence from in fact most modern adaptations of Brainiac outside of comics like injustice to Krypton and so on pull inspiration from this very story there's also a really cool three panel layout in this story that shows all the past versions of Brainiac as Superman is talking to Supergirl in the fortress of solitude Superman tells Supergirl who Brainiac is and how he's taken on several different incarnations of him one of the things Superman says to her is through science he created other bodies to control some were organic some were a robotic so I just thought that was an awesome way for Jeff Jones to acknowledge all the different retcons and incarnations of Brainiac over the past several decades for fans I love when writers an artist give a nod to that kind of stuff and then even try to find a way to make it work in continuity anyway by the end of this story brainiacs defeated when Superman knocks him out of his ship and into a swamp you see brainiacs weakness is bacteria and disease and it's a ship that provides him with the sterile environment he needs to protect him from those things so being separated from his ship and thrown into a swamp where his body becomes covered with microscopic bacteria is pretty much a death sentence for him but even though Supes saved the day not everything is good and his father Jonathan Kent suffers a heart attack and dies and this brings us to the new 52 where Brainiac had a huge role in the Superman doom story there's a whole lot to it but while everything is happening with Superman turning into doomsday or super doom as he's been dubbed Brainiac is taking over everyone's mind on earth and he later reveals his plan to Superman the reason why he's trying to control all Minds on earth is because according to him the combined psionic power of all the minds he has captured throughout the universe can bend reality to his will and he wants that power to recreate his world including his wife and son now you may be asking wife and son yeah the new 52 made a few alterations to brainiacs origin including the addition of his wife and child who died when his world was destroyed then more recently with DC rebirth in Hal Jordan in the Green Lantern Corps series Larfleeze uses his orange Lantern ring to control a robot that is apparently running on Brainiac 2.0 software a robot that also looks exactly like the 1983 version of Brainiac with that said in action 976 it was confirmed during a flashback sequence that restored Superman's pre new 52 continuity that the post-crisis post-2008 version of Brainiac still exists in rebirth continuity and that Superman has in fact encountered him in the past meaning the robot Larfleeze was controlling was indeed one of brainiacs drones in NOT Brainiac himself fascinating I know lastly Brainiac is apparently going to be a huge part of the upcoming know Justice storyline it involves Brainiac showing up to earth but not to destroy it instead he seeks to warn Earth's heroes and villains that there's a cosmic level threat coming and that in order to defeat it heroes and villains alike will have to team up this is gonna give us four different Justice League teams that are outfitted with brainiacs technology I cannot wait to read this but now how about some powers and abilities as his name implies brainiacs main power is his mind originally he only had a tenth level intellect but it soon wets a level 12 this gives him calculation abilities enhanced memory and advanced understanding of mechanical engineering bioengineering physics and other theoretical and applied sciences lastly I can't forget he has extensive knowledge of various alien technologies brainiacs mind is so powerful that his post-crisis incarnation said his brain is able to process and sort through the knowledge of over 490 octo to Cillian beings quite frankly I don't even know how much that is but it's a whole lot more than a trillion brainiacs mental powers also allow them to possess others absorb information from other beans transfers freaking consciousness manipulate computer systems replicate multiple versions of himself and exerting powers to transverse and control space and time itself yeah this dude is no joke but I'm not done yet he's also incredibly strong the exact level varies but his strength usually rivals that of Superman he also has a forcefield belt to protect himself and of course he has a shrinking ray which he uses the capture and model cities hence one of his nicknames being the collector of worlds Brainiac has several more powers and abilities which vary depending on what incarnation of them you were talking about but overall he's a technopath telepathic telekinetic super-strong beast you don't want to mess with having said that he does have the weakness I mentioned earlier Brainiac has been shown to be quite vulnerable to bacteria and disease particularly when he's outside of his ship so yeah his weakness is germs hey if Superman's weakness is a green rock it's only fair that one of his main villains weakness is something like germs but now I know you guys probably want to read some Brainiac comics so read Action Comics 242 whatever happened to the man of tomorrow story Superman doomed Superman Brainiac by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank panic in the sky and while not a reading recommendation watch the Superman Brainiac attacks direct a home video from Superman the animated series it's amazing before we get to this week's bias we want to let you guys know about the great people at Verve who helped make this episode possible Verve is an awesome digital platform that gathers channels from a bunch of our favorite content creators and puts them all together in one place and for a limited time the team over at VirB spelled vrv is offering you guys the variant nation an exclusive free 30 day ad free trial of Verve premium by going to VR Vico forward slash variant or by clicking the link in the description below that's 30 days to watch a ton of great content including my hero academia sub which is one of my favorite new animes but they also have Dragon Ball super and exclusive shows like last man and season four of bravest warriors Verve also 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when you do let us know what you're watching so we can check it out to again the offer is only for a limited time so jump on it right away you'll thank me later [Music] first up for Wednesday March 21st we have the Avengers issue 685 the Avengers are in a fight of their lives trying to end the Hulk's rampage but nothing can stop the unstoppable here we have Mighty Thor issue 705 the epic showdown years in the making finally explodes across the heavens Thor battles the unstoppable man GOG with the fate of Asgardian hanging in the balance now we have Nightwing issue 41 Nightwing has twice failed to stop the judge and if he falters a third time Dick Grayson may never recover next up is Witchblade issue for life after part 4 alex has survived her first major test as the Witchblade but now a far more powerful foe has set its sights on taking her down it's a comment on top Alex must fully embrace her role as the new witchblade's host and finally we have Batman issue 43 the quest to end IVs domination heads toward a close but can Batman offer IV Redemption on the other side of the scram and that brings another episode of Baron to a close but remember links for all our social media like our Instagram or Facebook or Twitter and website is in the description below and if you liked today's episode be sure to subscribe and then hit the bell next to it so you're notified whenever we upload a new episode I'll see you guys next time I want to talk about all things comics you

Channel: Variant Comics

Views: 1,172,055

Keywords: comics, DC Comics, Geek, Nerd, comic books, comic reviews, comic book movies, comic movies, marvel, dc, Image Comics, comic con, superhero, superheroes, movie reviews, graphic novels, graphic novel, Brainiac, Collector Of Worlds, Krypton, Superman, Villain, Jor El, Clark Kent, Superhero, Justice League, Origin, variant, variant comics

Id: VsXHZqMfs8s

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 21 2018