Brainiac (DCAU)
From Pop-Cult Guides
| DC animated Universe: Chronology |
| Batman: The Animated Series | Superman: The Animated Series | Batman Beyond | The Zeta Project | Static Shock | Justice League | Movies |
 
|
| Superman: The Animated Series:Characters | Episodes | Movies | Comics | Video games | Cast and crew | Broadcasting | Awards | DVD releases |
| Justice League/Justice League Unlimited: Characters | Villains | Episodes | Cast and crew | Movies | Comics | Video games | Broadcasting | Awards | DVD releases |
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Characteristics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Created by | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Otto Binder |
Brainiac is a fictional character, a DC Comics supervillain and frequent opponent of Superman. Created by Otto Binder, he first appeared in Action Comics #242 (July 1958). Due to complex storylines involving time travel, cloning, and revisions of DC's continuity, several variations of Brainiac have appeared.
Contents |
[edit] Appearances
- The Last Son Of Krypton, Part I
- The Last Son Of Krypton, Part II
- The Last Son Of Krypton, Part III
- Stolen Memories
- Ghost in the Machine
- Bizarro's World
- Knight Time
- New Kids in Town
- Twilight, Part I
- Twilight, Part II
- A League of Their Own, Part I
- A League of Their Own, Part II
- Panic in the Sky
- Divided We Fall
- Grudge Match
[edit] Movies
- Brainiac Attacks (out of the continuity)
[edit] DC animated universe history
[edit] Superman: The Animated Series
In The Last Son Of Krypton, Part I, the first episode of the series, Brainiac debuts as an artificial intelligence controlling the global information, digital resources and most of the day-to-day operations of Krypton in the style of HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. He senses the imminent destruction of the planet, but rather than warn others, he chooses to save himself and the collected records of Krypton. Despite Jor-El's development of the situation and his efforts to warn Kryptonians in order to plan an exodus, Brainiac denies facts fearing such preparations would take much of the time it needs to save itself. According to Brainiac's logic, as long as the records of Krypton exist in his posession, the loss of the planet itself and all its living inhabitants is part of the natural order, so at the end of the episode he takes all the information and data bases of the planted and leaves it and the Kryptonians to die there. The only survivior of Krypton is Kal-El, who is sent to earth and grows among humans as Clark Kent.
In space, Brainiac starts visiting other planets to gather information asimilate their technology and destroying them one by one until, in Stolen Memories eventually gets to Earth and learns about Kal-El. By then he has a powerful space ship with enough technological resources to storage all information about hundreds of planets he has destroyed and to destroy more, as well as a protocol android body to deal with the civilizations he visits. In the episode, he visits earth under the pretense of a peaceful exchange of knowledge with Lex Luthor, in order to buy time to convince Kal-el, now Superman, to join him and then perform his usual operation on earth. At first, Brainiac doesn't reveal Superman what he does to the planets once he gathers the information, however, he eventually discovers Brainiac's true intentions, and with the help of Luthor, destroys him along with his ship. However, some of his data survives in Lexcorp's database.
In Ghost in the Machine the data of Brainiac downloads into LexCorp's computers is revealed to be not only alien knowledge, but a copy of himself. There, he starts using Lexcorp's technology to restore himself, but his recovery gets to a point in which it needs to capture Luthor to force him to build a new body. Brainiac ends up destroyed again and Lex is saved by Superman with the aid of Mercy Graves, but Brainiac managed to shot Luthor an apparently not very harmful beam which would have big consecuences in the fourth season of Justice League (aires years later).
In Knight Time he improved an repeated the Gost in the Machine operation. This time he uses the Lexcorp link to Waynetech to transfer his data there and use their resouces and space technology, only he also developed technology to take control of Bruce Wayne's mind. With his android already rebuilt, acting trought Bruce Wayne, he has WayneTech technicians and engeneers working on a space ship of his design modeled after Kryptonian technology. Althuogh his operations were kept secret long enough to almost complete the ship, having Bruce completely devoted to it, his absense as Batman is noted by the Gotham City criminals and that way it eventually comes to the attention of Superman, who teams up with Robin to take the crime down and solve the case.
[edit] Justice League
After Knight Time, Brainiac manages to survive and restart his usual operation in space, growing stronger and more powerful than ever. In the animated series Justice League episode "Twilight" Brainiac attacks Apokolips after Darkseid had suffered a major defeat at the hands of Orion. As the invasion advances, Darkseid convinces the Justice League to save Apokolips. When the League gets to Brainiac's ship to stop the assault, they are taken hostage by the two villains, who were revealed to be working together. While Brainiac was attempting to transfer his mind into Superman, Darkseid, who identifies the computer as the anti-life ecuation, betrays him and hacks into his systems. After a battle between a Darkseid-controlled Brainiac and the Justice League, the ship in which they were battling exploded, seemingly killing both Brainiac and Darkseid.
[edit] Static Shock
A remaining piece of Brainiac hard drive kept in stasis at the Justice League's Watchtower (it is unclear from which attack does it come from). In the Static Shock two-part crossover episode A League of Their Own , during a visit of Static and Gear there is a power failure and they are conveniently were tapped by the League to help recharge the generators. Meanwhile, Brainiac makes the most of the break by transfering himself to Gear's Backpack droid, and later turn Richie into a cyborg under his control.
As Brainiac proceeded to use Richie's hands and technological skills to build a warship and take over the Justice League one by one with small implants inserted between skull and the spinal column, Richie attempts to fight back and tells Static the means by which to defeat Brainiac: Backpack's remote control had an off switch. Static eventually discovered it and was able to stop Brainiac's scheme at the source, ergo saving Earth.
The voice of Brainiac here sounds quite different because the producers of Static Shock decided to pitch Corey Burton's voice significantly lower for their show.
[edit] Justice League Unlimited
In the Justice League Unlimited episode Divided We Fall, it is revealed the beam Brainiac shot Luthor in Ghost in the Machine delivers Luthor a nano-robotic probe carrying a portion of his consciousness into Lex Luthor. When it starts manifesting (around the first Justice League Unlimited season), it began modifying Luthor's body to the point that it healed his cancer, giving him superstrenght and subtly controlling him into committing actions that resulted in a major story arc that occurred throughout the first two seasons of Justice League Unlimited. While Brainiac has through Luthor the Grovernment and the Justice League busy fighting each other, his plan was to get his his hands in secret files like the AMAZO and the Dark Heart technologies.
At the end of the episode Panic in the Sky, after Luthor hacks the Watchtower to shoot a Cadmus (a secret government agency to deal with metahumans) base creating a war between it an the League, he tries to transfer himself into an AMAZO body he creates with stolen technology from Cadmus and is stopped by Batman, Amanda Waller (Cadmus' head) and the core seven members of the League. With the AMAZO body destroyed and Luthor revealed as a manipulating criminal, Brainiac reveals himself suddenly growing and deforming luthors body from within. Then, in Divided We Fall, he reveals his actions to the present people in the scene (including an astonished Luthor) and then proceeds to attack revealing there is also hidden technology in the Lexcorp Building including a skull/octopus shaped space ship while excaping to a Cadmus base to fuse himself with the Dark Heart, another alien nano-technology capable of reproducing itself by reorganizing the structure of the molecules around itself. In the way there, Luthor convinces Brainiac to also merge his mind, a win-win situation that would grant Brainiac the creativity he lacks. After the Brainiac/Dark Heart/Luthor merging they become a being with the new purpose of asimilating all the information of the universe, destroying and recreating it in their image. Though they managed to subdue most of the Justice League members, Luthor/Brainiac were ultimately defeated by the Flash, who managed to separate them.
After the defeat, all that was left of Brainiac was a small piece of its body, which somehow came into the possession of Gorilla Grodd. Luthor himself continued to speak to Brainiac's consciousness, apparently still existing within his own mind. Urged by Brainiac to escape prison, Luthor was picked up by Grodd's Legion of Doom and convinced to join by the promise of getting his hands on the Brainiac fragment, with which he could reconstruct and re-merge with him. Though he eventually usurped leadership of the Legion of Doom from Grodd, Luthor remained unable to unlock the Brainiac fragment for some reason, and instead used it to locate the quadrant of the universe where Brainiac had been destroyed along with Darkseid. Using a combination of technology and magic, Luthor intended to reintegrate the surviving pieces into a new version of the android, only to wind up resurrecting Darkseid, who was reformed with extensive Brainiac technology integrated into himself, allowing the dark lord to destroy the Legion's headquarters/craft and return to Apokolips.
Luthor and the surviving Legion of Doom members returned to Earth and joined forces with the Justice League to stop Apokolips' attack on Earth, and Luthor claimed to no longer be able to hear Brainiac inside his head, although when Luthor was then transported to the Source Wall and recovered the Anti-Life Equation, it was claimed that only a "twelfth-level intellect" could accomplish this, and the only individual with this IQ is Brainiac. Ultimately, however, it was never explicitly revealed if Brainiac truly exists within Luthor's mind, or if he is partially insane.
[edit] New Kids In Town
In the year 2979, as it is revealed in the Superman: The Animated Series episode New Kids In Town, Brainiac still lives and has made enemies of the Legion of Super Heroes. During that time, it learned how to pass its code down biologically and created Brainiac 5; however, this iteration of the Brainiac identity turned out to be good, and joined the Legion in an effort to atone for the crimes of his predecessors. The original Brainiac traveled back to the past to kill the teenage Clark Kent before he would become Superman. Thanks in part to Cosmic Boy, Chameleon Boy, and Saturn Girl, Clark defeated Brainiac, and it was teleported into the sun, where it incinerated, destroying what may have been the last remnant of its original form.
When Supergirl, along with Green Lantern and Green Arrow, was pulled to the 30th century to help the Legion, she and Brainiac began to fall in love and Supergirl ultimately decided to stay in the 30th century. This left Lantern and Green Arrow in the unenviable position of telling Superman that Kara had stayed behind partly because of her feelings for Brainiac 5, and of trying to explain why that is not a problem.
[edit] Superman: Brainiac Attacks
Brainiac returned in the 2006 direct-to-video animated feature Superman: Brainiac Attacks, where he was voiced by Lance Henriksen.
The movie, which writer Duane Capizzi admitted to be out of continuity with the DC Animated Universe despite using character/set designs and voice actors from it, begins with Brainiac landing on Earth in a meteor. Brainiac goes around absorbing information until Superman destroys him with his Arctic breath. However, Lex Luthor is able to save a piece of Brainiac and forms an alliance with the Kryptonian robot. Luthor gives Brainiac a new body, made from his satellite weapon. Brainiac is also equipped with a Kryptonite beam and the ability to track Superman by his Kryptonian DNA.
Luthor and Brainiac's bargain revolved around Brainiac using his new body to destroy Superman, and afterwards, Brainiac would allow himself to be defeated by Luthor and leave for another planet so that Luthor would appear as a hero. However, Brainiac betrayed Luthor after he believed Superman was destroyed, but in the end, Superman returned to defeat Brainiac. This time, Superman made sure that this copy of Brainiac was completely destroyed.
[edit] Design
[edit] Action figures
