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Brainiac
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Real Name
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Vril Dox I
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First Appearance
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Adventures of Superman #438 (March, 1988)
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Creators
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Otto Binder, Al Plastino
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Team Affiliations
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Legion of Doom, Injustice League
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Aliases
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Milton Fine
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Base of Operations
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Mobile
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Powers
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Superhuman strength, Telepathy, Telekinesis, Technopathy, Regeneration
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Skills and Abilities
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Genius IQ
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Paraphernalia
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Skull Ship
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Brainiac is a supervillain in the DC Universe and a noted enemy of Superman.
History[]
Brainiac is typically depicted as an extraterrestrial cyborg (Coluan) or android. He is one of Superman's primary enemies, and is responsible for shrinking and stealing Kandor, the capital city of Superman's home planet Krypton. In some continuities, he is also responsible for Krypton's destruction. Due to multiple revisions of DC's continuity, several variations of Brainiac have appeared. Most incarnations of Brainiac depict him as a green-skinned being in humanoidform. He is bald, with a set of linked electrode-like objects (sometimes glowing) protruding from his skull.
Brainiac, in The New 52, seems to have kept most of the powers and equipment of his Post-Crisis incarnation (including his shrinking ray, force fields, and robot army), with notable additions. Brainiac's ship has been massively upgraded in this incarnation; it is now larger than the entire Earth & Moon planet system,[86] and carries within it a massive invasion fleet of many types of smaller ships. He still appears to possess the physical strength and near-invulnerability of his Post-Crisis counterpart, as shown when he easily defeats the Cyborg Superman.[87] By the Superman: Doomed story arc, Brainiac has used his twelfth-level intellect to become an enormously powerful psychic and telepath, augmented by the minds that he has stolen and digitized from across the galaxy, and capable of taking control of all seven billion minds on Earth at the same time. He also demonstrates considerable reality-warping abilities; he claims that the combined psionic power of all the minds he has captured throughout the universe can allow him to change reality to his will, and plans to use this power to remake the universe in his image. However, this plan is prematurely ended when Superman battles him telepathically and crashes his ship into a black hole.
His name is a portmanteau of the words brain and maniac. In 2009, Brainiac was ranked as IGN's 17th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time.
Media[]
The original version of the character was used by the cartoons: SUper Friends, Batman The Brave and The Bold and Justice League Action. As a machine: Superman Animated Series, DC Super Hero Girls web series.