What's Brainiac's best design? Out of all media.

[Ascended]

What if that female visage was tempered with a deep, masculine voice just like James Earl Jones aka Darth Vader?

Granted, harder to pull that disconnect off in print, but in animation, video games, or live-action? Would definitely freak out a good portion of the audience.

Yeah, I got nothing against that.

Personally I think a purely genderless approach, something utterly non-human in every single respect, sells the idea of the unknowable, alien Other, but your idea subverts expectations, and it'd certainly impact the segment of the population concerned with trans people using bathrooms pretty deeply.

[Jim Kelly]

Questions:

Do you prefer Brainiac be of Coluan origin or Krypyinian origin (like Superman TAS)?

I think most people preferred a fully robotic or cyborg iteration, rather than full organic.

I split the difference.

When Colu's Brainiac came to Krypton and abducted Kandor, Jor-El and Zor-El tried to stop it. They weren't entirely successful, but they did harvest some of its tech and acquire its advanced programming. Which explains why the brothers El made such giant leaps in scientific applications in such a short time. Unfortunately, all that alien tech infected Krypton's cybernetic infrastructure, leaving the planet unprepared for the coming disaster.

If that was the case, then it would also mean for baby Kal-El that his rocketship's onboard computer had the same infection. In other words, Brainiac was the one piloting Kal-El to his new home--and the computer memory banks of Krypton were corrupted by Brainiac, as well.

This could be used to resolve some continuity problems for the Man of Tomorrow.

[Kuwagaton]

but your idea subverts expectations, and it'd certainly impact the segment of the population concerned with trans people using bathrooms pretty deeply.

More about the former. If they wanted to do genderless to add something to the mythos, they'd be better off using Superman himself, for all of the exploration of his character required for the books to run and all of the people who would like to see him as an alien.

[Ascended]

More about the former. If they wanted to do genderless to add something to the mythos, they'd be better off using Superman himself, for all of the exploration of his character required for the books to run and all of the people who would like to see him as an alien.

I dont think you can go genderless with Clark, there's too much history there of him being....um.....properly....equipped......

What you could do is mess around with Clark's sexuality. He *is* an alien, despite being a human looking one. Who knows what he'd find attractive? Just due to the history you gotta keep the attraction to women, but he could be bisexual, pansexual, that thing where it's intelligence you find sexy and not anything physical (forget what its called, but that strikes me as fitting) almost anything could work as long as Clark is still into girls too. I mean, maybe Clark looks at his blender and says "Hey there, you come here often?"

[Adekis]

I dont think you can go genderless with Clark, there's too much history there of him being....um.....properly....equipped......

What you could do is mess around with Clark's sexuality. He *is* an alien, despite being a human looking one. Who knows what he'd find attractive? Just due to the history you gotta keep the attraction to women, but he could be bisexual, pansexual, that thing where it's intelligence you find sexy and not anything physical (forget what its called, but that strikes me as fitting) almost anything could work as long as Clark is still into girls too. I mean, maybe Clark looks at his blender and says "Hey there, you come here often?"

Confession time:



I like the thought of Kal being pansexual, in an across-species kind of way. The less than subtle implication of reciprocated feelings for Brainiac Five in the cartoon show imprinted the strong sense upon my young self that he and Brainy were romantically involved, at least in my "Platonic ideal" of Superman.

"Brainiac Prime" himself I think should be a technically sexless robot whose features and social attitudes seem masculine to most creatures. Brainiac Five, on the other hand, is a boy who was assigned-robot-at-birth, haha!

On an only tangentially related note, I also like the thought of Jimmy and Supergirl both being transgender, with Supergirl as a transwoman and Jimmy as a transman, obviously- I realize that it's controversial to some folks to consider totally fictional characters trans in absence of actual evidence, but I don't see the problem with it myself.

[Doctor Know]

Brainiacs 2-5 are organic, so I think he has to be at least part organic. And Colu is infinitely better than making him another Kryptonian relic. To me that's like having Joker kill Bruce's parents: it works in a world where there's nothing else but in a big, ongoing history it's a narrow idea.

I prefer the Colu origin, but I do have to admit that the Kryptonian version offers some nice narrative options that, quite frankly, Zod doesnt often have the range to convey.

I ask because the original Eradicator had a similar function as Brainiac. Only he was preserving Krypton's culture, by destroying others. As opposed to preserving all cultures and then destroying their planets.

I imagine Timm and company folded Brainiac and the Eradicator together when they designed TAS Brainy.

[Patrick Gerard]

I ask because the original Eradicator had a similar function as Brainiac. Only he was preserving Krypton's culture, by destroying others. As opposed to preserving all cultures and then destroying their planets.

I imagine Timm and company folded Brainiac and the Eradicator together when they designed TAS Brainy.

I always regret Mark Schultz didn't get to do more with Kandor in particular as he seemed to have a plan. Part of that seemed to involve Kandor being home to a kind of Area 51. Part of it seemed to be a start to explaining the electro-Superman stuff with the energy beings known as the Xan.

In my perfect take, Kryptonians weren't especially xenophobic until some kind of incident happened. They were just prideful of their accomplishments and with some justification. Then an incident happened. They started detaining offworld visitors, dismantling their space program. Jax-Ur's destruction of Wegthor factors in. It's a very 9-11 or Pearl Harbor parallel story. Brainiac's abduction of Kandor cements the xenophobia and the Eradicator is taken from The Cleric and converted into an anti-Brainiac program, designed to weed out foreign technology and infiltrators who've been engaged in terror activity. The Eradicator goes too far.

Maybe Brainiac stole Kandor precisely because Kryptonians turned it into an alien internment camp and the biodiversity attracted Brainiac's attention.

I would run somewhat with what I perceive as the Preus model of Kandor with some of the late 90s version. Ie. They're probably of Kryptonian descent and some are racist purists who falsely think they're "pure" Kryptonians but none of them are fullblooded Kryptonian and they have weird powers, none exactly Kryptonian. So you'd have Skorn and Cerizah. But they'd be part Kryptonian. You'd have Superman's cousin Van-Zee (Allura In-Zee's brother's kid, presumably) and Van-Zee would have a strong resemblance but I'd make his powers different.

I think Van-Zee rather than Zor-El should have been the New 52 Cyborg Superman. First, he's family to Kara, if we assume the Zees are related. Second, he's supposed to look a lot like Kal in most prior takes which avoids the whole weird thing where Zor-El is made to look like Kal or Jor. I'd have made his cybernetic bits look like Brainiac's 80s design.

[Kuwagaton]

I dont think you can go genderless with Clark, there's too much history there of him being....um.....properly....equipped......

He didn't have Vril Dox II the old fashioned way, but Dox himself had a son the old fashioned way even before Superman did. So same problem.

What you could do is mess around with Clark's sexuality. He *is* an alien, despite being a human looking one. Who knows what he'd find attractive? Just due to the history you gotta keep the attraction to women, but he could be bisexual, pansexual, that thing where it's intelligence you find sexy and not anything physical (forget what its called, but that strikes me as fitting) almost anything could work as long as Clark is still into girls too. I mean, maybe Clark looks at his blender and says "Hey there, you come here often?"

Well, I would find it weird if his sexuality is associated with being an alien instead of just being his own person.

[Dolores - The Worst Poster Ever]

Confession time:



I like the thought of Kal being pansexual, in an across-species kind of way.

My preference is Superman being asexual and aromantic, but I'd take pansexual Superman if DC was willing to go with it. Really, anything other than hetrosexual Superman would be a welcome change.

[Doctor Know]

Galactiac from the Amalgam Universe. Funny looking back at this, because DC has slowly been turning Brainiac into a Galactus type figure over the years. During the Civil War/Secret Invasion era of Marvel, Ultron became a galaxy traveling, world ending conqueror. Lol

[Milton Fine]

I've always been partial to the 80's redesign of the character...except I'd make him Green instead of White.

[Doctor Know]

The shortlived Brainiac 2.5. Definitely inspired by the DCAU Brainy.

[Doctor Know]

I really liked the LOSH tv show, can't believe they never even released season 2 on DVD. good description above, @ least his silver age interpretation anyway, was that Coluans were organic but created the super-android Brianiac to collect info from other worlds. My favorite Brianiac is still the purple shirt wearing pre-crisis Brianiac, he's just the most "iconic" to me, and most of his other looks are dirivitive of it.

My favorite overall version of Brainiac is the one from the Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon- it keeps him as a pure robot but without all the weird crap about having biological offspring and being from a biological species. Instead, he's a robot from a robot species.

Attachment 43960

sucks that season 2 of that show hasn't even been released on DVD.

Just found out that LOSH season 2 is available in HD on iTunes for $14.99. Season 1 is the same price. Good deal, if you ask me.

Amazon only has them both in SD and Vudu only has season 1 in SD for $19.99.

[Osiris-Rex]

It is probably just me, but I liked this version of Brainiac.

[Phoenixx9]

I like many of the Brainiac looks, including Galactiac!