Action Comics #649 (January 1990)
Action Comics #649 (January 1990)
The Brainiac Trilogy, Last Part! Brainiac debuts a sexy new body, and a sexy new spaceship shaped like his head.
As seen in Adventures #462, Lex Luthor is being held hostage inside his own secret Rocky Mountains lab by Brainiac, who now controls the entire facility with his mind. While Brainiac’s body is being genetically/mechanically remade inside a big glass tube, his mind is keeping itself entertained by mentally torturing poor Luthor. Meanwhile, Superman has been looking for Brainiac and Luthor for like six comics with no results, so he decides to let Clark Kent have a crack at it: thanks to his new job as editor of Newstime Magazine, Clark gets access to one of those “computer” things and is able to look up LexCorp’s recent finances, thus finding out about the secret lab in the Rockies.
Apparently, this three/seven part storyline would have lasted five minutes if only people had Google back in 1990 (only magazine editors did). Anyway, Superman figures Luthor must be holed up in the lab and arrives there just in time to watch Brainiac step out of his refreshing genetic bath as a changed man… or Coluan, since he’s now green.
After a brief mental match, Brainiac manages to knock Superman out by borrowing the brain energy of every scientist in the lab and escapes in his newly-constructed skull ship. Superman tries to follow Brainiac into space, but Brainy distracts him by revealing that he had his henchman Metallo secretly hide several nuclear devices all over Metropolis last issue. Superman has to hurry back to Metropolis to collect the devices, which explode in his face as he’s taking them out to the ocean. So, Brainiac escapes into the cosmos, but he does manage to send Superman one last mocking message before losing reception:
Character-Watch:
Aaaaand that’s gonna be Brainiac’s body from now on. See, this is why I like this Superman period: things take a while, but it all comes together in the end. They were planning Brainiac’s transformation from at least as far back as the “Hostile Takeover!” storyline when Luthor acquired that secret lab, and possibly longer (the mentions that Brainiac’s human body was deteriorating go back to Adventures #445). Remember this: Roger Stern plays the long game.
Plotline-Watch:
In addition to showing him his Mad Men-esque new office, Clark’s boss Colin Thornton also introduces him to his new personal assistant, Mara Talbot, who has the hots for Clark. Who wouldn’t?
Brainiac says he got the “basic design” for his skull spaceship from a dream. Actually, the ship he dreamed about during his trippy vision in Superman #35 had Luthor’s face on it instead of a skull, but that’s close enough I guess.
This storyline was loosely adapted as the “Ghost in the Machine” episode of Superman: The Animated Series, specifically the part about Brainiac taking over a LexCorp facility and dicking around with Lex.
WTF-Watch:
lol, Brainiac’s nekkid.
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