Adventures of Superman #438 (March 1988)
Adventures of Superman #438 (March 1988)
Superman vs. Brainiac! Sort of. This isn’t the slim green alien version of Brainiac, but the pudgy alcoholic circus magician one. At least for now.
Clark Kent spends an evening in the circus with Cat Grant, her son Adam, and Jimmy Olsen (who tries to hit on Cat but strikes out). After dealing with an abusive elephant trainer as Superman, Clark splits from the others to snoop around the circus because he has a bad feeling about this place. Meanwhile, Cat and Jimmy overhear the resident magician, Milton Fine aka “The Amazing Brainiac”, arguing with his wife about wasting his mental powers on parlor tricks when they should be cheating at the lottery or something – Cat interviews Milton by pretending to be Lois Lane and he claims his telepathic brain came into contact with the mind of Vril Dox, an alien from planet Colu whose body disintegrated in a teleporting accident. Having an alien in your head can be quite stressful, apparently, and this has driven poor Milton to alcoholism.
Just at that moment, the disembodied alien’s mind takes over Milton and he just starts tossing shit around with his mental powers and creating chaos in the circus. Superman tries to stop Vrilton, but in the end the only thing that can do the trick is the magician’s wife smacking him in the head with a bottle of booze (symbolism!). Milton is institutionalized with the diagnosis that he imagined Vril Dox as a way to cop with his powers. However, Milton insists that “Brainiac” is real… and he’ll be back.
Character-Watch:
I kinda like this version of Brainiac, where they tried to add some ambiguity about whether he’s real or the product of a drunken mind… even though we still know he’s totally real because we met his teenage superhero descendant from the 30th century a few issues ago (Superman doesn’t seem to make the connection). Also, Milton’s progressive transition from adorable old drunk to evil supervillain in the following years is seriously tragic.
Cat Grant and Adam return in this issue, so apparently she didn’t have to move to New York to be with her son after all. My guess is that Marv Wolfman included that part in case the next Adventures writer wanted to get rid of Cat, but John Byrne liked her and kept her around. We also find out little Adam is still afraid of Superman due to the events of Adventures #429, even though we saw him wearing a Superman shirt recently. I think Milton isn’t the only possible schizophrenic here.
WTF-Watch:
Clark gets hit on by a sexy bearded lady. I wish they’d kept her as a love interest now that Lois hates him.
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