The Brainiac Story

To most of us kids, it seemed as if Brainiac was like Luthor; one of those villains who'd always been around.  It wasn't until later that I learned that he actually had originated in July of 1958, and thus was only a little over a year older than Supergirl, in comics time anyway.

His first appearance, in Action #242, is also famous for introducing the bottle city of Kandor, an enduring plot device for the rest of the Silver Age.  Here's how his passion for reducing cities was explained in that issue:

There are a couple of oddities, however.  First, why did he only steal one city from Krypton, but multiple cities (including at least Paris, Rome and Metropolis) from Earth?  And wouldn't there be issues with expanding Kandor and Earth cities on the same planet?  Either the Kandorians would all be super, or the Earthlings would be crushed under the heavier gravity.

Superman managed to escape, and restore the Earth cities to their normal size.  But when there was only one charge of the enlarging ray left, he was left with a moral dilemma; should he restore himself, or Kandor.  Fortunately for us, a rocket ship from Kandor, piloted by Jor-El's old college roommate made the decision, pressing the button to return Superman to his normal size.  Brainiac is under sedation for the 100+ year trip back to his home planet.

He returns in Action #275.  In that story, he beams Superman with a combination red and green Kryptonite ray, which mostly impacts Supes like ordinary Red K. He grows a third eye in the back of his head, which comes in handy as with three eyes shooting heat vision at Brainiac, he is able to dissolve the villain's force field. He sends Brainiac back into the past on some remote planet, reasoning that this will get him out of his hair for awhile anyway.

Excluding the oddball Night of March 31st story which I covered years ago, Brainiac's next appearance came just five issues later:

In this story, Brainiac recovers from the suspended animation that Superman had put him in, and zooms into the future.  Along the way he hears voices of crooks imploring him to set them free.  Here's an interesting one:

Entangles his foes in a web, you say?  But Brainiac doesn't need any stooges, and refuses to help them out.  This story does see the return of the bottles, and the shrinking ray, in which Brainiac traps Superman, Lois, Perry and Jimmy, along with Congorilla, who ends up saving them all.

His next significant appearance (Brainiac often appeared in cameo flashbacks whenever the Bottle City of Kandor was mentioned) was in Action #286, when he teamed up with some other villains:

But actually it's just a nightmare that Superman had when exposed to Red K.

His "next" appearance is actually chronologically one of his first.  See, some of Brainiac's henchmen kidnap little Kal-El on Krypton and bring him to Brainiac's home planet, given a name for the first time:

Well, it apparently didn't entirely wipe out the population, as he does have those two helpers.  Brainiac intends to hold baby Kal for ransom so Jor-El will give him his latest invention.  However, it turns out that Superbaby does have powers on Bryak, and thus wreaks havoc on Brainiac's weapons and treasure, so that they return him quickly to Krypton, vowing to have revenge on that planet.  Hence the shrinking of Kandor, which I now must assume was never intended to be restored to its normal size (since the citizens of that city would be super-powered too).

In Brainiac's next appearance, a startling new fact was learned about him: he is a computer!

That's pretty cool and unique, but it doesn't fit in with the tale we've been told before about the population of his home planet (which he ruled) being wiped out by a plague.  At this point, Brainiac simply serves the other computers, and while they have defeated any resistance by the humans that originally created them, they did not wipe out the population.

Armed with this knowledge, Luthor decides to free Brainiac from the prison planet where he's locked up, and to improve the computer:

Of course, there's no honor among thieves and once the operation is done, Brainiac decides he doesn't need Luthor.  Or does he?

And back on Bryak, Brainiac gets another nasty-gram:

Again, it doesn't quite fit the story we've been told about the plague destroying all the people of his homeworld.

Brainiac and Luthor team up to rob Superman of his powers and shrink him to the size of a small bird.  But while they're bickering over who gets to kill him, Superman escapes and sends a message to the Superman Emergency Squad in Kandor.  They arrive and make short work of the villains, but in the meantime, Brainiac has put Supes into a coma, from which the finest Kandorian scientists cannot rouse him.  Brainiac makes a deal; if Kandor lets him and Luthor go, he will release Superman from the coma.  Oh, and along the way, he hypnotizes Luthor into removing the secret timer, and forgetting about Brainiac being a computer.


After that, Brainiac pretty much becomes Superman's generic villain from space.  Oh, occasionally we hear about his twelfth-order computer brain, or his hatred for Kandor, but there's no real attempt to fill in the holes in the back story of Bryak, although I assume a lot of that has chanced since the end of the Silver Age.

How Old Is Superman?

Here's an oddity that consistently pops up in the Superman family of magazines. I'd guess that whatever age we thought Superman was when we were kids, nowadays we'd put him in his mid-late 20s at the youngest. It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense for him to be much younger than that. For starters, we are always told that Clark is one of the top reporters for the Daily Planet, a major metropolitan newspaper. It is often mentioned that he has won numerous prizes for his reporting, and it is clear that he was graduated from Metropolis University, which means that he could not have started his career much before age 22.

However, there are problems. In the advertisements for Lois Lane #1, they gave her age:

Okay, so let's assume that maybe Clark/Superman is a little older than Lois. This makes some sense; it explains why he seems less interested in her than she is in him. It also might explain her frequently zany antics and risk-taking behavior.

But even this solution has its drawbacks. For starters, it was established in the early Superman stories that Lois was a reporter at the Planet before Clark arrived there. And indeed, there are several Silver Age stories that confirm this. For example, in Superman #133, there's a story that tells how Clark got his job at the Planet, including this scene:

So maybe Clark earned his chops at some smaller newspaper, before going to work in the big city? That's arguable, but the problem is that there are many stories which establish that Lois and he are the same age (or at least very close). For example, in Superboy #90, there's a story about how Lana was able to look into the future and observe the "romance" between Superman and Lois Lane. So she visits nearby Pittsdale (Lois' hometown) and attempts to sabotage prevent her from becoming a reporter:

But if Lana (who is the same age as Clark) is a high-schooler at the same time as Lois is, then Clark cannot be more than a couple of years older than Lois. And there are other stories which establish that they are actually the same age. For example, consider this famed story, from Adventure #128:

In addition, there is another story where Clark is shown as reasonably the same age as this young woman:

And yet, Clark is shown as meeting up with her in Metropolis years later, after he and Lois are reporters, and she is not yet 21!

So the conclusion seems obvious. Superman is 21 or 22 years old in the stories we read as kids. But even this causes problems (beyond the question of how he got a prestigious job at such a young age). Consider this letter to the editor from Superboy #68 (October 1958):


Indeed, many of the early letters columns in Superboy complained of such supposed anachronisms. But think about it for a second. World War II had been over for 13 years by then. If Superboy was in high school in the Superboy stories, then he must be at least 13 years old in those tales. Plus 13 years would make him 26+ in the Superman stories. Or looking at it the other way, if he was 22 in the Superman stories, then that would indicate that the Superboy tales were taking place around 1949 or 1950, when the television antennas would not be an anachronism.

But apparently chastened by this reader and others like him, Weisinger was more careful to make sure that Superboy didn't encounter anything too modern. Consider this scene from Adventure #253:

That dates the lecture to no later than mid-1945, or about 13 years before the 1958 publication date. But in the story, Robin the Boy Wonder has come back in time to visit Superboy (as discussed here). Robin appears to be about the same age as Clark Kent in the story. But Robin is often shown driving the Batmobile in Batman stories of the time, which means he must be 15 or 16 at the youngest, which again would place the contemporary Superman at no less than 28 years old.

The conclusion? Superman is somewhere between 21 and 28 years old, depending on the needs of the particular story.

Was There A Plan "C" for Clark?

I linked a week ago to Again With the Comics' post on the Helmet of Hate story in Jimmy Olsen. As you will recall from reading that post, at the end of the story it was revealed that the entire plot was based on Plan "J", a pre-arranged scheme where Jimmy Olsen was to do certain things to help out Superman.

As it happens, I was re-reading Lois Lane #29 today, and the cover story in that issue reveals Plan "L":

It's a ridiculously convoluted plot, obviously partly so to provide us with that entertaining cover scenario. Here's Lois explaining what Plan "L" told her:

Okay, but what if he's in trouble from Green K near Niagara Falls, or in Egypt? Was there a plan for that? At any rate, Lois sets about kissing every superhero she can get her lips on, which on this day in Metropolis just happens to be Green Arrow, Aquaman and Batman. After they're covered with her lipstick, they wipe it off onto a hankie which Batman flies up to the Fortress. Superman then coats his own face with the lipstick, because it has a form of Red Kryptonite on it that provides temporary immunity to Green Kryptonite. Oh, and she had to do it in that zany fashion because the villains were spying on her:

Note to self: When planning to keep tabs on Lois Lane, make the crystal eye a little less obvious.

Plan "P", for Perry White appeared in Action #295, discussed in detail at the Silver Age Sage.

Double Hockey Sticks

One of the odder aspects of the Silver Age Superman was the fascination Mort Weisinger and his writers developed with the initials LL. From the very first appearance of Superman, the love interest had always been Lois Lane. And in the Superboy adventures, his snoopy next-door neighbor was Lana Lang. But in the Silver Age, the LL's really started to take over. For example, we learned of Clark Kent's college sweetheart, Lori Lemaris:

Action #252 saw the debut of Supergirl. While Kara Zor-El doesn't have two Ls in her name, her secret identity was established as Linda Lee. In Action #272, we learned that there is a double of Supergirl on another planet, whose secret identity is Lea Lindy.

In Lois Lane #20 (October 1960), Clark decides to get rid of Lois the pest by flying back in time to the date he came to the Daily Planet office, and going instead to take a job as a deejay at a radio station. His secretary there is a gal named Liza Landis, who turns out to be an even worse snoop than Lois. Be sure to read that post to the end to see that Superman retained his irrational prejudice against the horizontally challenged. Hat tip: Michael Rebain.

In Superman #141 (November 1960), Superman accidentally flies back to Krypton before it exploded, meets his parents, and falls in love with a movie actress:

As far as I know this is the first time that the LL coincidence was noted in a story.

In Action #289, Supergirl tries to set up her cousin with a female superhero from another world:

But it turned out that the yellow rays of our sun were poisonous to her, and so she had to return to her home planet. Hat tip: Michael Rebain.

In Superman #157, he receives a machine from an alien world that can predict the future. One of the predictions is that he will be saved that day by an LL. Bizarro "gives" him a chunk of Kryptonite which starts to kill him. Which LL will save him, he wonders:

But as it turns out, a young baseball player by the name of Steve Snappin saves him. Was the machine wrong?

In Superman #165, he loses his memory and becomes Jim White, a cowboy on a ranch owned by the father of this gal:

Oddly, however, she's another SS, instead of an LL, although there are some Ls in her name: Sally Selwyn.

Adventure #333 (June 1965) includes a segment where Superboy meets the distant ancestors of the Atlanteans including a pretty brunette:


Jim pointed this one out to me in an email:


I didn't mention Lucy Lane or Lex Luthor. Jim also points out this gal:

In Action #321 (February 1965), Superman is trapped on a red sun world where he's the weakest man, and Lahla falls for him. But (amusingly) once they make it back to Earth she has no interest in him, as he's now the mightiest man around.

And this "gal":

Of course it's really Jimmy Olsen, from issue #67 (March 1963) of his self-titled mag.

Any more LLs that should be added to this list? I've always been a bit surprised that Light Lass didn't attract Superboy's attention.

Update: An early one, from Action #215 (April, 1956):

Lyra Lee (in 2956) turns out to be a secret identity pest for the Superman of that era, just like Lois a millennium earlier. And another mermaid from Action #244:

Mort Weisinger's Superman: Key Dates and Issues

I have written about this previously, but sometime in 1958 Mort Weisinger and his writers and artists set about creating the character that would come to be known as the Silver Age Superman. It was an era of tremendous creativity, that saw many terrific stories and innovations. Here are some of the most important:

April 1958: Adventure #247 introduces the Legion of Super-Heroes.
July 1958: Action #242 introduces the Silver Age Fortress of Solitude..
September 1958: Action #244 introduces Brainiac and the bottle city of Kandor.
October 1958: Superboy #68 introduces the teen-aged Bizarro.
December 1958: Adventure #255 introduces Red Kryptonite.
February 1959: Superman #127 introduces Titano, the Super-Ape.
April 1959: Jimmy Olsen #37 introduces Lucy Lane.
May 1959: Action #252 introduces Supergirl (Kara Zor-El); Superman #129 introduces Lori Lemaris and Atlantis.
July 1959: Action #254 introduces adult Bizarro.
August 1959: Superman #131 introduces Mr Mxyzptlk (Silver Age version).
April 1960: Adventure #271 introduces the teen-aged Lex Luthor, and establishes the motivation for his hatred of Superboy/Superman.
January 1961: Superboy #86 introduces Pete Ross.
April 1961: Adventure #283 introduces the Phantom Zone.
June 1961: Superboy #89 introduces Mon-El. (Corrected the intro of the Fortress and Brainiac/Kandor).

Action #314

This is one of the few Action issues from around this era that I didn't have in my collection until recently, and all I can say is, good Lord, I didn't know what I was missing. It starts with Aquaman and a few other JLA members signaling Superman to visit them on a remote island, where we learn:

Of course, Jor-El sent dozens of such messages to Superman during the Silver Age; indeed it would be a chore to catalog them all. At any rate, Jor-El wants to tell his son how Earth was chosen for his new home. It turned out that there were six possible worlds he could be sent to. Fortunately, one of Jor-El's friend has a future predictor:

It turns out that on the first world of Xann, he would be tiny compared to the other inhabitants, although he would retain his super-powers. Jor-El decides not to send him to Xann, because there he'd have nobody to marry. The second world, Valair, has no land, only water, and Kal-El's unhappy living his life under the seas. The third world has a red sun, so Kal would not have any super-powers there, but he does learn to compensate:

But he finds that some of the natives want to use his arrow-inventions for evil and leaves society to live on his own. Obviously that world is out. On the next one, it's always night and Kal-El takes on a lawman role:

On the penultimate world, Superman's adoptive father invents a ray that would give him super-speed, but the scene shown on the cover occurs when he gets a little too enthusiastic about trying out his powers. So Earth it is:

Comments: A silly story, obviously set up to deliver that surprise at the end where we realize that Superman would have been a one-man JLA. It does leave me feeling a little sad that he didn't end up getting sent to the planet of Amazonia, where he could have become Wonder Woman with the aid of a gender-transforming ray invented by his adoptive mom. ;)

But it is in the Supergirl story that things really get wacky. Remember, when Supergirl originally arrived on Earth, her parents had supposedly died when meteors struck Argo City. However, in Action #309, it was revealed that they had survived by beaming themselves into the Survival Zone, a dimension much like the Phantom Zone. Zor-El and Allura decided that they wanted to live among their fellow Kryptonians in the bottle city of Kandor, while Supergirl remained on Earth with the Danvers. However, all was not well:

As you can probably guess, she's heart-sick for her daughter, who never visits, never calls. Then one day:

So you can see she's gone completely mentally unstable. The authorities take back the android, without apparently considering that maybe, just maybe, they could make a similar doll for Allura that would ease her pain. They decide to contact Supergirl, but as it happens, she's out and the Danvers receive the call. Realizing that Allura's health is more important than their love for their adopted daughter, they decide to, wait for it, practice mental cruelty on Supergirl so that she will rejoin her natural parents. No, I'm not kidding:



But eventually Kara overhears the Danvers tearfully discussing how hard it is to be so mean to their daughter and discovers the reason why they've been treating her badly. She visits Kandor and suggests that she should stay their permanently, but apparently Mom realizes Earth needs its Supergirl. The only solution is for the Danvers to move to Kandor while the exchange ray brings out Zor-El and Allura. At first this looks like a great solution, as Supergirl's parents can join her in protecting Earth. But what of the Danvers?

The Chief Healer comes up with a solution:

The story ends as a cliff-hanger; will Supergirl's parents be happy on Earth? Can the Danvers find love in their heart for Dar-Lin?

Comments: Wow, what a wild story. I confess that I always enjoy these psychological dramas more than the run-of-the-mill secret identity stories, but this tale was completely wacked-out.

Titano, the Super-Ape

That one wins a booby prize for being one of the covers that give away the ending to the story; I talked about a Flash issue that did the same a few years back. Incidentally, this post was inspired by Silver Age Gold's "Ape-ril in January" suggestion.

The tale begins with Lois hosting a TV charity telethon. Among the acts is Toto, an intelligent chimp:

A pair of pie-throwing comedians accidentally hit Toto, and Lois wins his permanent affection by wiping off the filling from his back. His trainer alerts Lois to a real scoop; Toto is going to shot into space on a rocket as a "publicity stunt". Of course, this was at the time (1959) when manned space flight had not yet been accomplished (Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first, in 1961). Several monkeys were shot into space by the US around this time, including a South American squirrel monkey named Gordo in late 1958, so the story was pretty topical.

Lois demonstrates her versatility by broadcasting over the radio news of the space flight. Two glowing meteors, one kryptonite and one uranium, collide near the rocket. Will they have any effect on Toto? You betcha:

Because of his huge size, Lois renames him Titano. He grabs Lois, making her fear for her life. She calls over the radio for help from Superman, but when he arrives they learn that Titano now has kryptonite vision.

The ape takes Lois to a coal yard, where he tries to mimic a feat he saw Superman do on the telethon; squeezing a lump of coal into a diamond. But with his curiosity, Titano is a threat to society; he destroys an unmanned blimp and plays with a freight train. The army has Lois lure him into a trap:

That's when Lois has her brainstorm. Monkey see, monkey do, right? She gets Titano to mimic several actions, and eventually tricks him into putting on the lead-shielded glasses as shown on the cover. This enables Superman to hurl him into the past, where he can live with the dinosaurs:

That last scene is something of a swipe from the movie King Kong, where Kong and the T-Rex battle it out. Note as well that this time-travel vision is one of Superman's "superpowers that time forgot" as Mark Engblom put it.

Titano returned in Superman #138, with a cover even more obviously inspired by King Kong:

I should get that one CGC'ed; looks like mint to me! ;)

We learn that Superman had already forgotten his time-travel vision:

He spots a giant ape, and is momentarily confused, until he realizes that it's his old sparring partner, Titano. Unfortunately, with his trademark carelessness in handling alien objects, Supes failed to realize that the "time-television set" was actually a time-transporter, and it brings the chimp back to 1960.

This story comes after Mort Weisinger had taken over as official editor of the Superman line (although he was the de facto editor for years before) and so we see more of the Silver Age Superman than in the prior appearance of Titano (which came in the final issue credited to Whitney Ellsworth). He's got his robots, which would help handle the situation, but:

I swear, Clark's landlord was constantly redecorating his place back in the Silver Age. This is one of the more amusing things about the robots; they almost never really helped out Superman for the obvious reason that they would make the stories too simple. Still Superman has his lead-lined suit:

Supes had invented that about a year before in Action #249. But there is a complication; Titano has kidnapped Lois and so he can't kayo the ape without risking harm to her.

He notices that Titano seems interested in large, round objects; he grabs a hot-air balloon and then a bathysphere, but then discards them in frustration. What is he looking for? Superman flies into the past and finds giant coconuts where Titano was when he first spied him on the time-transporter. He returns to the present and drops the coconuts nearby. While the ape enjoys his meal, Superman saves Lois, then knocks out Titano and returns him to the prehistoric Earth.

Titano reappeared many more times in the Silver Age and even afterward; arguably he was a part of the Superman Family. There was even a Bizarro Titano.