OMG. Pryor was just shooting from the hip.

Action Comics #649



The Brainiac Trilogy, Part Three: "Man and Machine"

writer: Roger Stern
layouts: George Perez
finished art: Kery Gammill
inks: Brett Breeding
letters: Bill Oakley
colors: Glenn Whitmore
assoc editor: Jon Peterson
editor: Mike Carlin

grade: B+


First off, let's be clear -- a trilogy is a series of three related self-contained works. None of these three chapters have been self-contained works in and of themselves and, by the close, I'm not sure all three together even count as one complete work. This is the three part explanation of how Brainiac breaks free from Lexcorp, but it's not really a complete story in any real sense. Once more, I feel like Carlin's Superman office is doing a great job of finding old loose threads and weaving them all together, but we're not really getting stories, and so Superman's presence in this issue is just obligatory; he arrives at the end, gets trounced, and then swears to stop Brainiac someday. That's not a story. Where's the personal investment, the struggle both internal and external to achieve a goal, the impact the outcome holds for our protagonist, etc?

In fact, Superman really isn't the protagonist of this story in any sense. One might argue, instead, that it's Lex Luthor. He's the one who struggles to stop Brainiac and who faces repercussions, both internal and external, when he fails.

I absolutely love Lex's resolve in this moment:




especially when it unexpectedly turns to this:




It's the first time we've ever seen Luthor show genuine fear, realizing he's been toyed with by Brainiac's mental powers all along.




and he's right to be afraid because, from this point forward in the story, Luthor is a mindless minion of Brainiac's. That's right: for the first time, Luthor has also fully and completely lost to an opponent.

I'm reminded of Luthor's battle with Mxyzptlk back in Superman #31 (also written by Stern). In that story, Luthor proved to be the more logical and interesting antagonist for a classic Superman villain than Supes himself, and I think that holds true here as well. Luthor's pride, resolve, vulnerability, and willingness to go to any length to win make him a far more interesting counterpart to these characters. Well done, Stern.


Beyond that, the focus of this issue is largely on reestablishing a Post-Crisis Brainiac who is now free of Byrne's terrible decisions. Stern revisits Brainiac's origin but doesn't end up adding all that much that Byrne didn't give us the first time:



If you're looking for the motivation that turned a renowned scientist into a remorseless super villain, this origin story isn't going to help you out. At first, this story implies that Brainiac's motivations had always been practical -- he just wanted to do whatever it would take to regain a body and get back to his homeworld. And yet, Brainiac gets away in the end, rocketing off (presumably towards his homeworld) and noting that he'd like to add Metropolis to his list of conquests one day. So I guess the dude is just evil.

Better question, though -- if his real goal is to reconquer his homeworld from the computers who rule it, what would be his motivation for ever returning to Earth? In fact, DOES this version of Brainiac ever return to Earth??


And, while it was great to see the Byrne version of Brainiac abandoned in favor of something more classic:




the '80s child in me was hoping for this guy instead:




Stern does leave the door open for us getting that look down the road, though, when he provides us with the dialogue on this utterly gorgeous page:






Wait...in a dream? Is Stern suggesting that Brainiac's mental powers are somehow able to perceive beyond the boundaries of the Post-Crisis reboot? Fascinating. Was more ever done to explore this??


In the end, despite some impressive moments discussed above, this "trilogy" did feel very incomplete. I love what was done with Luthor but, after all this time, I'm still not excited by what I've seen of Brainiac yet; it's just the hope of what's to come that's got me fired up, and yet I'm not all that sure this version of Brainiac comes back. I don't recall him surfacing during the time I was reading, from mid 1990 through around 1992.




Important Details:

- Superman now has enough evidence to put Luthor behind bars.



I'm hoping this doesn't get abandoned/forgotten.


- revised origin of Brainiac, this time adding mention of computers running his home planet and fearing his abilities.


- 1st appearance of Mara Talbot, a potential new love interest for Clark at Newstime:



Roughly six months ago, the letter column promised that Clark would soon be getting a new love interest (I guess they figure they abused Lana Lang enough, but still wanted to put Lois through the wringer some more). Adventures of Superman #457 appeared to be setting up Clark's neighbor, Andrea, to be that love interest:



but she was never heard from again after that issue.



Minor Details:

- Can someone explain to me how Clark thinks he's going to make it work being Managing Editor of a major news syndicate while also being Superman? As a columnist, he could make his own hours and (apparently) not show up at the office for an entire week without anyone asking questions, but now he will have an entire news staff answering to and depending upon him. How could he not realize that this will inevitably blow up in his face?

- An explanation is finally given for why that army of Metallos robbed a Lexcorp bank last issue: it was a diversion, allowing Brainiac to plant four bombs across the city that he puts to use in this issue.


plot synopsis: Brainiac is building his new body and toying with Luthor, who he ultimately turns into another mindless slave after retelling his origin story. Superman decides to show up at his new office at Newsweek for the first time in order to do some research on where Luthor might be hiding, and he not only discovers the research facility where Brainiac is holding him, but he also finds all the evidence pertaining to the hostile takeover of STAR Labs that Luthor faked eight months back and decides it's enough to put him behind bars. Superman finally shows up JUST in time to meet Brainiac's new body. Brainiac mentally devastates him, sends him in a hunt to locate four bombs planted in Metropolis, and escapes in his new star-ship, presumably headed for his home planet.

Do you mean the Bruce Timm series? Yeah, that was definitely the best Brainiac origin ever done, even if it pulled a lot from The Eradicator Device concept in this continuity.



I skipped Invasion for the purposes of this thread, but I'm going to read it when the Justice League thread gets there.




Oh GOOD!

Thanks for pointing this out. I agree with Pharazonk's sentiment about Superman being minimized but, more than that, the whole thing just feels downright messy.

Several years late for this thread, but someone just posted these images to the DC in the 1980s Facebook group, and I wanted to share them here. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the amount of hype and expectation that was placed on Byrne rebooting Superman:

Well, he was the (arguably) hottest creator of the day, rebooting a 50-year-old flagship character.

On a side note, I used to hang on to promo bags like this as well as custom ones from stores. They were lost in a "What am I hanging on to this for?" purge a few years back.

I guess when I say still trying to wrap my head around the hype and speculation that accompanied Byrne's reboot, it's less a judgment of Byrne (fans couldnt have know how much of a disaster he was going to turn out to be) and more that I wasn't even aware there'd been a reboot when I was reading these books as a kid in 1990. I think it's a credit to Carlin/Stern/Ordway/Jurgens/Perez that, by 1990, they'd effectively restored Superman to his former glory while also carefully reconciling all that Byrne had done. In an age in which comics were growing darker and edgier, this Superman manages to feel timeless while also telling quality, engaging stories that don't settle for status quo.

So the idea that only four years earlier the world was anxiously waiting for Byrne to set all that legacy on fire in favor of an edgier/different approach is just totally alien to me, even after doing four years worth of these reviews.