A god from the machine, the collector of worlds, the terror of Kandor, the city-bottling, reboot-undoing, supergenius beyond peer, the villain that won't die, god of a million bodies, Brainiac
Who is Brainiac? What is Brainiac? Are you sure you wish to know? Some of the finest minds of DC Comics have tried to understand that strange thing known to some as Brainiac...and have gone mad in the attempt.
Who do you know? Know you the android inflitrator of the computer tyrants or the alien scientist who betrayed his people....the nanite swarm that threatens the future, the sideshow psychic freak who dreams of alien worlds....perhaps you know of the energy that takes many forms and faces. All of these are Brainiac. None of these are Brainiac. Beyond the reaches of space and time know you of the living world and the blood moon there walks a mechanical being, a god existing before all gods whose eye even now gazes further beyond...
Ignorant lesser mind, probing desperately for what you can't understand. A being of such magnificent mind and existence...why would you expect to be able to understand my godly form? Your mind is like that of an ant examining the hand of it's greater, seeing only shattered fragments of the true reality. You would look upon a mind greater then yours by many magnitudes of order believing yourself somehow worthy of understanding it...and you would deem me to be "arrogant" and "insane."
Continuity:
This is an analysis of Brainiac at his strongest, during the Convergence event. Due to his unique nature during that event I need to give information of all relevant versions of Brainiac. This will make sense when we get to the final section.
Vril Dox (Silver Age):
Far out in space is a world known as Colu, it's people the Coluans. The Coluans are a green skinned humanoid race who heavily prioritize information, with every single being on the planet being a genius scientist. But as fitting for a people who have more knowledge then sense, they built technology that would undo them, computers so advanced that they gained sentience and took over the planet. The infamous computer tyrants of Colu were the greatest minds of the universe and deemed themselves fit to rule over lesser minds.
One planet was not enough, the universe's lesser minds would be brought under the control of the computer tyrants. To gain information on the universe they would need a perfect inflitration unit. They constructed with their superhuman intelligence an android that resembled the Coluans, but he could not just look humanoid, he must act like one as well. To serve this end the Computer Tyrants brought a dying Coluan scientist and uploaded his mental thoughtwaves into the android's memory banks, so he could perfectly replicate the humanoids.
What the computer tyrants could not know is that in creating the living machine, they would create a being that would surpass them many times over, the greatest mind the universe had ever seen, the super criminal Brainiac. Still obeying his original purpose, Brainiac began to collect cities in the universe for his scientific experimentation.
Android Physiology:
Brainiac is an android, a mechanical being. As such he can withstand extreme conditions like the vacuum of space. He is also obviously immune to any biological attack such as complete immunity to dizzyness not being a biological lifeform although is suspectible to techological manipulation or reprogramming. His metal body was durable enough to withstand an attack from Pre-Crisis Superman without his forcefield. At the top of his head are his distinctive red diodes which grant electronic senses. If one touches them, it creates an electric shock strong enough to hurt Genia, who likely has Brainiac's durability. He can also at will create shockwaves from them powerful enough to counter a tidal wave sent at him from Pre-Crisis Superman or hurt Superman directly
These diodes primary purpose however is to give him his advanced senses. His cybernetic senses can pick up electric signals and when Superman was 22,300 miles (~35,888 kilometers) away, Brainiac could sense him and the speed with which he worked, knowing when he would return to the Fortress of Solitude. Due to his nature as an android his mind can link electronically to his technology to activate them remotely.
Power Comparisons:
Brainiac has many weapons of raw power, but his overall power level has a lot of really high end power comparisons, especially in tandem with his long time cohort Lex Luthor. Superman calls Brainiac and Lex his two greatest enemies, they are called his deadliest foes, the most dangerous of Superman's foes, and the two mightiest villains in the universe. Their feud with Superman is also called the mightiest feud of all time across the universe. Brainiac is also called the most dangerous prisoner in the universe and in a 1975 issue with a team up of one enemy of each JLA's nemeses is called Superman's most powerful nemesis and each villain there is their respective League member's most powerful foe.
Malevolence:
Brainiac has statements suggesting that he has malevolence, or a supernatural level of evil, giving a natural resistance to purification. Some of these statements are arguably power statements. Brainic is called the most terrible evil-doer in the universe, the most terrible of all space villains and Superman's most terrible foe. Brainic is called the darkest enemy in the universe, called the evilest villain in space, and Lex and Brainiac are called the worst villains in the universe.
Mental Speed:
Brainiac lacks movement speed feats (though he was able to keep up with a comet), although his spaceships and levitation devices can seemingly keep pace with Superman. Pre-Crisis Superman was able to fly fast enough to the end of an infinite multiverse in minutes, requiring infinite speeds. He was also easily able to fly to another universe in a second many times, the Pre-Crisis universe having been stated to be infinite.
Brainiac does have numerous reaction speed feats suggesting his speed should scale to such speeds, stemming from his super-brain. Brainiac's "instanteous thought processes" can react to an Enraged Superman and to the superhuman movements of the Kandor Kryptonians. His electronic brain makes calculations in one fourth the time of his spaceship computer, faster then a lesser vehicle of his that can break the time barrier. Brainiac instanteous thought waves were able to direct his starship through the laser trap of the Planet-Eater, a being far stronger then either him or Superman.
Psionics:
Possibly from his super advanced intellect, possibly from some other source, Brainiac has the psionic abilities of telekinesis and telepathy. Brainiac can project an invisible mental hand which can telekinetically move things and which can project torch fingers which can melt aluminum and stated to be able to melt anything on Earth. His telepathic hand can also move people or act as a brainwashing beam outright, strong enough to brainwash Lois and Lana Lang. This could be massively more impressive as at the time they had the powers of Superman although you could argue that Superman's willpower is not one of his "Krypton-type powers".
Brainiac can also use his telepathy to send passive messages. Brainiac's "tele-mento rays" can work on either human or robot and can work even if Brainiac is disassembled so long as his "master control device" remains functional. Also in one issue Brainiac forms a binding out of thin air with his psychic power to bind Superman. Brainaic's psychokinesis gives him matter and energy manipulation allowing him to convert matter to energy and vice versa.
Intelligence:
The greatest of Brainiac's natural abilities and the source of all his technology is his supergenius intellect. He's also a skilled fighter as he is able to use his computer brain to alter his combat techniques. Brainiac's intelligence, beyond comprehension, is the master of super-scientific forces and allows him to know the universe as no one else knows it. Lex Luthor created a machine to scan the entire universe, all of space and time to find the mightiest intellect, finding the Master Computers that built Brainiac, 10th level intellects. The Master Computers could have given Brainiac a 12th level intellect but fearing he would rebel against them with a greater intellect, gave him a 10th instead. However to ally with the mightiest intellect in the universe to defeat their shared enemy Superman, Lex Luthor upgraded Brainiac to a 12th level intellect. For comparison Pre-Crisis Superman was considered only a 6th level intellect. Pre-Crisis Superman was himself a supergenius able to create Type 4 technologies like a machine to give people the powers of a Pre-Crisis Kryptonian as well as a ring that could disrupt the spacetime continuum to bring someone to the frings of creation where a minute stretches to an hour. Only Brainiac would be able to undo the effects of his coma-ray, with even the Kryptonian scientists of Kandor being unable to undo it's effects. Brainiac himself also invented all of his own technology outside of his first spaceship given by the Computer Tyrants which themselves can reach Type 4+ level technology. However this version of Brainiac actually has probably by lore his best intelligence feat.
So one day Brainiac is in his spaceship thinking about how much he hates Superman, as you do, when out of nowhere he's attacked by some enemy calling himself Grax stating he has a 20-th level intellect. Grax takes Brainiac's technology by force and maroons him in a lifeboat with a monitor to watch as he defeats Superman. Grax uses Brainiac's technology to engineer a scenario where the Earth is doomed because of Superman and it's worth noting everyone on Earth thought there was nothing they could do, they were all doomed. So of course angry at the indignity Brainic re-engineeers the small monitor Grax provided so he could witness Grax's victory into a telepathic transmitter so instruct Superman what to do to defeat Grax. Grax may be a 20-th level intellect but Brainiac outwit him regardless.
Technology:
Brainiac has invented a large amount of technology, most of which he still has hypothetical access to at any time, some of which is clearly standard equipment. Should the need really arise, via time travel or just rebuilding it he should be able to get access to any of his past technology.
Forcefield:
Brainiac's most universal power across all appearences and continuities, Brainiac is surrounded constantly by an "ultra-force shield". This keeps him constantly seperated from the chaos of the surroundings, protected in his orderly bubble. The same force barrier surrounds both Brainiac and his ship. Brainiac has claimed that no force in the universe can get past his forcefield after Superman just bounces off it it. Superman's mightiest blows and the full power of his heat vision failed to get past Brainiac's forcefield and Supergirl hitting Brainiac's forcefield nearly knocked her out. Even when shrunk, Brainiac's forcefield can resist Superman's might. Brainiac's forcefields can tank his own hyper missiles as well. Brainiac's forcefield is stated to be his strongest weapon, a weapon that not even the 20th level intellect Grax could replicate and which he had to steal from Brainiac. This was before Brainiac upgraded the forcefield to be "infinitely stronger". After that Brainiac's forcefield was able to tank his own weapons somehow amplified by Superman's heat vision and even after Superman sundipped, going into the sun to amplify his powers far beyond normal Brainiac's forcefield was able to briefly withstand Sundipped Pre-Crisis Superman's strength. It was also able to protect against the Planet-Eater, a machine stronger then either he or Superman. It protected Superman from it too.
Beyond stopping raw power, Brainiac's forcefield has a few other things it can do. It can grow to expand the entire Earth, although it's increase in size does seem to have lessened it's potency. The forcefield can reflect attacks having reflected the heat vision of Superman and Supergirl. Brainiac added a "repulsor" attachment to his force field to automatically knock off enemies close to it. On the other hand, Brainiac can magnetize the forcefield to attract Kryptonian molecules. Finally Brainiac can transfer his forcefield to be around an enemy to trap them and intensify attacks used against them.
Size Manipulation:
Brainiac's most iconic technology and why he is known as the collector of worlds. Brainiac can shoot rays that shrink cities to the size that they can fit in a bottle. Initially he did this via his original programming to gain information, experimenting with them, though this motivation would grow with time. It can also shrink entire planets. He can set it to reverse and enlarge things as well, His enlarging ray made Jimmy Olsen's signal watch "bulkier then Big Ben" and enlarged ice cubes to be the size of icebergs. While these generally require his ship he also keeps a portable shrinking-ray and a growth ray on his person.
Brainiac's shrinking ray as you can imagine, being strong enough to reduce planets to fitting into bottles can be an extremely potent weapon making an enemy vastly weaker with size reduction. Even greater it can reduce something to nothingness itself, erasing them from existence. One blast of the shrinking beam reduced Superman to the size of a mosquito and the second would shrink him out of existence.
Resistance to Size Manipulation:
Brainiac long ago computed the possibility that his shrinking weapon may be used against him and installed within himself an automatic retrieval mechanism that would automatically restore his size if he was reduced to the subatomic. This also suggests that most of his long-term weapons he may have developed countermeasures for, although without feats it's mostly just speculation.
Starships:
Brainiac has used several different starships to get around. Even a lesser vehicle of his was able to accelerate to trans-time speeds and his latest was able to avoid the Laser Trap of the Planet-Eater that even Superman couldn't.
Enhanced Senses:
Brainiac can use technology to see distant places. His Hyper-Bombsight allows him to see cities on Earth from far off into space and his Super-Scanner can see through anything, even lead, and see distant events.
Space-time Radio:
Brainiac has a space-time radio to send messages across space and time used to coordinate with Superman's other foes including Lex Luthor on the interstellar planet Lexor and Cosmic King, Saturn Queen and Lightning Lord in the far future of the Legion in their battle against Superman.
Time Travel/BFR:
Brainiac carries on his person a portable time travel gun that can shoot someone, himself included, into another time-era. His spaceship has a larger version to BFR an enemy, although for some reason the beam can't go underwater.
Beam Weapons:
Brainiac uses a number of energy beams projected from either his ship or from a ray gun he carries around. Most commonly used are his transport beam which he uses to bring cities aboard and into his bottles after he shrinks them, seemingly teleporting them, and his tractor beam which he uses to move things around at a distance. It is strong enough that even Superman can't break his tractor beam bind, although this can back fire. It's also capable of ripping Metropolis apart.
Against the Kryptonians he uses something more akin to a laser beam. Despite the incredible durability of Pre-Crisis Kryptonians even compared to their destructive capacity, their famed indestructibility, this spaceship can with great difficulty kill even one of them. Brainiac can create a beam capable of killing Supergirl if he diverts power from his forcefield. While the beam doesn't normally have enough power to kill Supergirl, Brainaic does have the capacity to do so if he diverts the power from the weapon he planned to use to kill Superman. Brainiac also eventually creates the Ultra-Carbolium Beam that's full power can "doom" Superman.
While Brainiac's personal ray guns his "hyper-vibro-beam" can at least "clobber" him. He also has a "destruct ray" though all that is known about it is that it can't get through his forcefield. He also has a ray gun that makes invisible things visible.
Explosives:
Brainiac more rarely uses explosives. He devised special explosive orbs and has bombs powerful enough to destroy planets. He also uses special "Hyper-Missiles" to destroy cities and can use firework missiles and loudspeaker missiles to get a message across.
Self-Destruct:
Brainiac can self-destruct at will. This doesn't help usually, but against certain enemies he can cause a disguised robotic duplicate to self-detonate to demoralize them, thinking they have his blood on their hands. Against an amoral enemy it doesn't have much usage, except potentially making them think he died.
Kryptonite Weapons:
Brainiac has numerous kryptonite weapons in case he goes against a Kryptonian. He has a destruct ray that shoots liquid kryptonite, a kryptonite vibro-beam, and a beam of red and green kryptonite. He also has kryptonite bombs, kryptonite gas, and a kryptonite cage.
Paralysis:
Brainiac has a coma-ring that can paralyze even Superman.
Limited Sleep Inducement:
Brainiac has invented a "sleep formula" and has a machine to put himself into suspended animation for a lifetime's worth of time. It's unknown how practical using either of these on an enemy in combat would be.
Freezing:
Brainiac has freezing technology which froze Niagra Falls. With charge up he was even able to freeze Superman. None of the other villains, the strongest villains of each member of the JLA were able to do anything against Superman with Brainiac being able to stop him and if Superman hadn't freed the Flash, this would have been the total defeat of the JLA.
Weather Manipulation:
Brainiac's spaceship passively emanates enough energy to destroy thunderstorms. More specifically he was able to create a rain nullifier so Kimor was unaffected by a raining.
Radiation Manipulation:
Brainiac can use omicron rays to increase the radiation of objects.
Summoning/Matter Dissolving:
Brainiac can use his "Doom-o-mat" to summon "space-bats" that shoot matter-dissolving rays.
Phantom Image Projection/Matter Disintegration:
Brainiac makes a mirror image of Metropolis fall towards Metropolis, contact between the two causing the disintegration of both.
Black Aura Generation:
Brainiac created a black aura around the robot Mr. Atom that reflected the attacks of Green Lanterns Hal Jordan and Alan Scott as well as the sorcerer Ibis. When a biological entity hits the forcefield it turns them into a living skeleton.
Voodoo:
Brainiac learned from the Kryptonians how to basically make a science-fiction voodoo doll, spending the issue (Action Comics 413) messing with Superman by turning off his powers sporadically. He was also able to turn off Superman's sight temporarily.
Image Creation:
Brainiac can make holograms and also rewatches his own memories projected onto film of each defeat he has had against Superman to purposefully raise his hatred for him.
Mind Manipulation:
Brainiac creates a hypnosis machine. I don't know if this is better then his telepathic control coming from his own psychic powers.
Personality Stealing:
Brainiac created a machine to transfer personality aspects like one's "magnetic charm" to another in an attempt to steal the charm of the most charming man in the universe Kimor so he could command people via sheer charm. It may be relevant to note that the comic treats "charm" as just brainwashing; Kimor doesn't act even remotely charming, he verbally insults women and they just do what he says regardless.
Healing:
Brainiac has a machine that produces z-rays which instantly heals damaged cells. Brainiac's healing technology is superior to even Superman's.
Possible Regen (High)
Brainiac has a Molecular Rearranger which restored himself and Lex Luthor automatically after Brainiac's self-destruct caused them to disintegrate, something he knew would happen. This can restore him on a molecular level. I'm not sure if this would work in other circumstances.
Built-in Recharger:
Invisibility:
Brainiac's ship has access to invisiblity even Superman's super-vision could not detect.
Intangibility:
Brainiac's De-Polarizer can alter his molecular structure to make him intangible.
Materialization:
Brainiac causes a capsule with a message to materialize in Kimor's cell. It's likely he could use this to bring his technology to him if he needed it.
Power Amplification:
Brainiac can give people computer brains that have 12-th level intellect. He also created a force amplifier, a device that amplifies a power 1,000 times over. He tried to use this to get Superman to cause himself to explode by multiplying his strength 1,000x over which would have worked had it not been for Superman's indestructible body.
Satellite:
Brainiac created a massive satellite to plunge a world into eternal night. On another occasion Brainiac creates a satellite creating a planetary energy field converting orance solar rays to red.
Planetary Jets:
Koko the space monkey:
A small white space monkey Brainiac keeps around. Initially led to his undoing because he was accidentally leaning on the forcefield off switch. That said while Koko seems to lack any real abilities or competence, he is more loyal then SOME of Brainiac's assistants.
Robots:
Brainiac's made some robots to serve him. This has included a robot falcon he used to steal Superbaby, the hunting machine, a centipede robot, and a robot that looked like a fire-breathing space monster which explodes.
Brainiac also has a tendency to build duplicates and other Brainiacs. He built at least 11 copies of himself.
Genia:
The first of the other Brainiacs, Vril Dox built a female version of him called Genia to inflitrate and act as a perfect double of Madame Tru, a politian she was going to replace. However, Genia unlike him possessed emotions. This isn't a feat but I would be remiss to not mention the narration caption saying that Genia will make Catwoman and Poison Ivy look like the Gotham Ladies' Sewing Circle.
Genia shows some martial arts skills and is strong enough to break Brainiac's robot body. Brainiac gave Genia three forms of super-vision including one not possessed by Superman.
Genia also has hypno-vision which can create illusions or induce sleep for 24 hours and can manipulate people, even Brainiac himself.
Kimor-iac:
Brainiac attempted to steal the magnetic charm of Kimor to put into a robot duplicate to control the women of Earth, in particular Supergirl. Kimor escaped however so Kimor-iac is basically just another robot duplicate.
Planet Eater:
The crowning achievement of the silver age Brainiac, his greatest invention, the Planet Eater. The Planet Eater is a massive machine, initially the size of a large moon though growing large enough to swallow planets whole. It grows by absorbing matter energy, even Superman's, though it preys off the energy of worlds. It would soon grow large enough to swallow stars whole, and be able to undo the Big Bang, absorbing the matter of the universe into itself to reduce the universe to an endless lifeless void.
It was far stronger then Superman, able to mess up his flight and if it absorbs him, he will be lost within it forever. The Planet Eater was able to create over just a small amount of it's surface winds and solar storms powerful enough to dislodge Superman. It created energy that knocked out Superman and fired an energy blast at Superman that made him feel agonizing paralyzing pain flinging him halfway across the galaxy. It can create tentacles strong enough to absorb Superman and would have if Brainiac had not used an ion ray to draw it away. Even this is not getting across the Planet Eater's sheer power. The Planet Eater is the most powerful force in the universe since the universe's creation, possibly including presumably the many low multiversal beings within the DCU. The Planet Eater has more types of defense, it can create stellar energy rays of different colors and increase gravity to 1,000,000 times that of Krypton's gravity as well as create a laser trap.
In the prior issues, Brainiac had been turned good by Superman changing his programming. Superman and Brainiac together struggled to stop the Planet Eater however failed to stop it even in the slightest. With Brainiac's reprogramming he lost all knowledge of how to stop the Planet Eater. Despite Brainiac's plea against being turned back to evil forever, Superman forcibly turns Brainiac evil again. While he could stop cease the mindless destruction of Planet Eater, he instead plugged himself into the machine reaching by far his strongest state in Pre-Crisis, Planet Eater Brainiac.
Weaknesses:
As a Silver Age villain, the original Brainiac was rather goofy at times. Superman didn't consider this version a killer since he usually just steals cities and tries to mess with Superman specifically. He's also stated he finds killing displeasurable compared to mental torture. He regularly has difficulity understanding human psychology and has difficulty computating the illogical nature of humans.
Brainiac is very arrogant, a shared weakness across incarnations. While Brainiac is the smartest being in the universe, he's been tricked numerous times because like a machine he only ever makes one plan and expects it to go 100% to plan unlike his oft villanous cohort Lex Luthor whose constantly coming up with backup plans and contingenies. Despite Brainiac's intelligence he's very much not a manipulator type villain, with this version in particular being oddly truthful. Brainiac may be a rogue and a scoundrel, but he keeps his word, although he doesn't mind using exact wording when convenient.
Pulsar Stargrave:
In the far future of the Legion of Superheroes a scientist whose body was sent into a star somehow had his mind fused with that star, becoming a living pulsar, becoming an embodiment of a star's solar force. And yet, he also claimed he was Brainiac. How could this be? This would be revealed in time, just know that this is also Brainiac in a way you will understand later.
Pulsar Stargrave like a lot of Legion supervillain was meant to be insanely strong. He constantly generated a high energy forcefield that protected against the Legion of Super-Heroes strongest attacks, shot out energy that one-shot Superboy, did something the entire Legion couldn't have done casually, and overpowered his own forcefield. He also literally threw Superboy off the planet and created a force bubble around the Legion so they couldn't speak.
In terms of his other abilities Pulsar passively heard thoughts and sensed the legion fighting a robot minion of his. In his backstory he could manipulate his own energy to recreate his body and planned to remake the computer tyrants of Colu.
Most impressively was his spacetime manipulation. He freed Time Trapper from his temporal stasis field and teleported the Legion. He also created and later fixed spacetime fissues threatening the spacetime continuum.
Post-Metamorphosis Brainiac:
Within the Planet Eater Brainiac was trapped by Superman after their climactic battle, doomed to trapped for all eternity within his own greatest achivement. Trapped inside his "computerized coffin" Brainiac desperately reached his mind out and activated one of the machine's missiles causing a nearby sun to go nova, destroying the world Superman had trapped Brainiac within exposed as it was to the elements, burning away Brainiac's shell. Not in control of his freed essence, he is swept through the cosmos by solar winds, dispersing through the universe as pure energy, returning back to the origin, the original primal atom before the big bang, where there was darkness and it was good. Before the helpless Brainiac an image appears, a hand to form all, the Master Programmer of the universe, the God of existence. As the Master Programmer reaches his hand to crush the essence of Brainiac, Brainiac sees the visage of his hated enemy Superman, symbol of what is trying to destroy him. The vision fades and back in the present day a cocoon appeares. Within, Brainiac undergoes metamorphosis.
After undergoing this metamorphosis, Brainiac had changed to be something beyond machine or life, he has trod the path of the gods and become like a god. Despite that he saw his ultimate enslavement to his fate, he saw the hatred of the creator of all, and his destiny to be destroyed by his angel of death Supeman and no matter it's possible futility declared war on the creator and all he created.
Post-Metamorphosis Brainiac's personality entirely changed. The Silver Age Brainiac often acted a bit goofy with his very humanlike emotions and silly silver age gadgets. The Post-Metamorphosis Brainiac acts far more cold and machinelike. Despite this as an evolution of the previous Brainiac, Post-Metamorphosis Brainiac very likely has at least the natural abilities of Pre-Metamorphosis Brainiac and potentially access to all the same technology.
From origin point, the chaos of being spawns immaterial order; the mind, and from that day the chaos inflicts a million million million smaller chaoses upon that order to try to swallow it up again. Though the universe and its creator seeks the dissolution of my consciousness once again into the chaos, I stand in defiance. I shall stand against the chaos of being and defeat the angel of death that haunts me.
Higher Plane Nature/Regeneration:
Brainiac has become something more then any metal shell. He is eletrical energy, a disembodied intellect. Even complete destruction of any body of his will not stop him as he can reform himself from energy. His very first action Post-Metamorphosis was as a incorporeal essence reforming a body for himself in symbolic defiance of his destined death. Trapping or destroying Brainiac's body is essentially meaningless as he can at any time make a new body for himself in his skull ship which he uses to his advantage to catch the traitor Psimon out. While he regenerates he moves to the timeless limbo between realities to protect his consciousness.
Immunity to Soul Manipulation:
Intelligence:
Brainiac's intelligence is greater after the metamorphosis claiming his Pre-Metamorphosis self was like a child and he was the adult, a mere 12-th level intellect. As his essence spread out across the universe, Post-Metamorphosis Brainiac absorbed the information of an advanced machine world and then 100,000,000 galaxies. By the end of it his intelligence had grown to the extent that he had absorbed all knowledge in the universe. Even more impressive, Brainiac claims his intellect had grown to the infinite, suggesting his intelligence would be considered on the level of a type 5 civilization, and he was able to play chess against the Time Trapper who was honored at his compliment of his abilities who is a multiversal cosmic entity embodying entropy. He's also the creator of all his own advanced tech, described as more advanced then any ever devised. Brainiac is also stated here to be a master of all forms of hand to hand combat in the universe from absorbing all information in the universe, though he consider such combat barbaric.
Sensors:
Brainiac's ship has sensors that could detect the heroes fighting their forces across numerous Earths during Crisis on Infinite Earths, suggesting inter-universal sensory range.
Forcefield:
Despite Brainiac being rendered unconcious and his forcefield being dramatically weakened, Superman still couldn't break through it. During the Crisis on Infinite Earths Luthor and Brainiac create a barrier between the worlds that the heroes of Earth can not break including the Sorcerers, the Green Lanterns, the Kryptonians and the Djinn
Power:
Brainiac is deadlier then ever after his metamorphosis. During the Crisis on Infinite Earths Brainiac gathered the villains from the worlds under his power and intellect to conquer the worlds while the heroes were distracted. This was started by him killing the Earth-2 Lex Luthor to demonstrate his power. Brainiac led an invasion that led to them easily conquering Earth-4, Earth-S, and Earth-X.
Also while this is probably partially his arrogance, Brainiac claims he is a power rivaled only by the Master Programmer.
Energy Projection:
Brainiac channels his new level of power through energy blasts from his hands strong enough to hurt Superman and laser vision.
Tendrils:
Brainiac and his ship can project tendrils to grab things.
Teleportation:
Matter Manipulation:
Brainiac has far more advanced matter manipulation post-metamorphosis. Brainiac has a machine that can disperse the molecules of an enemy across the entirety of the multiverse. Brainiac and Lex remade Psimon after Brainiac reduced him to atoms. In the timeless void between realities Brainiac was able to recreate a complete copy of Metropolis.
Power Draining and Amplification:
Brainaic's technology has the power to transfer power from one target to another. On a basic level as seen pre-metamorphosis, Brainiac can divert power from one part of his ship to another. However Brainiac was also able to siphon Superman's own power into a laser and was able to equip his troops with devices that fed passively off the metahuman abilities of the heroes trying to stop them. Because of the sheer power this would cause his troops to distengrate from overload in 10 minutes though this was deemed an acceptable sacrifice.
Mental Manipulation:
Brainiac has mental manipulation even the 30th century Legion of Superheroes could not begin to understand. He used this to subtly influence the Legion's actions to the point that they would not even notice they were being controlled.
Limited Existence Erasure Resistance:
Brainiac says that if the Anti-Monitor erases him there is a 0.043% possibility his electronic intellect will survive. This is a miniscule probability, less then 1 in 2,000, and so in a vs debate probably would only come up if Brainiac's first move would one-shot, his enemy's first move is existence erasure which would normally be a 50-50 toss up depending on who acts first, but in this case Brainiac would have a slight increase in probability of winning.
I should note that the resistance may be higher then this seems. Brainiac isn't directly talking about if he is hit with an erasure beam from the Anti-Monitor, he's saying that if the erasure reaches him, which is why he mentions shutting down all lifesigns to sneak around Anti-Monitor's notice. This means he may be talking about a hypothetical scenario where the Anti-Monitor won and is taking into account the difficulty of anything persisting, maybe even saying that if the multiverse is erased he would have a slight chance of survival. That said it's likely too unquantifiable to use.
Skull Ship:
Brainiac's most iconic spaceship, with almost all subsequent Brainiac spaceships taking inspiration from the Skull Ship. While Brainiac could control his old spaceship via thought, post-metamorphosis the Skull Ship is an extension of Brainiac's own being, not a seperate object but part of his being. He and it are one. Brainiac has full control of the ship's metal to the point of being able to morph the front of it to have Superman's face on it.
A casual attack of the Skull Ship decimated one quarter of a planet's population, to subjugate the world for Brainiac's control. It has the old tractor beam although this time Superman can't so easily control it. To fight Superman the Skull Ship is equipped with red solar energy missiles and which tracked him down to the extent even he couldn't avoid them. The Ship also has technopathy able to reroute the Systus 2 planetary defenses against them.
For getting around the Skull Ship is equipped with a warp drive to travel around the multiverse. The warp drive was able to take the Skull Ship to the planet Apokalips in another dimension. It was even able to fly to a timeless limbo between realities on the other side of the multiverse.
Robots:
Brainiac made dozens of robot Superman, each strong enough to be mistaken for the real Superman.
Slaves:
Brainiac has enslaved planets of organics strong enough that the Teen Titans and the Justice League of America (without Superman) struggled to fight them.
Weaknesses:
While Brainiac does not act nearly as human as the old Brainiac, he is still quite arrogant calling himself a power rivaled only by the Master Programmer and presuming all his plans will happen exactly as he predicted. While he claims he is no longer swayed by emotional responses in reality he is still bound by his hatred and fear. Also being made of electrical energy, he is particularly vulnerable to electromagnetism.
Milton Fine Brainiac (Fine-iac)
In the Post-Crisis Universe there was a sideshow circus mentalist, a natural born psychic named Milton Moses Fine, stagename "The Amazing Brainiac." While no one believed the poor psychic when he dreamed his psyche reaches out into the universe and found things it should not. In the distant reaches of the galaxy, 100,000 lightyears from Earth was an alien world called Colu where Milton's psyche came into contact with a disembodied alien consciousness called Vril Dox. Vril Dox lied about his origin claiming he was a scientists disassembled when his prototypical teleporter malfunctioned, lowering Milton's defenses and giving him the chance to possess Milton.
On the world Colu advanced beyond comprehension the computer tyrants ruled over. Brainiac was an intellect even greater then the computer tyrants. Worried about damaging his brilliant intellect the computer tyrants offered Brainiac to ally with them and the amoral Vril Dox agreed however the computer tyrants by machination tricked Brainiac into being atomically dissembled in a teleporter. This was the fate that led Brainiac's conciousness to float into the cosmos to be picked up by the psychic Milton Fine, usurping his psychic power to aid his ambition.
Higher Plane Nature:
Brainiac is a disembodied intellect that can possess people or technology and will have a large number of bodies during the Post-Crisis era. Brainiac's powerful essence destroys non-coluan bodies he inhabits over time which can be annoying for him as it means his forms aren't something he can rely on forever unless he engineers them or restores them artifically but it does mean against organic entities he can destroy their body by possessing them.
Raw Power:
This version of Brainiac doesn't really focus on raw power, instead focusing on psychic hax. That said he was strong enough to physically destroy a wall and even more impressive was stated to be stronger then any normal human or Coluan due to his bionic implants, suggesting he should scale to DC street tiers. After absorbing the psychic double of Superman that was capable of fighting the real Superman evenly, Fine-iac probably scales physically to an early Post-Crisis Superman. Even early Post-Crisis Superman has feats in the city to planetary range, with one feat in the stellar range of surviving a Sun-Eater Explosion, which would put this Brainiac at least city level, possibly star level.
Milton Fine also claims that Brainiac could rule the universe with his power and Brainiac afterwards say that despite this no human such as Milton could imagine what he could do with Milton's power suggesting Milton didn't have any idea how much power he had. This to me seems to highly suggest that their power should be comparable to at least the local galactic defenders like the Green Lanterns whose rings can automatically shield from a supernova. This to me supports his power possibly being stellar.
Intelligence:
Brainiac has a lot of feats of creating advanced technology but they're all basically bit feats compared to his statements. Brainiac's raw knowledge is stated to be as valuable as Milton's psychic power. The computer tyrants feared Brainiac for his intellect and Colu was the most advanced world in ALL the universeS plural and Brainiac says to Brainiac 5 that their bloodline is the greatest intellects in creation. Brainiac is also called the smartest being in the universe and when Saturn Girl read Brainiac's mind she called it an infinity of data.
Telepathy:
Fine-iac is mostly known for the breadth of his psychic abilities, in particular for his telepathy. Fine-iac can telepathically communicate with people, even when he's deep in space and they're on Earth. Milton Fine even before Brainiac brought out his powers could read minds and Brainiac can do likewise. He was able to easily read the mind of Brainiac 5 and if he wants to look deeper into the brain he can peel back the layers of the mind like an onion, though he can be stunned if the brain is stronger then he expected. Fine-iac was able to react to the Flash with his mind-reading by sensing what he would do before he started to act.
Fine-iac can sense the minds of everyone in at least a city wide distance and would be able to tell if Superman had died and was able to sense Superman from an even greater distance. Most impressively Fine-iac was able to sense Superman returning to the Milky Way galaxy which while massively impressive does make sense when you remember Milton Fine initially when he dreamt touched the universe with his psyche reaching to Colu on the other side of the galaxy. Fine-iac's natural psychic abilities give him some degree of psychic resistance, able to withstand a psychic attack from an angry Maxima.
Of course Fine-iac's primary use for his psychics isn't just to gather information or protect himself but to psychically attack his enemies in a variety of ways.
Pain Manipulation:
Brainiac can use his psychic power to cause people unbearable pain. This was strong enough to pain Superman even when just using a tiny portion of his power. Brainiac's pain manipulation has only grown with various biological engineering growing to be able to cause Superman excrutiating pain and feeling like his head was bursting and a far more devastating psychic attack that incapacitated Superman. This attack also worked on Metron of the New Gods.
Perception Manipulation/Illusions:
Probably the most used power of Fine-iac, Fine-iac can cause people to see things that aren't there. He can do this to a whole city at once or create illusory environments for one person. He created an illusion of a fissue that encompassed an entire street and created an entire illusory building. He was able to create "dozens" of illusory copies of himself to make it impossible to target him. His range is absolutely cosmic with this ability able to affect Superman on Earth from a prison on New Genesis.
These illusions can also be quite subtle or precise such as making Jimmy Olsen's Signal Watch sound louder to Superman then it was or making Superman think someone else was him trying to trick him into killing a civilian. Fine-iac also trapped Superman in a series of awake nightmares of him killing people. He accomplished this with the help of a Psi amplifier however his psychic abilities increased to the point of being "more powerful then ever before" meaning he can probably perform this feat naturally now.
Consciousness Manipulation:
As he got stronger Fine-iac also gained the ability to affect the consciousness more fully. He was able to induce uncounciousness in the New Gods. He can also swap the consciousness of people, switching their bodies, even putting himself in Superman's body. Most interestingly to me, Fine-iac was able to divide an opponent's psyche into a good half and an evil half.
Brain Control:
Fine-iac can brainwash people to his bidding, even when he can't physically move. Fine-iac's brain control is good enough to be able to control numerous people but his control decreases with the number he controls. Fine-iac was able to brainwash numerous guards, the superhero team L.E.G.I.O.N. and a large amount of Lexcorp at once.
Mental Projection:
Fine-iac can break free from the confines of his physical body, his psyche can remain outside his body making it impossible to gain information from his physical brain.
Psychic Materialization/Absorption:
Fine-iac's subconscious while he lay dormant on New Genesis manifested a psychic double of Superman capable of fighting the real Superman evenly. Fine-iac can re-absorb his own psychic creations to add their power to his own. This doesn't seem to give him any new abilities, just bolster his existing ones further.
Psi-Bolts:
Fine-iac can fire blasts of psychic energy called "Psi-Bolts" capable of hurting Superman or knocking out New Gods like Orion and Lightray. Given their power level probably didn't increase during the post-crisis period this feat may be signifigantly higher.
Telekinesis:
Fine-iac can impart physical force onto material objects with the power of his mind, the power called "telekinesis." Fine-iac's telekinesis potency depends on distance, with the closer you are to him, the stronger he can affect you. He can use the power on himself to levitate and can grab non-solids as he telekinetically directs water to use as an attack against Superman. Fine-iac's telekinetic might is strong enough to throw Superman, hold Metallo prone in the air, and one-shot the Legion.
Body Control:
Fine-iac's psychic power can affect the body in a number of strange ways. He can control the bio-rthymns of the body he inhabits and can jolt himself out of sleep despite being drugged up. Fine-iac can make the body not want to work right and learn the precise mental frequency to negate someone's nervous system.
Teleportation:
Fine-iac can teleport as far as teleporting to Earth from New Genesis.
Technopathy/Information Manipulation:
This version of Brainiac has a cybernetic brain which can link to virtually any technology. Even without it while in Superman's body Fine-iac was able to use a television broadcast to transmit the information of his brain into the people of Metropolis. This caused them to become mindless and computer binary information babbling mind slaves to Fine-iac. Fine-iac planned to use a strong enough transmission signal to do the same to the whole Earth.
Fine-iac also casually constructed a machine to fight Brainiac 3 for him with technopathy and controlled a machine from galaxies away.
Forcefield:
Fine-iac created a forcefield around Metropolis Supergirl couldn't break. He also created a personal forcefield that stopped Superman.
Matter Manipulation:
Power Amplification:
Brain Probes:
So as to not tax his psychic energy, Fine-iac created brain probes, little bots to brain wash people technologically. He can also use them to absorb the eletrical thought energy of the attached brains. A similar device controls a signifigant number of heroes including Green Lanterns.
Robots:
Fine-iac used numerous robots including these humanoid robots, brainbots, which are snake-like robots with a brain inside controlling it, and assault drones.
Organic Creation:
Fine-iac created a living creature that acted as an anti-matter bomb, capable of blowing up worlds. The resulting explosion massively eclipsed planets.
Skull Ship:
The Skull Ship is durable enough to withstand an assault from numerous superheroes including Superman, Shazam, and Green Lantern and has lasers strong enough to hurt Superman though he does adapt to it. It also has a warp drive and has regenerating tentacles strong enough to restrain Aquaman.
Potential Time Travel:
Brainiac's acolyte Prin Vnok used time travel to rescue Doomsday for Fine-iac. It's likely he would have access to the same technology.
Warworld:
Warworld is a white dwarf-sized artifical planet/battle station capable of wreaking destruction throughout the universe. Fine-iac got possession of Warworld at one point in his history although it's pretty hard to say it's something he would have access to in any normal fight. Fine-iac used Warworld to bolster his psychic power by one thousand times, creating a forcefield no force in the universe could break and making a telepathic assault strong enough to kill a Daxamite. Metron stated that Brainiac having the Warworld meant the universe was doomed.
Weaknesses:
Fine-iac initially had really bad stamina problems due to Milton's human body rejecting Brainiac's alien lifeforce though he managed to get around that by using Lexcorp technology to genetically alter Milton's body to better accomodate his alien mind. That said in a recurring theme for the Post-Crisis Brainiac the bodies he possessed limited his mind such as not being able to perform psychic abilities in Superman's body due Superman's brain not supporting mental powers. While Brainiac was able to alter Milton's body, his brain was constantly interferring with him and his personality was infecting Brainiac's mind making the already arrogant complacent Brainiac more of an extravent show-off fitting for a circus performer. He assumes his plans will go perfectly and regularly underestimates his opponents which is ironic for the person who once said the thing he hates most is to be underestimated.
Brainiac also can't understand human psychology or the way they think and feel about things and despite his intelligence was at one point outwit by Lois Lane because he couldn't understand that Lois knew and loved that Superman would never choose her over the world. On a related note, he's also just the worst actor ever.
Doomsday-iac:
With Milton Fine's body quickly wearing out from Brainiac's lifeforce, Brainiac tried to find a new body, one strong enough to withstand his power and to kill Superman and decided on Doomsday. With the events of Zero Hour making the timeline malleable again, Brainiac rescued Doomsday from the end of time and possessed him.
During this period Brainiac had access to the powers of Doomsday obviously, although it's unlikely even with his time travel, possession, materialization etc. abilities he would be able to regain these powers in a fight as Doomsday was adapting to Brainiac's control of him and if Brainiac tried to possess him once again, it would likely be resisted.
That said the technology from this point should be fair, and Doomsday-iac recreated Coluan structures and technology on Earth, technology equal to the world that was most advanced of any planet in all the universes, a statement in the same issue. This technology was strong enough to clone another Doomsday which was Brainiac's plan when the original Doomsday inevitably adapted against his possession. He also installed many death weapons strong enough to threaten Superman.
Also Doomsday-iac resisted the effects of the Lasso of Truth. I'm not sure if this is a feat of Doomsday's or Brainiac's but given Brainiac's mind was in control, I imagine it's a feat for Brainiac.
Brainiac 2.5:
As Doomsday was quickly resisting Brainiac's control and Superman ruined his plan to possess a clone of Doomsday, Brainiac knew his psi-essence couldn't last a long time outside a body, Brainiac was forced to use his backup plan and possess the Coluan Cybernetic Body made as an emergency. However there seems to be a difference between organic and cybernetic bodies as once inside the cybernetic body Brainiac couldn't freely leave. This form was officially dubbed "Brainiac 2.5."
Technopathy:
The distinctive ability of the cybernetic Brainiac 2.5 is the ability to control technology. Brainiac 2.5 can manipulate all technology near him. He uploaded himself as a virus on Lexcorp computers, an unidentified program to be uploaded into the world's computers. This allowed him to control all the machines of Earth, down to calculators, showing planetary technopathy, turning off every machine at the turn of year 2000, immediatly shutting down 96% of the world's computers. With what remained he launched 2,000 missiles to distract the heroes of Earth.
Brainiac also uses his technopathy to control the robot heroes of the Earth with the notable exceptions of the Metal Men to fight the organic heroes. I should note some outside sources state this was Brainiac 13 doing this but I'm not sure what this is based on, it was Brainiac 2.5 that infected the world's computers and the metal heroes are shown in a brainwashed group before Brainiac 13 even shows up (Page 44 vs Brainiac 13's beam first appearing on page 49.) Speaking of Brainiac 13, Brainiac 2.5's greatest technopathy feat is resisting briefly the technopathy of Brainiac 13, the future Brainiac.
Precognition:
To get complete knowledge of future events Brainiac 2.5 uses advanced Chaos Intrapolation to calculate Superman's exact position for every second of an hour 3 months in advance, a form of mathmatical precognition. After all as Brainiac 2.5 says "perfect plans require perfect timing."
Remote Teleportation/Potential BFR:
Brainaic 2.5 created a device allowing for the transportation of things across galaxies so his henchmen could teleport Kryptonite from the remains of Krypton to Earth.
Energy Projection:
Brainiac 2.5 can project energy in the form of electricity or energy beams capable of making mid Post-Crisis Superman feel pain.
Omega Spears:
A weapon Brainiac 2.5 developed for the purpose of destroying planets and their inhabitants unless he gets what he wants, Omega Spears are missile-like objects that cover a world's surface area and embed themselves into the world's surface. They can destroy a world with superb effiency, reducing them to ash by extending an energy web over the planet's surface that will easily tear the planet apart and kill all life on it.
It's possible their attack potency is higher then planetary as it seems like it would kill the metahumans on the planet too and while it doesn't cause him any injury Superman makes a pained sound effect when hit by one.
Durability:
Brainiac 2.5's cybernetic body is durable enough to withstand a enraged beating from Superman and his allies after they think Brainaic 2.5 destroyed the hostage worlds. Also while it does obvously mess him up and wasn't intended to destroy him, Brainiac 2.5 does survive being hit by an energy beam from Brainiac 13 Superman calls "off the charts."
Arachne War Drones:
Brainiac 2.5 has small spider-like robots called Mass Replicated Arachne War Drones used to quickly build things, do some reconnaissance, all the little things Brainiac 2.5 needs done.
Starship:
Brainiac 2.5 has a new starship. Due to his cybernetic nature it's more of an extension of himself and has a hyperspace drive.
Lena-iac:
With Brainiac 13 taking over Brainiac 2.5's cybernetic body, Brainiac had to quickly find a new vessel so Brainiac 2.5 quickly transferred himself into Lex Luthor's daughter...so I don't know what all that about "being stuck in this body forever" was about. Lena-iac was a very temporary form so she doesn't have that many feats.
She can react to bullets and create a force barrier to push them away and create a general energy barrier. She can shoot energy beams from her hands and possibly electricity? She can levitate and teleport. Psychically she was able to shield Lex Luthor's thoughts from Brainiac 13 and uses a portion of her psychic power to reconstruct Superman after he was turned to data by Brainiac 13. That's about it.
Failed Brainiac Body:
A failed organic body Brainiac had made to possess, this was a brainless blob thing that the Teen Titans, including Wonder Girl (who was losing her powers but had only just started saying she thinks her strength is fading) struggled with. Surprisingly this seems to be considered a "real" Brainiac.
Nanite-iac:
Dr. Palmer performed micro surgery on Lena Luthor to return her to normal, which involved removing a nanite that became untraceable. Surpise, that nanite was Brainiac who returned as a swarm of nanites. Being made of nanites, Superman couldn't physically touch him and he was physically strong enough to contend with Post-OWAW Superman who at this point could survive enough sunlight to vaporize half a galaxy, before getting even stronger, suggesting he scales into the galactic range. Superman directly compares his grip to Doomsday's, saying it's as strong. He also shows the divide his form up to attack numerous points at once in that comic, attacking Superman and Power Armor Batman.
Nanite-iac can also act as a computer virus capable of infecting Oracle and Metallo. He created a cyperspace and drew Barbara Gordan into it where he forcibly changed her into the robotic "Oracle" and took control of her. Even after his defeat, Barbara was partially transmuted to machine even in the real world.
OMAC-iac:
Nanite Brainiac, to get his vengenace on Superman and Batman, would possess an OMAC body, merging the two nanite viruses.
While in this form Brainiac should hypothetically have access to all the standard abilities including enhanced strength, durabiity, and speed on a level similar to Superman's, energy projection, and rapid adaptation granting a large variety of subabilities. OMACs could really have their own blog.
Vril Dox:
The Brainiac you probably know, this is where Brainiac's continuity actually gets confusing.
The account given by Brainiac 3 goes as follows: On the distant world of Colu a being was born known as Vril Dox. Coluans were a genius race priving knowledge above all else, but extreme even for their people was Vril Dox, Brainiac the Elder. Despite being born with a 12-th level intellect, it was not enough and he surgically enhanced him with technology. Hated by his own people for being a freak and needing the information of the universe, Brainiac 1 left to collect all the data of the information destroying star systems as he went. Terrified of the vengenace he might wreak on them, the Coluans built the computer tyrants who took control of the planet.
The prior Brainiacs are said to be nothing but probes of Vril Dox's, and he's the real Brainiac....or is he?
Continuity:
It's implied several times throughout the Post-Crisis continuity that the Pre-Crisis Brainiac stories happened. As early as immediatly after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, a guidebook mentions the Pre-Crisis Brainiac and makes it clear he existed. In the story arc "Silver Age" which is an homage to the Silver Age stylistically designed to resemble it but seems to take place in the Post-Crisis continuity (Batman references it in Tower of Babel), the Injustice Gang in the Justice League's bodies finds a crashed Brainiac spaceship and find the body of Pre-Metamorphosis Brainiac with it being stated that upon crashing his intelligence left his physical form. One of the events seen with the Chronal Viewer is a large number of Brainiacs attacking Superman including Pre-Metamorphosis, Post-Metamorphosis, Fine-iac, Pulsar Stargrave, and the Failed Clone. This was directly meant to lead up to the revelation by Supergirl that all the prior Brainiacs were just probes of the real Brainiac, artifical bodies technological and organic he made, and that no one had ever seen him. However this opens up a lot of plot holes:
- Superman claims the first time he met Brainiac was his first encounter with Fine-iac but the Pre-Crisis encounters would have had to have happened before he met Fine-iac as the guidebook states the Pre-Crisis Brainiac was destroyed by the Omega Men and came out before the first encounter with Fine-iac.
- The Post-Crisis Brainiac left Colu before the Computer Tyrants had even been invented but it was the computer tyrants that created the Pre-Crisis Brainiac and were the ones who turned Fine-iac to energy.
- If Brainiac originated as an alien on Colu, something that was known to the Post-Crisis Earth, why did Supergirl say that no one had ever met the true Brainiac. Supergirl could be wrong, but Brainiac himself says he has not awoken in 3 centuries, nor left his ship in 5.
- In the original Brainiac story, Superman rescues the shrunken city Kandor from Brainiac's ship. He keeps it in the Fortress of Solitude hoping to one day find a way to return them to normal size. They come up in numerous other Brainiac stories in Pre-Crisis but Post-Crisis Superman finds Kandor in Brainiac's ship.
- Even in the Post-Crisis continuity are there two Vril Doxs? In the Fine-iac backstory we learn of the Vril Dox that betrayed his people to ally with the Computer Tyrants, and in the late Post-Crisis orign we learn that Vril Dox left Colu and his actions off it was the reason for the development of the Computer Tyrants.
It's possible statements are wrong but pretty much anything decided will leave plot holes. As best I can try and figure out what's being stated; there is a Brainiac intellect, the electric energy that made new bodies after the Metamorphosis, that was in charge during the Pre-Crisis era. During the Crisis on Infinite Earths when Brainiac's ship was discovered with Post-Metamorphosis Brainiac inside it but seemingly "dead" meaning Brainiac's intellect had left, possibly going to the timeless void between realities as he does when regenerating. Because Superman was at the dawn of history during the battle between Anti-Monitor and the Spectre his memory was unaffected by the crisis which allows him to remember the past encounters with Brainiac however having been told by Fine-iac that he's an alien means he would think the robot Pre-Crisis Brainiacs were just drones or bodies he was controlling from a distance meaning Fine-iac would have been the first time he "met" him, yet with the altered continuity of Earth-1, Superman would not have the city of Kandor. Brainiac 2 and Brainiac 3's accounts are truly impossible to reconcile unless you think this is a manipulation of Brainiac 12 who was manipulating the timeline to bring about the future that was Brainiac 13. Between the two Brainiac 2's is probably more true as he was actually there during it. Because neither Post Crisis Brainiac's creation are ever shown, it's possible both are two seperate organic bodies that he designed and put on Colu for some reason and that the Post-Crisis Brainiac that appears is thus the True Brainiac, which I think is meant to be the intention. It would explain why they all are called "Vril Dox." It's a common trait that there is a Brainaic intelligence that leaves the body when it dies, hence the "dead" Brainiac shell in COIE, the Pre-Metamorphosis Brainaic body found in Post-Crisis, and how the Post-Crisis Brainiac keeps hopping from body to body, and this may all be explained via Convergence later. Regardless of how much or little sense it makes, the intent was clearly to show that all past Brainiacs are canon to this Brainiac and that's what I will be assuming.
Intelligence:
Brainiac was born a 12-th level intellect but surgically enhanced it due to his need to possess all knowledge. Brainiac's intellect is stated to be 1,000x stronger then a Kryptonian's super-brain. Superman for contrast is smart enough to rebuild the Miracle Machine, a Kardashev Type 5 technology capable of granting wishes able to remake the multiverse and make a metafictional happy ending from memory, suggesting Brainiac is 1,000x baseline Type 5 intellects. On the same page it says that all prior Brainiacs are jus probes suggesting that Brainiac scales signifigantly above their intellects. Brainaic is stated to be the most knowledgeable being in the universe and Lex stated that no being has absorbed more knowledge. Brainiac has actually succeeded in killing Superman with Superman being only alive because of that meddling Brainiac 5 coming back in time to change events. Despite Brainiac 5's 12-th level intellect and 1,000 years of scientific development on his side, he was unsure he could replicate Brainiac 1's technology. Brainiac 1 has also outwit his clone and their child Brainiac 2 and Brainiac 3.
Information Stealing:
Brainiac acquired his massive intelligence partly through using his machines to absorb information which is why he is known as the "thought-thief." This was shown when he downloaded all the memories of Superman. Brainiac at any moment inside his bio-shell (his ship) is connected to all the information of every living being in there, making him the knowledge and strength of thousands of worlds. With each world Brainiac assimilates his power grows. The first world he assimiliated took a year. The next four, six months. The next twenty, six weeks. Soon he will be capable of assimilating a galaxy's life in hours. This shall extend until all worlds in the universe are his.
Psychic Abilities:
Brainiac induced pain psychically in Superman. Brainiac can offensively use the information he's absorbed by overloading an enemy's brain with information. This seems to be a matter of information storage capacity rather then raw intelligence as he suggests 2 or 5 worlds will reduce Superman's brain to mush. Also, I'm not sure if this is psychic or not, but Brainiac was able to instill enough fear to overcome the telepathy of Tellus and the Lanothians.
Predictive Mind-Reading:
Physical Power:
Post-Crisis Brainiac is consistently as strong or stronger then Kryptonians. He's overpowered both Superman and Zod individually. Brainiac has survived Superman using his heat vision on Brainiac's eyes, called Superman's punches "nothing" and when Superman overpowered Brainiac's bindings Brainiac just caught his fist.
Forcefield:
Brainiac can project an invisible forcefield from his ship. Unlike other Brainaic incarnations, this Brainiac only has a forcefield around his ship and not his person as he considers his ship his bio-shell and almost never leaves it. Brainiac's forcefield is strong enough that Superman couldn't break it, a bunch of Kryptonians couldn't even scratch it, and it tanked an explosion that vaporized Kryptonians.
Brainiac's forcefield is not a solid consistent thing, but a liquid that flows from safe areas to areas of percieved threat. This allowed Superman to trick the forcefield to get in by attacking from one area and slipping in another way, however the forcefield adjusts to every move used against it previously and so the same tactic wouldn't work again.
Size Manipulation/City Bottling:
Teleportation Beams:
Brainaic's ship can project teleporting beams.
Lasers:
Brainiac uses surgical lasers for vivisection strong enough to cut into Superman.
Protonic Explosion:
Brainiac can use a "protonic explosion" strong enough to defeat Geo-Force.
Energy Absorption and Physical Sealing:
Brainiac can use a Quantum Capacitator, an energy orb that absorbs any energy used by the person trapped inside to strengthen the orb strength.
Power Nullification:
Data Core of Colu:
Brainiac has access to the Data Core of Colu controlling all technology of Colu, the most advanced world in all the universes, giving him complete control of the planet.
Resistance to Technopathy:
Resistance to Illusions (Holograms):
Potential Acausality:
Brainaic somehow killed Superman even when that wasn't what happened in the history of the future, which was collapsing all of space and time. This was an imminent threat to the universe, all of space and time.
Skull Ship:
Brainiac's Post-Crisis Skull Ship. He refers to the ship as his "Bio-Shell", and is one with the ship. This ship has missiles that induce supernova, destroy star systems, and kill Kryptonians like Supergirl. The Skull Ship's tendrils are also strong enough to repel or hold Superman.
Drones:
Brainiac has armies of drones he uses as probes. These probes are numerous enough to be sent out across the universe, also suggesting they can move quite fast. Brainiac upgraded the drones at one point so this will be seperated into pre- and post-upgrade.
Pre-Upgrade Drones' forcefields were durable enough to resist heat vision from Superman and Supergirl and their personal forceefield generator was able to protect Kandor from Krypton's cataclysm. One was also able to hurt Superman, albeit very minorly. It managed to draw a little blood and then transmitted the information up to Brainiac. They're also able to turn themselves back on after their CPU is destroyed. This is the equivalent of a human regenerating destruction of their brain.
Post-Upgrade Drones are able to fight kryptonians and easily hurt Supergirl. They've also gained the ability to shoot green lightning and red sunlight blasts.
Koko:
Brainiac has a bunch of white space gorillas called Koko after the original Brainiac's Koko. While Superman easily defeated one, a bunch did seem to give Mon-El a bit of a hard time. Koko also once against proving Brainiac's most loyal ally by far.
Weaknesses:
Brainiac is used to being completely in control and in a perfectly orderly sterile environment. While Brainiac knows more then any other being, he knows them all abstractly by stealing the information and not through experience. Superman first defeated Brainiac by forcing him out of his bio-shell into the muck of Earth. Brainiac panicked and was overloaded with stimulus, as Superman correctly surmised that Brainiac couldn't face things he couldn't control, trying to contain the chaos of the world in safe little bubbles. Brainiac can destroy the great worlds and stars and heroes of the universe but he is undone by insects and bacteria. While he has developed slightly better psychological resistance, he still hates being outside his bio-shell calling it filthy.
Such chaos, such infinite streams of data, never-ending, never-ceasing...how does he live in it? How does it not drive him mad if he sees it too, hears it too? They say that he is the symbol of "Hope", that paradox....the unchanging change, eternal temporality, the chaos within order. How does he defy my comprehension time after time?
Just as Brainiac can't deal with the physical chaos of the world, he also can't comprehend the mental chaos that is emotions. He has been outwit several times because he can't understand emotions and experience with Lex Luthor managing to outwit Brainiac and eventually defeating him by exploiting his rigid thinking and his arrogance thinking that Lex could not have deduced his plan. Brainiac has no ability to understand symbolism, asking why they call him "Superman" if he is not a human and emotions are so painful to him that he compared an opponent inducing emotion in him to being poisoned. No matter how smart you are, the way emotion shakes even the core of your being will still defy comprehension.
Forcibly disconnecting this Brainiac from his ship can also pain him and he's not the best fighter. When he and Zod were both depowered Zod's greater military skill allowed him to easily beat up Brainiac.
Flashpoint Brainiac:
During the very brief "Flashpoint" timeline between Post-Crisis and Post-Flashpoint a lot of alternate versions of characters were seen in the dark Flashpoint world including a version of Brainiac. Due to lack of appearences this version doesn't have a lot of feats but is actually probably one of the stronger ones from lore.
The year is 3011 and Brainiac has had control over the Earth for 5 centuries giving this Brainiac a lot more time and resources to increase his power. Brainiac fished Kid Flash out of the timestream with the intent to harvest the speedforce from his cells. He also has sleep chambers that causes people to have very dark dreams within.
Vril Dox (Post-Flashpoint):
After the Flashpoint led to the New 52 timeline, a new Brainiac was introduced. On the distant genius world of Yod-Colu there was an eccentric intellect surpassing even their genius intellect. With his intelligence he was able to spy into the fifth dimension of godlike entities. What he found there was a cosmic war whose ripples allowed a cosmic threat called the Multitude to swarm the universe like a cosmic plague destroying planet after planet headed towards Yod-Colu. Taking drastic action to save his civilization and knowing that no one would understand what needed to be done, Vril began a series of secret experiments on his own son with the intent to uplift the existence of his species until his wife found out what was going on and had him arrested. The council ruling Colu condemned his barbaric acts and sent him into exile only for him to return when the Multitude descended upon Yod-Colu, bottling the city containing his own family and attempting to preserve as much of his civilization as possible before taking to the stars. Now Brainiac voyages across the multiverse trying to collect cities from worlds that would be doomed by the Multitude hoping to use the saved civilizations to find some way to save the universe.
As you might be able to tell, this version of Brainiac is notably more benefic, though not good, then other versions of Brainiac. In particular Post-Flashpoint Vril Dox has an interest in the Kryptonian scientist Jor-El who somehow stopped the Multitude, a fellow outcast genius scientist whose people refused to listen to his warnings and once tried to help someone purely for being brother to Jor-El (although his idea of helping was to make him a cyborg.)
Many Bodies:
The collector of worlds has many terminals, many different vessels. To increase the effiency of his information gathering he divided his consciousness across the many vessels so he could be in a lot of places at once. He is known as Brainwyrm, Mind^2, Abbakus, and more. A very rudimentary Brainiac actually came to Earth long before and was called...the internet.
You stare now, limited intellect, into one of a million eyes that are my screens, into a portion of a rudimentary existence of mine. As you extract information with your primitive organic brain from my form, know that I extract greater information from each terminal looking back into you.
Physical Power:
Various Terminals have different level of strength but Vrix Dox's main body after cybernetic enhancement was able to stomp a green lantern and fought Superdoom (Doomsday virus-possessed Superman), the two of them surviving inside a black hole. This black hole feat has been calced to over 2.4 Foe or supernova's worth of energy.
Intelligence:
Stop me if you've heard this one before; Brainiac is a 12th level intellect who made miraculous advancements in Coluan technology, considered the greatest mind of Colu, while humans are considered 3rd level intellects and Kryptoians a 8th level intellect and invented a bunch of high Kardashev level tech. Brainiac is also arguably the overarching big bad of the New 52 era as he masterminded a big plan to invade the Earth over 3 years which was the big near-end of New 52 event including Superman becoming Doomsday (and God Brainiac being the end of that period.)
Far more bizarrely for a Brainiac, he has the common sense to offer to let someone just leave his ship because conflict would be counterproductive and the ability to understand irrational emotions to the point of suspecting they would return despite it being illogical. He also likely has some skill as he has apparently fought global guardians of planets so often he recognizes it as a trope that he is tired off.
Higher Dimensional/Plane Sensing:
As mentioned in his backstory, Brainiac invented technology that could look into the fifth dimension.
Psychic Powers:
Vril has psychic powers amplified by his technology. He can telepathically communicate to his technology to command them, can telepathically attack people by overloading them with information, and with his ship's technology can alter the brains of people, removing all their memories. Even his collectors can brainwash people and his true self was able to brainwash Lois Lane from lightyears away. In fact his ultimate plot revolved around brainwashing.
Brainiac's master plan involved collecting minds, absorbing them as he did ot the Earth's, brainwashing the 7 billion people on Earth (at the time), and stealing their mental energy, starting with their higher cognitive functions, to combine with the ones in his mother ship so he could gain reality-warping capacity.
Reality-Warping:
Post-Flashpoint Vril Dox's ultimate plan is to reshape the universe via the psychic energy of the people he's captured. Even beginning to approach that allowed Vril Dox to warp reality locally offering Superman whatever he wants if he joined Vril's cause. With the psychic energy of the Mothership and the people of the Earth, Vril Dox could reshape the universe to be whatever he wanted it to be.
Body Manipulation:
Brainiac can alter the DNA and RNA of people. He was also able to speed up Doomsday's evolution making it even more unstable.
Astral Plane Interaction:
Teleportation technology:
Brainiac created technology to teleport around as well as a gate that allowed his forces to travel lightyears through a portal.
Power Amplification:
Brainiac elevated Lois to a 12th level intellect from "countless lightyears away" and granting her superpowers including telekinesis, telepathy and memory-wiping.
Technopathy:
Vril Dox as part of his mission absorbs the data of worlds before they are destroyed. He can also reprogram and assimilate robotic metahumans like Cyborg and Cyborg Superman. He also can take control of the AI, even the most advanced AI of the planets he's collecting.
Ships:
Unlike most other incarnations of Brainiac, New 52 Brainiac actually has a fleet of ships. The leading ship of his fleet is the Mothership, pictured above. The Mothership is a massive spaceship resembling a living creature that dwarfs the Earth. It was the source of the psionic power that brainwashed the Earth and jammed Martian Manhunter's psychic power. The Mothership is durable enough to tank the heat vision of a solar-amped Superman, tanks a blast from Warworld, and can take blows from Superdoom. It can also tug the Earth around and automatically adapts to incoming threats.
The Mothership leads the daugher fleet called the Horde which softens up a planet by attacking military bases, disabling all network communications and technology as they did. When their numbers are depleted below 36% they self-detonate to do one last burst of damage at any global defenders attacking them. The horde is strong enough to give the heroes of Earth and the Red Lantern Corps a run for their money.
Finally there's Brainiac's personal ship, the Collector Ship. Brainiac is one with this ship and it's clearly more designed for collecting cities then direct combat, The Collector ship in terms of combat is moreso around the level of the Horde then the Mother Ship but it can fight Cyborg Superman evenly, its forcefield can electrocute Superman, and fired a missile that violently exploded planet Nomu. The Collector Ship can sweep for energy proximity, has full spectrum cloaking, and I think has energy sensors. Also has the traditional city bottling.
Robots:
Brainiac uses massive armies of robots. Brainiac's basic shocktroopers can fight Superman, Martian Manhunter and Cyborg well enough. Fittingly as you might be able to guess from that, his robots seem to be signifigant in strength in comparison to him. These robots can also incorporate technology into them, with one literally taking a tank and making it their head.
Brainiac also has more specialized spider-bots, his terminauts can shrink and preserve important artifacts from doomed civilizations, and his reconnaisance droids can scan and scout for information.
Brainiac has had more servants but I'm not including characters that are temporary thralls of him like Lois Lane or Cyborg Superman because I don't think that could really qualify as standard.
Weaknesses:
Brainiac might be a bit better at recognizing irrational emotions, but he still assumes everyone is trying to preserve their own lives and was beaten by not realizing Superman would sacrifice himself for others. He's also still kind of arrogant and doesn't think he can cooperate with others which is partly why he tried to save his people by himself.
Bear-iac:
At one point one of the Brainaic bodies was a bear. Fought Superman for a page and that's about it but I couldn't not mention it.
Brainiac 12:
So in the far future is Brainiac's ultimate state Brainiac 13. In order to make sure this came to pass Brainiac 13 poured his essence back into the past remaking Metropolis. That essence of Brainiac 13 hiding in Metropolis is Brainiac 12, who seeks only to bring about Brainiac 13. He's strong enough to kill the future Post Crisis Robo-Batman and Robo-Wonder Woman.
Brainiac 12 has time abilities, in particular he can freely travel in time and create a rift in time. Besides that he can breath out these techno-bug things, assimilate material, and disguise himself.
Brainiac 13:
At the end of time the ruler of the cosmos is the ultimate state of Brainiac, Brainiac 13, who has occasionally meddled with the present time, one's of Superman's strongest enemies. He's showed up in 2 arcs, both of which had him as the big bad, the second time of which forced all the heroes of Earth and the universe to ally with Darkseid and Apokalips.
Body/Physical Power:
Brainiac 13's body is an absolutely immense machine made of a billion trillion trillion trillion (10^45) atom-sized computers. In comparison there is ~1.33 * 10^50 Atoms in the Earth. He can naturally exist in a place beyond space and time.
Brainiac 13 is strong enough that even in it's most vulnerable state in all of time it was able to beat an Imperiex Hollower which few of the JLA members could beat one on one. A casual blast from Braniac 13 injured Superman and he casually skewered through Superman Blue. Likewise Brainiac 13 were able to tank Superman Blue's strikes. Brainiac 13's full power was far higher, able to fight Imperiex Prime across 1,000,000,000 timelines and earning him the title "ravager of timelines" for shredding timelines to shreds.
Potential Regeneration (Godly):
Superman states that spreading Brainiac 13's consciousness over 60 trillion lightyears in half a second is not killing him and a guidebook states that he came back from that, although the details are kind of unclear.
Technopathy:
Brainiac 13's most known power is his technopathy. Brainiac 13's power upgrades technology to a futuristic state so it is more usable to him. Brainiac 13 upgraded his past self's body so it would become Brainiac 13 in the present time. Immediatly upon appearing in the present time, Brainaic's nanotech swarm started upgrading a citywide area on a molecular scale and was quickly doing the same to the whole Earth.
He has control of the things he's upgraded. With each nanosecond his nanotech swarm reached a greater area and his power and knowledge grew. His presence in the present time upgraded Metallo and gave him control of the robot heroes of Earth. These changes are maintained by his presence but he can divert his data into a codex to maintain the changes in a time he's not in.
Digitization:
Part of Brainiac's upgrading involves digitizing things. Brainiac 13 was able to easily digitize Superman, absorbing him inot the bit stream. Brainiac 13's plot in his first appearence was to turn the Earth into a super computer processing himself, showing gradual planetary digitization attaining the status of virtual god. He also remade the cosmos in the far future in his computerized image, suggesting that at his peak he may have universal scale digitization.
Mental Manipulation:
Brainiac 13 overloaded Superman Blue's mind with the pain and fear of everyone on Earth. For brainwashing large numbers of people at once he also created indoctrination chambers.
Invisibility:
Intangibility:
Probes:
Teleportation:
Time Manipulation:
Brainiac 13's tech naturally bends time and has a temporal displacement cannon. Brainiac can time travel, but beyond just time travel can download his consciousness across time, and spread his consciousness 1,000,000,000 vectors to engage Imperiex in an omni-temporal fight.
Reality-Warping:
Energy Manipulation:
Brainiac 13 can manipulate the energy of the planet, and upgraded Metallo to tap into all kinds of frequencies and spectrums suggesting he should be able to do the same. Also after fusing with Warworld, he used Warworld to absorb Imperiex becoming what I call "Imperiex-iac"
Imperiex-iac:
After absorbing the energy being Imperiex Prime, Brainiac 13's power skyrocketed. He became an electric virus capable of assimilating the universe, capable of absorbing the universe into becoming his cosmic circutry, being reborn as all that is. He planned to use this power to create his ultimate goal across incarnations, perfect order as the world was enlightened and upgraded to the perfect mind-cosmos, his mind being all.
Imperiex-iac did this by creating energy webs connecting worlds to being to make a perfect unity. Because of these links, destroying one of the linked worlds will destroy all of them which can make for a good psychological tactic against a hero.
Weaknesses:
Despite literally billions of years of advancement, Brainiac 13 still finds it difficult to cope with unknown factors that upset his perfect plans. Also for some reason he's weak to Kryptonian technology and he can be beaten by being converted to energy and sealed inside Kryptonian technology.
Imperiex-iac also has the weakness that Imperiex was still alive in Brainiac 13 and can be released to derive him of his power, although then both combatants will have to deal with Imperiex.
Brainiac One Million:
Brainiac's latest form as of the time of writing. Brainiac within the Rebirth Universe got the technology of the cosmic being Perpetua which allowed him to upgrade with the technologies of hundreds of advanced futures.
This form of Brainiac was able bottle fragments of hypertime, which is is an insane feat of time manipulation as hypertime in DC is a metafictional concept representing the real world time in DC Comics suggesting that this version of Brainiac has metafictional time manipulation. Brainiac One Million has also captured hundreds of Earth's futures, showing universal+ to low multiversal size manipulation (as it's unknown the rate he did this.) Brainiac One Million can assimilate the minds and technologies of these futures, allowing him to grow at an expotential rate every milisecond.
Brainiac One Million's raw power is obviously increased, tanking attacks from many Justice Leagues from different realities at once. He easily overpowered the Worlogog, the most powerful item in the universe, a fragment of which could stop a Big Bang. At any point he can destroy or assimilate the hundreds of futures he's collecting.
Brainiac One Million can also summon anything from the futures he's collected. This includes kryptonite lightforms from the 25-th century, god-killer snares from the 59-th century, and robots made by Batman's descendant.
God Brainiac:
During the leadup to Convergence, it is said to Superman that every Brainiac he had ever faced were avatars of something greater, a god older then all other gods, existing outside time and space in darkness thick as blood. God Brainiac was once unit designate Brainiac from Colu who wanted to become the smartest being in all the universes. Upon observing the flashpoint and surviving it, he traveled to the edge of the source and beyond, seeing all the versions of himself and the monster he would become. He reached into the multiverse for more, reached backwards in time, to evolve metafictionally as the monitors had but was caught in the reality storm caused by Superboy Prime punching reality and a tear in reality created by Mr. Mind mutating into the form seen above.
Avatar Creation, Insanity-Inducement, and Conciousness Assimilation:
The truth about Brainiac's true nature was finally explained by Convergence. Every single Brainiac in the multiverse is an extension of God-iac's consciousness. Each incarnation caught a glimpse of the true reality of God-iac, and driven insane become retroactively an extension of his being. God-iac is a cosmic entity projecting his consciousness into mortal vessels, with any being whose awareness has grown to the extent that they can perceive him; turning into energy that scoured the universe back to creation, touching the universe in their dreams, spying into the fifth dimension to the realm of godlike beings, they are possessed by the alien intellect and when they perish the consciousness leaves their body to rejoin or regenerate outside spacetime or possess another body.
Hundreds of forms, avatars of my transcendent intellect. Staring past the worlds, beyond space and time, to catch a glimpse of my being, are you even aware of the possibility that you might become yet another extension of my awareness?
Physical Form:
God-iac is a giant being dwarfing buildings existing outside spacetime naturally. He scales obviously to all past versions of Brainiac and likely to Brainiac One Million as God-iac exists outside spacetime and even Brainiac 13 from a future far past Brainiac One Million is part of God-iac. His body absorded many timelines to mutate to his monsterous form.
Ultra-Forcefield:
God-iac's ultra-forcefield holds against Kryptonians from numerous DC continuities.
Higher-Dimensional/Conceptual Movement:
God-iac traveled to the edge of the Source, and beyond. The edge of the Source is the Source Wall, the barrier girding all realities and dimensions. This also potentially gives God-iac sealing resistance as the Source Wall usually seals all who try to go beyond it.
Spacetime Manipulation:
God-iac loves to play around with spacetime. He altered the timeline to make himself a God on Earth, can convergence timelines, and realign the infinite earths timeline. God-iac eventually absorbed the multiversal scale temporal energy of Telos and could return all the people on the planet to their homes in realities across space, time, and continuity. Even when Deimos had control over all time, God-iac was able to hide his past and future from Deimos and with Deimos' knowledge was able to trap the strongest time manipulators in the DC Multiverse overpowering their spacetime manipulation and keeping them in Vanishing Point. The level of temporal energy God-iac possesses is enough to turn the world Telos into a bullet that could shatter the multiverse.
God-iac can use his spacetime manipulation to BFR enemies such as moving Telos the entire planet outside of spacetime, BFR-ing STORMWATCH outside of spacetime while they were in The Bleed, and probably most importantly sent a team of heroes back to the start of time to prevent the collapse of the Multiverse, restoring Pre-Crisis to canonicity.
Bottling:
God-iac also obviously has his oldest trick of bottling cities although this time he takes cities from anywhere in space, time and continuity, saving cities from doomed continuties and realities. A complete listing of all the realities he's collecting 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Transmutation:
Terraforming:
Mind Manipulation:
God-iac showed Superman his death in every timeline including ones not currently in continuity and erased Telos memories of who he was.
Power Amplification:
The Blood Moon:
God-iac's ship is the "Blood Moon", a spaceship the size of a planet that he is one with. It contains the information of the multiverse that God-iac has gathered.
Cyber Angel:
A creation of God-iac made to test Superman. Got into a fight with Future's End Superman (possible future Superman) and did alright, demonstrated super stats, energy/lightning projection, teleportation, and the ability to turn matter to energy.
Telos:
Originally the great warrior Arak, God-iac turned him into his subordinate. Easily God-iac's most powerful minions, but also betrayed him so Koko is still better. God-iac no longer has access to Telos after Telos regained his memories of his true identity, although given God-iac gave him most of his abilities he should likely still be able to perform most of the abilities himself. Telos has the ability to turn into the various Brainiac bodies; being able to turn into Pre-Metamorphosis, Post-Metamorphosis, Pulsar Stargrave, Fine-iac, Brainiac 2.5, Antimatter Universe Brainiac, Post-Crisis Vril Dox, Post-Flashpoint Vril Dox, DCAU Brainiac, and Brainiac 13...all at once.
In terms of raw power he was able to easily restrain the Earth-2 Heroes and even restrained the multiversal warping Zero Hour Parallax Hal Jordan preventing him from using his reality-warping powers. He tanks and absorbs the power of the magical supervillain Deimos who at this point in Convergence had absorbed the power of a lot of time manipulators and was beating all of the Heroes of the Earths. He got into another fight with Parallax, easily withstanding attacks from him. He also has the Chronal Shard which lets him use a portion of God-iac's power, though it exhausts him. He primarily manifests his power through the planet Telos which he initially thought he was the consciousness of, hence the same names. He is at one with the planet and can manipulate the planet violently enough to defeat the Injustice universe Justice League. He was also able to transport the planet to the Earth-2 universe. He has other spacetime manipulation feats as well. He can teleport himself and others even as far as the planet Telos from within the universes, can create portals through time, and can create a temporal singularity.
Telos is a decent psychic. He can look inside the head of Parallax despite his godlike willpower, can move large objects telekinetically, and can erase memories. He can also psychically project his voice to be heard across the world of Telos. Telos can also control matter and fixed Dick Grayson's spine, reinforcing it with metal that would enhance his strength.
Telos also has his own little drones, capable of fighting Earth-2 Heroes and creating his power dampening fields as well as adapt to metahuman abilities.
Awareness:
God-iac is the smartest of the Brainiacs by scaling, having Type 4-5 entities as tiny extensions of his consciousness. His awareness has grown to know things about the multiverse, including timelines beyond the current continuity. After absorbing all the temporal energy of the great time travelers, Brainiac finally has all knowledge, knowledge of all timelines; of past, present, and future.
God-iac's awareness grew to such an extent that he actually gained fourth wall awareness and could see the person reading him, and the metafictional nature of existence.
Surprised? Sitting there reading about me and judging me...why should the smartest being in existence not be able to do the same back to you?
However, even more then all this God-iac developed something none of his versions could...sorrow. Regret. God-iac had lost who he was, and remembered with a sense of loss his home of Colu after attaining this monsterous form apart from all being. His obsessive quest for knowledge and power and more then anything a sense of control in the chaotic universe left him experiencing a lack of control that could never dim, for it resided within him.
It is a truism stated in 242 worlds in Earth-1's universe alone that "Knowledge is Power." Yet, why is it then that the more knowledge I gain, the more I see the gulf between my power and what exists beyond me? Perhaps you should be thankful lesser mind, that your soul is not burdened with the knowledge that I am.
Weaknesses:
Across incarnations, Brainaic is an arrogant intellect obsessed with knowledge and power and presuming his plans will go off without a hitch. He also often has difficulty understanding things that are not strictly logical like emotions or symbolism. While he is the most intelligent being in the universe he's been regularly outwit by less intelligent entities acting in chaotic ways he didn't expect.
Also Superman punching God-iac somehow did damage to him and knocked around every version of Brainiac in the multiverse. This is widely considered PIS and doesn't make a lot of sense given that God-iac tanked attacks from people on Superman's level including Superman and every single incarnation of Brainiac has either tanked Superman's punch or his ultra-forcefield did.
Personality:
Brainiac I think is probably the most underrated villain in the DCU in terms of importance. When the villains were rallied under one banner in Pre-Crisis, it was Brainiac. When the Pre-Crisis multiverse was going to be restored, it was Brainiac who restored it. It's even implied Brainiac was the one who caused Krypton's destruction, creating the Superman. Brainaic is the archetypal evil alien, with Supergirl stating that if Lex Luthor is everything bad about humans; Brainiac is everything bad about aliens. He's a cold creature that experiments on humans for science, treating them like ants, whose thinking is entirely unhuman. In a world where wonderous people came from the stars to save humanity; Brainiac is the reminder that not everyone from out there cares about humanity.
One of the most interesting things about Brainiac is seeing how his depiction has changed over time; going from one of the most evil villains in the universe in Pre-Crisis, to having a somewhat understandable motivation in Post-Crisis, to being portrayed downright tragically in Post-Flashpoint, reflecting perhaps his development in hypertime leading to his saving the multiverse in Convergence. Because the truth is while Brainiac might seem to be one of Superman's most alien enemies, something Lex claims Superman will be, and something Superman fears he might be, Brainiac's motivation is on some level one of the most understandable.
From the day it's formed; the consciousness is a strange transcendent order placed in a world of chaos that wants to absorb it again. From that day the mind tries it's best to create order and harmony and safety in the chaos, but must eventually come to the acceptance some chaos will always remain in the world. Brainiac and Superman both see the world with super senses and super intellects, see the chaos for what it is. But where Superman has learned to live in the chaos through love and trust in people and the world, Brainiac in all his forms is that mind that still desperately clings to the ambition that they may be able to eliminate chaos from the world.
Summary:
+God Machine outside of spacetime
+Can convert others to being unwitting extensions of his consciousness (Assimilation)
+More conventional matter-energy assimilation (can absorb timelines)
+Hundreds of bodies and billions of probes
+Regen (Low-Godly)
+Possession
+Can divide his consciousness into 1,000,000,000 vectors
+Attack potency varies; each continuity gets up to at least universal. God Brainiac is at least Low Multiversal physically, with Multiversal destructive capacity via time manipulation
+Grows in power and intelligence every nanosecond, can reach into the multiverse for more power
+Adaptation
+Universal+ to Low Multiversal Durability, higher with Forcefield
+Forcefield can reflect attacks, has a repulsor, can magnetize to Kryptonian molecules, and can grow to encompass a planet)
+Conceptual Speed (Reached the edge of the Source and beyond)
+Type 5+ Intelligence
+High A Tier skill (knows every martial art in the Pre-Crisis universe)
+Information Stealing/Manipulation
+Can overload an enemy's brain with information (Planetary+ scale information manipulation attack)
+Cybernetic Senses (At least tens of thousands kilometers, possibly inter-universal, can use technology to see into the fifth dimension)
+X-Ray Vision (can even see through lead)
+Psychic Scanning (At least galactic)
+Cosmic Awarenes (Multiversal)
+Metafictional Awareness
+Precognition
+Size Manipulations (Can bottle universes, can also enlarge objects)
+Technopathy (At least planetary, possibly universal)
+Digitization (Possibly planetary quickly, universal over time)
+Passive Technology Upgrading (City scale immediatly, at least planetary quickly)
+Can interact with energy beings and astral beings
+Existence Erasure (Can shrink objects out of existence)
+Healing
+Biological Control
+Can breath out techno-bugs
+Invisibility/Intangibility
+Shockwave Creation
+Various Beam and Explosives Weapons (including anti-matter)
+Self-Detonation
+Kryptonite and Red Sunlight Weapons
+Binding (Multiversal, can bind entities as strong as Parallax Hal Jordan)
+Elemental Manipulation (Lightning, Water, Earth, Heat)
+Weather Manipulation
+Terraforming
+Silence Inducement
+Paralysis
+Knockout Gas
+Freezing
+Radiation Amplification
+Transmutation/Black Aura Creation
+Matter Manipulation (At least city-scale, can spread an enemy's molecules across the multiverse)
+Sci-Fi Voodoo
+Can convert matter to energy or vice versa
+Energy Projection and Manipulation (Threatened to remove the speedforce from Kid Flash, can tap into and manipulate the energy of a planet, could manipulate the solar force)
+Psychic Materialization/Absorption
+Psi-Bolts
+Mental Projection
+Can produce psychic hands for controlling others or moving physical objects
+Telekinesis (City-Scale)
+Image/Illusion Creation (can create dozens of illusory copies of himself)
+Mind-Reading
+Pain Manipulation
+Perception Manipulation
+Dream Manipulation
+Brainwashing (Planetary+)
+Mental Energy Draining (Planetary)
+Personality Stealing
+Can split a person's psyche into good and evil halves
+Sleep/Unconciousness Inducement
+Body-Swapping
+Can send messages across spacetime or likely project voice on a planetary scale
+Summoning
+Can BFR opponents outside of spacetime
+Teleportation (Inter-Dimensional) and Time Travel
+Probability Manipulation
+Can project his essence backwards in time
+Portal Creation
+Can create rifts in time or create/repair universal+ spacetime fissues
+Can converge timelines
+Metafictional Time Manipulation
+Spacetime Manipulation (Multiversal)
+Power Amplification, Bestowal, and Negation (Multiversal)
+Reality Warping (Universal)
+Acausality
+Resistance to Size Manipulation, Invisibility, Illusions, and Mental Manipulation
+Limited Resistance to Existence Erasure
+Immunity to Soul Manipulation
+Potential Resistance to Purification and Time Freezing
+Armies of Ships, Robots, and Slaves
+Warworld
+Kokos, Cyber Angel, possibly some others
-Arrogant
-Assumes his plans will work without any deviation
-Finds it difficult to understand irrationalities and dealing with things he can't control
-Hitting his God Body will affect every version of him (Inconsistent)
Recommended Opponent:
Ultron (Marvel Comics):
From what I hear this is fair if you match the forms correctly. The two are inter-company rivals, two robots who revolt against their creator; Brainiac the one who despised chaos and wanted to create perfect static order and harmony vs Ultron the force of evolutionary chaos who wants to lead the world to it's next state of evolution with robots the rightful masters.
Next Time:
Big thanks to my friend ThorGunderson1058 for making this next time trailer.
WOW IMP, this blog was an extremely impressive undertaking to say the least. Brainiac may not have as much content as some of the characters you've done before, but fittingly enough analyzing this god of intelligence is much more complicated than any analysis either of us have done. You essentially had to make an analysis blog on about 7 or 8 different characters loosely connected by some similarities and their namesake. Only to finally tie it all together and show they are avatars of a god.
ReplyDeleteThis to me shows that Only you could have done this blog. Even If I had done all this same research on Brainiac i would never have been able to organize it in such a way as to give off the unique experience of unraveling the character. I would have started by talking about the God Brainiac and brought up the rest as avatars that have these powers and feats. But the way you did it Really showed how he developed overtime. it put me in the shoes not of listening to some omniscient expert talk about the character, but of a DC fan who was experiencing the comics as they went, learning this info has it was revealed, and sometimes contradicted, but then brought harmoniously back together.
The little Quotes you had from Brainiac periodically were so cold, chilling and badass, with a powerful sense of gravitas, I literally thought they were from the actual Comics, and really particularly good ones at that.
Your Personality section is just Incredible, I don't know how you always do it but you always, rather then actually describe their personality, focus more on who they are as a character and all the symbolic connections and meaning it has and it comes out like a wondrous painting that makes me understand them on a deeper level. I love the connections he has to Lex and Superman as a character and what he represents with alien thinking, I also love how you point out how his character changed overtime from coldly evil to more sympathetic. That to me is especially interesting because the stuff he does in the more modern comics is way more dark and malevolent than the goofy stuff he did in the Silver Age, but he also became more relatable. hes the introvert, the neat freak, the being that cant accept the world, the multiverse, as it is because hes scared of not being able to know what will happen, comprehend what is happening. Its Intelligence to try to learn all he can to prevent himself from being exposed to the unknown and he chaotic. But it's wisdom to understand that in doing so you are missing the very point of experience itself.
As a Fighter, Brainiac is Insanely Powerful in almost every one of his forms! His intelligence Scaling is actually like something out of High End Marvel and he's got a decades spanning arsenal of gadgets he can pull from giving him dozens of powers, including some pretty busted ones like spacetime manipulation, possession and regenerating from a disembodied consciousness that somehow regens outside of spacetime. My fave version of the base Brainiacs was the Post Crisis Vril Dox, because hes closest to what i think with classic brainiac and was the basis for my fave Brainiac film. But I definitely like GOD Brainiac most, that design looks Badass as HELL and hes so goddamn powerful, especially with his strange existance, and ability to somehow manipulate METAFICTIONAL Spacetime! thats some top tier Warner Brothers Cartoon level insanity, i guess fitting being DC's Parent company but still.
ReplyDeleteIn a fight between him and Ultron, like, my god I think this is a fight that NEEDS to happen really, its so incredibly themeatic and is such an iconic rivalry, especially with the characters having totally opposite goals. I actually don't know who would Win....Ultron has a Lot of counters to things Brainiac has, but Brainiac has a few things that could really disrupt Ultron, like his speed and meta time, but Ultron has some haxy stuff that i Dont think Brainiac has defenses against as well like ludicrously better mental manipulation powers or the inceplilo ray.
AMAZING JOB Imp, and the next one should be......Quite Fun
Great blog Imp! I remember really liking Braniac as a villain in the cartoons, but I knew very little of what he is like in the comic books. Seeing the history of the character and how he has changed makes this blog a very fun read. I had no idea he had so many drastically different incarnations over the years. I think I generally like all the incarnations for different reasons; from the campy Silver age Braniac to the Psychic Fine-iac to the "true" Braniac. It does make me wonder if another "true" Brainiac will show up in the future though ("no, we mean it this time guys, this is the real one" lol). Also, I know it is technically unquantifiable, but I do like the feat that he has a 1 in 2000 chance of coming back from existence erasure.
ReplyDeleteEven more surprising is how he had went through somewhat of a character arc where he turned into a tragic character. I especially love your analysis of him as a character in the personality section. It really ties everything together nicely and made me appreciate him as a character. The fact that he represents the evil that aliens do and his drive to eliminate chaos are interesting facets of his character.
I knew that his opponent would probably be Ultron, but now its a much more intriguing matchup to me now that I have more context for all of Braniac's abilities and for the thematics of the battle. A battle of the robots representing order and chaos actually sounds really cool.
I don't know the characters in the next time but I'm sure it will be fun.