Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Does anyone know what happened to the OTHER alien cities Brainiac shrunk and stole? Did Brainiac bring them back to Colu and enlarge them? Or did Superman return the shrunken cities to their original planets?

I'm pretty sure Superman said he put them all back where they belonged.  Except Kandor, of course, which had no world to return to.  Get the new Archive and you'll know for sure! (Mine is still in the mail, darn the luck).

This might have made for some interesting follow-up stories, I suppose.  If the other cities had been shrunken as far in the past as Kandor -- or even earlier -- it must have made for some difficult adjustments as beings were returned to their homeworlds and tried to re-enter their societies.  Would they have lost friends and family to the passage of time?  Would their cities be far behind others in terms of technology and culture, since time essentially stopped for them when they were shrunk?  Might they have evolved cultures very different from those they left behind, cultures that don't mesh well upon their return? As "alien abductees" would they be forever ostracized and looked on with suspicion by their planet-mates?  

The story as told brushes these issues aside...Superman returned the cities to their worlds and that's that.  But I imagine if you or I were in a city that had spent 20, 30 or more years away from Earth, we'd have a hard time indeed adjusting to being back.

In fact, on Earth, we'd hardly have left a "smoking hole in the ground" for decades.  We'd have rebuilt!  So what happens if Superman takes a city back and there's no place to put it, because another was built in its place?

Maybe a better solution would have been to create something like what we saw in Gerard Jone's "Green Lantern: Mosaic" series...a world composed of cities from various other worlds.  It might have made for an interesting addition to the Super-mythos.

In the first Brainiac story, Superman used Brainiac's devices to restore and return all the cities to their rightful places.

But when he got to Kandor, only one charge of restoration power was left.  The Kandorian scientist, Professor Kimda, used it to restore Superman to normal instead of Kandor.

See the below links to the relevant pages of that story.

http://superman.nu/tales2/superduel/?page=12

http://superman.nu/tales2/superduel/?page=13

I re-read that story before I posted the thread. I'm actually speaking of the RETCONNED humanoid computer Brainiac, not the one who first appeared in the comics. As you can see in the first story, Superman only returned the stolen EARTH cities and took Kandor. While the retconned Brainiac stole many other alien cities.

The retconned Brainiac was introduced in this (http://superman.nu/tales2/luthorandbrainiac/) story.

Ahhh, gotcha, NotSuper.  I'm switching out of stupid mode now. heh

I don't think those cities were ever shown being returned to their homeworlds, at least not by Superman.

The Coluans revolted against the computer tyrants so they arguably had access to all the technology and shrunken cities, esp. since Vril Dox had a 12th-level intelligence compared with the tyrants' 10th-level ones.  While not shown, arguably the Coluans, or at least Vril, restored those other cities.  I can't honestly see them keeping those shrunken victims around after asserting their own justice for themselves.

The shrunken cities were never shown either in the present or 30th century Colu, so I suspect that's what happened.

That's a good theory, but wouldn't Superman have had Kandor restored by the Coluans if that was the case? I think Superman would've just returned the shrunken cities to their home worlds, maybe even restoring the inhabitants after he restored Kandor.

Was there ever a story, which re-told the original encounter between Superman and Brainiac? If there is an answer to this question, we'll find it there.

In the context of that first retcon story, Superman was both unaware of Brainiac's machine nature nor his Coluan origins.  Ergo, he'd have no reason to go to Colu to rescue the other cities.

In later stories, Brainiac's android status becomes common knowledge.  That begs the question why he didn't ask them, esp. Vril, for help enlarging Kandor?  Heck, he's met Brainiac 5 in the 30th century so why didn't he ask for his help?

Simple explanation:

The Legion (Saturn Girl/Supergirl) placed a super-hypnotic suggestion in his mind that prevents him from remembering things from the future that would interfere with present-day history.  So, he doesn't think of Brainiac 5 helping out with Kandor since that would wreck Kandor's destined history according to their records.  This super-hypnotic suggestion may go so far as to block the idea of going to Colu in the present since LSH records have Kandor being enlarged independently by Superman.

It's a stretch but it does use existing Pre Crisis continuity elements.

Let's examine several possible theories:

Theory #1: Superman returned each of the shrunken cities to their home planets. He promised the inhabitants that he would return and enlarge the cities once he had discovered how. After he restored Kandor, he went to these planets and restored the cities (which suffered the same effect as Kandor).

Theory #2: Kandor was the only city Brainiac had in his posession when he first encountered Superman. The other cities he took had been taken back to Colu for study. Later, Vril Dox returns each city to its rightful planet and restores it using his vast intellect.

Are there any other theories I've overlooked? Is there any way to confirm which of these is true?

another thing that was never established was when the coluans overthrew the computer tyrants.  brainiac's mission could have been intended to take several decades, if not a century or two.  maybe the revolt happened before braioniac was to return.  then when he found out about it he decided to become a free agent.  He was programmed with the mannerisms & thought patterns of a coluan scientist.  the tyrants could have given him 12th level intelligence, but didn't.  they were afraid that if they did he (as their superior) would become their master.  lex luthor later upgraded brainiac to 12th level iq.  How about this?  he had a base hidden somewhere.  all the alien cities (other than kandor)  he shrunk, are still there.  unless he enlarged them when he was in that temporary "good guy" mode.  the reason he kept kandor with him at all times?  maybe he considered it the prize of his collection.

Or there is the possiblity that he kept Kondor with him out of fear of enlarging a city of super beings

It shows in http://superman.nu/tales3/greatest/?page=76 that Brainac never passed on the secret of enlarging the citites.  So that leaves with what, that there where no bottled cities except those from earth and kondor at the time?

I've wondered did Brainiac shrink any more after his first encounter with Kal?

Here's a question: What were Brainiac's motives after his creators were destroyed?

Brainiac was created to be a spy, so what happens when he has no one to work for? Did he seek to conquer the universe and rule it with his logical mind?

Excellent reference, Just a fan.

I've not read that story before, so thanks for the link.  I'm sure I'll enjoy the whole thing when I get to it.

Seeing as Brainiac was retconned later into being an android and he was 10th level intelligence when he created the ray instead of Vril's 12th level one, I find it hard to believe that Brainiac 2 couldn't figure out how to create an enlarging ray invented by a mere 10th level guy.  It would be like saying a two-year-old could outwit a genius; he might do so for a time on an off-day but certainly couldn't do so forever.

I'm inclined to think Brainiac 5 simply lied to Supergirl to keep history intact.  It was a bit unethical of her to ask for help from the future like that which certainly could endanger the timeline.  At least that's what I gleaned from that one panel.  I'll have to read the whole thing to see if my opinion changes.

It must be noted that we never saw other cities captured besides Kandor and the Earth cities.  It may be Brainiac only chose to capture those ones for whatever his reasons.  He seemed to have ignored all the rest of Krypton's cities except for one but chose to grab a bunch of Earth ones.  His standards for this remain unknown but we know of at least one instance where he treated planets differently.

NotSuper, apparently, Brainiac was motivated to conquer all lesser beings than himself.  And he considered everyone else less than himself -- even Grax who had a 20th level intelligence.  Go figure.

His other motivation was to avenge himself against the puny 6th level super-hero, Superman, who always managed to defeat his superior intellect somehow.  His pride would not allow him to accept this.

OK, Just a fan, I just read that whole story in your link.

I propose one of two things can resolve Brainiac 5 seemingly not to know how to enlarge Kandor.

One way is that he was deliberately lying in the note to preserve history.

Another way is Supergirl misremembered the note despite her super-memory.  How can this be?  As I posted earlier, both Superboy and Supergirl have had super-post-hypnotic commands imbedded in their minds to prevent them remembering anything from the future that could alter their present (aka the LSH's past).  That command kept her from remembering Querl's real message re: an enlarging ray so her mind substituted something else she considered plausible.

silver-age superman was far greater than a 6th level intellect.  when kandor was finally enlarged it was kal who created the enlarging ray did it.  grax (the alleged 20th level intellect) admitted that he could not invent a force field anywhere near as powerful as brainiac's.  that was another thing brainiac invented as a 10th level intellect.  it was never established how long it took him to invent his greatest weapons; shrinking/enlarging ray, force field.  he considered the super-computer (in the fortress of solitude) to be the most advanced in the galaxy.  he was going to use the super-computer to upgrade his own mind from 12th level iq to 21th level.  superman invented & created that computer himself.  brainiac seemed to only respect the intellects of two beings:  kal-el/superman, his arch-enemy; & lex luthor, his most frequent partner-in-crime.

That bugged me too about the Pre Crisis Superman.  He was supposed to be super-intelligent, have a super-brain, etc. yet he kept being classified as 6th level compared with the Brainiac line's 12th level.

The problem is 'level of intelligence' was never really defined.  So, they could keep making those statements and we'd have no way of disputing it.

The facts that Superman continued to outwit Brainiac in encounters, and Superboy being the only person Brainiac 5 could find who might challenge his own intellect in recreational games, and how Luthor seemed to be the more successful and intelligent of the two primary superfoes, that makes me believe Superman/Superboy operated at levels rivalling the 12th one.  Indeed, Brainiac learned quite a bit from studying Kandorian science while he had the city captive which suggests that Kryptonian tech rivalled his own in general.

And Luthor is at least Brainiac's equal in intelligence.

But intelligence consists of many aspects not a linear, single factor, so it could be the above characters excelled in some areas of intelligence while the others had their own strengths.

That's how I differentiate between Batman's greater deductive and intuitive/lateral thinking strengths compared with the 'brute force' of Superman's arriving at conclusions faster through conventional logic.

i always saw luthor as being more brilliant than brainiac & superman.  lex was the one who upgraded brainiac from 10th level to 12th level.  also the way he discovered brainiac's true nature & origin says a lot.  in his early teens lex devised an antidote to kryptonite.  superman was unable to do that despite several decades of research & experiments.

Absolutely agreed, llozymandias.  Luthor is demonstrably the most intelligent of the bunch mentioned above.  Indeed, IIRC, Von Neumann proved mathematically that one cannot create something more intelligent that oneself so Luthor had to exceed the 12th level to make those changes to Brainiac.

Just the same, the difference between Kal and Lex should be that of one intellectual giant to another not a genius to a moron.  That's Lex's key flaw in battles of wits with Superman: He refuses to acknowledge that Kal is almost as bright as he is so he consistently underestimates the Man of Steel.  At least that's how it's described in The Einstein Connection/The Ghost of Superman Future.

http://superman.nu/tales2/einstein/?page=3

http://superman.nu/tales2/einstein/?page=5

OTOH, Kal could devise a perpetual motion machine which was clearly beyond Lex's capabilities, so, at least sometimes, Kal could be the intellectual superior not counting underestimation.

http://superman.nu/tales2/einstein/?page=7

http://superman.nu/tales2/einstein/?page=8

Lex not only could create an antidote for kryptonite poisoning, he also devised a holographic system so sophisticated Kal could not duplicate it.

http://superman.nu/tales2/ghost/?page=2

Again, they're intellectual peers with Luthor having the slight edge, IMHO.

With all due respect to this marvellous discussion of the levels of intelligence; I have but 2 token points to make:

a) Intelligence was all Luthor had to even place him in the class of Superman's foe. Most of the other challengers of the vaunted Man of Steel had some super human attribute and Luthor had only his intelligence (add to that cunning, wiles etc) going for him. Hence the focus IMHO. Think back to the SA Superman, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that he would not have been nearly as popular as he was if all he (Superman) had done was use his brains. What is the difference between him then, and say, a Sherlock Holmes?

b) Luthor had all the time in the world to plot. Whether he was in prison or out of it, he contiued to plot and scheme and one of his greatest, if not the greatest obsession was the Man of Tomorrow. On the other hand, (and this could be a quirk of the writers) Superman was shown as mainly reacting to the emergency that cropped up, having to "think on his feet" and figure things out as he went along.
In this case, his pal Batman does a better job of scheming ahead and making preparations!

How smart was Superman?

(http://superman.nu/a/Encyclopaedia/images/word.gif)

Some fun Super Feats of his Super Smarts:

In January 1942, Superman is able to converse fluently with a mermaid despite the fact that her tongue is completely foreign to him because his advanced intellect instantly comprehends her strange language. (Superman #14)

In April 1955, Superman is described as having used his photographic memory to memorize all the files of the Daily Planet.

In January 1958, Superman is able to match up a suspect's fingerprints with those on file in Washington, D.C., as the result of having used his super-memory to memorize the entire fingerprint file of the F.B.I.

In June 1958, while relaxing at his Fortress of Solitude, Superman defeats a great robot he has built in a game of super-chess, despite the fact that the robot - which possesses a super-electronic brain - can think and play with the speed of lightning and plans a million moves at once.

A text dated August 1963 notes that Superman possesses the super-intellect of a score of the world's most brilliant minds put together!

Source: http://superman.nu/a/Encyclopaedia/powers.php

thanks for the reminder super monkey.  this is one of the main reasons i prefer the pre-crisis versions of superman & luthor.  a battle of wits is more interesting than a simple slug-fest.

I'm not sure I agree with this. The Coluans created the super-computers and they were much more intelligent than their creators. The super-computers also could've made Brainiac more intelligent than themselves as well. The Coluans said that ALL humans have a 6th level intelligence. For Luthor to exceed that, he would have to have super-intelligence himself (which would mean he DID have a super-power).

To play the devil's advocate to Mr. Super Monkey  :) , having a photographic memory does not in my opinion equate with super intelligence. If that were the case, Dustin Hoffamn in Rain Man would have also been portrayed as super intelligent!

The other facts though, I completely agree with.

To play the devil's advocate to Mr. Super Monkey  :) , having a photographic memory does not in my opinion equate with super intelligence. If that were the case, Dustin Hoffamn in Rain Man would have also been portrayed as super intelligent!

The other facts though, I completely agree with.

luthor (untill 1986 anyway) did have super-intelligence.  in his first appearance luthor described himself as "just an ordinary man with th' brain of a super-genius".   being a super-genius would mean having super-intelligence.   superman was a super-genius.  super-memory was just one of his mental abilities.

That is the pivotal term: described himself...me thinks the term "megalomaniac" would be better suited.

I've always theorized that Superman's so-called "super-intelligence" was just a combination of his ability to absorb information extremely fast and remember everything. I remember that he was described as having only above average intelligence in Last Son of Krypton. However, his ability to learn and deduce at much greater speeds and to remember everything greatly accelerated his intellect. You have to wonder just how intelligent the already brilliant Jor-El would be under a yellow sun.

As for Luthor, his pre-Crisis mind was so great you could almost consider it a super-power. But that may go against the nature of the character.

Genetics does play a role. At least in the Pre Crisis Universe, Kal-El was the pinnacle of evolution the best possible that Krypton had to offer. So if Jor-El was "brilliant",.....

according to "last son of krypton" (the novel)  kryptonian science had a way of meauring an individuals level of intelligence.  or if it's a child the intelligence they will develope as they grow.  jor-el used that to measure baby kal-el's intellect, & found that kal was smarter than him.  under a yellow sun jor-el would be kal's (at Least) near-equal in intellect.  kal without his powers would still be smarter than one einstein, instead of an army of them.  here is a kind of scary thought if luthor gained kal's powers what would  his resulting iq be?  keeping in mind lex is already super-intelligent & that gaining kal's powers basically amplifies all your abilities to an equal extant.  

   all megalomaniacs believe themselves superior to everyone else.  lex's megalomania comes from the fact that intellectually he is superior to pretty much everyone else.

You have to wonder if Luthor's intellect could be considered a super-power itself. Perhaps his mental abilities represent a new pinnacle of human evolution. Based on his great intellect, I would even theorize that Luthor already has total recall (or the human equivalent of it).

In terms of comparing intelligence, I would rank Brainiac above Luthor, and Luthor above Superman. The reason I rank Brainiac higher is because of the fact that he's a living computer, while Lex and Kal are carbon based life forms. In fact, I would wager that a being of Brainiac’s almost unlimited intellectual capacity would be smarter than most biological organism in the DC Universe.

i still place luthor above brainiac in intellect.  i alway saw brainiac as having very mixed feelings regarding lex.  a mixture of gratitude, admiration, curiosity, & fear.  gratitude, lex was the one who upgraded him from 10th level to 12th level.  admiration,  brainiac has admitted to being impressed by lex's intellect.  i don't see brainiac as being impressed by an inferior mind.  curiosity,  brainiac always believed that all humans were at best 6th level.  and here is lex who is clearly above 12th level.  fear,  in their first meeting (in addition to upgrading him) lex puts a bomb in his head.  lex did that to have leverage over brainiac.  in the process lex taught brainiac to never really trust him.  all in all, lex is the closest thing brainiac has to a friend.

Interesting discussion you have regarding Luthor and Brainiac. My two cents is as follows:

In as much as (at least Pre Crisis) Superman is vastly enhanced, physically as well as mentally, he would be Lex Luthor's superior just by virtue of being Superman. And I know that Luthor may have 12th level intelligence and then again he may not. What we are doing is guessing based on shaky benchmarks as best.

As to "upgrading" Brainiac from 10th to 12th level, remember the basic circuitry was in place. My cousin, who is electronics engineer, tinkers with a TV set and adds an enhancement or two. That does not, IMHO make him more intelligent than the person/people that dreamed up and built the TV receiver in the first place.

The intuition of the living creature gives it an edge over the computer. Also, there was a mention of Who said anything about Kal-El being carbon based? Is that another presumption?  :roll:

Inasmuch that Krypton evolved light years away from Earth, the basic element could well have been silicon for instance.

Like I said, my two cents... :)

Actually, given that both Pre and Post Crisis, Kal-El could have viable descendants with Terrans that tells us that he is a carbon-based life-form and arguably of a divergent branch of humanity.

That having been said, it betrays a kind of intellectual prejudice to say that machine/computer intelligence is automatically superior to organic ones, just the same as it's a conceit to suppose that organic intelligence will always outwit A.I.  Brainiac being a computer is irrelevant to how he rates with the others.

What matters is actual results and performance.

And, yes, beings with intuition and lateral thinking are capable of outperforming linear intelligences no matter how advanced they are.

Like Mr. Spock eh?

Forgive me the preumption, but I thought "children of Lois and Kal-El" was only a concept in the "Imaginary Stories" and "Elseworlds"; otherwise it has always been either no kids or kids with WW (perhaps we need a new thread for this)

DC One Million documents at least one alternate future where Clark and Lois not only have children but their line continues at least to the 853rd century.  It was originally supposed to be the actual future of the DCU but the powers-that-be decided -- wisely -- not to limit themselves too much so it's now only a possible future.  But that continuity does establish the genetic interbreeding viability between Kryptonian and Terran humans.

I really think that the comics should've defined what each level of intelligence reflected. The Coluans seemed to imply that ALL humans (whether they're geniuses or have average intelligence) are at the 6th level. I wouldn't place Lex at 12th level intelligence or above, but I'm also not sure you could classify him as a "mere" 6th level one.

While I believe Brainiac to be better at storing information and reaching conclusions much faster than Superman and Luthor, his weakness is that he doesn't understand the subtle intricacies of humans. He's almost TOO logical. In a way, his nearly unrivaled intellect is also his weakness.

actually brainiac did have "human" emotions & thought processes.  he was programmed with emotions, thought processes, & mannerisms of a coluan scientist.  the computer tyrants wanted him to be able to pass for "human".  could that scientist have been vril dox's father?  i still see luthor as higher than 12th level.

Yes, but it's also been stated before in the comics that Brainiac DIDN'T have human emotions. Brainiac himself confirmed this in the story which revealed his origin, check here (http://superman.nu/tales2/luthorandbrainiac/?page=27).  But I can remember examples where he did act like a human, he even laughed a few times. My theory is that the "emotions" he has are all an act.

it could be that brainiac believes that his emotions are an act.  his hatred of superman seemed pretty genuine.  how did his true nature become common knowledge?

What's interesting in real world research is that emotions are key to decision making and success in life.  Patients with the emotional aspect of their brains cut off are still intelligent, can be logical, but can make no decisions.

To be truly sentient and thinking creatures, both the Coluan tyrants and Brainiac require some base emotional context or else they're incapable of even basic decisions.

Well, then how would we explain Mr. Spock? Repressed emotions? and Data (before the emotion chip)?

Aside from the fact that they represent a different fictional universe and continuity (heh heh :) ), Vulcans have been established as having emotions but they have truly inhuman supression of them.  And Data evidently has some degree of emotional awareness even given certain facts like he prefers his proper name pronunciation (when it was mispronounced once), his clear behaviour of love towards his daughter, Lal (despite his voiced objections to this emotion), and his evident anger at Fajo which made him override his respect for life programming.

And he clearly prefers the company of certain humans like Geordi. And he grew attached to Tasha and felt her absence.  These are clear emotional behaviours regardless of what is actually said about or by Data on these matters.

Actions speak louder than words.

I always thought that Data was "aping" the emotions of humans around him. As for Spock, I believe Vulcans DO have emotions -- they're just incredibly logical.

Looking back at the comics, it appears that Brainiac really did hate Superman. He didn't just consider him a threat; he actively despised him. I also remember almost feeling that he was unquestionably Superman's greatest foe in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow. Maybe Brainiac was more "human" than he would like to admit.

Getting back to the original topic, I'm confident that one of my two theories is correct. Either Superman returned each city to its planet and later restored them, or Brainiac brought the planets back to Colu, where they were eventually returned and enlarged on their respective planets.

Given how Brainiac seemed pretty obsessed with retrieving Kandor when the opportunities presented themselves and how he didn't seem to have nor care about other cities shrunken, it may be Kandor was the only city he stole before reaching Earth.  We saw the Earth cities restored.  No other cities were evidently on his ship except for Kandor which supports this.  For whatever reason, it looks like Kandor and the Earth cities were the only ones shown shrunken.

You see, you have to wonder about this.  Brainiac kept Kandor around for decades then we see the Earth cities.  We have no evidence he shrank any other cities.  It does seem odd that he kept Kandor around like that and was prepared to do the same for Earth cities.

The original Kandor story was retold and "updated" (revised) in a few pages of flashback during DC SPECIAL SERIES #26. THis was a giant tabloid -sized story detailing the history of Superman's Fortress, including the Bottle City itself.

Brainiac's appearance was changed to his current one in the flashback IIRC (with the pink tights and lightbulb-crowned head). Koko also looked a bit more menacing than a harmless little space-monkey. It SEEMS to me that the flashback established that Superman traveled throughout the galaxy before returning to Earth, and restored various alien cities to their homeworlds... but I no longer have this story in my collection, and can't double-check. If anyone else can, it should clear things up. Memory does play tricks on us.

As for the team of Luthor and Brainiac...they always seemed to be roughly intellectual equals (though neither would admit it) with a SLIGHT edge going to Lex because he could grasp human emotions properly. True, Brainiac was programmed with the emotions and mannerisms of a Coluan scientist, and it was always portrayed inconsistently by the writers whether he truly felt emotions or not, and he certainly SEEMED to express emotions like greed, rage, fear, hate, satisfaction etc.  over the years. But my understanding is that Brainiac was acting in the ways he thought he was SUPPOSED to, without necessarily understanding WHY... he was programmed to imitate emotions, rather than truly  experience them. Remember, Brainiac was originally created to blend in among humans as a SPY and  to escape detection easily. (Superman didn't even learn Brainiac was an android until JIMMY OLSEN #87, around a decade after their first meeting in the comics! Strangely, Superman just noticed for the first time then that Brainiac didn't have a heartbeat and other human bodily functions.) Brainiac never developed his emotions as a human does, by evolving them in childhood. Instead they were downloaded all at once.

Vulcans, in contrast, HAD  emotions, but were trained from childhood NOT to show them to others (at least outside their families)  or act on them to make decisions. They believed that substituting logic for emotions was the key to advancement,  since their race had nearly been wiped out by war in the distant past.

For what it's worth, the cover of ACTION COMICS #545 had this to say about the colder, more robotic upgrade of Brainiac:

"The OLD BRAINIAC had the merest TOUCH of HUMANITY! The NEW BRAINIAC has ELIMINATED that defect!"

Brainiac, as a computer, could process far more information and work out many more  theories in the time it would take an organic human mind like Luthor's to do the work. But Lex seeemd to be able to make intuitive "leaps" of logic that Brainiac's rigid computer mind, and even Superman's super-fast yet emotional mind, couldn't...  therefore Lex came up with so many more advanced inventions than either of the other two did.

I may be able to shed some light on this.   Brainiac put himself into suspended animation at the end of his first meeting with Superman in Action #242.  Brainiac finally woke up from his long nap in, of all places, Lois Lane.  

In this tale, entitled "Lana Lang, Superwoman" (LL # 17, May 1960 - art by Swan & Kaye), Superman recounts for the benefit of Lois and Lana his first encounter with the arch-villain and says "When my strength returned, I restored all the cities Brainiac had reduced to their normal size and returned them to their native worlds.  I kept the bottle containing Kandor in my Fortress, because there was no world of Krypton left for its people to return to..."

Then Lois asks, "But if Brainiac went into suspended animation for centuries, how could he have returned so soon again to menace Earth?"  Superman responds, "I'll explain that now..."

Only ... he doesn't!  He goes on to tell how he outwitted Brainiac in this return engagement, but never spills the beans on how exactly he was revived.  Of course, a later Superman tale would reveal that Brainiac was not even human, and wouldn't need suspended animation to begin with, so perhaps it's a moot point.

so brainiac did have a collection of alien cities.  explains why the power for the enlarging device was almost exhausted when it came time to restore kandor.  funny thing is superman could have restored both himself & kandor.  he had the enlarging device set up to restore kandor at the touch of a button.  he could have returned to kandor & used a remote controlled rocket to push that button.  

     lex as a super-genius did not have an ordinary organic mind.  it's possible that his mind could work at least as fast as brainiac's, & process at least as much information.

One thing I always wondered about, is why when Kara Zor-EL arrived on earth, Kal-El didn't tell her about Kandor, and that there were more of their people alive.

Some of the realities were created as time went on and then retconned to fit the continuity. I suppose, Kara was intially from Argo City that was an intact part of Krypton that flew off. Then her parents were transferred to Kandor as Argo City started to change into Kryptonite. Am I missing some continuity here?

originally zor-el & allura were thought to have died along with everyone else in argo city.  years later kara discovered that her parents were still alive.  zor-el had discovered a "phantom zone" like dimension, that he called the survival zone.  when kara learned that she (with help from fred danvers, i believe) she freed her parents from the survival zone.  zor-el & allura decided to move to kandor.

Thank you kindly

You can find that story here if you can get a copy,ACTION COMICS 310 (May 1964)

From somewhat epic beginnings thro' Crisis now to a lifeless form of protoplasmic husk? Supergirl sure has gone the distance

You know, it would be interesting to see who would win in a game of chess: Brainiac or Luthor. It sounds simple, but a game of strategy between the two would be quite interesting. Everyone would assume Luthor would win because of his human brain, but remember that Brainiac has managed to trick Luthor on occasion (i.e. when Brainiac hypnotized Luthor into upgrading him).

It might be fun to see this scenario presented in a story. Luthor and Brainiac would talk while playing, each explaining their different views on life, intelligence, and Superman.

Would the fact that chess is a human invention and Luthor is human, have any bearing? Or are we talking about the tri dimensional Star Trek chess played by Jim Kirk and Spock?  :lol:

Plain chess -- 2-D, 3-D, or otherwise -- is a rule driven mathematical game.  In a straight up match with no Games Theory modifications, Brainiac may have the advantage for logical maneuvers and forward planning, but Luthor would take it for intuition at times.  Lex might have the slight advantage given they both operate pretty much at the same level to begin with.

If Games Theory is allowed, then Brainiac can have the advantage since Luthor is vulnerable to emotional manipulation and fatigue while Brainiac isn't.

Given all the above, I'd say overall, Luthor may win some early matches, but Brainiac can keep it up far longer and win more over the long run, intuition or not on Lex's side.

Out of ten matches:
Luthor/Brainiac - 6/10

Out of 100 matches:
Luthor/Brainiac - 20/80

IMHO :)

Well, Humans have beaten recent super computers at chess, and Brainiac was a mere 60's model! So I say Lex :)

Nice touch, Mr. Moderator, sir, however; with the modernization of the whole comic, don't you suppose the same has happened to Brainiac?