Action Comics #242 + 489-491

Action Comics #242 + 489-491

Originally released in 1958 (#242), 1978 (#489)

Written by Otto Binder (#242), Cary Bates (#489-491)

Art by Al Plastino (#242), Curt Swan (#489-491)

I'm in the mood to read some silver age Superman, but unfortunately, the DC Universe Infinite app has some large gaps in their collection.  I get that they can't digitize everything, but it's weird when the issues are available on the app as parts of collections, but not individually. One major Superman villain that I haven't read much of is Brainiac, and seeing that there's a collection of early Brainiac stories, I decided to fix that.

Brainiac's first appearance starts off with the first manned voyage into space, with this issue predating Yuri Gagarin's 1961 space flight by a few years.  Naturally, two of the people on this history-making voyage are Clark Kent and Lois Lane, two journalists who have little to no training as astronauts.  While in space, the crew spots a flying saucer that's shooting a ray at their spacecraft.  What's going on?  This looks like a job for Superman!  But how can he deal with the problem when Clark Kent has to stay on the space ship?  The following panels cracked me up.

Clark just figures he can throw himself out of the spaceship and everyone will assume that he got too scared and decided to head back to Earth, a decision that would normally kill him.  The alien menace is Brainiac (and his pet monkey-like creature Koko), whose home planet is a desolate wasteland; he plans to shrink major cities, bring them back to his homeworld, and rule over those cities like an emperor.

Brainiac's force field proves to be impenetrable even for Superman, both the one covering his ship and the one covering him personally, so Superman has to rely on his cleverness rather than his brawn. (some of Brainiac's actions feel like childish schoolyard antics, like when Superman uses his heat vision on Brainiac only for the alien machine to say something like "my force field sends your heat vision back at you!")

Metropolis is shrunk down in an almost off-hand matter, with Superman predicting this and heading back to Metropolis so he can get inside of Brainiac's spaceship.  Even when shrunken down, he still has flight and superhuman strength, allowing him to slip out of the bottle and explore Brainiac's ship.

Evading Koko, Superman takes refuge inside of a bottle without a lid on it, discovering that it is a Kryptonian city that was stolen from the planet before its destruction - the bottled city of Kandor!  Brainiac seeks to replicate the conditions of the original worlds, including the light of Krypton's red sun, which leaves Superman powerless while inside.

Finding Jor-El's college roommate, Superman devises a plan to get out and free the cities.  How will he deal with Brainiac, whose force field can withstand blows from Superman? As it turns out, it's easy - he doesn't have to. To prepare for the long voyage through space to his next planet, Brainiac enters a cryogenic sleep along with Koko.

Brainiac's machines have enough of a charge to restore the Earth cities and return them to their original locations, along with one more charge.  It's a nice character moment for Superman; he has to choose between restoring Kandor to full size or restoring himself to full size, and without a moment's hesitation, he picks Kandor.  This doesn't stick, as Jor-El's college friend makes the decision for him and restores Superman, but it's a great moment for the character where he would immediately choose to sacrifice himself in order to restore a piece of his lost homeworld.

Issue 489 through 491 is a three part story focusing on Brainiac, as Superman rushes to complete as many good deeds as possible thanks to an impending celestial event. The light from Krypton's explosion is due to reach Earth soon, something that the people of Earth are eager to see and the people of Kandor use as an opportunity to mourn.

Superman takes this so seriously that, in the lead-up to the event, he chooses to speak in Kryptonese to honour his lost culture. (I'm not sure if the people of Kandor taught him, or if the rocket had instructions; the only human who knows how to translate it is Batman) He also anticipates that Brainiac will attack Earth, which he's completely right about.

The light from Krypton's destruction factors into Brainiac's plan, as he intends to force Superman to look directly at it. Much like a human being looking directly at an eclipse, Brainiac theorizes that a Kryptonian looking directly at the explosion of Krypton will suffer negative side effects.

Rather than blinding Superman, it fills Superman with energy, heightening his powers to levels that are unheard of, even for him, but also sending him on destructive rampages to wear off that energy.

Even sleeping doesn't help, as he's unconsciously letting off so much force that he might tear down the Fortress of Solitude.  He even flies towards the Justice League's satellite base while Hawkman's on monitor duty, though thankfully this just amounts to minor damage.

Ultimately, in order to solve his problem (after getting some inspiration from the plight of a blind man and undoing the damage to that man's eyes), he takes the fight directly to Brainiac. Using the light of a sun going supernova, he manages to undo the damage and, for the first time ever, destroy Brainiac's forcefield while supercharged through the results of Brainiac's own scheme.  The whole three part story almost feels like it's written purely for Superman's final figure of speech.

These stories were a lot of fun, and I wish that the DC Universe Infinite app had more of them on here.  They're cheesy, especially the one from the 1950s, but they're enjoyable, and I laughed to myself several times while reading them.