Saturday, February 14, 2009
Comic Art
SO BAD - THEY'RE GOOD
The eternal, if to my taste often boring, struggle of brain v. brawn has long dominated the superhero comic idiom. The Hulk has the Leader and Superman has Brainiac, which is who we are looking at today. To say that the name "Brainiac" is iconic would be an understatement. I have no idea if the idiomatic reference to being really smart came first and the character followed, or vice-versa, but the word has permeated our common language in an extraordinary way.
But is he a good villain?
Brainiac is a moderately good villain. Frankly, there have been more "Brainiac's" than Carter s has pills. I mean this character has been reinvented so many times in so many ways. Bad guy, good guy (well his long distant same-named progeny anyway) in the Legion of Super Heroes, robot, humanoid, and even planet - you need the web just to keep track of who is, and who is not Brainiac.
With so many versions, his motivations are, to say the least, mixed. For the most part, in the end, he is just a tool - someone capable of creating a crisis large enough that it requires Supes, et. al. to stop the universe from ending.
At the bottom here we have the cover of his first ever appearance - also reflected in the head shot in the corner. Regardless of the changes the character has gone through - to my old fart mind, this is an iconic image. Admittedly the pink tights on green skin is less than intimidating, but the lights on his head - well, let's just say you have to be really smart to have lights on your head.
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The eternal, if to my taste often boring, struggle of brain v. brawn has long dominated the superhero comic idiom. The Hulk has the Leader and Superman has Brainiac, which is who we are looking at today. To say that the name "Brainiac" is iconic would be an understatement. I have no idea if the idiomatic reference to being really smart came first and the character followed, or vice-versa, but the word has permeated our common language in an extraordinary way.But is he a good villain?
Brainiac is a moderately good villain. Frankly, there have been more "Brainiac's" than Carter s has pills. I mean this character has been reinvented so many times in so many ways. Bad guy, good guy (well his long distant same-named progeny anyway) in the Legion of Super Heroes, robot, humanoid, and even planet - you need the web just to keep track of who is, and who is not Brainiac.With so many versions, his motivations are, to say the least, mixed. For the most part, in the end, he is just a tool - someone capable of creating a crisis large enough that it requires Supes, et. al. to stop the universe from ending.
At the bottom here we have the cover of his first ever appearance - also reflected in the head shot in the corner. Regardless of the changes the character has gone through - to my old fart mind, this is an iconic image. Admittedly the pink tights on green skin is less than intimidating, but the lights on his head - well, let's just say you have to be really smart to have lights on your head.
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