Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes I demand a Romado Five story!

So, the whole story of Action Comics #242, which introduced Brainiac and the Bottle City of Kandor, is actually based on a Superman newpaper strip featuring the city-shrinking space-villain Romado!

I think it's time we see a team-up between Romado's heroic descendent and our own Brainiac Five!

Does Romado enjoy shrinking Ramada hotels?

I'd have loved to have seen Ramona Fradon draw Romado shrinking a Ramada!

Great idea. Your post sent me on a deep dive to find out more about Romado.

Interestingly, although numerous websites say that Romado was the precursor to Brainiac, the publication dates are extremely close.
The Romado daily strip ran from April 14 1958 to August 23 1958 (source:https://web.archive.org/web/20100206075400/http://www.thespeedingbullet.com/daily/ep91_105/ep104.html) while Action Comics #242 is cover dated July 1958 - which the Grand COmics Database lists as on sale May 29 1958.
So the two stories published only a month apart!

I imagine the general knowledge is correct and that Romado was created first, but they were very, very close.

Anyone interested can see some sample of the strip via UK reprint at https://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2011/10/superman-in-radio-fun.html

Interesting. The conventional wisdom is that Weisinger used the newspaper strip to workshop ideas for comic stories, but that's not really giving a lot of lead time for feedback.

Apparently, the adult version of Bizarro first appears in the newspaper, though slightly after the first Bizarro story in Superboy.

Little known fact;

Just as Brainiac 5's 'real name' is Querl Dox, his infamous ancestor's birth name was Romado Dox, who explored the notion of downloading his intellect into a mechanical body.

After a vicious custody battle, he divorced himself and his robot self legally changed his name to Brainiac.

And now you know... The rest of the story.