Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Should Brainy Die?

Now, before everyone goes off on the "enough with the dead characters" riff, of which I myself have been guilty, hear me out.

Almost any story involving a group has their "exposition" character. One that has the information and gives it to lead to resolution of the storyline.

Fiddler has his Bennie.
Harry Potter has his Hermoine.
NCIS has its Tim.

Every group has a "brainy" person that can pull up the needed info. And the Legion has... well, Brainy.

And this is the problem as I see it. Brainy has become the supreme Deux Ex Machina. He not only has the information for each problem, but he also has the solution to every problem lately. And what he doesn't know, he can instantly cull from the Omnipad or Omnibus or the Omnicron or the Omni something or other.

He's become the biggest crutch the legion has. And he's also become the Universal Legionaire, in that he's in every story. It used to be Superboy, but now it's Brainy.

The Legion has, in the past, had other smart people to lead them, to figure things out, to be the one that discovers the one crucial piece of info that allows everyone to put things together and get it done.

I personally noticed the change with the Great Darkness Saga. It had begun before, but thats where it became overly obvious to me.

The simplist solution, obviously, is to simply not have him in the story, but the writers always have him there in some capacity, which turns him into the crutch.

The next obvious is the artificial elimination. Brainy is off planet, Brainy is insane...etc. And yet, you get panels of story devoted to WHY Brainy isn't there to solve the problem.

The next solution usable, but not to my knowledge in the legion before, is the "brain injury". Now, this can take a goofy form, like Wildcat in the Seventies, or something that we may have not seen lately, like what is apparantly taking place with Mr. Terrific in the current JSA, but to me its never led to a good story, so I wouldn't want to see something like "I know this, I should know this, but my 12th level intellect has been curtailed to only "x" level because of "y event".

Therefore, I submit- The loss of Brainy would free up space for other, lesser used characters to be used in a fashion that might highlight them and quit havign Brainy hog all the action.

Make it an event story, and you have not only that issue, but following issues for characters to reflect on the loss.

Make it an offpanel storyline, and perhaps you can have a mystery.

Have it be something that happened far from the Legion's beaten path, and without them even knowing he's dead there could be a great search for Brainy storyline.

Discuss. Tawk amoungst yourselfs.

Even if Brainy was killed off, you know he'd be brought back sooner or later.

Death in comics is sooo overrated.

The fault, of course, lies with writers who use Brainy in unimaginative ways. I think back to '60s stories, when Brainy seemed less expository and less someone who pulled technological rabbits out of a hat. But writers back then also had a more solid grounding in something other than comics--science, science fiction, for example. Their knowledge gave them more to draw on. Writers today, including Levitz, don't seem to have that grounding, hence the "crazy Brainy" or "socially awkward Brainy" stereotypes.

So, rather than getting rid of Brainy, I'd rather the Legion have more imaginative and well-rounded writers.

I'd be okay with Levitz retiring him and the founders... you know, like he did in his previous run.

Yes.

The points you make may be valid, but I fear that Brainy is one of those "essential Legionairres," as I'm certain has been discussed in previous threads somewhere.

The ideal solution(s), I think, would be for the writing staff to henceforth make conscious efforts to: a) feature him less, and b) refrain from writing deus ex machina plot resolutions. I'm sure that both of thesee things can be done if efforts are made; after all, Superman should experience this problem all of the time because he's essentially omnipotent, but decent stories are written all of the time about him nonetheless.

In particular, my favorite type of Brainy story is one where he's emotionally tormented by his past or the social isolation his advanced intellect imposes. Or by the same token, when glimmers of genuine human fondness peeks out.

I'd like to see Brainy's body damaged beyond repair so that he becomes a brain-in-a-jar(or globe) type character!!

^^Like!

His brain could fly around in a li'l ship like Quislet's, except it would be transparent!

He could convert the li'l flying version of Computo for the purpose!

Perfect! I was also thinking he could hook himself up to Legion HQ & control the whole building while in the lab, ditto a Legion cruiser when they are going on a mission.

He has been attributed with a lot of stuff lately (he made the flight rings, he made the time bubble, he cured Mon-El, etc., etc.), taking the focus away from Legionnaires who are quite smart and competent, and / or fully-functional scientists in their own right (Dreamy, Imra, Mon, etc.), who may have, in past stories, been responsible for all the stuff he's now given credit for.

Plus he's a friggin' moron. I want my super-smart character to actually be smart. To know how to communicate. To not be constantly flummoxed and perplexed by the sorts of situations that a five year old could figure out, such as how not to piss off everyone you are working with, and make your own life more difficult.

Unfortunately, any change to his character to actually be true to his intellect, and to restore credit to those other Legionnaires who did stuff with their brains, back in the day, would now be seen as a 'retcon.' Grr.

I'm not sure I want him dead (since it'll never stick anyway, and only result in him getting even more attention in the inevitable 'death of' and 'return of' storylines), but if he went back to Colu and got himself a personality transplant, leaving him off-panel for about twelve issues, and giving the other smart Legionnaires a chance to show of their brain-fu, that could be cool.

Which is particularly annoying. Pertinent quote from Comic Bulletin's
Top Ten Members of the Legion of Super-Heroes :

"No matter what incarnation of the Legion you love, our green-skinned and blonde hero was the smartest and most arrogant man in the universe. And if you had his mental ability, wouldn’t you be arrogant too? Brainy invented the fershlugginer Legion flight rings, for goodness sake! He also invented a zillion other important inventions for the Legion over the years. The guy earned his arrogance."

The thing is, he really wasn't arrogant in a lot of his older portrayals. In fact, he always struck me as incredibly humble in many of the best stories featuring him. He was damn smart, but also realized there's so much more to the world than he understood. I'm thinking particularly of his comments on exploring our universe versus exploring the multiverse in LSH #300.

I don't mind him being arrogant & ornery, it just seems that ever since the Action Comics arc, Brainy's been turned into a misanthopic genius with a gross indifference to the lives & well-being of his teammates and to people in general.
I mean, sure he should be difficult but now it seems like he doesn't like or care about anyone.
Even the reboot Brainy-who was portrayed as a total pain in the butt-showed concern for his teammates.

Yes, and, going back even further, he was gentle with Lu when she thought she'd lost her second body in Superboy # 200. He tried to console her by reminding her of her impending wedding.

My favorite Brainy scene is during the Nardo story, when Brainy was tortured with images of himself claiming to be Brainiac 5. Brainy had the mental fortitude to resist the torture and still calmly led the resistance, waiting patiently for the spy (Weight Wizard) to expose himself. It's hard to reconcile such portrayals with the misanthrope he's become.

That isn't to say Brainy didn't have his arrogant streak (Computo, anyone?). But he was capable of displaying a much wider range of emotions.

Again, it's down to the writers.

Even the moments that can come off as kind of arrogant (such as the Computo story) I tend to read more as a kind of monomaniacal drivenness ultimately rooted in his desire to prove himself. For me, the key to appropriate Brainy characterization is in his early appearances where he's constantly apologizing for being descended from the evil Brainiac. If anything, there's a deep feeling of inferiority which is at the root of the character.

Interestingly, Silver Age lettercols periodically featured letters complaining about the portrayal of Brainy, with the usual refrain being that they were making him too unemotional, computer-like, or "Spock-like", which was inconsistent with earlier appearances.

I wonder what color his brain is?

No, Brainiac 5 shouldn't die or be written out of the Legion. He just needs to be dialed back some. I would be satisfied with occasional acts of kindness and less screen time. There's no reason in the world he can't be absent from stories because he's working on projects at the time institute, on Colu, meeting with scientific leaders of the U.P. or just on vacation.

Everyone dies, sooner or later.

Everyone makes mistakes, too. When Brainiac 5 makes a mistake, it's a doozie. But he doesn't learn from them. Which is very frustrating in a guy whose power is super-intelligence.

Actually, Brainy's ultimate weakness is that he can be no more intelligent than the guy who writes him.

And that is a doozy. If the writer's idea of super-genius is some irascible curmudgeon who happens to figure out the only way to defeat the bad-guy (that the writer just pulled out of his butt), then that's pretty much what Brainy is going to be stuck doing, over and over again.

I do prefer when Brainy's clever plans require imaginative uses of other Legionnaires powers, such as calling in Matter-Eater Lad to devour the Miracle Machine, or calling in Phantom Girl to deal with the pirate ship that Dawnstar couldn't track (because the pirate captain was Bgtzln and was phasing his ship), or in the threeboot, restoring the gravitational balance of the solar system by rigging up a machine to supercharge Ayla and Thom's powers.

Or when he has to admit that he doesn't understand something, like on Orando, where he punches the Gil'Dishpan portal technology in frustration, because he can't make it work. That was a nice humanizing moment for him.

The Legionverse is full of stuff like that. Brainy may really understand the tech of his universe, but it's possible that Quislet, an explorer from a universe with entirely different physical laws, might have a huge advantage dealing with something that flouts Brainy's understanding like Gil'Dishpan tech.

Gilligan had his Professor.

Well, let's see. They've already made Timber Wolf an actual (were)wolf, Dream Girl an actual dream and Phantom Girl an actual phantom. They've even made Element Lad composed of actual elements. Making Brainy an actual brain can't be too far off.

[likes]

And that's why Ginger and Mary Anne never got pregnant.

Hm. Can't wait for when Sun Boy becomes an actual sun and Light Lass becomes an actual feather. :rolleyes:

Sounds like a nightmare these characters might have.

I really don't want Brainy to be killed, but they could send him off to Colu for a year. Occasional one-page updates on what he's doing there, some limited interaction with the Legion.

Or replace him with his sister, the one that nobody knew about....