"Brainiac: Rebirth" (more commonly known as just Rebirth) was a Superman story arc published in Action Comics #544-546 (March-May, 1983). Written and pencilled by Marv Wolfman and Gil Kane, it introduced Brainiac's skull-ship and skelebot form as part of an attempt -together with "Luthor Unleashed"- to revamp Superman's Rogues Gallery.
Brainiac, who had been trapped by Superman in an artificial world during a prior battle, tries to control his planet-prison into absorbing the energy of an exploding nova, hoping to channel it into his body and become powerful enough to break free. Nonetheless, Brainiac the huge amount of energy unleashed overloads and breaks Brainiac's body up into his molecular components. Brainiac himself does not die, though; its consciousness travels throughout the universe, absorbing so much knowledge as he can take in.
Eventually, Brainiac's spirit returns to his prison-world, and begins the task of rebuilding himself. Several months later, Brainiac leaves his husk reborn as a frightening, utterly pitiless skeletal robot. His previously already formidable intellect has also been enhanced, and Brainiac feels he has now a new mission: during his exploration of the cosmos, he has come to believe that Superman is an agent sent by the "Master Programmer" to destroy him; so that he intends to destroy Superman and then conquering the universe and raising an army to destroy His Creator.
This storyline has nothing to do with the DC Rebirth 2016 event.
Tropes:
- Aerial Canyon Chase: A depowered Superman steals a shuttleship to escape from Brainiac's ship, and dives into a meteor swarm to shake him off his tail. However, as Superman needs to dodge the meteors, Brainiac's vessel can simply fly through the swarm, letting the meteors smash against his ship's force field. Eventually, Superman's flier crashes into a meteor and explodes. Fortunately, his powers have returned by then.
- Apocalypse How: When the inhabitants of Systus 2 revolt, Brainiac burns their world to ashes to force the survivors to work for him.
- Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: Brainiac's body is disintegrated into molecules, which look like a stream of multicolored marbles and are visible to the human eye.
- Asteroid Thicket: Superman tries to evade Brainiac's ship by flying his smaller spacecraft into a meteor storm.
- The Bait: Superman uses himself as a bait to lure Brainiac to the Sun.
- Big Applesauce: Brainiac sends his alien army to storm New York City for no real reason, since Brainiac intends to eliminate Superman, who famously lives in Metropolis.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Brainiac mind-controls aliens of three different planets into becoming his invading army to attack Earth with.
- Brought Down to Normal: Brainiac shoots a torpedo at Superman, who easily destroys it and becomes bathed in concentrated red-solar energy which nullifies his powers.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Brainiac gets Superman depowered and captured, but although he really wants to kill him, he decides to examine him first to learn any useful secrets that Superman can still possess.
- Combat Tentacles: Brainiac's new ship is armed with giant metallic tentacles which he uses to catch and tries to crush Superman with.
- Complexity Addiction: Superman is depowered, immobilized and completely at mercy of Brainiac, who is determined and incredibly eager to destroy him...but he decides he needs to run tests on Superman first, so Brainiac takes him in his ship. After examining him, Brainiac decides to kill him at last; but instead of using a simple and swift method (putting a bullet through his head, stabbing his heart, cutting his throat, even shooting a disintegrator beam...), Brainiac mentally activates a pulse of energy which begins killing Superman slowly. Then his ship gets attacked and Brainiac gets distracted, accidentally turning his pulse energy off and letting Superman escape.
- Continuity Nod:
- Brainiac was trapped in a living planet in "The Planet Eater Trilogy".
- Superman battled Satanis and fought alongside the Omega Men in "Two for the Death of One".
- Curb-Stomp Battle: When Brainiac decides to attack Systus 2 to turn its population into his slave army, his ship's beams quickly kill one quarter of the population. Systus' army responds by quickly launching one-hundred missiles, which are easily and even more quickly re-routed into their own cities. Systus 2 surrenders, and Brainiac remarks he has needed less fire-power than he calculated beforehand.
- Deadly Dodging: Superman is trying to escape from Brainiac's ship after being depowered and captured. Superman has found the access leading to the hangar, but the door is locked, and Brainiac's attack drones are hot on his heels. So, Superman leans against the door, waits for them, and ducks right when the drones shoot their energy weapons, shattering the door.
- The Dreaded: Brainiac originally had the merest touch of humanity, even if it was because he needed to pass himself off as a biological humanoid. After rebuilding himself into a nighmarish skele-bot android with incredibly superior knowledge and any semblance of humanity or feelings removed, Superman deems him to be more frightening than any other of his enemies.Superman: Besides, this new Brainiac frightens me...He's unlike any enemy I've ever met before. He has no morality, no compassion— He simply wants to control. And I don't know if even a Superman can stop him!
- Due to the Dead: After leveling a world called Systus 2, Brainiac grants the survivors five minutes to pray for the dead, if such is their custom, before joining his army.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When Brainiac declares that he knows that Superman will destroy him unless he destroys him first, Superman protests that he never intended to destroy him, but reforming him. Unfortunately, Brainiac refuses to believe him.
- Evil Gloating: Brainiac captures Superman and, despite allegedly removing emotions from his programming, he cannot stop himself from rambling on about being an evolved invincible being who will destroy all his enemies, reveling in telling Superman what caused his transformation, and choosing a slow method of execution when he finally decides to kill his prisoner. However, his gloating has given his minions time enough to prepare a revolt, which Superman exploits by breaking free while Brainiac is dealing with his rebellious slaves.
- Explosive Overclocking: Superman is being chased by a trio of Brainiac's soldiers, who are equipped with devices which feed off his powers. Though, their power suits and their metabolisms become gradually overloaded with the sheer amount of absorbed power, with the result that they burst into flames within minutes.
- Faceship: Brainiac rebuilds himself like a skeletal robot, and builds a ship which looks right like his skull, with Combat Tentacles attached to the base.
- Fetal Position Rebirth: As Brainiac rebuilds himself after being disintegrated, his new body skeletal body can be seen huddled in fetal position inside a semi-transparent mechanical womb/cocoon.
- Gondor Calls for Aid: Superman cannot deal with the newly-rebuilt Brainiac, who is approaching Earth with a huge slave army, so he goes to the Justice League. When Kid Flash -who is present when Superman walks into the Watchtower and asks the League for help- asks if Superman wants him to call his team the Titans, the latter replies that any help is needed and welcome.
- Hurl It into the Sun: Variant. Superman is being chased through the space by Brainiac's red-sun torpedo. He does not dare to destroy it, cannot outrun it and can barely dodge it, so Superman plunges into the nearest Sun, expecting (correctly) the torpedo to chase after him and melt into oblivion.
- Instant-Win Condition: While fighting Brainiac's slave army, the heroes realize that his mind-controlled troops will instantly surrender if Brainiac is defeated or forced to retreat.
- Keystone Army: While fighting Brainiac's soldiers, the Justice League and the Teen Titans realize that they have to reach Brainiac rather than waste time battling his troops. And indeed, when Brainiac falls his slave army surrenders.
- Logical Weakness: After being rebuilt as a living robot, Brainiac is massively more powerful than before, but he is still a robot, meaning his computer brain is vulnerable to electromagnetic disturbances caused by a sunspot.
- Mechanical Lifeforms: Brainiac, who was previously a human-looking android, is rebuilt as a skeletic robot composed of living metal, partially thanks to a mysterious planet of living machines.
- Mind Screw: In the beginning, Brainiac tries to use the energy of an imploding super nova to break free from his planet-prison, but it takes his physical body apart. Brainiac's molecular essence disperses throughout the universe, until finding an ancient planet-sized living computer built by unknown beings. Merging with its cells and tapping into its memory banks, Brainiac's essence learns the universe's history, before drifting across the cosmos and studying every single world and civilization. Once he has learned everything he needs, Brainiac's essence moves through a black hole caused by the previously mentioned super nova, goes back in time, wittnesses the Creation of the universe, and feels the "Master Programmer" seeks his destruction, using Superman as His instrument. All of sudden, everything vanishes and his molecular essence has been returned to his time and computerized prison, where Brainiac starts building himself a new mechanical body, a process that will take months and some kind of womb-like device. So, why did Brainiac's conscience survived disintegration and kept his molecules around? Why did it decide travel through the universe? How and why did it travel through the time? How did it return to his own time and place? Where did the planet-sized computer come from? Was God really trying to kill him? Absolutely nothing of that is explained.
- Numbered Homeworld: After his rebirth, Brainiac attacks a planet called Systus 2.
- Orbital Bombardment: Brainiac's Skull ship shoots barrages of missiles and beams to destroy the cities of Systus 2. When its inhabitants try to mount a counterattack, Brainiac fires a massive beam which turns their world into an uninhabitable ball of scorched, cracked earth.
- Rule of Perception: Brainiac's disintegrated body is depicted as a stream of highly-visible, multi-colored, marble-like molecules, since readers obviously need to be able to see it, and people tend to associate molecules with round shapes.
- Secret Identity Change Trick: Clark Kent notices Brainiac's ship approaching Earth right when his boss is berating him about his unexplained absences and ordering him to get down to the studio. Clark is not in the mood to come up with some good lie, so he makes a show of snapping back at Morgan Edge and storming off and into his own office, where he changes clothes.
- Sheathe Your Sword: When Brainiac activates a tractor beam to drag Superman into his ship, the latter initially but futilely tries to resist its pull; however, Superman realizes that tractor beam is so powerful because Brainiac has diverted his ship's full power in it, at the cost of lowering his force-shields. Superman then stops resisting the tractor beam's pull, turns around and speeds down to try to break through the hull's ship. Brainiac hurriedly turns his tractor beam off and raises his shields back again.
- Shout-Out:
- When Kid Flash asks Superman if he could use the Teen Titans to stop Brainiac, Superman replies he would use Bozo the Clown if he'd help.
- Morgan Edge complains about Clark disappearing and "pulling a Cheshire Cat on him", in reference to the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland's character.
- As he is dodging the weapons of Brainiac's soldiers, Superman thinks: "One clear hit and that'll be all she wrote." in reference to Murder, She Wrote.
- SkeleBot 9000: Brainiac's original humanoid body is destroyed and replaced with a more dangerous and more fearsome skeletal form
◊. - Slave Mooks: Brainiac plunders three planets and uses threats and mind-control to force their surviving inhabitants to fight for him.
- Solar Flare Disaster: When his super-computer breaks down due to an electro-magnetic anomaly, Superman guesses that it was caused by one Brainiac's red-sun torpedo exploding into the sun and generating a sunspot. Superman then realizes that he can beat Brainiac by luring his ship to the Sun and creating a sunspot which damages his computer brain.
- Time Skip: The story has Brainiac to start building a new body after his former self's disintegration. Then it skips several months ahead, when Brainiac has completed his rebuilding into a mechanical horror.
- Tractor Beam: When Superman flies into space, Brainiac chases after him and tries to draw him into his ship with a tractor beam.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Every time Superman overcomes or beats his weapons, Brainiac turns tail and runs, teleporting his ship to wherever he wishes to go.
- Villainous Breakdown: When he sees Superman's ship crashing into an asteroid, Brainiac feels relieved for one second...until he sees his enemy has survived the crash, his powers being restored. Brainiac feels overwhelmed by a chilling, numbing fear, and needs some instants to collect himself before becoming overcome by a sensation of defeating inevitability and the feeling that he is fated to being destroyed by Superman, no matter what.
- Villain Teleportation: When Brainiac's new ship suddenly disappears and not even Superman's telescopic vision can find him, Clark guesses his ship has warp capabilities, and it might be on the other side of the galaxy by now.
- You Can't Fight Fate: When Brainiac sees that Superman has survived his latest set of traps against all odds, the android wonders whether he is really doomed to be destroyed by Superman, no matter what.Brainiac: "Superman lives. Red solar radiation dissipated, returning his powers. I...feel a prisoner of my destiny— the images I saw, the grasping hand of the Master Programmer— the threatening gaze of his Angel of Death... There seems to be no way to alter that future."
