Brainiac (character)
Brainiac is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by Otto Binder and Al Plastino and first appeared in Action Comics #242 in July 1958. Brainiac is usually depicted as an extraterrestrial android or cyborg and enemy of Superman and the Justice League, and is regarded as one of Superman's archenemies, second only to Lex Luthor. He is known for shrinking and stealing Kandor, the capital city of Superman's home planet Krypton, and is even responsible for Krypton's destruction in some continuities. The character's name is a portmanteau of the words brain and maniac. In 2009, Brainiac was ranked by IGN's as 17th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time, saying that he "has a very personal connection to Kal-El and can directly challenge him both physically and mentally; there are very few that have that distinction, allowing Brainiac to rank up there with the best of them." He has been substantially adapted into various forms of media, having been voiced by Corey Burton in the DC Animated Universe, John Noble in the animated film Superman: Unbound, and Jeffrey Combs in the video game Injustice 2. In live-action television, Brainiac has been portrayed by James Marsters on Smallville and Blake Ritson on Krypton. The first Brainiac/Kandor comic book story in Action Comics #242 (July 1958) was based on a story arc in the Superman comic strip from April through August 1958. In the comic strip story, Superman's foe was named Romado, who traveled the cosmos with a white alien monkey named Koko, shrinking major cities and keeping them in glass jars. The strip's Kryptonian bottled city was named Dur-El-Va. This cross-continuity conflict was not unprecedented; in 1958 and '59, editor Mort Weisinger used the comic strip to prototype a number of concepts that he planned to introduce in the book, including Bizarro and red Kryptonite. Brainiac is a bald, green-skinned humanoid who arrives on Earth and shrinks various cities, including Metropolis, storing them in bottles with the intent of using them to restore the then-unnamed planet he ruled.