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Brainiac
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name
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Brain InterActive Construct (Brainiac), Milton Fine
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First Appearance
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Action Comics #242 (July 1958)
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Creator
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Otto Binder
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Affiliations
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Abilities
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Artificial intelligence with variable superhuman powers
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Played by
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James Marsters
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Brainiac, sometimes also known as Milton Fine or as the Brain InterActive Construct to Kryptonians in the TV series Smallville, is a robotic/computerized supervillain, who is one of Superman's main nemeses aside from Lex Luthor. His most well-known crime was the shrinking of the city of Kandor prior to Krypton's destruction, and preserving it amongst a host of other cities from various planets aboard his spaceship. His original name, on Colu, was Vril Dox.
Brainiac is usually depicted as a green humanoid, coming from the planet of Colu where all native inhabitants have green skin. In his original appearance, Brainiac was in fact a coluan man, however his origin and nature were soon retconned and changed, making him an android hailing from Colu. His origin is frequently reimagined for various Superman stories; but they almost always begin on the planet Colu. Many recent versions of his story, however, have given him an origin on Krypton.
Brainiac is easily the most high-tech of Superman's foes. He uses advanced alien spacecraft and technology to combat Superman. In early appearances in the Silver Age comics, he had a purplish flying saucer. Since then, however, he has used a giant, green/metallic skull-shaped space ship with metallic tentacles.
In the Legion of Super-Heroes comics and animated series, a version of brainiac known as Brainiac 5 is a promenent member of the team. In the comics, he's a normal, green-skinned Coluan who is descended from Brainiac; However, in the animated series, Brainiac 5 had more advanced robotic and computer-based abilities and was closer to the classic Brainiac.