{"id":3706,"date":"2022-02-14T09:08:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T17:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/?p=3706"},"modified":"2022-01-23T22:01:19","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T06:01:19","slug":"661-brainiac-and-kandor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/661-brainiac-and-kandor\/","title":{"rendered":"661 – Brainiac and Kandor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/a>
A panel from Action Comics #242, May 1958<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

May 1958 brings in yet more expansion of the Superman mythos by Otto Binder and Al Plastino, in Action Comics #242. The villain Brainiac<\/a> makes his debut, arriving to Earth and stealing the city of Paris (Eiffel Tower and all!), while Clark and Lois are hitching a ride on the first experimental spaceship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lois<\/a>
Lois and Clark take a flight in space in Action Comics #242, May 1958<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Clark sneaks out of the spaceship to confront Brainiac, only to have Brainiac’s super-science re-buff Supermans’ attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Another<\/a>
Another panel from Action Comics #242, May 1958<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Superman eventually gets shrunk as Metropolis is captured and is able to sneak onto Brainiac’s ship. While there, he is startled to discover that Brainiac also has captured and miniaturized a city from his homeworld, Krypton. The city of Kandor<\/a> was Krypton’s capital city and has been on Brainiac’s ship for years, having been captured and shrunk before the planet exploded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Superman<\/a>
Superman meets a Kryptonian scientist from Kandor in Action Comics #242, May 1958<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

After Brainiac is put to sleep for a century-long spaceflight, Superman with the help of Professor Kimda, a scientist and college roommate of Jor-El’s, is able to escape Kandor’s gravity, regains his powers, and puts all the Earth cities back. There is only one charge of the “hyper-force” ray, so Superman makes the decision to enlarge Kandor instead of himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Superman<\/a>
Superman makes a tough decision in Action Comics #242, May 1958<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This makes sense, since there are a million Kryptonians on Kandor who can now help protect the Earth as full-sized Kryptonians living on Earth. But Professor Kimda has other ideas and doesn’t want to deprive Earth of its greatest hero. Kimda uses a rocketship to escape Kandor and uses the last charge on Superman, enlarging him to regular size. Instead of figuring out a way to re-charge the hyper-ray or stop Brainiac permanently, Superman takes the bottled city of Kandor to his Fortress of Solitude and lets Brainiac’s ship stay the course through space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I realize this story was meant to introduce Kandor as a plot element in future stories, and I do love Brainiac as a Superman villian, but an ending where Superman tried to act more responsibly would have left a better taste in my mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Known surviving Kryptonians: 1,000,005.<\/em> (It is stated that a million people would be saved in Kandor, plus Krypto, three villains imprisoned in space, and Superman himself).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May 1958 brings in yet more expansion of the Superman mythos by Otto Binder and Al Plastino, in Action Comics #242. The villain Brainiac makes his debut, arriving to Earth and stealing the city of Paris (Eiffel Tower and all!), while Clark and Lois are hitching a ride on the first experimental spaceship. Clark sneaks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[598,597,14,180,602,306,601,43],"class_list":["post-3706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-598","tag-brainiac","tag-dc","tag-fortress-of-solitude","tag-kandor","tag-krypton","tag-kryptonian-population","tag-superman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3706"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4086,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3706\/revisions\/4086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}