To most of us kids, it seemed as if Brainiac was like Luthor; one of those villains who'd always been around. It wasn't until later that I learned that he actually had originated in July of 1958, and thus was only a little over a year older than Supergirl, in comics time anyway.
His first appearance, in Action #242, is also famous for introducing the bottle city of Kandor, an enduring plot device for the rest of the Silver Age. Here's how his passion for reducing cities was explained in that issue:
There are a couple of oddities, however. First, why did he only steal one city from Krypton, but multiple cities (including at least Paris, Rome and Metropolis) from Earth? And wouldn't there be issues with expanding Kandor and Earth cities on the same planet? Either the Kandorians would all be super, or the Earthlings would be crushed under the heavier gravity.
Superman managed to escape, and restore the Earth cities to their normal size. But when there was only one charge of the enlarging ray left, he was left with a moral dilemma; should he restore himself, or Kandor. Fortunately for us, a rocket ship from Kandor, piloted by Jor-El's old college roommate made the decision, pressing the button to return Superman to his normal size. Brainiac is under sedation for the 100+ year trip back to his home planet.
He returns in Action #275. In that story, he beams Superman with a combination red and green Kryptonite ray, which mostly impacts Supes like ordinary Red K. He grows a third eye in the back of his head, which comes in handy as with three eyes shooting heat vision at Brainiac, he is able to dissolve the villain's force field. He sends Brainiac back into the past on some remote planet, reasoning that this will get him out of his hair for awhile anyway.
Excluding the oddball Night of March 31st story which I covered years ago, Brainiac's next appearance came just five issues later:
In this story, Brainiac recovers from the suspended animation that Superman had put him in, and zooms into the future. Along the way he hears voices of crooks imploring him to set them free. Here's an interesting one:
Entangles his foes in a web, you say? But Brainiac doesn't need any stooges, and refuses to help them out. This story does see the return of the bottles, and the shrinking ray, in which Brainiac traps Superman, Lois, Perry and Jimmy, along with Congorilla, who ends up saving them all.
His next significant appearance (Brainiac often appeared in cameo flashbacks whenever the Bottle City of Kandor was mentioned) was in Action #286, when he teamed up with some other villains:
But actually it's just a nightmare that Superman had when exposed to Red K.
His "next" appearance is actually chronologically one of his first. See, some of Brainiac's henchmen kidnap little Kal-El on Krypton and bring him to Brainiac's home planet, given a name for the first time:
Well, it apparently didn't entirely wipe out the population, as he does have those two helpers. Brainiac intends to hold baby Kal for ransom so Jor-El will give him his latest invention. However, it turns out that Superbaby does have powers on Bryak, and thus wreaks havoc on Brainiac's weapons and treasure, so that they return him quickly to Krypton, vowing to have revenge on that planet. Hence the shrinking of Kandor, which I now must assume was never intended to be restored to its normal size (since the citizens of that city would be super-powered too).
In Brainiac's next appearance, a startling new fact was learned about him: he is a computer!
That's pretty cool and unique, but it doesn't fit in with the tale we've been told before about the population of his home planet (which he ruled) being wiped out by a plague. At this point, Brainiac simply serves the other computers, and while they have defeated any resistance by the humans that originally created them, they did not wipe out the population.
Armed with this knowledge, Luthor decides to free Brainiac from the prison planet where he's locked up, and to improve the computer:
Of course, there's no honor among thieves and once the operation is done, Brainiac decides he doesn't need Luthor. Or does he?
And back on Bryak, Brainiac gets another nasty-gram:
Again, it doesn't quite fit the story we've been told about the plague destroying all the people of his homeworld.
Brainiac and Luthor team up to rob Superman of his powers and shrink him to the size of a small bird. But while they're bickering over who gets to kill him, Superman escapes and sends a message to the Superman Emergency Squad in Kandor. They arrive and make short work of the villains, but in the meantime, Brainiac has put Supes into a coma, from which the finest Kandorian scientists cannot rouse him. Brainiac makes a deal; if Kandor lets him and Luthor go, he will release Superman from the coma. Oh, and along the way, he hypnotizes Luthor into removing the secret timer, and forgetting about Brainiac being a computer.
After that, Brainiac pretty much becomes Superman's generic villain from space. Oh, occasionally we hear about his twelfth-order computer brain, or his hatred for Kandor, but there's no real attempt to fill in the holes in the back story of Bryak, although I assume a lot of that has chanced since the end of the Silver Age.
