Uncategorized
Finally, finally, we’ve been given a glimpse of what’s to come with James Gunn’s Superman, and it’s clear we’re all a little excited.
The first trailer for the film, which is due to be released on July 11, 2025, provides a moving and hopeful montage of David Corenswet’s Clark Kent/Superman. Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane is there in all her glory, as is the goodest boy Krypto and a slew of familiar DC heroes and villains. Clearly, there’s plenty to be excited about.
One of the key superhero supporting characters in James Gunn’s Superman is a relatively obscure DC Comics hero named Mister Terrific. In the film, and presumably future DCU projects, X-Men: First Class actor Edi Gathegi plays him. And unlike other heroic characters in the film like Hawkgirl, Metamorpho, or Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Mister Terrific has only been around for a relatively short time. But who is this hero with a giant “T” mask on his face? And what makes him so darn cool? Before we get into his DCU future, let’s unpack his comic book history.
Mister Terrific Is a Legacy Hero
The current Mister Terrific, Michael Holt, is actually a legacy hero in the comics. The original Mister Terrific was a “Mystery Man” hero from the Golden Age of Comics named Terry Sloane. There was nothing very original about him at all, and his stories were few. Terry Sloan first appeared in Sensation Comics #1 in 1942, as a backup feature for what was Wonder Woman’s premiere series. He had no powers to speak of, but was someone who was just great at everything. You didn’t need much more than that back in the ’40s.
Sloane graduated college at 13, was adept in every form of fighting, and one day just decided to take up crime fighting. Sure, why not? At the time, everyone else was putting on a costume and fighting crooks. His costume was famously corny, as it had the words “Fair Play” written on the front. (Not quite as intimidating as a bat.) He joined fellow Mystery Men in the Justice Society of America for a couple of issues, then went away for decades. DC brought him back simply to kill him off in an annual Justice League/Justice Society crossover in 1979.
The ’90s Introduce Us to Michael Holt, the Second Mister Terrific
In 1997, DC decided to resurrect the name Mister Terrific with an all-new character. In an issue of The Spectre, creators John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake introduce readers to millionaire genius Michael Holt. Like Terry Sloane, he was born with a genius-level intellect that made him literally great at everything. He had 14 PhDs, he was a gold-medal-winning athlete, and was a self-made millionaire with a thriving tech company. (A tech company that he eventually sold to Bruce Wayne.) He literally had it all…until one day, he didn’t.
After he made his pregnant wife Paula late for church one day after arguing with her about the value of religion (Holt was an atheist), she died in a car crash. Holt blamed himself for her death, and contemplated taking his own life as a result. It was then that the Spectre, a ghostly being who is an actual agent of God, appeared. He told him about the original Mister Terrific, Terry Sloane, and this inspired Holt to take up the superhero life. As an homage to the original Mister Terrific, Holt’s black leather jacket has the words “Fair Play” written in bold letters.
Mister Terrific Leads the Justice Society and the Terrifics
The new Mister Terrific soon joined the Justice Society of America, quickly becoming its chairman. He also received the designation “Third Smartest Man in the World,” with the top two being Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor. (Who is one and who is two is up for debate, but we’re Team Batman here.) Mister Terrific became a fixture of the DC universe, partaking in many crossover events during the 2000s. DC prominently featured him in series like Infinite Crisis and Blackest Night. During the New 52 reboot of 2011, they gave him his own short-lived solo series.
In more recent years, Mr. Terrific became the leader of a team of heroic cosmic adventurers called The Terrifics, including Metamorpho, Plastic Man, and Phantom Girl. Explorers of the Dark Multiverse, the team was DC’s homage to Marvel’s Fantastic Four (and to a certain extent, Pixar’s The Incredibles). Their series was short-lived, lasting 30 issues from 2018-2020. However the series was critically acclaimed, and the team is still active in the DC Comics multiverse.
Mister Terrific’s Powers and Abilities
Mister Terrific doesn’t have any superpowers to speak of, but like Batman, he’s a human character who is pretty much good at everything. Every fighting style, he’s a master of. And his intellect is almost unmatched. In fact, many see him as the JSA’s counterpart to the JLA’s Dark Knight. His main weapons are his T-spheres, floating automated spheres that can project energy blasts, hack into any computer system, create holograms, and much more.
Mister Terrific in TV and Film
For a relatively recent DC hero, Mister Terrific has had quite a few outside-comics media appearances. He was a member of the Justice League Unlimited cast, popping up several times on that series. He then made appearances on Beware the Batman, Justice League Action, and several DTV animated movies. In live-action, a variation of Mister Terrific appeared on Arrow, named Curtis Holt. An LGBTQ hero, his backstory was different. Nevertheless, he had several of his comic book counterpart’s attributes and a similar costume. But Superman will see the live-action debut of the Michael Holt version.
Mister Terrific’s DCU Future
According to James Gunn, Mister Terrific won’t be just a cameo in Superman. He’s a key supporting player. Of the other heroes we’ll see in Superman, Gunn says that Mister Terrific is “the main character of those characters,” adding “he actually has a big part of the plot.” The trailer shows us one scene where Mister Terrific is fending off an attack with what looks like a force field. And while Gunn insists that Superman isn’t designed to set up bigger things, the fact that Mister Terrific is in a movie with Metamorpho, his Terrifics teammate, suggests to us a Terrifics project might be in the planning stages. Regardless, it’s clear Mister Terrific has a bright future in the new DCU.
The post The DC Comics History of SUPERMAN’S Mister Terrific, Explained appeared first on Nerdist.
“Who is Superman’s greatest foe?” Ask anyone, and nine out of ten will say Lex Luthor. And that’s accurate; the billionaire genius has long been the Man of Steel’s most notable nemesis. But just as consistently, the alien android Brainiac has been his second most popular villain for decades. And yet, he’s never appeared in a live-action film, even after seven Superman films. Imagine if, by the time of The Dark Knight Rises, all we’d seen on screen fighting Batman was Joker and Riddler. See why it’s so absurd? But why is Brainiac so important to the Superman mythos, and thus long overdue for cinematic treatment? For that, we’ve got to get into the character’s history, which goes back to DC Comics’ Silver Age.
The Silver Age Brainiac, Superman’s Alien Enemy
Superman had been around for 20 years when Brainiac first appeared on the scene, showing up in Action Comics #242 in 1958. Writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino created him. This was at the dawn of DC Comics’ Silver Age, an era that was a renaissance for the publisher. DC started leaning more into high-concept sci-fi, and no character leaned harder into it than Superman. Under editor Julius Schwartz, this era saw an expansion of his supporting cast, introducing Supergirl, the Legion of Super-Heroes, and Krypto the Superdog. New iconic villains with more kid-friendly appeal appeared, like Bizarro and the Phantom Zone criminals. Each of them was a true physical threat to Superman.
Originally, Brainiac was a green-skinned alien from the planet Colu (sometimes called Byrak), who wanted to accumulate all knowledge in the universe. He miniaturized the Kryptonian city of Kandor before its destruction and attempted to do the same to Metropolis. Superman stopped him, but the alien villain nevertheless caught on with young readers. After a few more appearances over the next few years, DC revealed that Brainiac was actually an android. He was a creation of the Computer Tyrants of the planet Colu, sent out as an agent to conquer other worlds. He was given a genius-level Coluan child to raise named Vril Dox, who was given the title “Brainiac 2.” Vril’s descendant, Querl Dox, would become the Legion of Super-Heroes’ Brainiac 5 a millennia later.
Saturday Morning Cartoons Make Brainiac a TV Star
Brainiac would plague Superman several times over the next few years. But his popularity would be cemented thanks to Saturday morning cartoons. He appeared in the 1960s Adventures of Superman series, later reappearing in several iterations of Super Friends. In 1983, Brainiac would get a modern, more menacing makeover. Instead of a green dude in short shorts and white go-go boots, he downloaded his computer consciousness into a new body. This new metal form looked like an almost insectoid skeleton. Upgraded Brainiac flew around the galaxy in a giant skull ship, and fans immediately took to the menacing new design, especially as it featured prominently in the Super Powers action figure line of the ‘80s. This Brainiac was actually scary, and posed a physical threat to Superman. But he was not to last, as DC’s reality-altering Crisis on Infinite Earths event erased the old Brainiac from continuity.
The Evolution of Modern Brainiac in the Pages of Superman
The post-Crisis Brainiac was, at first, not very exciting. He was a short, middle-aged human man named Milton Fine, a carnival mentalist going by “The Amazing Brainiac.” However, his mental powers were actually real. When the alien Vril Dox was executed on the planet Colu for inciting rebellion, his consciousness connected with Fine’s, merging with his. Over the next decade, Fine would clone himself a superior body (a green one, an homage to the original), and eventually, a powerful robotic form.
In the ‘90s, this new Brainiac became one of Superman’s most lethal enemies, one Kal-El often needed the Justice League’s help to defeat. In 2008, writer Geoff Johns revealed that all the previous Brainiacs were merely drones, or splinter aspects of the real Brainiac’s programming. The true Brainiac was an ancient being, who took design inspiration (thanks to artist Gary Frank) from the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact, and the art of Alien concept designer, H.R. Giger.
Superman: The Animated Series‘ Brainiac Is the Best Version
As previously mentioned, Brainiac would gain household name status thanks to the Super Friends cartoons of the ‘70s. However, his superior animated incarnation was in the 1996-2000 Superman: The Animated Series. That version broke with almost 40 years of lore, making Brainiac an A.I. from Krypton, not Colu. In fact, he was created by Superman’s father Jor-El as the computer system designed to run all of Krypton’s day-to-day functions. Gaining sentience, he allows Krypton to die, uploading himself off the planet. He builds himself a new body, when he eventually encounters Jor-El’s adult son, now Superman. This version, voiced by the great Corey Burton, had vast intellect and power, collecting knowledge from world after world, and then destroying the planet. And as he was a creation of Jor-El, he was (in a sense) Superman’s evil brother. It all worked like gangbusters. So why haven’t we seen Brainiac yet in a film?
A Small Screen Brainiac Appears on Smallville and Krypton, But Never in a Movie
Superman III producers considered using him for the film, before they dropped the idea for being too expensive. A live-action version did eventually appear on Smallville, in a much more human form, played by Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s James Marsters. The CW series just didn’t have the budget to do a Brainiac akin to his comic book counterpart properly. The Smallville Brainiac was an amalgamation of previous comic book and animated versions. Like in Superman: The Animated Series, he was a Kryptonian A.I. gone rogue, invented by Jor-El. His name stood for “Brain InterActive Construct,” and on Earth, he took on the human form of Milton Fine. A recurring secondary villain in Smallville, the show’s budget prevented them from ever going big with the character.
The 2017 series Krypton would utilize the most comic book-accurate version of Brainiac in live-action thus far. In this Superman prequel series, Brainiac (Blake Ritson) is once again a Coluan “collector of worlds” who has set his sights on Krypton and the House of El. The series presented him in his alien form, a first for live-action. He even had his badass skull ship. The show only lasted two seasons, but it proved comic book-accurate Brainiac was possible on screen. But even so, fans still have never seen him fight Superman. Most recently, Superman & Lois had an appearance from Milton Fine, the human version of Brainiac from Earth. But that was more of an Easter egg than a real role.
Will James Gunn’s Superman Finally Give Us a Cinematic Brainiac?
But aside from animated films, Brainiac has never been in a Superman feature film. The movies keep going back to Lex Luthor and General Zod, seemingly on a loop. While he might have been hard to realize on screen in the ‘80s, there was nothing holding the studio back from visualizing him in the 21st century. He would have been an ideal villain for Superman Returns, or Man of Steel. But for reasons unknown, no one at Warner Bros. had wanted to pull the trigger. It’s a shame, as Brainiac has stood the test of time. He represents both a mental and physical challenge for Superman, as well as a connection to his Kryptonian past. Hopefully, James Gunn realizes that it’s high time Brainiac got his shot at being a movie villain. Rao knows, it is long overdue.
The post Brainiac, Superman’s Second Most Important Villain, Explained appeared first on Nerdist.