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The Super-Duel in Space is a Superman story published in Action Comics #242 (July, 1958) by Otto Binder and Al Plastino. It is remembered among Superman fans for introducing two iconic elements of the lore: Brainiac and the Bottle City of Kandor.

Clark Kent and Lois Lane are invited to take part in the flight of the Columbus, the first experimental manned spaceship. The rocket launch is successful, but shortly after leaving the Earth orbit the Columbus is attacked by a mysterious and unknown alien ship. Clark Kent sneaks out, turns into Superman and attacks the ship after discovering it is manned by an alien called Brainiac.

Superman's attack simply bounces off the Brainiac's ship, although he manages to push the Columbus out of the way of Brainiac's ship's beams. Brainiac does not care, though, since he's got a bigger ship to fry. Brainiac aims another ray towards Earth, reduces four of the world's main cities and teleports them into bottles with the purpose of studying their culture and enlarge them on his planet, so that he can rule over their denizens. Brainiac then lands on a planetoid to refuel his ship, and Superman tries to attack Brainiac again. However, Superman cannot beat Brainiac, no matter what he does.

Superman pretends to flee in defeat, but he has come up with another plan. He cannot damage or break into Brainiac's ship from outside, but maybe he can sneak in. Since Brainiac is sure to want to steal Metropolis, Superman goes back to his city. Once Metropolis has been shrunken and taken into Brainiac's vessel, Superman sneaks out of the bottle. However, he is still miniaturized, so he must hide from Brainiac into another bottle-city, wherein Superman will get the biggest shock of his life so far.


Tropes:

  • After the End: In his first appearance, Brainiac is stealing alien cities to repopulate his home world after a plague wiped out his then-unnamed people. Later stories would retcon Brainiac into being a living computer spy created by the computer tyrants which ruled over planet Colu before being overthrown and destroyed during a rebellion.
  • Artistic License – Geography: Judging by one panel, Rome consists entirely of the Coliseum and some few surrounding ruins sitting next to the mouth of an estuary. The real Rome is a huge city, famously surrounded by seven hills, and located 216 km (134,21 miles) from the Tyrrhenian Sea.
  • But What About the Astronauts?: Superman finds out that the city of Kandor and its population survived by being shrunk and abducted by Brainiac (becoming an involuntary colony in the collection room of his spaceship) before the planet Krypton’s destruction.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: When Superman becomes trapped in the Bottle-City of Kandor, head scientist Kimda gives him a tour around the city, showing him curiosities like one-person rocket-shaped vehicles, or a huge metal-eater alien mole. Later, Superman comes up with a plan to escape from the bottle: flying a rocket up to the metal cap and have the mole to eat one hole through it.
  • Contrived Coincidence: After entering the Bottle-City of Kandor, Superman seeks out a scientist, and he meets Professor Kimda...who happens to be Jor-El's former college roommate. Since it is not plot-relevant at all, it is surprising that Otto Binder felt that Superman couldn't just run into a random scientist who would be willing to help him out.
  • Create Your Own Hero: Brainiac had not even heard of Superman until he attacked the Clark Kent's adoptive homeworld and shrank and stole his city Metropolis, earning himself an exceptionally dogged nemesis.
  • Domed Hometown: Brainiac creates domed force-fields around whole Earth cities, shrinking and abducting them. While trying to recue them, Superman finds the Bottle City of Kandor, a Kryptonian city also miniaturized by Brainiac.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • In his first appearance, Brainiac is remarkably small, scrawny and big-headed compared to later portrayals (possibly an instance of differing artistic styles, since Curt Swan's cover art is consistent with said posterior depictions). He is also just an alien scientist who collects cities in bottles, and it's implied that he is an organic being. It was established six years later that he was a humanoid super-computer, a characterization that has stuck ever since.
    • Brainiac also claimed to be the only survivor of a plague which wiped his species out. Later stories established that Brainiac was not even a biological creature.
    • Brainiac has a white alien monkey that serves as a sort of Right-Hand Cat for him; Koko has rarely ever appeared since, and often in an unrecognizable form (in Superman: Brainiac he is a baboon-like monster).
    • Superman takes the Bottle City to his Fortress, placing it in a niche excavated in a wall outside the fortress. Later comics would have Kandor kept deep inside the Fortress and linked to complex life support systems.
  • Eiffel Tower Effect: So that readers can tell right away what cities are being collected by Brainiac, Al Plastino makes sure that their main landmarks (the Roman Coliseum, the Eiffel Tower, the Big Ben Tower, the Empire State Building...) are always clearly visible.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: A host of journalists and scientists are invited to take part in the spaceship Columbus' maiden flight, the latter of the which are bringing along several test animals. During the trip, someone notices that the test animals are going mad right before that Brainiac's ship comes within human sight and begins firing at the Columbus.
  • Flashback Cut: Superman meets a Kandorian who wants to know how Superman survived Krypton's explosion and got to Earth. Superman explains his whole backstory up to that point in one panel showing different images of his past (his rocket taking off, the Kents taking him in, his Superboy career...)
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Mistaking the first manned space flight launched by Earthmen as an attack specifically directed against him, Brainiac attacks the spaceship and then steals several Earth cities, thus putting himself in direct conflict with Superman (who did not even know of his existence). Brainiac's strike will not only cause his first defeat and the loss of his stolen cities but will lead to many defeats and humiliations at the hands of Superman and his cousin Supergirl through the years ("Brainiac's Blitz", "Let My People Grow!"...), culminating in his final death in "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?".
  • Incredible Shrinking Man: Superman ends up shrunk by Brainiac's reducing ray.
  • Last of His Kind: Brainiac claims to be the last one of his race because of a plague wiping out his home world. Later, it turns out that he is not the last living Coluan, but the only of the Computer Tyrants of Colu who was not destroyed by the rebels.
  • Lilliputians: The people of Kandor and several Earth cities are shrunk to miniature size and shoved into bottles.
  • Metal Muncher: Superman meets a Kryptonian, yellow metal-eating mole in the Kandor City Zoo, kept in a glass cage.
  • Monumental Damage: Brainiac shrinks and bottles Rome, Paris, London and New York. Then, Brainiac uses a pair of tweezers to rip the George Washington Bridge, the Eiffel Tower and other monuments loose, using a pair of huge tweezers, to examine them under a magnifying glass.
  • More Expendable Than You: Superman has rescued Brainiac's stolen cities and has enlarged all of them except Kandor. He was also shrunk, but Brainiac's enlarging has only one charge left. Superman is not about to put himself above one city worth of people, but before he can enlarge the last Kryptonian city, a Kandorian presses the button and enlarges Superman, arguing that they could let Earth be deprived of its greatest hero.
  • No-Sell: Thanks to Brainiac's forcefield, nothing Superman could throw bothers him or his ship. Superman even throws island-sized chunks of an asteroid to no avail.
  • Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Brainiac claims he is stealing cities in order to repopulate his world...and then having a new empire to rule once again.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: A shrunken Superman manages to infiltrate Brainiac's ship, but he is mistaken for an annoying fly for Brainiac, who tells his pet Koko to swat it. While fleeing from Koko, Superman flies into a Bottle-City which Brainiac was examining and finds Kandor, the last Kryptonian city which survived its planet's explosion thanks to Brainiac stealing it for his collection and was rescuded by Superman thanks to Koko chasing after him.
  • Put on a Bus: Superman finds the Bottle-City of Kandor and meets Professor Kimda, Jor-El's college roommate, who helps him beat Brainiac...and is never seen again, despite being Superman's father's old friend.
  • Secret Identity Change Trick: When the Columbus is attacked by Brainiac, Clark needs an excuse to abandon the spaceship; so that he picks a spacesuit and a jetpack, pretends he has become frightened enough to try to fly back to Earth on his own, and leaps out of a hatch. Once he is out of sight, Clark changes clothes.
  • Sleeper Starship: In order to survive the long trip back to planet Colu, Brainiac and his pet Koko go into a pod and put themselves into suspended animation, setting his machines to revive him one hundred years later.
  • Some Kind of Force Field: When Superman tries to break into Brainiac's ship and gets bounced off, a white glow flashes around the ship. Even so, Superman ponders he has "rebounded from an invisible wall".
  • Space Is Air: Otto Binder couldn't be reasonably expected to know how much he got wrong about manned space flights because the story came out three years before Yuri Gagarin's trip. To sum up, the rocket makes u-turns as if it was a plane, nobody wears spacesuits, the single pilot wears an airline pilot costume, and several untrained people (journalists, scientists...) have been invited to join the flight and are sitting on rows as if it was a commercial flight.
  • There Is Another: As exploring the cities stolen by Brainiac, Superman bumps into Kandor, Krypton's ancient capital city. It was the first instance of the Silver Age Superman running into other Kryptonian survivors (albeit this was retconned when Superboy 1949 #67 (September, 1958) introduced Klax-Ar only two months later).
  • Trojan Prisoner: Superman cannot break through the energy barrier protecting Brainiac's ship, so that he pretends to flee, and he goes back to Metropolis, knowing that Brainiac will want to shrink and move the city into his ship.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: In order to escape from the Bottle-City of Kandor, Superman entices a Kryptonian metal-eating mole to eat his way through the metal cap. After the mole has burrowed one tunnel through the metal, Superman flies off, leaving the mole behind, stranded on the top of the giant bottle. It is unknown what happened afterwards to the animal who helped Superman beat Brainiac and save the Kandorians.
  • Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Brainiac defeats Superman by standing still with his arms crossed while Superman futilely tries to shatter his force-field. When Superman runs out of planetoid to hurl at him, Brainiac mockingly asks if he is done.
  • The Worf Effect: Brainiac is established as a serious threat in his first appearance when the Silver Age Superman fails to overpower him twice, being forced to outsmart him.


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