This year's Game Awards were filled with countless World Premieres and reveals, and one trailer that managed to stand out from the crowd was the latest one for Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. In this brief glimpse at more cinematics and some long-awaited gameplay, fans got a better idea of the game's core focus and who the characters will be facing off against.

As the name implies, the squad of Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, and King Shark are tasked with taking down the Justice League, with the trailer focusing on a seemingly "possessed" Flash. While the Justice League are certainly going to be primary antagonists, there's one villain behind it all.

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An Overview Of Brainiac In the Comics

Braniac Superman Game Antagonist

First appearing over 60 years ago, Brainiac has been a constant in the world of DC Comics, frequently clashing against every member of the Justice League. Brainiac first appeared in Action Comics #242, where his first comic arc involved shrinking the futuristic city of Kandor, on Krypton. This shrinking of cities, and even planets, is a staple of Brainiac across all mediums, being the main focus of the third LEGO Batman game.

As is the case with all classic comic book villains, Brainiac's mastermind plots often involved tricking Superman in lightly irritating ways, such as exposing him to red Kryptonite, which gives Superman a third eye that he spends the entire comic trying to comically hide. The 1980s saw Brainiac become the villain more recognizable to modern day fans, with Action Comics #544 redesigning Brainiac as a more robotic villain that has the sole goal of killing Superman. This is also where Brainiac gets his iconic "Skull Ship," which can be seen in Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League's first trailer.

Then Crisis On Infinite Earths happened, and the entire DC continuity got rebooted. Brainiac's backstory was completely reworked, with him now being an alien scientist named Vril Dox who was sentenced to death for attempting a coup on his home planet of Colu. Just as he is being executed, Brainiac's conscious mind is transported into the body of a sideshow performer who had psychic powers. To maintain his possession, Brainiac must take the cranial fluid from his victims.

After some brutal run-ins with the Man of Steel, Brainiac is left without a body, slowly dying. It is then revealed that Brainiac has placed a virus in LexCorp's computer system, which inadvertently allows a future version of Brainiac, from the 64th century, to take control of current day Brainiac. This new futuristic version of the character is dubbed Brainiac 13, who goes on to possess multiple robotic metahumans and turn them against Superman and the city of Metropolis.

Brainiac has had countless comic arcs over the years, each one changing the character in one way or another. It seems, however, that Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League is taking inspiration from one modern day comic line in particular: Scott Synder's No Justice run.

This comic sees Brainiac come to Earth with a warning, saying that a great threat is coming to the planet and the Justice League are no match for it. After proving his point by taking out a few Justice League members, the heroes and some villains agree to team up with Brainiac to stop the "Omega Titans" that are on their way to Earth. But before Brainiac can carry out his defensive plan, Amanda Waller carries out a plan of her own, in which Brainiac is captured and psychically interrogated, which causes Brainiac's death.

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Brainiac's Video Game Appearances

LEGO Batman 3 Brainiac Trailer

Being one of DC's most popular villains, Brainiac has also appeared in a plethora of video game adaptations. His first brief appearance was in the 1992 arcade side-scroller simply titled Superman, where he acted as the final boss of the game. Brainiac often appears as stage bosses throughout DC video game history, with appearances in the infamously dreadful Superman 64, the original Xbox game Superman: Man of Steel, and the creatively unique Scribblenauts Unmasked. The MMO DC Universe Online features Brainiac as the main villain, capturing the player character at the start and inadvertently giving them the metahuman abilities they've chosen.

Brainiac is a mainstay of the LEGO DC games, with a brief cameo tease at the end of LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes setting up his antagonist role in LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, in which he tricks the Lantern Corps into giving him their powers so that he can shrink the planet Earth and keep it as a collectible. Brainiac shows up briefly in the toys-to-life game LEGO Dimensions, fighting the player heroes in Middle-Earth with mind-controlled Urukai. Brainiac also makes a playable appearance in the latest LEGO DC Super-Villains game.

Perhaps his most well-known video game appearance, Brainiac takes on the role of the main antagonist in the fighting game Injustice 2. In this continuity, Brainiac doesn't shrink worlds, he destroys them. The opening of the game follows Kara Zor-El (Supergirl) as she narrowly escapes an exploding Krypton, this time its destruction is due to Brainiac's armada of Skull Ships and drones. Upon discovering that a Kryptonian survived and is living on Earth, Brainiac takes his fleet and begins to enslave the planet's population. Depending on which ending the player chooses, Brainiac is either killed by Superman or imprisoned by Batman.

While players have yet to see the version of Brainiac in Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, there is a wealth of deep comic and video game history to take inspiration from. If there's anything that Rocksteady is good at, it's turning somewhat absurd villains into genuinely frightening characters.

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League is set to release in 2022 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S

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