Brain (comics)
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The Brain is a DC Comics supervillain and frequent enemy of the Doom Patrol. He is a French mastermind and criminal genius.
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[edit] Fictional history
As a scientist, the man who would one day become known as the Brain experimented on animals to raise their intelligence. One of his experiments was when he captured a gorilla and experimented on it, raising its I.Q. to the genius-level of 178. He named the gorilla Monsieur Mallah and educated him for almost a decade before making him his personal assistant.
His colleague, Niles Caulder grew jealous of his work and arranged for the scientist to get caught in an explosion, which destroyed the scientist's body. Only the brain survived, and Caulder planned on putting his brain in a robot body.
Mallah rescued the scientist, taking his brain and transferring it to a computer network that kept it functioning (Caulder would later engineer another accident, causing the racecar driver Robotman to crash his car; Caulder then put Steele's brain in the body originally meant for the scientist).
Now known simply as the Brain, the scientist and Mallah gathered together the criminal organization known as the Brotherhood of Evil in hopes of conquering the world and getting revenge on Caulder. Caulder, now known as the "Chief", through a series of other accidents that he manipulated, would form the superhero group known as the Doom Patrol. Setting out to destroy the Chief's 'pets', the Brain, Mallah, and their Brotherhood became enemies of the Patrol. Their criminal activities would also pit them against the Teen Titans.
During Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run, Mallah had the Brain placed in Robotman's new body (Robotman's brain had been removed from it earlier, due to it malfunctioning). In his new body, the Brain confessed to Mallah he was in love with him. When Mallah revealed he felt the same way, the two kissed. However, Robotman's body had developed sentience and vowed never to be enslaved by a brain again; when Mallah placed his lover in the body, he triggered a self-destruct mechanism, which exploded as they kissed.
The two would later resurface (the Brain back to floating in a jar). It is uncertain if the two somehow survived the explosion, or that they were brought back to life by some alteration of reality (in Zero Hour, the world was destroyed and recreated with subtle differences, and in Infinite Crisis, Superboy-Prime's pounding on the walls of reality created ripples which corrected reality and caused history to repeat itself for several characters).
[edit] One Year Later
Recently, the Brotherhood have been raiding genetic research facilities; their plan being to unlock the secrets of cloning in order to create a new body for the Brain, so he and Monsieur Mallah "can finally live happily ever after."
The Brain was ultimately able to clone a new body for himself, but after a short while it began to break down, so he had Mallah rip off his head so he could put his Brain back into another jar.
[edit] Other media
In the Teen Titans animated series, the Brain is described as "intellect personified and evil incarnate". Considered the leader of the Brotherhood of Evil, he, like his comic counterpart, is a brain preserved in a robotic jar. It is he who leads the Brotherhood in their attempt to destroy the Titans and their allies. He speaks in a computerized voice similar to Stephen Hawking. The Brain seems to do very little during the series, and acts behind the scenes coordinating the villain attacks. When he appears in his secret base, he is frequently seen playing chess with Mallah and comparing it to the game of wits he considers himself to be playing against Robin. In the rare instances where he fights, he appears to possess limited telekinetic and telepathic abilities. He is otherwise defenceless an easy target several times in the series.
He meets his end in "Titans Together", when Beast Boy throws him into his own freezing machine. The "skull jar" that houses his brain can detach from the rest of his body. When escaping he activates his body which is a fusion device to blow up his base so he can escape (saying that sometimes the best strategy is to "clear the field"). But he was caught and his bomb was sent into outer space. Beast Boy froze him with Professor Chang's device and he made a joke about "brain freeze". His appearance is very similar to a Dalek, who are major antagonists in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, and indeed the producers of Teen Titans mentioned the British show in interviews about Season Five. He is voiced by Glenn Shadix. Like Mallah, his sexuality was not mentioned due to the targeted kid audience.
Brain made an appearance in issue #29 and a cameo in the Teen Titans Go! comic book series.
