#brainy

The first thing you need to know about Brainy is that in almost every iteration that exists, he is an incredibly emotionally unstable character. In the show, this is mostly demonstrated through his inhibitors (something that’s also briefly touched upon in PZH continuity) but for other variants…. Brainy is just like that.

There’s a sort of unspoken expectation of Brainy in the comics that because of his twelfth level intelligence, he should be capable of handling just about anything. And because of that, he constantly takes on too much. He doesn’t sleep. He stresses himself out. He internalises. He has a mental break down. Rinse and repeat.

During LoSH's first continuity, Brainy was institutionalised after becoming delusional and paranoid from overwork and lack of sleep, feeding a jealousy he’d already been harbouring after not being voted as leader by the other Legionnaires. This nearly led to him destroying the entire planet with the use of the Miracle Machine, and even when he briefly regained enough of his senses to save the planet, his plan left another Legionnaire, Matter Eater Lad, completely mentally broken after using him to fix his own mistake.

So now you have a bit of context, allow me to introduce you to the story arc that I’m referring to for Brainy. One of my favourite Brainy-centric arcs of this specific continuity, actually:

THE TRIAL OF BRAINIAC-5

Over the course of this comic’s lifetime, many Legionnaires were put under scrutiny in one way or another, either in a UP courtroom or by the Legion itself.

In this story, when a long-term villain known as the Time Trapper causes the death of the Legion’s Superboy, Brainy – fuelled by anger and heartbreak - goes against the Legion’s back, gathering the support from a few trusted Legionnaires in the process, to concoct a plan to kill the Time Trapper. Brainy’s plan involves using the Infinite Man, formally known as Jaxon Rugarth, against the Time Trapper. Jaxon was left brain dead after a time travel experiment gone wrong that led to his transformation and eventual comatose condition. Therefore, he had no ability to give his consent to be involved with this plan - a plan that meant sacrificing his own life by becoming the Infinite Man again in order to destroy the Time Trapper.

However, knowing Jaxon’s values, Brainy surmises that he would have wanted to give his life for this and, in sacrificing Jaxon, he was in fact successfully able to defeat the Time Trapper.

Saturn Girl, Triplicate Girl and Mon-El all agreed to be co-conspirators in this plan and during the fight, Triplicate Girl – at the time known as Duo Damsel – loses her second body when she is killed by the Time Trapper. For added context, in the early years of the LoSH run, one of Brainy’s inventions – COMPUTO – took on a mind of its own and killed Triplicate Girl’s first body, leading to her name change in later issues. Mon-El was also gravely wounded during this attack and later succumbs to his injuries. *Although he is eventually resurrected

While Brainy wasn’t necessarily responsible for either of these deaths, he was still held in contempt by his fellow Legionnaires due to the unethical nature of his plan. In fact, they hold a court hearing for him where the Legion must vote on whether he can remain a member. Legion opinion is split. Some agree that Jaxon was brain dead with no hope of recovery and that the plan was therefore morally sound, however others believed Brainy’s actions as sacrilegious as Jaxon was still technically alive and unable to consent.

Brainy doesn’t take the court hearing seriously because he honestly doesn’t care what the Legion thinks of his decision. In his mind, the plan was fully justified and he has no regrets in carrying it out. He even requests that Saturn Girl offer nothing in his defence.

Instead, he tells the Legion exactly what he thinks. That there is no trial, only an argument of morality, and he believes that his is sound.

In the end, even though the Legion do vote in favour of him staying, he decides to leave of his own volition, returning to Colu to pursue his research where he won’t be restricted by Legion politics.

It's important to note that Brainy is not a cruel or callous character. He cares about his friends and the Legion very much and wishes to protect them to the best of his ability. However, he is willed by his logic and practical mindset, and so when he isn't able to do his job because of the obstacles the Legion puts in his way, he isn't beyond leaving. Brainy leaves and rejoins the Legion a few times during the comic's run, sometimes due to dispute, others due to his own mental health, but he always rejoins the moment he's needed.

In fact, the only regret Brainy has over the fight with the Time Trapper is that Triplicate Girl/Duo Damsel had to lose another life - both that he feels responsible for - leaving her with only one body. Before he leaves the Legion, he reaches out to her, leaving his shield belt - his signature tool - with her as an apology, and in hopes of keeping her safe.

Okay – so now let’s jump to Nia’s arc.

Nia Nal who, at 18 years old, only had about three years of experience as a superhero before she was forced to work for Amanda ‘The Wall’ Waller against her will. Nia Nal, who - in this universe - did not have the likes of Supergirl’s example to follow, but was rather made to lead a bunch of morally ambiguous criminals to carry out Waller’s bidding in a new Suicide Squad.

Nia Nal, who at just 18 years old, accidentally killed an old man when she was forced to transport her team to his location through his dreams. Oneiric Travel: a power unique to her comic variant

Nia had started out with the purest intentions, wishing only to live up to her mother's example, but after Waller threatened to dox the location of her home, the secret alien haven of Parthas, she was willing to protect it with everything she had, even if it meant abandoning her own morals in the process.

When Waller releases Parthas' location to the public anyway, Nia, full of rage and intending to kill Waller for what she had been forced to do, discovers through a dream that there was a trigger inside of Waller's body that would go off the second her pulse stopped. A trigger that would terminate her only surviving family.

She'd never had a choice, only orders, and if she mis stepped, it would have been her father and sister that ultimately paid that price.

Just like Brainy, Nia’s story is a lot darker than some of the other heroes that she runs with. For example, one of the first heroes she befriends is Jon Kent, son of Superman, who embodies the teachings of his father, never killing or using his powers for ill will.

So, you can imagine Jon’s surprise when he finds out that Nia had not only killed someone, but had been planning on killing a recently prison-breaked Waller as well.

But Nia had already left her mark on Waller.

After the events of the comic arc Absolute Power, Waller was finally incarcerated and the trigger was removed from her body, but not before Nia stole every incriminating memory Waller had, every piece of information she could have ever used as leverage. Waller’s power came from her intel, and Nia made sure that Waller would never have the means to blackmail anyone ever again.

*Nia did not, in fact, put a bomb in Waller's head. But she's happy for her to go crazy believing that.

Jon doesn’t approve of Nia’s methods, but Nia isn’t apologetic for doing what she did. In her mind’s eye, her plan was justified. She had ensured that Waller would never be able to hurt anyone again, but when she finds out that Waller might be in the process of having those memories restored, she doesn’t hesitate to plan her murder again.

In the end, Nia sees Waller at her weakest, stripped of her power, without her memories, and realises that so long as Waller’s memories can be permanently extracted, she isn’t a threat, nor is she worth killing. She only wants her to face justice for everything she's done.

By the time we catch up to Nia’s arc, she is disillusioned and bitter and no longer believes that she would ever fit in the tight constraints of the Justice League.

By this point, she’s seen the darker side of being a superhero, she’s worked with the people who never once had an easy day in their life, who were used and abused by systems outside of their control, who had become criminals to survive or simply because they had no other choice. Not only that, but in the Absolute Power arc, Nia had sacrificed her own life to protect Superman and other heroes from being attacked inside the Fortress of Solitude. Her body was ripped to shreds in an explosion and the only reason she survived was through the dreamscape of Jon Kent, where she was able to rebuild and reconstitute her body before returning to the physical realm.

Despite what she gave up, it amounted to nothing in her eye. Jon still doesn’t trust her after learning about what she’d done to Waller, and his boyfriend Jay still blames her for the part she played in his mother’s murder - despite the fact she’d already revolted against Waller before that had even happened.

So, she doesn’t want to be accepted back by the Justice League. Partially because she’s punishing herself, partially because she’s angry for being judged by the choices she made.

Despite all this, she’s still a hero. She’s lost a lot, and she’s terrified of losing anyone else, which oftentimes makes her choices come off as selfish. In fact, her own losses often blind her to the larger picture, which is that despite her losses, her closest friends have also experienced similar devastation.

And those friends are still striving for hope within the new Justice League, one they desperately want her to be a part of. Nia’s pain and self-hatred skew her own judgement. She no longer believes in herself, but in the end her heart and will to do good is still present, she’s just refusing to see it.

There’s still a lot of story left to be told, and so we don’t yet know how Nia will grow from here, but for the moment I’m taking what we do know to draw my parallels.

So, you may be asking at this point – what parallels? Aside from the fact that Nia and Brainy in the comics are way more messed up than their show counterparts.

I think what interests me the most about these two is that Brainy and Nia are both passionate for what they stand for, and they don’t let codes or judgement get in their way of doing what they believe to be the right thing. Nia and Brainy both make selfish choices at times, choices that may come from anger or grief or lack of control, but that doesn’t mean that those choices don’t lead to results that end up stopping the bad thing from happening, something that a hero with a cleaner conscience may not have had the heart to carry out.

And, when judgement is inevitably cast upon them, they are not ones to back down. In fact, they are more than happy to part ways with a system that they don’t believe is working in favour of finding one that better serves their interests. Justice is all that matters in their eyes, especially at these specific points in their respective arcs, and I just love that so much.

Brainy’s strength comes from his intellect, but his flaws are in his hubris. Nia is incredibly powerful, but she’s also inexperienced and punishing herself and others by refusing to look beyond the side of the story that she’s experienced first-hand.

Obviously, this isn't a perfect parallel, both characters are in very different stages of their journeys in these arcs, and their reasoning for not joining forces with their respected teams are coming from different places too, but it's their justification and passion for what they believe in and stand for that ultimately tie these two instances together in my mind.