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In Reality Z-25 31-H, Doctor Brain was a particularly tenacious supervillain. A mad scientist whose head had been reduced to a brain and eyes floating in a spherical tank, he was in other respects a surprisingly ordinary person, setting aside his ambitions of world domination.
Description
Physical appearance
Doctor Brain was a tall, broad-shouldered, muscular man wearing ornate armour and long gloves. The most striking thing about him, however, was that his "head" was reduced to a brain and eyes, his skull and face absent. Though still connected to the rest of his body by nerves, the brain and eyes floated in an unidentified liquid in a round “fishbowl” mounted onto his neck, and on which a large electronic speaker was affixed, allowing him to speak. (COMIC: Tales To Behold)
Personality
Although Doctor Brain wished to take over the world, this appeared to be attributable not so much to conventional thirst for power as a kind of hedonism that led to Brain wanting to get rid of every annoying thing in his life, from paperwork to superheroes. Despite the hubristic madness of his goals, Brain acted fairly normally in person, despite a certain self-consciousness that made him want to “act like a villain”. (COMIC: Tales To Behold)
Powers & abilities
Doctor Brain was a genius scientist with some skill in dimensional engineering. (COMIC: Tales To Behold) He was capable of participating in a witchcraft ritual, although he seemed to need the help of a real witch (such as his daughter) to set one up. (COMIC: For Whom The Toll Bells)
Biography
Early life
At some point, Doctor Brain was in a relationship with a woman and they had a child together, a daughter named Jesse. They later separated and seemed to remain on bad terms, with Jesse's mother disapproving of Doctor Brain's supervillain ways and being opposed to his involving Jesse in his schemes. (COMIC: For Whom The Toll Bells)
Summoning a Griffin
At a point when he had already been the nemesis of Captain Evening for some time, Doctor Brain secretly got Jesse's help for a new scheme to get rid of him. Jesse was, by then, a student of witchcraft, and the two (with the help of two of Brain's henchmen) participated in a summoning ritual to bring forth a Griffin from the Sixth Realm and bind him to this world until he killed Captain Evening. The Griffin took flight, Doctor Brain and his daughter parted ways once more, and Doctor Brain thought no more of it for a long time. (COMIC: For Whom The Toll Bells)
The Portal
A few weeks later, (COMIC: For Whom The Toll Bells) Doctor Brain and some scientific assistants of his captured a Shifter and used her powers to power an interdimensional portal to another dimension. Brain began tossing unwanted mail and paperwork into the portal, and intended to eventually move on to banishing people, such as I.R.S. auditors and superheroes, to the other reality.
However, when the Monstrosity began coming through in the opposite direction, he ended up having to be saved by Captain Evening, who stopped the portal by unplugging the Shifter from it. She introduced herself as “Jenny”; although the Odds believed her to be Jenny Everywhere for a long time, she was in fact Jenny Nowhere. (COMIC: Tales To Behold)
Meeting Evil Cloak
Returning home to try and relax in front of the TV, he was soon disturbed by Jesse, who had decided to move out of her college dorm due to a feud with her roommate Alicia. (COMIC: For Whom The Toll Bells) However, he came to see the bright side of this new cohabitation when he nearly burned down his kitchen trying to cook dinner, only for Jesse to magically put things right.
After Jesse left, the Doctor was visited by a mysterious being calling herself “Evil Cloak”, who offered him a partnership after materialising out of nothing in the middle of the room. Though initially startled, Brain quickly grabbed one of his concealed weapons and made to shoot Evil Cloak. However, the strange entity had already vanished. (COMIC: In Dr. Brain's Kitchen) Brain then drove Jesse to a dance club in town, to meet up with Alicia and Babs; he refused to let Jesse drive herself, fearing for her safety. Ironically, Brain then ended up in an accident himself on the way back, though only because Evil Cloak materialised in the middle of the road right in front of him.
With his helmet damaged in the crash, Brain was pinned on his back: there was a crack in the front of the “bowl” which would cause the nutrient fluid (in which his brain floated) to leak out if he tried to get up. A wickedly gleeful Evil Cloak then asked if he had reconsidered her offer of a partnership, implicitly pledging to help him out of this predicament if, and only if, the Doctor agreed to Evil Cloak's deal. (COMIC: Following Up) The Doctor returned home with a quick patch to his helmet and with his arm in a sling, having agreed to the bargain. He was joined by his daughter, who'd had her own run-in with Evil Cloak over the course of the eventful evening. (COMIC: Famous Last Words)
Evil Cloak's masterplan
Evil Cloak directed Doctor Brain to have his henchfolk rebuild the Dimensional Portal exactly as it was. She revealed herself to him as none other than Jenny herself, the very woman he had kidnapped during his first scheme involving the Portal — but as she showed him, she was not actually Jenny Everywhere as she'd told the rescuing Captain Evening, but an incarnation of her “evil twin” Jenny Nowhere. Now working in concert with no secret between them, the Doctor and Jenny ended up having a fling. They were walked in on by the Doctor's daughter, Jesse, who thereby discovered Evil Cloak's true identity. (COMIC: Meanwhile, On Earth)
A short time later, after Armagedda lured the Odds to the villains' lair, Doctor Brain served as master of ceremonies, monologuing at them as they realised they'd been lured into a trap. However, he soon admitted the plan was not his, giving her due credit to Evil Cloak, who finally revealed herself to heroes and villains alike as Jenny Nowhere before ordering the villains to attack the Odds. Naturally, Brain focused his efforts on Captain Evening, fighting him hand-to-hand and taunting him about his feelings of betrayal about Jenny's true identity.
Evening seemed to have just gained the upper hand when Nowhere, frustrated with how the battle was going, activated the Portal to summon the demonic entity Gazoom. In an anticlimax that baffled all the other heroes and villains, she was immediately eaten by Gazoom, who then stepped back through the Portal. The heroes and villains, still in shock, mutually agreed to Doctor Brain's suggestion that they all call it a day with no further fighting, and they went their separate ways. (COMIC: Meanwhile, In Queens)
Personal drama
Some time later, cohabitation with Jesse Brain hit its first rocky patch as the Doctor forgot that Jesse had asked him to find somewhere else to be for a night as she organised a sleepover with her friends Alicia and Babs, being caught off-guard when Jesse arrived at the apartment with the two other witches. Alicia suggested he stay and hang out with them, and he reluctantly agreed, ending up having a pretty good time, notably cooking up a “devilish” salsa in his laboratory for use at dinner. However, he was caught off-guard when he later headed to bed only to find a naked (and drunken) Alicia splayed seductively on said bed. Mortified, he shooed the young woman out, with him left dumbfounded by what had just happened while Alicia returned to her own room in tears. (COMIC: The Sleepover) The following morning as they all had breakfast, the Doctor and Alicia tried to “play it cool”, only for Jesse to bluntly ask Alicia why she'd been gone from the bedroom for a while the previous night. (COMIC: Moment of Truth)
| Recurring elements of The Cosmic Beholder | ||||||||||
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