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NOVEMBER 6, 2015
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Greetings, True Believers! It is
I, your magnanimous leader, back
once again to lay some knowledge
on you from beyond the computer
screen.
I hope everyone had an
awesome and nerdy Halloween.
What better excuse to get your
next cosplay done and show it off
early?
My fiance and I decided to
be plant-based villains from
Batman– Poison Ivy and Mr.
Bloom! I was going to be Ivy, but
she pulled off the leotard better
than I. If you have pictures of
your costumes, share them with
us– [email protected]. And
maybe you will be in the next
issue of TB.
Until next time, True Believers,
Fight On!
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Cassini to Make Historic Low
Pass in Geyser Plume
By Charly SHELTON
The Cassini Solstice mission
to Saturn that launched in 1997
and arrived in 2004 is about to
make history. Last Wednesday,
October 28, the spacecraft made
a close approach to the surface
of Saturnian moon Enceladus.
And while Cassini has flown
closer to the surface before,
it has never flown this close
through the icy plume which
sprays out into space from the
southern pole.
Enceladus has a liquid water
ocean which circles the small
moon underneath the icy
surface shell, about 25 miles
thick. The ocean underneath,
it is believed, is treated by
geothermal heat at the south
pole and this causes the water
and ice to erupt as ice particles
and water vapor, carrying
organic compounds with it. The
eruption carries the water, ice
and organic compounds into
space where they are caught
in Saturn’s gravity and help to
replenish a small ring on the
outer edge of Saturn’s great
rings, called the E-ring.
Cassini made a dive into
the plume Wednesday and
passed within 30 miles of the
surface, clocking approximately
19,014 miles per hour, relative
to Enceladus. The array of
instruments
captured
as
much material as possible
and over the next few months
will be analyzed for several
factors, one of which being the
presence and composition of
the organic compounds. While
not indicative of life itself, it
could help to point the way
in discerning habitability –
the possibility that this moon
could support some kind of
life. This flyby will not detect
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VOL. 3, NO. 16
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the existence of life, as Cassini
is not equipped for this. It
will, however, be able to tell
something about how habitable
the environment is in the seas
beneath the ice.
Another aspect the team
hopes to research from the data
is evidence of hydrothermal
activity, or how the rocky
bottom of the planet interacts
with the water of the oceans
and the internal heat of the
moon.
At press time, no information
is available from Cassini,
other than that the pass was
successful and the data will be
analyzed by the team at JPL/
NASA.
For more information on the
Cassini Solstice mission or the
Enceladus flyby, visit Saturn.
JPL.NASA.gov. And check with
CVWeekly for future stories
as more information is relayed
NOVEMBER 6, 2015
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It’s Time For All “Idjits” to Unite
and from the beginning its stars
and creators seemed to respect and
There are all kinds of “cons” from understand the power of the fan.
“The interesting thing about
Comic to Dragon where fans can
catch a glimpse of their favorite ‘Supernatural’ is … that from the
star from their favorite show. But first show, the leads have made
there is something special about it their mandate to get out there
a convention. Maybe it’s because and see the fans. They are out [at
the fan convention was established conventions and shows] 15 to 16
years before the “cons” began. times a year. They headline our
Maybe it is because a convention shows and it has been a wonderful
dedicated to fans of one show is partnership,” said Gary Berman,
more like a family reunion where co-CEO of Creation Entertainment.
Entertainment
is
there is a freedom to be who you are Creation
and not to hide that you know not producing the “Supernatural”
only the names of all the episodes convention.
At
the
foundation
of
but can quote obscure lines from
“Supernatural” are the two
each one.
For fans of the long running brothers, Sam and Dean. Their
television show “Supernatural,” career, or calling, is that of hunters.
that family convention is happening They hunt demons, angels, ghosts
next weekend, Nov. 13-15 at the and anything supernatural. The
Pasadena Convention Center. episodes are based on the Bible,
The lineup for the “Supernatural” Cain and Abel, Michael and Lucifer.
convention is impressive with the Plots mix in religious stories from
Winchester family, including dad the ancient Greeks to Hinduism
John (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and and, of course, there are some oldbrothers Sam (Jared Padlecki) and fashioned ghost tales. Throughout
Dean (Jensen Ackles), all appearing the storyline is the ever-present
demonstration of strength of family,
on Sunday.
Castiel (Misha Collins), Crowley whether biological or friendship
(Mark Sheppard), Rowena (Ruth based.
Fans have been loyal since the
Connell), Claire Novak (Kathryn
Newton)
and
Young
John beginning of the show and the
Winchester (Matt Cohen) will be on convention is the perfect venue
stage on Saturday. Sheriff Donna for them to hear the stars, ask
questions
and just hang out with
Hanscum (Briana Buckmaster),
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Sheriff Jody Mills (Kim Rhodes) and their favorites.
Since
1971,
Creation
Cole Trenton (Travis Aaron Wade)
will be on stage on Friday. Kevin Entertainment has given fans of
Tran (Osric Chau) will appear on science fiction, fantasy and, well,
the supernatural [pun intended] a
both Friday and Saturday.
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place to go where like minds can
And The Trickster (Richard
Speight, Jr.) and Church Shurley/ meet the creative teams that put
Carver Edlund (Rob Benedict) will their favorite shows together.
When Berman and his friend
be partnering as emcees for the
Adam Malin were 14 years old
entire run of the convention.
There are other events where they took their love of comic books
fans can see and ask questions of and turned it into an incredibly
stars and creators of their favorite successful business.
“It all started with comic books,”
show but nothing brings the one-onone feel like a convention dedicated Berman said.
The basis of their success is they
to one series. “Supernatural” is in
the midst of its 11th year on the CW actually do what they love to do. In
By Mary O’KEEFE
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1971 they held a comic book
convention at the New Yorker
Hotel in New York City.
Berman had gone to another
convention and said he liked
the “Wild West nature” of the
event.
“It was pretty cool. Those
old conventions were fun but
not as organized [as they are
now],” he said.
Berman knew the power
of the fan, even at 14. Gene
Roddenberry, creator of “Star
Trek,” knew this power more
than most.
“‘Star Trek’ we focused on in
the 1980s,” Berman said.
Creation
Entertainment
hosted/produced several “Star
Trek” conventions. Berman
worked with Roddenberry
and praised his foresight
when it came to knowing
how important fans were to a
show.
“Star Trek: The Original
Series” ran from 1966 to 1969.
For most shows that would be
the end, but “Star Trek” had
a following that was strong
enough to breathe life back
into this canceled series. The
series not only expanded to
add more television shows
but extended to the big
screen as well. All along
were the generous, loyal and
supportive fans.
Berman has given those fans a
place to exercise their fandom and a
place for studios to reach the fan in
a one-on-one way. The importance of
the fans may have been recognized
by those like Roddenberry and
Berman, but not everyone. In those
early days, Berman did not get a
welcoming attitude from studios;
however, nowadays studios contact
him to set up conventions.
“We do one show at a time,”
Berman said of why his company
concentrates on one series as
opposed to panels of several shows.
“People are going to spend their
money to travel [to the conventions].
We want to give them their full
money’s worth.”
The “Supernatural” Convention is
at the Pasadena Convention Center,
300 E. Green St. in Pasadena. The
shows begin about 10 a.m. or 11
a.m. and end about 6 p.m. or 7 p.m.
They may begin earlier depending
on actors’ schedules. The hourby-hour schedule is posted late in
the afternoon on the Wednesday
prior to the convention. General
admission tickets for Sunday are
PAGE 2
sold out but Friday’s tickets are $30
each and Saturday tickets are $60
each. They are still available as of
press time though tickets are selling
out quickly. There are preferred
admission tickets available with
prices ranging from $50 to $120.
Weekend general admission tickets
are available for $175. There are
also tickets available for the Gold
Weekend Package at $699; all
$1,000 tickets giving fans a front
row seat have been sold out.
For information visit www.
creationent.com/cal/supernatural
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Photos by Steve HERNANDEZ
NOVEMBER 6, 2015
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PAGE 3
NOVEMBER 6, 2015
NEW EARTH (1985-2011)
Origin
Vril Dox, alias Brainiac is a
brilliant Coluan scientist. At
some point, he cloned himself
to get a lab assistant; the clone
would later be called Vril Dox
II. He acquired a spaceship and
went on a journey through space,
acquiring knowledge and using
his robotic drones to capture living organisms of various alien
species. Along the way, he came
to the planet Krypton some time
during the lifetime of General
Zod, and kidnapped the entire
city of Kandor, miniaturizing it
in his spaceship. He also
created a remote scout
unit, which was programmed to think it was
the original Vril Dox.
Earth
The remote scout unit
came to Earth as a cloud
of nanotechnological robots, and took over the
body of sideshow mentalist Milton Fine, who worked under the
alias “Brainiac”. Needing cranial
fluid to maintain his possession
of Fine, Dox went on a murder
spree. He discovered Fine had
genuine psychic powers, which
he frequently used on Superman.
Brainiac was later captured by
Lex Luthor, but used his powers
to wrest control of Lexcorp away
from him. Under his mental domination, Lexcorp scientists recreated his Coluan form. The diodes
in his head now increased and
stabilized his mental powers, as
well as allowing him direct access
to computer banks. He continued to plague Superman, using
a combination of mental powers
and computer control. On one occasion, he began to shrink cities.
Following the loss of Milton
Fine’s body, Vril Dox would place
his consciousness in a robot body
he called Brainiac 2.5. He became
briefly obsessed with gaining Superman’s form.
Brainiac revealed he had
placed a sleeper virus in Lexcorp’s Y2K bug safeguards. This
was intended to dramatically
boost his abilities. Instead, it allowed Brainiac 13 to arrive from
the 64th century. Brainiac 13
stole Brainiac’s body and placed
Brainiac’s mind in the body of
Lena Luthor. Brainiac 13 then
converted Metropolis into a futuristic replica of itself; Lex Luthor
traded his daughter, Lena Luthor, to Brainiac 13 in exchange
for being given control of his B13
Technology. Brainiac 2.5 left with
Brainiac 13.
During the Imperiex attack,
Brainiac 13 and Brainiac 2.5 became involved. Although initially
working against Imperiex with
the heroes of Earth, they tried to
double-cross them later on. However, this plan backfired; Brainiac
13 was sent back through time to
die in the Big Bang and Brainiac
2.5 lost control of Lena Luthor.
This copy of Brainiac is now considered dead.
Alliance with Brainiac 8
Later, a copy of Brainiac
teamed up with a future descendant of the Brainiac line, Indigo
aka Brainiac 8 sent to kill Donna
Troy and ensure Colu’s future.
This version of Brainiac was trying to clone its body using a secret
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Lexcorp facility. He was killed by
Starfire when she destroyed his
ship with him in it.
The Nanotech copy
After the Infinte Crisis, a
copy of Brainiac composed of nanoscale robots invaded a Waynetech robotics facility and tried
to gain a new body - a prototype
OMAC unit built with B13 Technology. Controlling Metallo and
the Metal Men, he fought Superman and Batman for the OMAC,
but was ultimately defeated.
The Original
A drone unit came to earth and
fought Superman, drawing blood
for research by Brainiac. After
Supergirl informed Superman of
Brainiac’s true nature, Brainiac
brought his ship above Earth,
deactivating all technology on the
surface, capturing Superman and
preparing to steal Metropolis; as
soon as he had Metropolis, he
planned to destroy the Sun with
a missile, taking the rest of the
Earth with it. Supergirl stopped
his missile, while Superman
broke free in his ship and carried
him to the surface of the Earth,
where he knocked him out. However, as Superman was distracted
with saving Metropolis & Kandor, Brainiac tried to attack the
Kent farm; Jonathan Kent died
as a result.
Brainiac was captured by the
United States government and
turned over to Project 7734. Lex
Luthor attempted to flee the
Project with Brainiac, but Brainiac resisted, citing a plan that
he had. How this plan will unfold
is unknown, but it involves an
alliace between the two masterminds against Superman.
PRIME EARTH (New 52)
History
On Yod-Colu, a great scientist
named Vril Dox developed an
advanced artificial intelligence
named C.O.M.P.U.T.O. Using it,
Dox dared to look further than
anyone ever before, into the Fifth
Dimension. However, he discovered what appeared to be a war,
and forecast the destruction of
his world and so many others by
a force he christened “The Multitude”. He tried various methods
to stop this force, from experimenting on his son to petitioning
the government. But none of it
worked, and he was arrested to
be exiled. So Dox took a drastic
step: he used C.O.M.P.U.T.O. to
build an army of robots, shrunk
the city where he and his family
lived, packed it into a spaceship
and left his world to burn.
Merging with C.O.M.P.U.T.O.
and copying himself into an army
of spaceships, Dox set out to save
worlds from The Multitude by
saving the pinnacles of their culture in forcefield bottles using
miniaturization. He became the
Collector of Worlds. Whenever he
encounters a world that is on the
list, he takes control of the world’s
infrastructure, makes an army of
robots to get him the things he
wants, saves it all in one city, then
minituarizes it and freezes it. The
locals in return refer to him by the
name of the most advanced local
computer system. On the planet
Noma, he was Pneumenoid; on
Bryak it was Mind2; on Krypton
he became Brainiac 1.0; and, finally on Earth, he is the Internet.
The Men of Steel
A Collector ship came to save
Earth. Parking in trans-Uranian
space, it made contact with the
only human smart enough to talk
to it: Lex Luthor. Trading scientific advice for information
on Earth, it decided that Metropolis would be the city it
miniaturized. However, its
plan hit a snag, in the form
of Superman, a Kryptonian.
Convinced that it needed
him to complete its representation of Krypton - the Bottle
City of Kandor - it tried to
fight him personally, but the Collector left itself open to digital
attack, and Superman managed
to take it over using the Brainiac
computer in the ship that brought
him to Earth.
The Collector’s ship was Superman’s base for some years, floating in Earth orbit. However, under as-yet-unseen circumstances,
he moved to the Fortress of Solitude at Earth’s North Pole.
Several years later, it was revealed that Brainiac had released
a process during his capture of
Metropolis, which turned twenty
ordinary humans into powerful
telepathic. He hoped to use one of
them as a host, but the telepaths,
left alone, quietly acquired power
for themselves.
The Elite
The main Collector ship travelled to Krypton when it heard
that Jor-El, one of their scientists, had successfully repelled
The Multitude. However, by the
time he got to Krypton, the planet was beginning to fall apart and
Jor-El was dead. Hoping to recreate Jor, the Collector searched
among the survivors, finding ZorEl, a brother. The Collector wiped
Zor’s memory, rewrote his DNA
using samples of his brother’s
blood, enhanced his body with
technology, and gave him a suit
decorated with the standard of
the House of El. Naming the result as the ultimate Kryptonian,
a Cyborg Superman, the Collector sent him into the universe to
find exceptional things and bring
them back.
This Collector ship, now answering to Brainiac after its time
on Krypton, passed near the
planet of Tolerance in the Tenebrian Dominion. Whatever its
plans, it found itself opposed by
an undercover Green Lantern
and a ragtag group of mercenaries and rebels. It passed on.
Brainiac later found its way to
I’noxia, where Cyborg Superman
had found a Kryptonian dying
of Kryptonite poisoning. While
trying to keep her alive, Cyborg
Superman’s memories came back
to a degree, and Brainiac had to
fight him off, allowing the rogue
Kryptonian to escape.
Doomed
Making contact with the Phantom Zone prisoner Xa-Du, Brai-
PAGE 4
Real Name: Vril Dox
Current Alias: Brainiac
Aliases: Milton Fine
Affiliation: Anti-Justice League
Status
Alignment: Bad
Identity: Secret Identity
Race: Coluan
Marital Status: Single
Occupation: Scientist
Characteristics
Gender: Male
Height: 6’ 6”
Weight: 300 lbs (136 kg)
Eyes: Green
Hair: No Hair
Skin: Green
Unusual Features: Unique Physiology
Origin
Universe: New Earth
Place of Birth: Colu
Creators: Otto Binder, Al Plastino
First Appearance: Adventures of Superman #438 (March,
1988)
http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Brainiac
niac concocted a plan to destroy
Superman. One part of the plan
involved the monster nicknamed
Doomsday, taking advantage of
a Kryptonian prophecy about
a great monster that would destroy a warrior of the House of
El. The second part of their plan
was to take advantage of the previous Brainiac’s discovery that
his brain was compatible with
human physiology. Looking for
the Twenty, he discovered that
Lois Lane had mind powers now.
Using her as his agent on the
ground, the plan could begin.
Brainiac did something to the
inhabitants of Smallville, putting the inhabitants into comas
but also making their brains
broadcast a signal into space.
Before Superman could investigate, Brainiac freed Doomsday
from the Phantom Zone and set it
loose on Earth, stronger than before. Superman was forced to kill
Doomsday and absorb his body,
in an act that would mutate him
into a monster. With a little prodding, Superman left Earth.
At this point, Brainiac sent a
fleet of ships, guarded by Cyborg
Superman, to Earth to amplify
the signal coming from Smallville, and broadcast it over the
entire Earth. By the time the
deranged Superman returned to
thwart him, Brainiac had taken
control of every human on Earth,
and revealed the rest of his plan:
to use these minds to give himself
the power to change reality, and
use that to restore his family.