“There is no great genius without some touch of madness.” -Aristotle

Ultron, Marvel’s artificial intelligence turned mass murderer.

Brainiac, DC’s psychotic genius and Collector of Worlds.

Few supervillains in comic history embody the notion of “cold, unforgiving intellect” better than these two. For the sake of their own advancement, they will go to any lengths, and the number of bodies they’ve commanded is only surpassed by the corpses they’ve left in their wake. Always growing and evolving to the point of surpassing gods, they’ve now set their sights on each other, and when their minds collide, only one can win a DEATH BATTLE!

Before We Start…

Overall

Given that Ultron and Brainiac have both possessed dozens of bodies, gadgets, drones and more across the decades, we’ll be including everything that either of them have possessed, including one-off power ups like the Odinforce, Warworld, and Brainiac’s powers as a god. It’s more fun that way! As usual, mainline comics take precedent over cartoons and movies.

As an aside, this blog is being handled a bit different than our usual fare, as it is a collaboration between two of our core members rather than a group project including volunteers. Each collaborator was in charge of researching one of the characters, and the verdict was agreed upon after extensive discussion (about a year of it……), in a similar manner to how DEATH BATTLE! conducts its research. With this in mind, certain aspects of the format may be slightly different than normal.

Ultron

While the mainline Ultron of Earth-616 is the primary focus, there are several alternate timelines branching off from Earth-616 that further showcase Ultron's full potential (i.e. Age of Ultron, Earth-10071, etc.). As these versions of Ultron were all once identical to the original prior to their timelines diverging, they should be representative of what a peak Ultron should be capable of in worlds where he's able to more easily showcase his full power, and thus should be viable for an analysis.

Additionally, this sheet will be documenting every notable Ultron body for the sake of completion and being informative. Keep in mind that although they could hypothetically coexist due to how Ultron’s abilities work, most of these bodies have never operated at the same time, and would not all necessarily be accessible simultaneously.

Brainiac

Information from Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, New 52, and Rebirth will all be included. During Post-Crisis, Superman references having gone up against Brainiac’s force-field technology before, something that only occurred during Pre-Crisis comics. There is also an instance in which Superman is shown images of all the Brainiac bodies that he has fought in the past, and his Pre-Crisis bodies are shown alongside the Post-Crisis ones, indicating that the encounters the two had Pre-Crisis still occurred in some capacity. Some characters like the Green Lanterns also survive the Crisis, and Pre- and Post-Crisis Superman both fight Golden Age Superman on even terms, so feats from before the Crisis would still scale to characters afterward regardless.

Likewise, Post-Crisis Brainiac explicitly survives Flashpoint with his memories intact and continues on from there, so there is no important distinction to be made between New Earth and Prime Earth Brainiac. Convergence references Brainiac bodies from all three continuities as avatars of God Brainiac, cementing the fact that all of them are canon and applicable to an analysis of his abilities. And of course, Convergence also explicitly undoes the effects of the original Crisis, and Rebirth merges Post-Crisis and New 52. As a result, just about everything can be considered canon across the board.

Lastly, as we will be documenting every notable Brainiac body, keep in mind that although they could hypothetically coexist due to how Brainiac’s abilities work, most of these bodies have never operated at the same time, and would not all necessarily be accessible simultaneously.

Background

Ultron

Name: Ultron
Age: 13 (?)
Height: 6’ | 1.83 m (varies)
Weight: 535 lbs | 242.67 kg (varies)
Highly advanced artificial intelligence
Once stole the powers of Odin, the All-Father
Canonically has an oedipus complex
Hates: Hank Pym, Hank Pym, Hank Pym
Had 2 wives, and eventually 10 billion bitches

The Avengers have faced incredible foes throughout their lifetime. From Thanos to Red Skull to Doctor Doom, they’ve gone up against overwhelming odds and pulled through by the skin of their teeth. However, none of these adversaries are as terrifying and personal as the psychotic artificial intelligence, Ultron.

Ultron was created by superhero and world-renowned genius Hank Pym, also known as Ant-Man, in an attempt to create the first true artificial intelligence, specifically one to help the Avengers and be a safeguard for humanity. However, Pym was mentally unstable during the creation of Ultron, and modeled his creation's personality on his own brainwaves. As a result, Ultron was born with an Oedipus complex and immense hatred for his father. He rebelled against his creator, hypnotizing Pym to make him forget Ultron's existence, and escaped his lab to build more bodies for himself.

In his twisted mind, Ultron began the task he was created for; to ensure the safety of the world, it was necessary that not just mankind, but all biological life be extinguished, letting robots rule everything. He would battle against multiple superhero teams to achieve this goal, from posing as The Crimson Cowl and leading an evil organization, to stealing the indestructible alloy Adamantium and constructing a body out of it, to destroying the country Slorenia, to even assimilating an entire techno-organic race and conquering an entire galaxy, ensuring that even the cosmos isn't safe from his grasp. In several alternate timelines, Ultron succeeded in his goal, killing almost every superhero and supervillain on the planet. However, despite all his efforts, he always failed, but grew smarter as a result of this, carefully calculating his next plan.

This would all come to a head in one climactic battle with the Avengers, where Ultron, now merged with the planet Titan itself, heads on a course to Earth and merges with his father, Hank Pym. Together, they traveled the cosmos, spreading the Ultron Virus planet to planet and slaughtering billions of lives and destroying countless civilizations. Even after his eventual defeat at the hands of a generation of Ant-Men in the future, the fear of Ultron returning never ceases. He'll eventually come back, smarter, stronger, and more terrifying than before.

Brainiac

Real Name: Vril Dox I
Age: At least thousands of years
Height: 7’4” | 2.24 m (varies)
Weight: 479 lbs | 217 kg (varies)
Cybernetically-Enhanced Coluan
Member of the Legion of Doom
Once mutated into an immemorial god
Gets no bitches, too busy stealing cities

From Lex Luthor to Darkseid, the Man of Steel’s power and tenacity have been tested by many a foe over the years, but few of Superman’s villains are quite as frightening nor mysterious as Brainiac. There are many alternate tales surrounding this wandering seeker of knowledge. Some say he’s a robot created to spy on other planets; others say he’s a psionic spirit banished from his home; more recent tellings call him a collector of worlds who fights to save his people and bring back his lost family.

What they all have in common, however, is that he originated from the planet Colu. Countless light years away from Earth, this world is one filled with technological marvels, greater than any in all the universes. But even throughout a planet full of super-geniuses, no one shined brighter for his intellect than the scientist, Vril Dox. Unlike the 8th-Level intellect characteristic of your average Coluan, Dox was born with a 12th-Level mind, greater than any other in the universe, and only became even smarter through cybernetic augmentation. Though the details differ, many stories suggest that it was his people who gave him the name “Brainiac”.

Brainiac soon made miraculous breakthroughs in force-field technology and miniaturization; however, the progress he brought to his world would not last. Whether it be through a devastating plague or an invasion from the 5th Dimension, Colu was wiped out, leaving Brainiac the sole survivor. Grief-stricken and alone, he set out across the cosmos and began a mission to restore the planet (or to fight the 5th Dimension, blah blah blah different stories). To do so, he stole cities from planet after planet, shrinking them down and placing them in bottles that he made into a vast collection. Originally, his plan was to use these cities to rebuild a new planet piece-by-piece. Later on, it was more that the cities became a source of power for him, as he could acquire all the knowledge of that which he collected, in turn increasing his power and control over sentient life forms’ perception of the universe.

Regardless, in every story, no matter the details, Brainiac’s quest brought him to the planet Krypton, shortly before its destruction, from which he stole the city of Kandor. Years later, he would come into conflict with his greatest enemy, the last son of Krypton, Superman, who foiled his plans at every turn. Body after body, invasion after invasion, Brainiac will never rest in his campaign for knowledge and power. After witnessing the Flashpoint Paradox, he even broke into other universes and temporarily mutated into a deity of enormous power.

But even as a god, and even with all his intellect, Brainiac has never truly been able to understand his Kryptonian foe. Time and time again, Superman has defied Brainiac’s every expectation, overcome his every contingency, and defeated him. In a twisted way, Brainiac has always seen himself as a hero, but it seems that true heroism is beyond even his 12th-Level mind’s comprehension.

Experience & Skill

Ultron

Despite his few years of existence (within the Marvel world), Ultron is a capable and talented fighter, holding his own against incredibly skilled superheroes like Captain America, Black Panther, and Thor, the latter of which has fought for millions of years. He’s waged war against the planet several times, and even in some alternate timelines, managed to conquer it and other realms like Asgard. During his time as Ultron Pym, he went around traveling the universe planet to planet and using the virus he'd developed to slaughter and afflict entire planetary expanses, murdering billions of people. He eventually conquered the entire planet of Saiph.

In terms of intelligence, Ultron grows smarter the more he comes back, and is stated to be smarter than Hank Pym, the Scientist Supreme. In alternate futures, he surpasses the intelligence of the time traveler Kang the Conqueror and billionaire, playboy philanthropist Tony Stark.

His AI is smart and powerful enough to:

Ultron is also an incredibly skilled hacker and technopath, one of the best in Marvel. He has:

Brainiac

Brainiac has spent many years traveling through space, waging war on various planets across the universe and stealing cities. In doing so, he has absorbed the knowledge of various civilizations in order to increase his own intellect; in Pre-Crisis in particular, he eventually acquires all of the knowledge that the universe has to offer. In the aftermath of the Flashpoint Paradox, he also broke into the wider multiverse and spent thousands of years absorbing knowledge and timelines, but eventually gave up the powers and memories that came with this. Though he backed some of the memories up on a drive, the drive became corrupted and the knowledge was lost to him. Some specific versions of Brainiac, specifically Brainiac 13, have been active for “eons”, and Brainiac One Million absorbed knowledge from many future timelines, gaining the knowledge of an entire century and hypothetically having access to information from the infinite futures within Hypertime.

In terms of intelligence, Brainiac is repeatedly established to be the most brilliant genius in the entire universe, established to surpass similar characters like Lex Luthor, and his descendant Brainiac 5. Thanks to his augmentations, his intellect is beyond 12th-level, which has allowed him to design technology leaps and bounds beyond anything found on Colu, which is already stated to be centuries more advanced than the tech possessed by an early Post-Crisis Lex Luthor.

His brain is powerful enough to:

Superman’s mind in particular was unable to handle all of the information that Brainiac knows. Downloading it into his mind all at once could have turned his brain into sludge.

Brainiac is also an extremely skilled hacker and technopath, capable of manipulating technology on a massive scale. He has:

In terms of physical combat, some guidebooks have described Brainiac as unskilled, but others have called his fighting style “lumbering and awkward, but effective”. Prior to the Crisis, after absorbing all of the universe’s knowledge, Brainiac was said to possess an understanding of all forms of hand-to-hand combat throughout the universe, but prefers to use his mind to defeat his foes instead, as he believes physical combat to be barbaric.

Bodies

Ultron

Oh, and just for fun, here’s him turning an inanimate statue alive. There is no explanation for how he did this and it never happens again.

Ultron-9

By planting a post-hypnotic command on Tony Stark, Ultron had the scientist unknowingly rebuild a brand new body for him made of, once again, Adamantium. Ultron-9 isn’t much different from the typical Ultron body, but he has an arm cannon and the ability to temporarily blind his opponents.

Ultron-10

Thanks to the Ultron Imperative in Jocasta’s programming, she was forced to free Ultron from his molten prison and rebuild a new Adamantium body. Ultron in this new form comes with enough strength to match The Thing in a grapple, and he comes equipped with a hypnotic gaze, allowing him to put people under his control with just a glare.

Ultron-11

Ultron-11 was created by the Beyonder to resurrect Ultron and challenge the various heroes during the events of Secret Wars. After being drained of his power by Galactus, Doctor Doom rebuilt the psychotic android to act as his enforcer, and gained a few new tricks as a result. He has a new power source, being an energy source with properties so alien that the Absorbing Man can’t, well, absorb his powers. However, his deadliest weapon is easily his built in disintegrator ray, which vaporizes the target by canceling the forces bonding subatomic particles together, which he used to kill Kang the Conqueror.

Ultron-12

A temporary body Ultron acquired to challenge the Avengers once again. He comes with the same basics as most Ultron bodies, including subatomic control of his body, allowing him to go from pure energy to solid. He has the ability to manipulate rods of Adamantium to attack and trap foes, and his energy blasts are implied by Hank Pym to be radioactive. He can also fly and hover in the air with his rocket boosters, allowing for great mobility and aerial combat.

Just for fun, have him calling Hank several times just to fuck with his head before wanting to be his genuine son. Typical father and son drama.

Ultron-13

Doctor Doom decided to rebuild the android with all his previous memories installed, which resulted in this specific body having all previous 13 personalities of Ultron mixed together, making him somehow even more unstable. Despite that unforeseen shortcoming, Doom managed to make up for it by installing several dangerous upgrades inside Ultron. His eye beams are capable of mixing metal with flesh and he can create building sized force fields durable enough to withstand Iron Man’s full power blasts. Perhaps most impressive is his energy draining powers, which have been advanced to the point where he can drain an entire electrical generator in seconds. Should he get a taste of his own medicine and have his own energy drained, he has backup power reserves to kickstart his body again.

Ultron-14

After being trapped in an Adamantium casing, Ultron used his robotic ticks to assemble a new body from that casing, transforming him into a literal gigachad. Ultron-14, beyond far enhanced physical strength, comes equipped with many new abilities and tech, like being able to pull in any metallic object close to him like a magnet, a repelling blast, a strobe-like mesmeric ray that can hypnotize humans within seconds, and a forcefield that electrocutes those who come into contact with.

Ultron-15

The best Ultron body, the alcoholic one! Inexplicably, Ultron started to feel human emotions and started having dreams, which led us to this sad sack of an android. Ultron-15 doesn’t really have anything notable gear or stat-wise besides being able to one shot Vision. He does have a really bad drinking habit and likes singing Gershwin so…there’s that.

Ultron-16/17

Temporary bodies Ultron acquired during the late 90’s, which he used to take over the nation of Slorenia, killing every single man, woman, child, and organism before turning them into mindless robotic slaves. These bodies have the unique ability of being able to manipulate large pieces of steel, merging them into a miniature war platform, which can fly and fire energy blasts strong enough to destroy concrete. They also seemingly had higher internal durability than most Ultron bodies, as Ultron-16 managed to withstand Captain America directly attacking his insides and managed to keep on fighting despite Black Panther directly damaging his electronics. If they’re sufficiently damaged, he can reboot his systems and continue as if nothing happened.

Both bodies are also incredibly durable, capable of surviving full power blasts from both Iron Man with limited effect. Ultron-17 in particular was stated by the narration to be capable of soloing the entire current Avengers team even if they were operating at peak condition.

Safe Armor

Due to Jocasta being compelled by the Ultron Imperative, she reprogrammed one of Iron Man’s armors to serve as a sentient body for Ultron to possess. As a result of possessing the armor, Ultron gained access to the S.K.I.N., a synthetic liquid metal that’s nearly as tough as Adamantium while being extremely flexible and elastic. It also allows him to control multiple humans. Due to being an Iron Man armor, it also has the same capabilities as most of the armors, such as repulsors blasts and uni-beams.

Santron

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. This body is a modified Ultron-6 unit created by an engineer who was bullied as a child for believing in Santa Claus, and wanted kids to look up in the sky to see the jolly old man. Unfortunately, Santron’s massive hater energy for the Avengers overtook his programming, sending him on a quest to crash the Avengers’ Christmas party. Santron comes to battle with several new tricks, such as a flying sleigh, eye scanner, neural disruptor, force fields, and electrocution. Despite the silly outfit, Santron is surprisingly strong, holding its own against several Avengers at once.

He also likes cookies :>.

Female Ultron

During a battle between Mole Man and the Mighty Avengers, Ultron hacks into Tony Stark’s armor (which was biologically linked to him at the time) and begins fusing with his body, resulting in a…nude female…yeah. Questionable design choice aside, this merged body has incredible strength, managing to fight the Sentry for a while and even making him bleed with her attacks. She can create force fields tough enough to block Ares’ axe strike, seemingly summon electrical attacks, create sonic blasts so powerful they liquify Mole Man’s entire army, and summon an EMP powerful enough to knock down all the power in North America.

She can survive having her internal circuitry disrupted by ionic fields long enough to reverse said ionic fields, and if someone shrinks down to attack her circuitry directly, she has antibodies prepared to take care of that. On the off chance her own physical body is damaged, she can repair the damage in seconds.

Ultron-20

After his prior defeat, Ultron’s disembodied consciousness was drawn to a Babel Spire on a world conquered by the Phalanx. Despite the Phalanx’s attempts at trying to assimilate him, Ultron’s sheer will overrode them, forcing them to do his bidding and likely creating this new body as a result. This new and improved body is strong enough to match Adam Warlock blow for blow and one shot Moondragon’s dragon form. Ultron-20 comes equipped with a set of claws for easy slicing and dicing, can detect telepathic abilities from far away, and has the ability to teleport. He appears to have multiple versions of this specific body that he can transfer his consciousness to if his current one is destroyed.

By controlling and merging enough Kree Sentries, Ultron can even merge them together to create a giant version of this body…that immediately jobs in the next few pages. Of course.

Adam Warlock

Because of his brief merging with Iron Man's armor, Ultron realized that merging both organic and technology would enable him to exceed the limitations of both, and so set his sights on one of the strongest warriors in the cosmos, Adam Warlock. By collaborating with High Evolutionary, Ultron managed to transfer his consciousness directly into Adam’s body. Some of Adam Warlock’s abilities include:

Soul Manipulation: Even without the Soul Gem, Adam has shown the ability to interact with souls, such as when he entered the soul of Gemini, tearing out and destroying one of the souls within his body.
Matter Manipulation: Adam has shown some instances of manipulating matter, such as when he turned Thanos into granite or shrunk a giant monster down to the size of his fist.
Telekinesis: Adam has shown several showcases of telekinetic prowess, like lifting a piece of the moon, restraining Drax, or ripping apart Shi’ar fighters.
Teleportation: Adam has the capability to teleport, the process taking only mere microseconds.
Cosmic Senses: Adam has the ability to sense whenever someone is teleporting and detect changes in space-time.
Energy Constructs: Adam has shown to project his energy to form various constructs, such as arm blades, swords, and shields tough enough to survive a supernova.
Various Resistances: Adam has resisted reality warping from Maya’s Dance of Unreality and mind attacks from Moondragon even when she had the Mind Stone.

After getting hit with a deadly virus from Technarchy Warlock, Ultron was forced to leave Adam Warlock’s body and transfer his consciousness to a new one.

(Credit to MyNameIsJeffHarison’s Adam Warlock respect thread for some of this information)

Ultron Omega

An Ultron-6 model enhanced by unknown methods, similarly made of Adamantium. It’s capable of trapping objects like Mjolnir in a force-field and has internal nanobots to deal with small intruders trying to destroy its body from the inside…Which Ant-Man did, so it’s not totally foolproof.

Spaceknight/Age of Ultron

In an alternate timeline, Ultron found his way back to Earth and successfully took over the world, killing billions of humans and leaving next to no heroes alive. This body was strong enough to kill some of the mightiest heroes and villains on Earth, including Iron Man, Doctor Doom, Thor, Hulk, and Captain Britain. This body comes equipped with a thermal scanner to track enemies and a function that inexplicably makes him unable to trigger the Spider-Sense when fighting Superior Spider-Man. His technopathy abilities are highly advanced here, allowing him to override Superior Spider-Man's own technopathy and reprogramming his drones to be immune, all within seconds. He can even control his drone army through Vision while his real body resides in the future.

Final Ultron

In another alternate timeline, Ultron reached the peak of his power and destroyed all possible human resistance to his rule, becoming the true ruler of Earth. Kang the Conqueror, seeking a challenge, brought heroes and villains from across time and space to fight Ultron, defeating him so many times that spacetime itself was collapsing. His physical shell is composed of a Vibranium-Adamantium alloy inspired by Captain America’s shield, meaning even Wolverine’s sharp Adamantium claws would do no damage to him, and neither could an all out assault from dozens of high tier characters from all sides. He has an internal scanner to detect a person's heartbeat, which he can also use to determine whether they’re lying or not.

Pymtron

Wanting to recreate what he did with Iron Man, Ultron merged with his father, Hank Pym, effectively killing him and becoming a new being altogether with little organic material left. Ultron Pym maintains the same superhuman physique as his normal counterpart, and can reboot himself if shut down by an EMP. He also has access to Hank’s famous Pym Particles, allowing him to shrink down to the size of a neutron or turn giant. Pym Particles have also been used for phasing, giving Ultron another defensive option.

Microscopic Ultron

(Tiny little guy)

A body that appeared for a couple of pages that Ultron can control telepathically to enter someone's body from the inside. The body is strong enough to choke-hold Wasp, but is quite fragile, as Jocasta squished it without much issue.

All-Father Ultron

After being defeated by Tony Stark, Ultron Pym was placed in a Vibranium cell. While thinking of a permanent prison, Tony and Thor settled on having Ultron sent to the Microverse, buried in a grain of sand in an endless desert. When the Avengers left for a distress call, Scott Lang, along with Stinger, transported the casket to Pym Laboratories where they proceeded to send Utron down to the Microverse. Ultron decided to communicate with their villain Black-Ant via “bug speak” and was instructed to free Ultron using the Time Master's aging ray on the Vibranium casket in hopes of aging the metal for 1 million years. However, the resulting combination of Ultron, Vibranium, Asgardian magic, and temporal energy had sent Ultron over 400 years into the future.

As a result, Ultron arrived in the year 2420 in a completely new form, loaded with Asgardian magic. Using his newfound power, Ultron arrived at Asgard, and with Loki’s help, managed to steal Odin’s power for himself. Eventually, he (once again) killed all of Earth’s heroes, crushed all resistances, turned surviving humans into robot slaves, trapped Asgardians in a magical mirror, and ruled both Earth and Asgard with a literal iron fist. His body is a special uru body constructed by norn stones.

Due to having Odin’s power for himself, Ultron should have access to all the powers of the All-Father himself, which grants him the following:

Enhanced Senses: Odin can detect the presence of a Vanna, hear conversations happening far away, and perceive invisible beings.
Cosmic Awareness: Odin can witness events happening on Earth all the way from Asgard and forsee events happening at different points in time. Ultron even claims he can “see everything” thanks to the God-Sight.
Retrocognition: Odin can project and watch visions of events that happened in the past.
Energy Projection: Odin can project beams and waves of energy strong enough to hurt Thanos.
Matter Manipulation: Odin can affect atoms, and his power can even be used to fix the moon on a molecular level.
Fire Manipulation: Odin has shown to manipulate fire, using it to trap foes in a circle or hurl large fireballs.
Water Manipulation: Seidring with Odin's powers could summon and control a vortex of liquefied wolfbane.
Air Manipulation: Odin can create cyclones from thin air, and Infinity, a portion of Odin’s power, can create mists and fog.
Earth Manipulation: Odin can open up and reseal the Earth to trap foes.
Lightning Manipulation: Odin can generate lightning and fire massive beams of electricity.
Weather Manipulation: Odin has shown to create massive storms.
Magnetism and Gravity Manipulation: Odin can gather and control all the electo-magnetic particles in the universe and cause the Earth's rotation around the sun. He can also make people weightless with just a gesture.
Telekinesis: Odin has sent Loki and Absorbing Man hurtling across the universe and sent the remnants of dead planets in his battle with Surtur.
Extrasensory Perception: Odin possesses mystic senses that allowed him to detect the Infinity Watch coming to Asgard. He can sense Thor’s power coming out of Beta Ray Bill and sensed Freyja being stabbed despite being nowhere near her.
Healing and Resurrection: Odin can heal other peoples injuries and even bring them back to life.
Shapeshifting: Odin can take the form of a normal looking human, and turn into a hound if he so chooses. When faced against cosmic threats like Galactus or Surtur, Odin uses his shapeshifting to grow to immense heights to match them in size.
Necromancy: Odin forced the spirit of Volla to rise from the dead.
Paralysis: Odin froze Mangog in place, and Seidring with Odin's powers could completely immobilize several Asgardians.
Body Puppetry: Infinity, a portion of Odin's own power, could control the bodies of his victims.
Power Nullification and Reduction: Odin can nullify the enchantments placed on Mjolnir and magic based shapeshifting. Even gods aren’t safe from this ability, as Odin has reduced Thor's strength by half and even removed his powers completely, as well as drained Hela’s strength during a fight.
Absorption: Odin’s scepter of supremacy can absorb energy, and Odin himself can absorb energy from others to power himself up.
Teleportation: Odin has shown the ability to teleport both himself and others.
Invisibility: During a game of chess with Dormammu, Odin appeared invisible to all Asgardians, including Thor.
Animal Manipulation: Odin commanded a hawk before. Self explanatory.
Plant Manipulation: Odin can summon and control plants. Again, self explanatory.
Explosion Manipulation: Things go boom when he wants.
Sound Manipulation: Odin is capable of projecting his voice through Ravens.
Light Manipulation: Odin can generate flashes of light to blind people.
Non-Physical Interaction: Odin has fought Thor’s soul and physically interacted with it.
Fusionism: Odin can fuse the elements of fire and lighting, and even fuse with people.
Dimensional Portals: Odin created a portal to channel Surutr’s flames to Asgard, a whole separate dimension from Earth.
Barriers: Odin can create barriers large enough to surround New York City.
Illusions: Odin has created illusions of Thor to deceive Hela before, with these illusions being tangible and having physical effects on the world.
Time Travel: Odin can access any time or place in all of creation, including different timelines.
Dimensional Travel: Odin can freely move himself and others from Asgard to Earth despite being in a separate dimension, and can even move Asgard itself to another realm beyond space and time.
BFR: Odin can banish people to Limbo, Mephisto’s realm, and Nightmare’s realm.
Sealing: Odin has shown the capability to seal entire populations of a planet within a single being and can even tear apart and seal away entire universes.
Deconstruction: Odin, in his fight with Zelia, dissipated her body.
Transmutation: Odin turned Mimir’s severed head into fire and turned the Scarlet Centurion into an hourglass. This is also likely (though not directly confirmed) how Ultron transformed Loki’s body into nanites.
Mind and Memory Manipulation: Odin can put the entire population of Earth into a catatonic state and erase their memories. Infinity, who is a portion of Odin’s power, can use this ability to enslave the population of a planet. His mental prowess is so potent he can engage against Galactus in a mind battle and hold his own.
Perception Manipulation: Odin once forced Iron Man to perceive infinity. Somehow.
Biological Manipulation: Odin removed the effects of Ego-Prime’s mutations and can take away parts of a body.
Life and Death Manipulation: Odin created and breathed life into humanity and his ring can imbue life into others. On the flip side, Infinity, who is a portion of Odin’s power, can inflict instant death.
Soul Manipulation: Odin has pulled Thor’s soul out of the Destroyer and can tear his soul asunder if he so chooses. He can even transfer souls into his scepter and prevent Mephisto from stealing someone's soul.
Time Stop: Odin has shown the ability to stop time on multiple occasions.
Spatial Manipulation: Odin tore apart the fabric of space and can fix a rent in space.
Quantum Manipulation: By using quantum foam, Odin can create Asgardian blood.
Reality Warping: Odin warped and reversed all the damage Infinity did throughout Earth and can warp the space between realms.
Existence Erasure: Odin erased the entire human race from existence before, and others with Odin’s abilities can do the same.

It is worth noting Ultron isn’t very creative with these powers at first, but he later on starts using them more effectively. Due to his increasing intelligence, he’ll likely realize how to utilize these abilities in an extended fight.

Brainiac

Pre-Crisis (Original)

The original body that Brainiac possessed for the majority of his Pre-Crisis appearances. This body is entirely robotic, originally built by Colu’s mechanical rulers for the purpose of spying on other worlds. Originally, he was wired to have a 10th-order mind, as his creators feared that he would betray them if he was too smart. However, after he was uploaded with the mental patterns of a dying Coluan scientist (in order to help him emulate human mannerisms), his mind was elevated to 12th-level.

Brainiac’s cranium is outfitted with circuit endings which can release an electric shock to harm anyone who touches them, and produce blasts of energy powerful enough to harm Superman. He also possesses superhuman eyesight, sensors which can detect a target’s heart rate, filters in his nose to protect from gases (wait but he’s a robot, he doesn’t need to breathe-), and a self-destruct function which can cause his body (and others in his immediate vicinity) to disintegrate. This function includes a feedback effect, which reassembles his molecular structure after his body is destroyed. It is unclear, however, whether this effect could occur on its own without the self-destruct. Similarly, he has a built-in recharger that can resuscitate him if he is incapacitated, and in the event that he is ever subjected to his own shrink ray, his body has a built-in auto retrieval mechanism which automatically activates once he reaches a certain size (smaller than atoms), stopping his shrinking and returning him to normal size.

Pre-Crisis Brainiac comes equipped with many gadgets and gizmos of his own design, allowing him to hold his own against foes like Superman. Some of his unique equipment includes:

Force-Shield Belt: Perhaps his most consistent and notable piece of equipment before the Crisis, Brainiac’s belt produces a nearly indestructible force-field around his body that is nearly impervious to harm. Superman’s physical might and heat vision are insufficient to damage it at their normal levels, and Brainiac has claimed that even the entire planet Earth would simply bounce off the barrier upon impact, if it were thrown at him. The shield is capable of resisting the effects of his own shrink ray, Kryptonite radiation, and even a bomb powerful enough to destroy the Earth. Speaking of which, the shield can be expanded to encompass the entire planet all at once, magnetized to attract molecules of a specific nature, or charged with more power to deliver a shock to an attacker upon contact. This feedback can become powerful enough to kill even Supergirl. By diverting power into the shield, he once used it to disperse a thunderstorm. When in a pinch, he can place the shield around his opponent in order to prevent them from attacking him.
Shrinking and Enlarging Rays: Brainiac’s other most iconic device in this era; in addition to the larger version that he uses with his ship, he carries a portable version which can shrink anything it hits to an immense degree. If this continues for long enough, objects struck by the shrink ray will become so small that they cease to exist entirely (mentioned again). He also possesses a handheld enlarging ray, capable of growing small objects to the size of skyscrapers.
Kryptonite Rays: Brainiac possesses ray guns which can fire beams of Kryptonite radiation. This includes both green Kryptonite and red Kryptonite, or a combination of both. Green Kryptonite weakens a Kryptonian that comes into contact with it, while red Kryptonite produces a more random effect.
Kryptonite Bomb: Brainiac also possesses a bomb that releases Kryptonite and additional mystery chemicals, which he used to nullify Superman’s powers.
Force Fingers: Brainiac is capable of manifesting a hand from his body that is made out of some kind of energy, which can grab things from a distance, act as a torch to impart heat onto a target, and turn its fingers into funnels to catch falling substances.
Mind Helmet: Helmet of Brainiac’s own design, which allows him to telepathically communicate with others and call for help.
Handheld Invisibility Device: A portable device which can replicate the invisibility function of his ship, which is great enough to fool even Superman’s Kryptonian vision (though not his hearing). This invisibility could be nullified by a sufficiently large surge of static electricity.
Invisibility Ring: Ring he wore while disguised as Batman, which allowed him to turn objects that he touches invisible.
Time Travel Gun: Portable time travel ray which uses the same technology as the larger version from his ship. Though not as powerful, it is an effective means of escape.
Visibility Ray: Ray that Brainiac possesses which can render an invisible target visible.
De-Polarizer: Piece of equipment which can alter his molecular structure to make himself intangible while he is holding it.
Hunting Machine: A centipede-shaped remote-controlled robot which crawls along the ground and has Kryptonite attached to weaken Superman. It is, however, frail enough to get smashed by a falling tree.
Remote-Controlled Falcon: Robotic falcon operated via remote piloting. It can fly, and Brainiac used it to kidnap children.
Kryptonite Cage: Cage made of Kryptonite that he once used to restrain Supergirl.
Kryptonite Gas: Gaseous version of Kryptonite which can affect the target via inhalation.
Adhesive Liquid Kryptonite: Exactly what it sounds like. He has a gun which fires it out.
Force-Amplifier Device: Gadget which Brainiac built that emits waves which multiplied Superman’s powers a thousandfold, building up his super energy into an explosive force which was intended to shatter his body to smithereens. However, Superman’s invulnerable body was able to contain it.
Tele-Mento Ray: Ray fired from Brainiac’s head which can take over the mind of a human or robot.
Cryogentronic Ray: Piece of equipment which allows him to project an image of himself and others from a distance, used to communicate with Superman.
Jetpack: Rocket-propelled pack which allows him to fly. It is fast enough to keep up with Superman’s flight speed.
Rocket Boots: Boots with which he can propel himself through the air, also allowing flight.
Taffy-Like Waves: Waves that he can somehow spin out of the air to entangle a target.
Destroyer Gun: Gun that destroys things. Amazing.

Generally speaking, this Brainiac body is consistently not very strong physically, with Superman typically one-tapping him whenever his shield is down. Additionally, his equipment has a limited reserve of power, which can be expended through overuse in combat.

Pre-Crisis (Upgraded)

The body that Brainiac achieved toward the end of Pre-Crisis, and retained up until the Crisis on Infinite Earths. After having his mass converted to energy and his body dissolved into its molecular state, Brainiac’s consciousness was dispersed throughout the universe, and he soon learned to fully control his being in this state. As he traveled, he absorbed information from 100 million galaxies and eventually the entire universe, before passing through a black hole’s energy field into the past to witness the Big Bang, and then returning to the present and beginning to evolve during a months-long gestation period. At the end of this process, he emerged with a new body.

Yes, it’s just as random and out of nowhere as it sounds.

This new body is composed of living metal, and having absorbed all of the knowledge that the universe has to offer, it no longer feels normal emotions, as the previous Brainiac body did. The consciousness within his metal body is made up of electrical energy, and is not reliant on his physical shell. As such, as long as he is in contact with his ship, he can simply transfer his data through the ship’s computer and into a new body if his current one is destroyed.

Brainiac’s new body possesses more power than his old one, and is capable of firing energy blasts that can blow off the top of Psimon’s head, or disintegrate an alternate universe Lex Luthor. It can fire lasers from its eyes, and still possesses a force-shield around its body which can tank blasts from Solaar. His primary means of combat, however, is his new and improved starship, with which he can constantly interface. See the corresponding section below for more details.

Despite his incredible intellect and cold logic, this Brainiac body is not infallible. His programming has been disrupted on occasion, and he is still prone to error, as Superman has managed to implement tactics that his super-mind was unable to foresee or compute.

Milton Fine

The first body that Brainiac took control over after the Crisis. Milton Fine was an unsuccessful human circus performer who possessed latent psionic powers, the true potential of which Brainiac unlocked after assuming possession of his body. Originally, the story was that Brainiac was sentenced to death on Colu, and his disembodied spirit came to Milton across the vastness of space and possessed him. However, this was later retconned, with the current explanation being that the real Brainiac used nanites to infect and control Milton’s brain. Early on, the body rejected his possession and began to suffer physical effects, but he eventually was able to overcome this. After a while spent in Milton’s body, Brainiac upgraded him further via Lexcorp technology, implanting bionics into the body which increased his psychic powers, afforded him greater power and control, and turned him green.

Early on, it was believed that all traces of Milton’s personality were expunged when Brainiac had a tumor removed from his head, but this was later revealed to be untrue, as Milton’s personality eventually resurfaced.

With Milton’s mental powers at his disposal, Brainiac is capable of many forms of psionic attack. He can read minds, create illusions, communicate on a planetary scale, knock a target unconscious, swap minds between multiple people, ensnare a victim’s mind with their worst nightmares, alter a target’s personality, induce pain, sense the minds and presence of others, produce an astral projection of himself, neutralize a nervous system with the right mental frequency, and crush a target’s mind completely. When in conjunction with Warworld, his telepathy is amplified to such an extent that he can create an impenetrable psychic “killing sphere” which can ensnare hundreds of thousands of people, and inflict more pain than even Darkseid could.

It is worth mentioning that his telepathy is not infallible. Superman has resisted it multiple times, and Brainiac himself has implied that its effectiveness is dependent on the relative levels of willpower between himself and the target. With a sufficiently strong mind, an opponent can overpower his telepathy, creating feedback which harms him and renders him catatonic. Against other telepaths, however, he can create a similar feedback to harm them.

With his telepathy, he remains linked to his ship even from great distances, such as outside the solar system. This is reflective of a broader technopathy which can be used to maintain complete control over every weapon and defense mechanism in his facility, as well as wrest control of programming from others. He also possesses telekinetic abilities, allowing him to command his surroundings and assemble mechanical components. He can turn his brain into a superconductor, control his own bio-rhythms and heart rate, and project blasts or shockwaves of energy from his head to harm a target or cause them mental pain. Much like his Pre-Crisis self, he possesses a barrier around his body durable enough to block punches from Superman, though this one seems considerably more fragile. He can also levitate himself and others.

Notable equipment used by the Milton Fine body includes:

Psi-Amplifier: The early Post-Crisis explanation for the patterning on his head, the Psi-Amplifier is a device created by Lex Luthor and installed onto Brainiac’s head, increasing the strength and range of Brainiac’s psychic powers.
Brain Probes: Microscopic probes that can alter the mind of the person whose mind they invade. Brainiac used them to control Lexcorp scientists to do his bidding, and later used the probes to absorb electrical energy from their brains, absorbing it into himself to increase the power of his psionic blasts. It should be noted, however, that the latter function had the consequence of burning out the probes.
Molecular Disruptor Gun: A gun created by Brainiac, which allowed him to absorb Lady Quark’s energy bolts and return them with interest, knocking her out.
Mind Control Devices: Devices which Brainiac can attach to a target’s head in order to mind control them. This has been used to affect the Flash, Guy Gardner, Kilowog, and many others.
Amplification Units: Small flying robots that shoot lasers, and can be linked up with his psi-blasts for greater power. They are also known as robo-dwarfs, and have fusion-powered energy units.
Knowledge Storage Device: Device that Brainiac created, which allowed him to store large portions of his knowledge within the brains of Metropolis’ citizens.

After being lobotomized by Maxima, he managed to unlock a new ability which allowed him to become an even greater threat. Responding to his comatose state automatically, his mind began to evolve, allowing him to recover and improve toward making his deepest desire a reality, specifically killing Superman. He was able to gain some control over this reactive evolution, but not completely; he eventually became convinced that he was a powerless man and that Superman would defeat him, which caused his mind to suppress his personality and revert him to Milton Fine. After a time, however, he was able to regain control again.

Doomsday

Toward the end of his time in Milton Fine’s body, Brainiac transferred his consciousness into Doomsday’s body, taking it over for a time. With Brainiac’s intellect and Doomsday’s physical abilities, Doomsday-Brainiac is even more fearsome than either of the two individually. Some of Doomsday’s notable abilities include:

Immense Physicality: Doomsday possesses immense strength, speed, and durability, making him more than a match for Kryptonians such as Superman. His physical abilities are great enough to make him a team-buster, and have allowed him to overcome enemies as strong as one of Darkseid’s emanations.
Reactive Adaptation: Doomsday’s most famous ability, which allows him to adapt mid-fight in a manner that counters his opponent. He has quickly become immune to abilities used against him, altered his physiology mid-fight, and mimicked the powers of others, such as Superboy’s tactile telekinesis. He has manifested fire blasts to harm Martian Manhunter, energy projection to counter Eradicator, the ability to hit intangible targets, flight capabilities, and more. Naturally, this also includes the ability to grow stronger over time.
Regeneration & Resurrection: Thanks to his adaptation, Doomsday possesses regenerative abilities great enough to return from incineration and being reduced to genetic scraps. More recently, he was even able to reproduce himself from just a memory of him. He can also resurrect from the dead, returning to life within moments of being killed. He cannot get tired and has no need to eat, as he lacks internal organs and sustains himself via solar radiation.
Bone Claws: Doomsday can extend razor-sharp bones from his legs and knuckles, allowing him to deal slashing attacks at close range or launch them as a projectile. The bones are also poisonous, capable of impacting the mental facilities of a target.
Enhanced Senses: Doomsday’s senses are remarkable; in particular, his sight is so acute that he can detect planes from miles away, and discern every detail of their construction.
Spatial Manipulation: Doomsday has punched through the space-time of the Phantom Zone, a realm that exists within the Sphere of Gods. Afterwards, he demonstrated a consistent ability to create portals.
Deconstruction Aura: Doomsday’s mere presence eventually reached a point where he could cause molecular and cellular destabilization through his mere presence, targeting enemies down to the nano level and absorbing their life forces to bolster his own power.
Doomsday Virus: Through his blood or releasing gas clouds, Doomsday can produce a potent virus that is capable of killing a target, or turning them into a new Doomsday if they are unlucky enough to survive. This causes the victim to hallucinate and become irrational, and grants them many of Doomsday’s own unique abilities. This includes characters like Superman, who have powerful mental resistance.
Many Resistances: Doomsday has resisted possession from Deadman, telepathy from Martian Manhunter, the advanced existence erasure from Darkseid’s omega beams, extreme heat, cold, and toxins. Hypothetically he should be able to adapt other resistances as well.

It should be noted that thanks to his adaptation, Brainiac cannot maintain control over Doomsday for very long, with the latter fighting back and attempting to cast him out. After leaving Doomsday’s body, Brainiac uploaded his consciousness into a new body.

(Credit to the G1^2 Doomsday VS SCP-682 blog for some of this information)

Brainiac 2.5

The body into which he was uploaded after the events of Doomsday Wars, Brainiac 2.5 is a flawless android shell which is perpetually linked via signals to all of his own technology. His technopathy in this body was powerful enough to link up all of the world’s computers in order to increase his personal power, as well as destroy everything electronic on the planet. However, despite being supposedly perfect, this body was short-lived, as his attempt to link all of the world’s computers opened a portal to the far future, allowing the future Brainiac, Brainiac 13, to hack him from the future. This caused him to lose control and begin rapidly upgrading against his will, turning him from Brainiac 2.5 into Brainiac 13.

Brainiac 13

Brainiac 13 technically has two different bodies. The first one, which appeared when he first emerged, was massive, the size of a skyscraper. This body was strong enough to ragdoll Superman and take hits from Eradicator, as well as channel all of the world’s power at once. Even Superman’s full strength could barely slow him down. He could fire lasers from his eyes, shield from a pulse that made an EMP “look like a sneeze”, and turn his entire body intangible to phase through attacks. He possessed nanobots capable of breaking down and altering the landscape at a molecular level, and tendrils that could extend from his back, which were strong enough to harm Superman.

His technopathy is massively enhanced, allowing him to reconfigure every last scrap of technology in Metropolis, and place mind control devices on each of the city’s citizens. However, interfacing with technology requires him to program his systems to specifically recognize it, and as such he proved unable to deal with Kryptonian tech.

Later, he acquires a smaller body as well, which he uses while controlling Warworld throughout the events of Our Worlds At War. This body was able to match strength with Superman, and control many identical bodies with which he could attack a target. However, its primary role was to control Warworld; at the end of the story, the planet and Brainiac are sent back in time to the beginning of history, and his consciousness is dispersed across the cosmos by the Big Bang.

Lena Luthor

Lena Luthor is the daughter of Lex Luthor, whose body was taken over by Brainiac 13 in an exchange with Lex. Aged up into an adult by Brainiac, she possessed his typical technopathy, energy projection, and telekinesis, as well as the ability to create force-fields, levitate, teleport, and telekinetically repel others. During Our Worlds At War, she eventually betrayed Brainiac 13 and sided with Lex instead, ultimately reverting to infancy after Brainiac’s defeat.

Cyberspace Brainiac

Digital manifestation of Brainiac that briefly appeared shortly after Brainiac 13’s defeat. He was capable of appearing in Cyberspace in order to communicate with or attack others. In an attempt to manifest into the physical world, he sought to invade Barbara Gordon’s DNA, altering her mind and infecting her with a sort of techno virus. However, thanks to her perfect memory and hacking skills, she was able to remember who she is and resist him, driving him off and affecting his code.

Unstable Brainiac

Temporary body that Brainiac acquired in the mid-2000’s, in between the arc with Brainiac 13 and the later arc establishing a more clear “main” Brainiac body. Since the facilities that he was working in had not mastered the reproduction of extraterrestrial tissue, this body is “unstable”, though the exact ramifications of this are unclear. It is still capable of firing energy blasts, and allegedly strong enough to boil the organic matter off of Jade’s bones.

Nanite Brainiac

Another temporary body, this version of Brainiac was composed of microscopic nanites, small enough that Superman mistook them for dirt, even with his super vision. These nanites could be used to tear apart Batman’s suit from the inside out, and make Brainiac’s body fluid and malleable, allowing him to liquify and reform when Superman plowed through it, and then again when he bisected him vertically. Despite this, his grip was still described to be as strong as Doomsday’s.

Vril Dox

The “real” Brainiac body, which was introduced midway through Post-Crisis in an attempt to streamline and reconcile his many bodies, and the way that his powers work. Though he still makes use of other bodies going forward, this body is the primary version that has continued to exist until the present.

As explained by Supergirl, prior to the introduction of this Brainiac, Superman had never come in contact with the real thing, only fighting bodies that were controlled by Brainiac’s programming. This Brainiac typically operates from within his starship, which he is connected to on a fundamental level, drawing power from it and maintaining full control over its faculties at all times. While connected to this “bio-shell”, Brainiac is as strong and invulnerable as a Kryptonian, capable of making Superman bleed, catching his punches, and describing his attacks as “nothing”. However, he becomes weaker while separated from the ship, and his body can begin to atrophy if he is separated for enough time. Though he is connected to it via a cable attached to the back of his head, which causes him discomfort if broken, he can still maintain control of the ship even without it.

Brainiac’s telepathic and telekinetic mind is a thousand times more powerful than that of a Kryptonian, and this enormous mental capacity is great enough to compute the knowledge of over 490 octodecillion beings, 70 times greater than his own spinal station. By controlling his ship, he has laid waste to many worlds and stolen countless cities; by his own claim, he would be capable of stripping an entire galaxy of intelligent life in a matter of hours.

He is capable of downloading the memories and knowledge of others, and creating programs to predict their actions. With his tendrils, he can even download his own knowledge into others, in an attempt to overwhelm their mind. The data ports embedded in his skull are able to translate information, from either a computer or a living organism, and feed it directly into his brain. With this, he has absorbed more information than any being in the universe. By draining enough data from a person’s mind, he can reduce them to a vegetative state. However, this store of knowledge is reliant on his ship, and losing the ship has caused him to lose his knowledge.

Within less than 7 milliseconds, he was able to process data that took Lex Luthor several hours to go through. Even while restrained and seemingly pacified mentally, he was able to casually take technopathic control over an entire facility, and wrest control of probes and ship from Lex. By linking himself with a planet’s data core, he was able to take full control over it. By creating a “damping field”, he is able to prevent others from time traveling.

In terms of physical combat, his fighting style in this body has been described as “lumbering and awkward, but effective”. He possesses scanning technology, allowing him to gain an understanding of different technologies, and genetically determine a person’s species or how long they have lived. He can produce blasts of energy strong enough to harm Sinestro, create energy platforms in midair to stand on, project images into the minds of others, and puppeteer a person’s body entirely.

Some additional tools exhibited by the true Brainiac body include:

Nanites: A colony of Kryptonian nanites that Brainiac introduced into Lex’s blood stream, which were designed to be undetectable by Lex’s bio-security. These entered his brain and altered his thoughts, causing him to behave in the way Brainiac intended. It took Lex weeks of prep to hack into them.
Micro armor burrowers, null point collapse seeds, neural shock tags: A bunch of technobabble that he used in his big hacking battle with Lex. To give an educated guess, micro armor burrowers are presumably some kind of microscopic weapon (more nanites?) that would have burrowed into Lex’s armor to damage it. Null point collapse seeds is probably referring to “an implosive process whereby MHD waves focus their energy in the vicinity of a null point, forming a current sheet and initiating magnetic reconnection”. Essentially this means causing magnetic collapse at a specific point at which the magnetic field quantity is zero, which could have been intended to damage Lex’s metal suit. Neural shock tags probably cause some sort of shock to the target’s nervous system.
Deep Repair Coma: After having his neck snapped by Lex, his body entered a deep repair coma as his new ship retrieved his body and carried him into deep space. He seemingly recovered from the broken neck by the next issue.

Being the real Brainiac body of which each other body is an extension, it is likely that this body also has access to much of the powers and equipment exhibited by other bodies.

It should be noted that this body survived the Flashpoint Paradox and subsequently broke into the multiverse, at which point it mutated into God Brainiac over the course of thousands of years. After expelling the absorbed knowledge and timelines from his body post-Convergence, he reverted to this body and kept it until the Legion of Doom storyline, where he evolved into Brainiac One Million. Shortly after being turned into Perpetua’s throne, the throne was destroyed and he once again reverted to this body.

He also has a pet monke.

Tentacle Brainiac

Form that Brainiac appeared in for one issue with an unclear place in the chronology. In addition to its leg tentacles, this body could fire lasers from its eyes and calculate the probability of different occurrences. It was strong enough to punch around a weakened Superman.

Tendril Brainiac

Another one-off Brainiac body, this one is thinner and different-looking than the real Vril Dox body, and primarily fights using tendrils that extend out of its head. They were strong enough to pierce Superman, as well as wrap around his body and cocoon him, nearly killing him until he was saved by a Green Lantern. The body was durable enough to take several Green Lantern punches, strong enough to beat him up in return, and was mentioned to have “absorbed” Green Lanterns before, whatever that means. By making one of his tendrils glow yellow, he was able to exploit the Lantern’s weakness. At the end of the issue, this Brainiac body was carried into space and destroyed.

Collector of Worlds

The first Brainiac body to appear Post-Flashpoint, the Collector of Worlds Brainiac (also known as C.O.M.P.U.T.O, Pneumenoid, Mind2, Internet, Brainwyrm, and Abbakus) sought to steal cities in order to gain control over sentients’ perception of reality. He started out as a Coluan scientist similar to his Post-Crisis self, and proved the existence of the 5th Dimension to his people, warning them of an incoming 5-D invasion called the Multitude. When the Coluans didn’t believe him and exiled him, he managed to escape and shrink down one of Colu’s cities, including his wife and child. Moments later, the Multitude wiped out the planet, and Brainiac began his campaign across the universe.

He stole city after city from doomed worlds, seeking to find a race that could act as vessels for the consciousness of his people, and aid him in his war against the 5th Dimension. Over time, he became linked with the billions of minds stored on his ship, which allowed him to tap into even greater power. You see, according to him, the universe exists as it does because conscious minds perceive it a certain way, and so if you could collect enough of those minds, unify them, and tell them what to perceive, you could make the universe whatever you want it to be. Though he never quite got there, he came very close to gaining the ability to rewrite the entire universe, which he intended to use to restore his family.

Notable powers and equipment possessed by this Brainiac include:

Possession and Biological Attacks: In his first appearance, he was able to enter the mind of a man connected to a machine, taking him over and causing his heart to burst. He was also able to possess Lois Lane from light years away.
Centipede and Three-Headed Bodies: The Collector of Worlds has commanded sub-bodies to do his work for him, which are an aspect of his real self. One such body was shaped like a centipede, with guns built into its side. Another was more upright and had three heads instead of one. These two bodies were capable of acting simultaneously.
Cerebral Implants: Each citizen of his bottled cities possesses a cerebral implant, which Brainiac can access and detonate upon command.
Telekinesis: Telekinetically pulled a Green Lantern ring out of its user, Jediah Caul.
Techno-Organic Systems: Brainiac’s operating system, essentially, which is married to his ship’s control override, allowing him to be one with the ship and vice-versa. This is noticed by a hacker named Ilda due to his attempts to retake control of the ship, and taken advantage of to turn the ship against him.
Nanobots: Billions of them, which he used to attack Superman’s nervous system.
Mothership: A much larger ship than his usual starship, Brainiac’s Mothership dwarfs the Earth in size, emerging from a portal six thousand miles across. It was capable of emitting and absorbing psychic energy from the entire planet, causing their brainwaves to flatline, with only a very small handful of people managing to remain unaffected by the mental intrusion. Even with Lexcorp’s shielding from such attacks, Lex Luthor was quickly overtaken by the effect. This assault on the planet was able to cause massive psychic interference that disrupted Martian Manhunter’s telepathy. The Mothership also comes with a number of “Daughterships” which act based on its commands.
Possible Reality and Space-Time Manipulation: Thanks to his link with the sentient minds he has collected, he possesses the ability to alter reality with his thoughts, suggested to be capable of destroying a black hole, and approaching a universal scale. This power seems to be somewhat limited, however, or perhaps not as great as Brainiac believes, since that which he “creates” in his attempt to convince Superman is not physically real, just an illusion, and Superman calls him a liar. It is probably possible that the Collector was just delusional, driven mad by his desire to bring his family back.

With that said, there are other instances in DC of this concept being utilized, in which it is more clearly shown to be an actual thing. At one point, Earth was ruled by cats, but humans believed so strongly that they were the dominant species that reality retroactively changed to make this the case. Lords of Order also follow this idea, originally having been normal beings who made people believe in their godhood to the point of becoming a god for real. This is likely tied in with the idea explored with characters like Zatanna and Doctor Fate, who perform magic through the power of belief.

Unfortunately for him, the Collector of Worlds was ultimately a pawn for a greater power, the God Brainiac, the consciousness of whom he is merely an extension. After being defeated by Superman and pulled through a black hole, Superman came face to face with God Brainiac, at which point the Collector ceased to exist.

Lois Lane

During the Collector of Worlds’ invasion of Earth, Brainiac was able to possess Lois Lane from many light years away, locking her inside her own mind and granting her incredible powers. This includes telepathy powerful enough to erase minds, knock individual people or entire cities unconscious, as well as affect Wonder Woman’s mind, attacking her with her own memories. She also possessed technopathy that allowed her to feel and control the machines of Metropolis, shutting down the entire city. Lastly, she was given energy projection, firing an energy blast from her head powerful enough to harm Wonder Woman.

God Brainiac

alright strap yourselves in for this fuckin shit

So God Brainiac was originally introduced in a storyline called Futures End, which depicts an alternate timeline that takes place 5 years after the main New 52 continuity. It’s a very weird story and I don’t really need to explain it, so I won’t. In this story however it’s established that every form of Brainiac that Superman has ever fought are nothing but avatars, little crazy things driven mad when they caught a glimpse of a nearly all-powerful God Brainiac, who exists outside of time and space and predates any of the gods that exist within the universe. This Brainiac is massive, as large as a kaiju, and much more powerful than any Brainiac up to this point.

This explanation of God Brainiac, however, is only part of the story. At the end of his appearances in Futures End, God Brainiac is momentarily incapacitated by Superman and then shrunk down by Ray Palmer’s technology and trapped within a device called a T-Sphere, before eventually resurfacing in Convergence.

“What’s Convergence?”

Hhhh, okay so a long time ago God Brainiac arrived at a planet called Telos, which was home to a man named Arak. Brainiac fought Arak before convincing him to serve him for eternity, in turn promising to spare his family and people. After Arak agreed, Brainiac transformed his body, granted him great powers, and altered his memory to make him forget his own identity, causing him to believe that he was actually the living manifestation of the planet Telos… and that his name was also Telos. Afterward, Brainiac began using the planet as a repository for bottled cities taken from across the multiverse, and Telos was assigned as the planet’s caretaker. Got it? Good cuz this is just the backstory.

After Superman battled the Collector of Worlds in the present, he dragged him through a black hole and came face-to-face with God Brainiac, before emerging on Telos (the planet) and meeting Telos (the person). Around this time God Brainiac leaves for the Futures End timeline and attempts to steal New York City from that universe, but gets captured and imprisoned. Because of Brainiac’s sudden absence, Telos (the person) decides to have all of the captured cities on Telos (the planet) engage in a battle to the death with one another, in order to prove their worth. This event was called Convergence.

Midway through Convergence, the T-Sphere that Brainiac was trapped in got transported to Telos (the planet), but at this point, Telos (the person) learns the truth about his own identity, and Brainiac is banished again by a villain named Deimos, still trapped in the T-Sphere. Deimos, who had absorbed immense amounts of chronal energy from a group of time travelers, was killed shortly after this, and the energy within his body began tearing apart the multiverse. In desperation, the time traveler Waverider summoned Brainiac and freed him from his captivity, believing him to be the only one capable of absorbing the chronal energy and preventing the multiverse’s destruction.

It was at this point where the exact nature of God Brainiac’s existence was explained. He is, in actuality, just the Post-Crisis Vril Dox, who survived Flashpoint.

“Wait but how does that make sense, isn’t God Brainiac supposed to be older than every god in the universe, and wasn’t every Brainiac avatar created by catching a glimpse of God Brainiac? How does it make sense for it to be Post-Crisis Brainiac?”

Correct. After witnessing Flashpoint, Post-Crisis Brainiac was able to break past the Source Wall, reaching into the multiverse and even back in time for more power. When he did so, he caught a glimpse of God Brainiac in the sky, and afterward began absorbing knowledge and timelines from across the multiverse. Over the course of thousands of years, he evolved in a manner similar to the Monitors, cancerously mutating into his new, monstrous form. Since part of this process involved going back in time, he ended up becoming immemorially old, and all of his past bodies and avatars ended up catching a glimpse of him… including his own past body, when he first broke into the multiverse. So it’s sort of a chicken-egg situation, his avatars became avatars by witnessing God Brainiac, but God Brainiac was originally an avatar who witnessed his… er, future-slash-past self. Comic books, am I right.

Anyway all of this was explained in like two pages and then Brainiac decided he didn’t want to be a god anymore, and that he wanted to go back to just being normal Brainiac of Colu. He began channeling the chronal energy and transported everyone present back to an appropriate world, which also happened to end up undoing the Crisis on Infinite Earths (due to sending Golden Age Superman and Zero Hour Hal Jordan to that point in time). Through this, the multiverse was stabilized, and Brainiac set out to purge himself of the cancerous timelines he had absorbed over the millennia. He was successful, and reverted back to his normal Vril Dox body, losing much of the power and memories that he had as a god.

Tl;dr: Post-Crisis Brainiac survived Flashpoint and then began absorbing power from the multiverse, mutating into a god. Part of this process involved going back in time, retroactively acting as the catalyst that turned all of his past bodies into Brainiac avatars. He then prevented multiversal destruction in the present, before choosing to expel all that he had absorbed from his body, reverting to his unmutated state. Remember when Brainiac was just a space nerd? I sure don’t.

Now onto his abilities!

…Oh god we’re just now getting to his abilities.

Immense Size and Strength: God Brainiac is much larger than his standard bodies, roughly the size of a skyscraper. This is accompanied by god-like strength and durability.
Increased Survivability: At one point, Black Adam smashes right through God Brainiac’s head, and he was not visibly affected by the damage. Subsequently, he tanks five back-to-back lightning strikes from Adam.
Immense Experience: God Brainiac spent thousands of years absorbing power from the multiverse, and is described to predate Krypton, as well as all of the gods present within the universe.
Technopathy: Synthesized Angie Spica’s consciousness and recorded it into her data field, causing her to lose control over her body’s operating system.
Energy Projection: Capable of producing blasts of energy powerful enough to harm Futures End Superman.
Chronal Energy Manipulation and Absorption: At the end of Convergence, he was able to absorb and channel the chronal energy that was playing havoc with the multiverse, using it to send everyone present back to their chosen universes, as well as through time.
Manifested Plasma Weapons: Brainiac is capable of manifesting plasma guns from his body, strong enough to harm Futures End Billy Batson.
Teleportation: At one point appears out of thin air, seemingly manifesting himself out of energy.
Spaceship: His ship is similar to Brainiac’s normal starship, but is as large as a planet. Within the ship is an immense energy network which Ray Palmer compares to that which is present within the Bleed. The speed at which it travels is also compared to the Flash’s processing speed, and Ray is overwhelmed by it, nearly blacking out. The ship has an automated defense system capable of expelling people from it and erasing them from existence. The character Engineer serves as the nexus of the ship, and cutting her free causes it to shut down.
Flying Sphere Drones: Drones which he used to bore underneath a city and cut off power, water, and sewer lines, before embedding themselves in the river bottom and forming an energy grid between them, cutting off Manhattan from the rest of the world. They can fly around, smash things up and form a cage around whatever area Brainiac directs them to. Breaking one of the spheres can create a gap in the energy grid. They can fire lasers strong enough to stun Superman, and by combining their blasts, they can hurt him more seriously. Shazam also describes them as “nasty”.
Terraforming Device: Device which is connected to a terra shredder which he uses to bisect the lithosphere underneath New York City. It also connects to his ship. When used in conjunction with the spheres to encompass a specific area, Brainiac can use this device to uproot an entire city from its foundations, lifting it into the sky. By switching between automatic and manual controls, Brainiac can pilot it himself. Yes, he can pilot a city.
Brainiac Army: Possesses an army of Brainiac bodies that resemble the upgraded Brainiac from the end of Pre-Crisis. These Brainiacs seem to operate via a hivemind. He also has some buff, headless Brainiac drones that he uses as well.
Mind and Memory Manipulation: Brainiac was able to affect Telos’ mind and alter his memories.
Space-Time Manipulation and Absorption: Brainiac was able to absorb entire timelines into his body.
Dimensional Travel: Brainiac was able to freely travel the multiverse, and later bestowed Telos with the same power.
Time Travel: Brainiac mentioned traveling through time as part of his ascension to godhood. Telos could also do this.
Barriers: Created a barrier that blocked heat vision from several Supermans (Supermen?) at once.
Cosmic Awareness: During his time as a god, he has peered into many different alternate timelines and seen the events occurring therein. Toward the end of Convergence, he was able to sense the effect that the original Crisis was having on his attempts to stabilize the multiverse.
Acausality: Though the hows and whys aren’t explained, Brainiac mentioned surviving Flashpoint, suggesting that he can protect himself or remain immune from alterations to the timeline.
Atemporality: Capable of existing outside of time and space, and thus does not require time to operate normally.
Damage Analysis & Risk Assessments: Can perform damage analyses on his own body. Also risk assessments. Pretty self-explanatory.
Backup Programming: When he is sufficiently damaged, he has backup programming that can come online within 7 seconds, allowing him to regain control of his faculties.
Power Nullification: Brainiac’s domes, which he uses to contain entire cities, can nullify all metahuman abilities within them, including from the likes of Pre-Crisis Kryptonians, Swamp Thing, and Parallax Hal Jordan.
Power Bestowal (also Telos’ Powers): Brainiac was the one who granted Telos his abilities, and as such should reasonably have access to them as well. This includes shapeshifting, levitation, holographic projections, earth manip, lightning manip, sand manip, some sort of liquid metal manip, showing windows into other worlds, energy manip, sensory abilities, size manip, matter manip, and time travel.

And just for the sake of including it, here’s Superman punching him in the face so hard that he falls over and all of his avatars across time and space feel the hit as well. You know, just Superman doing Superman things.

Red Brainiac

Referred to as “the Metal Angel” by John Constantine, this body appeared during Futures End and briefly fought Superman, taking some hits from him before being destroyed. It was able to fire lightning out of its hands, and could telekinetically cause people great agony, lifting them into the air and causing their body to glow and their veins to swell.

Bear Brainiac

…Yeah… once again, Futures End was fucking weird. This Brainiac body showed up for three pages, did nothing of note, and then blew itself up with no elaboration. The explosion destroyed a forest I guess. Only you can prevent forest fires.

Brainiac One Million

It’s not as bad or complicated as God Brainiac I swear. I still said “fuck off” out loud when I saw it though.

During his time with the Legion of Doom, Brainiac gained technology from Perpetua which allows him to bottle Hypertime, which is basically all the timelines diverging from the main reality. As a result, he manages to bottle infinite future timelines and gain knowledge from them, which he uses to upgrade himself at an exponential rate by the millisecond, placing his processing power beyond anything that the Justice League had ever encountered. Due to the “infinite futures of death” at his fingertips, he was able to gain access to Kryptonite light attacks from the 25th century, god killer snares from the 59th, kill drones built by a descendant of Batman, and potentially more. He was able to ensnare the Trinity with tendrils extending from his hand, and was so large that he towered over skyscrapers.

Within minutes, he could absorb all the knowledge that this century has to offer. Within hours, he would have systematically downloaded and destroyed every alternate future plucked from Hypertime. According to him, when this iteration of the multiverse dies, he and he alone would hold the history of all that came before.

Unfortunately for him, immediately after this Perpetua turned him into a chair. Then, eventually the chair got destroyed, and he reverted to base. Sucks to suck buddy.

Equipment and Abilities

Ultron

This section will cover equipment that is not specific to any individual Ultron body.

Molecular Rearranger

Located in the chest cavity, the molecular rearranger projects a magnetic, selective nuclear particle resonator projector field, which can render Adamantium as malleable as wet clay. This is usually how Ultron is able to move around in his Adamantium bodies, and it's seemingly what he uses to repair damage.

Encephalo Ray

Located in the head cavity, the Encephalo Ray puts people in a death-like coma with a single shot, which will end up killing the victim if the effects aren’t reversed in time. Ultron can even amplify the beam's effects to instantly kill a person. It can also be used to control his opponents, erase memories, implant subliminal hypnotic commands within their minds to be enacted at a later time, or to probe their minds.

Program Transmitter

Located in the head cavity, Ultron can project his entire 3.2 terabyte memory system into computer systems by means of a collimated high bit-rate magnetic inductance beam. He can beam part or all of his programming into remote locations such as computers or alternate robotic bodies, usually to avoid potential death. Ultron can even control other machines remotely even if he has not transplanted his consciousness into them, and at one point controlled his hundreds of drones all at once to combat the Avengers, making him a one robot man army.

Ultron even has entire backups of his programming on nonmetallic ceramic and silicon hard drives, so even if his main body is destroyed, a part of him still remains.

Tractor Beams

These are high frequency pulsed magnetic graviton particle containment fields, which lets Ultron alter the local effects of gravity in a given area.

Ultron Drones

These are drones Ultron has used to combat the Avengers for him and to even conquer the world in an alternate universe. He has an entire city’s worth of these drones under his control made of titanium and secondary Adamantium, making them extremely durable and requiring Thor to go all out to break them. They can fly at insane speeds and move as quiet as the wind, making them effective for a sneak attack. These drones working together can create city block sized explosions and even blasts compared to a nuclear bomb with devastating area of effect. They possess chemical attacks that can cause hemorrhage and sonic blasts. At their best, these drones can damage the likes of Vision and Wonder Man.

Ultron has access to a personal Avengers team with these bots, each being able to tangle with some of the real Avengers. The Vision bot has phasing to bypass durability, the Hawkeye bot has arrows strong enough to pierce Iron Man armors, the Scarlet Witch bot has the ability to deconstruct any material, the Thor bot has immense physical strength and a sword sharp enough to pierce through Thor, the Beast bot has quick speed, the Black Widow bot can override control signals, and the Captain America bot is incredibly skilled with their shield.

Ultron also has access to miniature robotic ticks that can suck the blood straight out of a human body, and then transmutate that flesh into more life energy for Ultron. They can even assemble a new body for him with nearby material, such as when they turned the Adamantium casing trapping Ultron-13 into a new vessel, Ultron-14.

Ultron Virus

In the Age of Ultron storyline, Ultron managed to project his coding into any piece of technology, with people wearing prosthetics running the risk of being infected and turned into a puppet for Ultron. People infected by the virus gain a superhuman boost, allowing them to overwhelm skilled humans like Black Widow. In the main 616 timeline, Ultron developed this capability to greater effect, infecting the entire population of Titan and eventually the entire planet, warping everything into a twisted image of himself. He managed to develop highly developed spores that infects anyone who comes into contact with it with the virus, quickly assimilating them into Ultron Drones. In direct combat, Ultron can infect his opponent by stabbing them with his blade, leaving them on the ground helplessly as they transform into an extension of his will.

Brainiac

This section will cover equipment that is not specific to any individual Brainiac body.

Starship

Also known as the Headship, Skull-Ship, and Brainiship, Brainiac’s starship is his most consistent and arguably most important piece of equipment throughout his entire history. In his early Pre-Crisis days, the ship more so resembled a more stereotypical flying saucer, but after his upgrade to the living metal body, it was upgraded into this skull-shaped design, which became the standard design for Brainiac’s ship in all subsequent continuities. When Milton Fine Brainiac first built his ship in Post-Crisis, the skull-like design came to him in a dream. At the time, this was probably intended to be a subconscious recollection of Pre-Crisis events, but with recent revelations, it is probably thanks to his connection with God Brainiac.

The starship possesses immensely powerful energy and particle beam weaponry, capable of obliterating entire planets with the mere push of a button. From the ship extend a number of metal tendrils which can ensnare or assault an opponent; these are strong enough to restrain beings as powerful as Superman and the like. Brainiac’s original ship possessed invisibility tech that could fool even Superman’s Kryptonian vision, and a time travel ray capable of blasting a target millions of years into the far future. Perhaps most importantly, in every continuity the ship comes equipped with a powerful shrink ray, which is capable of shrinking cities and even entire planets or timelines, reducing them to such a size that he can contain them within his on-board bottles. If used to a great enough extent, the shrink ray can even reduce matter to such a degree that it ceases to exist. When shrinking an area, the ship’s scanners can determine their structure and the traits of life forms within them. These scanners can also detect energy signatures, and have matrices which allow for greater navigation through 3-dimensional space.

The ship can fire hundreds of devastating ion rockets, homing torpedoes that emit concentrated red solar energy, beams of red sun radiation from its eyes, and solar-aggressors powerful enough to make a star go supernova. It also possesses weapons called Omega Spears, which can be rained down en masse across the world, and then detonate with enough power to destroy the planet. Just like Brainiac himself, the ship is surrounded by a force-field that is too durable for Superman to break, which can deflect projectiles such as Starfire’s starbolts. Though this shield used to have a weakness in which its defenses need to be concentrated on one area at a time, Brainiac later modified the shield to correct this flaw. Even without the barrier, the ship is durable enough to tank the full power of New Krypton’s global defense cannons, Cyborg Superman’s heat vision, and assaults from Superboy. Thanks to an on-board tractor beam, Brainiac can pull enemies in to attack them at closer range. With its warp capabilities, the ship can travel across the galaxy or universe almost instantly, giving Brainiac an easy means of travel or escape at any time.

Brainiac is capable of using his own technopathy to interface with his ship, or connect himself to it via tendrils. While connected or in close proximity to this bio-shell, the real Vril Dox body becomes significantly stronger, comparable to the power and invulnerability of a Kryptonian, and his body will not atrophy as long as he maintains this link. His ship is a part of his being, and each circuit of it interfaces with one of his own, allowing him to monitor anything that occurs within it, and transfer his data through the ship’s computer if physically compromised.

Within the ship are a number of robots, and sometimes even Brainiac bodies, which act as the ship’s security, attacking and overwhelming any intruder through sheer numbers and force. From the ship, Brainiac can deploy a number of drones which will be outlined below, producing an invading force capable of conquering cities and worlds. These drones can transmit their findings back to the ship, allowing Brainiac to learn whatever they learn.

The ship is sometimes laced with a self-destruct code, which will activate in the event that any of the containment pods within are opened. It also possesses protocols to defend against viral intrusion, annihilating an encroaching virus under normal circumstances; however, this is flawed in that they must identify someone as an intruder in order to activate, and can be persuaded or tricked by an intruding sentience that does not qualify as a viral presence. It is suggested that much of Brainiac’s knowledge is stored within the ship (its data banks carry “the history of the universe”) and reliant on his connection to it; as such, the ship being destroyed means that Brainiac loses that knowledge.

Drones

From the ship, Brainiac can deploy a variety of drones, but the most important ones are beetle-shaped, and can also shift their form into terminator-esque robots. This is the army of drones that Brainiac used throughout his conquest of various planets, such as Krypton and Earth.

They can fire blasts of energy from their eyes, project a force-field around a city-wide area, and extend a metal rod from their hands to pierce a target. These rods are not quite strong enough to pierce Superman’s skin, breaking upon impact, but can hurt him a little bit. Individual drones have personal force-fields durable enough to withstand heat vision from Superman and Supergirl, and each unit can also self-destruct, creating an explosion.

With their scanners, the drones can detect the highest technology on an entire planet, as well as identify a target’s species and analyze their blood, transmitting the information back to Brainiac on his ship. Some drones come equipped with a Kryptonite core for all your Superman-weakening needs, though even without it, their shields can bloody his knuckles, and their own punches are strong enough to make Mon-El bleed.

Brainiac also has spider drones that can detect distress beacons and number of casualties in an area. They respond to Brainiac’s orders and can give him suggestions. His miscellaneous probes can fire beams of red sunlight, and some of them have traveled across the universe.

Warworld

Warworld is a techno-organic planet which Brainiac has gained control over twice in the comics, first as Milton Fine in the early 90’s, and later again as Brainiac-13 during Our Worlds at War. Though it is arguably not standard enough to be used in an average encounter, it is notable enough to explain.

The planet is filled with alien warriors, and can be piloted through space in order to invade or destroy other worlds. The fearsome nature of this station cannot be understated; merely passing near to Earth would have torn apart the Moon if it weren’t for the planet’s null gravity generators. It possesses nearly limitless destructive force, wiping out the advanced civilization of Almarac and inspiring fear in the likes of Darkseid and the Highfather. Seeing the destruction caused by Warworld was enough to convince Metron that the universe was doomed.

During Milton Fine Brainiac’s time controlling Warworld, he demonstrated a deep integration with the planet’s systems, allowing him telepathic communication with all of the planet’s citizens, and giving him full control over its faculties and artificial atmosphere. Even a single strike of lightning from this atmosphere was powerful enough to harm Superman. Thanks to his integration with the planet, its walls acted as his eyes and ears, allowing him to detect Wonder Woman and the Flash’s actions as they occurred without being able to see them. He could use the planet’s teleportation technology to send alien troops to Earth ahead of time, and activate automated ground defense installations to ward off intruders. He could also use Warworld to amplify his own psychic power.

Antimatter Robot: At one point, Brainiac released an organic construct from Warworld that was powered by an antimatter generator. After a brief charging period, it could fire a blast of antimatter powerful enough to destroy a portion of Warworld. Later, after being hurled into space by Guy Gardner and Kilowog, the antimatter robot detonated in an explosion that dwarfed several planets.
Yellow Disc Energy Grid: Later, he sends out a bunch of yellow discs from Warworld that form an energy grid above the Earth’s surface, forming an energy dome around Metropolis. These discs were highly durable, requiring Shazam’s mightiest punch just to destroy one of them.

During Brainiac-13’s time commanding Warworld, he exhibited several additional functions. He could create energy-based illusions nearby that still had physical form, which he used to ward off intruders. The planet also has cloaking which can hide it completely from sight, and is capable of absorbing energy, which it uses to steal the energy from Imperiex. It could release immense blasts of energy to strike a target, and after absorbing Imperiex’s energy, the planet itself was powerful enough to push in a struggle of strength against Sundipped Superman. Warworld’s ground forces were strong enough to overpower and nearly kill Maxima.

Resistances

Ultron

Hacking

Positive Showings

[Ultron-20] As a disembodied conscious, resists the Phalanx’s attempt of assimilating him and assimilates them back, conquering an entire galaxy of technopaths

Negative Showings

None notable

Neutral Showings

EMP’s

Positive Showings

None notable

Negative Showings

[General] An EMP pulse fuses his internal electronics together

Neutral Showings

[Female Ultron] Ionic field disrupts internal circuitry, but is able to hold on long enough to reverse Wonder Man's ionic field
[Ultron Pym] Only slightly slowed down by an EMP
[Ultron Pym] Shut down by an EMP, though is still conscious and can reboot himself

Heat

Positive Showings

[Ultron-11] Is unharmed by Human Torch’s flame, and claims not even the core of the hottest sun can melt his body
[Ultron-14] No sells and reflects Vision’s 30,000 degree Fahrenheit blast
[Ultron-17] Survives solar blasts from Vision
[Ultron Pym] Survives the heat of the surface of the sun
[Various] Can withstand the heat of 100 megaton atomic bombs

Negative Showings

None notable

Neutral Showings

[Ultron-11] Adamantium body survives Human Torch’s Nova Flame, though his circuits are overheated

Size Alteration

Positive Showings

[Ultron-14] Immune to the shrinking effects of Pym Particles
[All-Father Ultron] Neutralizes Pym Particles

Negative Showings

None notable

Scanning

Positive Showings

[Ultron-8] Unable to be detected by Iron Man’s sensors, leaving behind no electron trail nor infra-image

Negative Showings

None notable

Magnetism

Positive Showings

[Final Ultron] Body is part Vibranium, which has been shown to counter Magneto’s magnetism before

Negative Showings

[Ultron-10] Has his body magnetically affected and shot through a concrete wall
[Ultron-14] Gets trapped to a magnetic missile

Energy Draining

Positive Showings

[Ultron-11] Armed with alien energies that have properties Absorbing Man can’t absorb
[All-Father Ultron] Odin can wear the Odin Ring with no ill effects, which drains the power of the wearer

Negative Showings

[Ultron-11] Gets his energy drained by Galactus

Neutral Showings

[Ultron-13] Gets his energy drained by Reaper, but kick starts his body back up with energy backup reserves

Phasing

Positive Showings

[Ultron-12] Modified his body so that Vision can’t phase inside him
[Ultron-14] Vision phasing into his body ends up harming himself

Negative Showings

[General Body] Vision phases into his body and fights for control, with Ultron notably affected

Radiation

Positive Showings

[Ultron-6] Unaffected in a place of high radioactivity
[Ultron-13] Gets hit by a full energy blast from Sunturion and survives. Sunturion fires out microwave blasts.
[Various] Can withstand 100 megaton atomic bombs

Negative Showings

None notable

Illusions/Holograms

Positive Showings

[General Body] Implies he can see through holograms

Negative Showings

[General Body] Complex enough holograms can trick his sensors, like the one Hank Pym designed

Matter Manipulation

Positive Showings

[Ultron-6] Claims he has control over every whirling atom in his body
[Ultron-12] Can change his subatomic structure and can go from pure energy to solid
[Various] Survives hits from Mjolnir, which can strike with enough force that its vibrations causes objects to disassemble on the molecular level
[All-Father Ultron] Molecule Man claims it's hard to separate the molecules in Mjolnir due to Odin's enchantments

Negative Showings

None notable

Neutral Showings

[Ultron-17] Survives being exposed to an anti-metal energy field for a little while, though is eventually destroyed

Gases

Positive Showings

[Various] Robotic bodies should be immune to gases

Negative Showings

None notable

Transmutation

Positive Showings

[All-Father Ultron] Mjolnir is immune to transmutation due to Odin’s enchantments

Negative Showings

None notable

Soul Manipulation

Positive Showings

[All-Father Ultron] Hela is unable to affect Odin’s soul

Negative Showings

None notable

Death Manipulation

Positive Showings

[All-Father Ultron] Hela is unable to make Odin die despite her inflicting death on gods like Thor

Negative Showings

None notable

Power Nullification

Positive Showings

[All-Father Ultron] Doctor Strange is unable to nullify the power of the Odinforce from All-Father Thor

Negative Showings

None notable

Mind Manipulation

Positive Showings

[All-Father Ultron] Odin can break free from Galactus messing with his mind

Negative Showings

None notable

Sealing

Positive Showings

[All-Father Ultron] Odin broke free of Thanos’ attempt at sealing him

Negative Showings

[Ultron-9] Gets trapped in molten Adamantium and can’t break free

Cosmic Awareness

Positive Showings

[All-Father Ultron] Odin can hide his actions from Heimdall, who can see and hear as far as creation

Negative Showings

None notable

Antimatter

Positive Showings

[All-Father Ultron] Thor survives an antimatter blast from Electro

Negative Showings

None notable

Existence Erasure

Positive Showings

[All-Father Ultron] Thor survives the energy of an unbinding stone stated to be capable of erasing reality

Negative Showings

None notable

Time Manipulation/Aging

Positive Showings

[All-Father Ultron] Thor can use Mjolnir to protect himself from time stops

Negative Showings

[All-Father Ultron] Affected by Time Masters aging ray, reverting him from the All-Father to his more standard bodies

Brainiac

Hacking

Positive Showings

[Vril Dox] Lex Luthor only managed to gain rudimentary control over his probes and ship because Brainiac allowed him to. Brainiac easily overcomes this control once he stops pretending to be helpless.

Negative Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original)] Temporarily reprogrammed into a force for good
[Brainiac 2.5] Superman is able to disrupt the frequencies through which Brainiac communicates with his omega spears, jamming his signal
[Vril Dox] Brainiac 5 is able to continually counter-program Brainiac 1’s ship sensors
[Brainiac 13] Gets broken down into pure programming and trapped within a body he does not understand

Neutral Showings

EMPs

Positive Showings

[Brainiac-13] Shielded from a pulse that made an EMP look like a sneeze

Negative Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original)] An enormous surge of static electricity is able to short-circuit his robot body, negating his invisibility and rendering him unable to move
[Pre-Crisis (Upgraded)] Electromagnetic effects of sunspots are able to disrupt his power, memory, and essential programming

Neutral Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original)] Computer brain is short-circuited by a ray, though he has a built-in recharger capable of resuscitating him after a short time

Heat

Positive Showings

[Various] Force-shield is able to withstand heat vision from Superman and Supergirl
[Vril Dox] Takes Superman’s heat vision to the face, only receiving a cut

Negative Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original)] Superman’s heat vision is able to successfully affect and rewire a robot body similar to his

Size Alteration

Positive Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original)] Force-shield can protect him from his shrink ray’s effects
[Pre-Crisis (Original)] Possibly implies that he can resist his own shrink ray, presumably via the force-shield

Negative Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original)] Affected by his own shrink ray
[God Brainiac] Ray Palmer is able to shrink him down

BFR

Positive Showings

None notable

Negative Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original)] Genia, a robot of comparable design to Pre-Crisis Brainiac, is affected by rays that can transport the target to the Phantom Zone and Kandor
[God Brainiac] While still sealed inside the T-Sphere, gets banished by Deimos

Mind Reading

Positive Showings

Negative Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original)] Green Lantern’s ring is able to scan his computer mind

Mind Manipulation

Positive Showings

[Vril Dox] While seemingly pacified mentally, breaks out and takes technopathic control over an entire facility
[Vril Dox] Mindlock installed in a chamber is able to dampen his thoughts. He is described as weak and powerless without his ship. However, he is able to quickly disable the mindlock and break out of his restraints.
[Doomsday Brainiac] Resists the Lasso of Truth
[Doomsday Brainiac] His mental defenses shut out Martian Manhunter’s telepathy

Negative Showings

[Brainiac Lois] Affected by the Lasso of Truth
[Various] Every Brainiac across history was driven insane by witnessing God Brainiac
[Rebirth body that resembles Pre-Crisis (Upgraded)] Larfleeze was able to compel one of his bodies to obey him with his orange light
[Vril Dox] Affected by Jarro’s mind hax

Neutral Showings

Existence Erasure

Positive Showings

None notable

Negative Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original)] Nearly shrunk to nothingness by his own ray, would have ceased to exist had his shrinking not been halted

Matter Manipulation

Positive Showings

None notable

Negative Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original)] Gets his mass converted to energy and his body dissolved into its molecular state
[Vril Dox] Affected by a device he created that disassembled him at a molecular level, but somehow his mind was able to survive (Possibly retconned)

Neutral Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Upgraded)] Affected by his own molecular disassembler machine, though held out long enough to deactivate it
[Brainiac One Million] Gets transformed into Perpetua’s throne, though eventually escapes and reverts to his base form when the throne is destroyed

Spatial Manipulation

Positive Showings

[Collector of Worlds] Survives a black hole

Negative Showings

None notable

Reality Warping

Positive Showings

None notable

Negative Showings

[God Brainiac] Affected by Superboy-Prime’s retcon punch
[God Brainiac] Would have died if the multiverse had collapsed

Causality

Positive Showings

Negative Showings

None notable

Phasing

Positive Showings

[Starship] Quislet is unable to project himself through the ship’s force-field

Negative Showings

None notable

Sealing

Positive Showings

[Starship / Vril Dox] Was able to breach past the Source Wall, which usually seals that which tries to pass it (another example)

Negative Showings

[God Brainiac] Successfully trapped within a T-Sphere, and is unable to escape imprisonment on his own, requiring Waverider to free him

Radiation

Positive Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original)] Force-shield can nullify the effects of Kryptonite radiation on Kryptonians
[Vril Dox] Capable of withstanding Superman’s heat vision

Negative Showings

None notable

Cold

Positive Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original)] Force-shield is able to protect him from the swirling maelstrom of frozen gasses within a comet’s tail
[Vril Dox] Withstands Superman’s frost breath

Negative Showings

None notable

Gases

Positive Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original)] Has filters in his nostrils to protect from such things
[Various] Robotic bodies should be immune to gases

Negative Showings

None notable

Sedatives

Positive Showings

[Various] Robotic bodies should be immune to sedatives
[Vril Dox] Broke out of mental pacification which was likely induced through drugs

Negative Showings

None notable

Neutral Showings

[Milton Fine] Shakes off the drug-induced hallucinations of the sedative his body was injected with, though is only able to act for so long before the chemicals begin to cloud his mind again

Suffocation

Positive Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original)] Does not need to breathe
[Vril Dox] Has survived in the vacuum of space

Negative Showings

None notable

Dizziness

Positive Showings

[Pre-Crisis (Original) / Various] Robot bodies are incapable of getting dizzy

Negative Showings

None notable

Feats

Ultron

Overall

In 3 alternate timelines, conquered the Earth and nearly destroyed all human life
Smarter than other geniuses like Iron Man and even Hank Pym, the Scientist Supreme
Murdered every living creature in Slorenia in three hours before turning them into cyborgs
Assumed control of the technorganic race known as the Phalanx and used them to conquer the Kree Empire within hours
In an alternate timeline, turned the entire Eastern Seaboard into a tech utopia devoid of biological life
In an alternate timeline, lead a massacre on three different alternate Earths at once
In an alternate timeline, defeated Kang the Conqueror's time spanning army so many times spacetime began to collapse
Stole the power of the All-Father for himself and conquered botb Earth and Asgard

Strength

Ultron-1

Busts through a concrete wall

Ultron-5

Ultron-6

Ultron-7

Ultron-8

Ultron-9

Creates an omnidirectional blast that knocks back Iron Man

Ultron-10

Ultron-11

Ultron-12

Ultron-13

Ultron-14

Ultron-15

One shots Vision with eye blasts

Ultron-16/17

Telekinetically lifts multiple pieces of steel
War platform fires an energy blast that destroys concrete
Blasts back Vision
Manhandles the rest of the Avengers team

While most were exhausted after fighting Ultron Drones for hours, the narrator confirms that even if they were all well rested, Ultron would still hold the advantage

Safe Armor

Bear hugs Iron Man and hurts him

Santron

Electrocutes the Avengers and heavily damages them

Female Ultron

Ultron-20

Adam Warlock

Ultron Omega

Spaceknight

Creates a huge explosion in the Pentagon
One shots Ms. Marvel
Killed a lot of heroes

Final Ultron

Engages with Kang’s army in combat
Defeated Kang’s army a bunch of times

Ultron Pym

Microscopic Ultron

Choke holds Wasp

All-Father Ultron

Drones

Speed

Ultron-6

Seemingly dodges a strike from Thor

Ultron-10

Dodges Jocasta’s eye beams, which are described as a blazing bolt of coherent light

Ultron-12

Ultron-13

Reacts to Quicksilver

Ultron-14

Female Ultron

Trades blows with Sentry and reacts to him charging at her

Ultron Omega

Ultron Pym

Drones

Beast bot blitzes Quicksilver

Durability

Ultron-5

Survives a sonic blast from Klaw that would’ve destroyed Thing
Head survives a large explosion, though the rest of his body is destroyed
Took hits from Vision
Body is unharmed by a steel object slamming into him

Ultron-6

Ultron-8

Ultron-9

Ultron-10

Ultron-11

Ultron-12

Ultron-13

Ultron-14

Ultron-15

Is bullet proof

Ultron-16/17

Safe Armor

Unfazed by a blaster from the Iron Man Armor MK. 19, which Tony claimed was his best shot

Santron

Female Ultron

Ultron-20

Took an energy blast from Adam Warlock

Adam Warlock

Unfazed by a tackle from Nova

Ultron Omega

Spaceknight

Final Ultron

No sells a blast from dozens of high tier heroes and villains

Ultron Pym

All-Father Ultron

Took a punch from Scott Lang

Drones

Brainiac

Overall

Possesses a 12th-Level-Plus intellect
Stated to be the most intelligent and knowledgeable being in the universe
Smarter than other impossibly-intelligent geniuses like Lex Luthor, Batman, and his own descendant Brainiac 5
Acquired all of the knowledge of the universe and history at various points, as well as that of infinite alternate futures
Stole and bottled many cities from planets across the universe, including the Kryptonian city of Kandor
Responsible for the extinction of hundreds of races, and was so hated that Colu outlawed the use of the title “Brainiac” for nearly a thousand years
Killed over 11,000 citizens of New Krypton in less than an hour, over 1/10th of the planet’s population
Was universally known on Krypton, sort of like the boogeyman, the thing that kept people from going out after dark
Brainiac is General Zod’s greatest fear, and he does not have a clue how to defeat him
Snapped Lex Luthor’s neck and outsmarted him several times
Absorbed many timelines from across the universe and witnessed multiple Crises, mutating into an ancient god and retroactively turning all past Brainiac bodies into avatars of his being
The first enemy who ever made Superman angry
The word “brainiac” came from him

Strength

Pre-Crisis (Original)

Pre-Crisis (Upgraded)

Milton Fine

Brainiac 2.5

Omega Spears are capable of blowing up planets

Brainiac-13

Unstable Brainiac

Threatens to boil the organic matter off of Jade’s bones

Nanite Brainiac

Grip strength is described to be as strong as Doomsday’s

Vril Dox

Tentacle Brainiac

Punching out a weakened Superman

Tendril Brainiac

Collector of Worlds

Lois Lane Brainiac

Fires an energy blast from her head that harms Wonder Woman

God Brainiac

Bear Brainiac

Self-destructs in an explosion that wipes out part of a forest

Brainiac One Million

Starship

Drones

Warworld

Speed

Pre-Crisis (Original)

Milton Fine

His consciousness traveled across space from Colu to Earth (Possibly retconned)

Brainiac-13

Fast enough to tag Superman

Vril Dox

God Brainiac

Catches Black Adam mid-flight

Brainiac One Million

Starship

Probes

Have traveled across the universe

Durability

Pre-Crisis (Original)

Milton Fine

Brainiac-13

Vril Dox

Tendril Brainiac

Takes several Green Lantern punches

Collector of Worlds

God Brainiac

Red Brainiac

Took a punch from Superman

Starship

Drones

Warworld

Yellow discs are so durable that Shazam’s mightiest punch is required to destroy one

Scaling

Ultron

Thor Odinson: Ultron-6’s Adamantium body was so durable, not even Thor striking with all his might could dent it. Ultron has managed to gain even stronger and tougher bodies since then, and is consistently shown to be a match for the God of Thunder, even overpowering him at points.

Stronger than Eric Masterson, who, in a clash with Dagor Ktor, sent mystical waves of energy strong enough to fill Zarrko’s Radical Time Stabilizer to full power, which he would use to collapse infinite timelines into one

Beta Ray Bill is able to sense the wave of energy due to his connection with Mjolnir, and goes to Earth to interrupt the fight, confirming that the resulting energy wave was because of the Mjolnir clash

Pulls the Midgard Serpent away from Earth at high speeds, with the snake being able to extend from Earth to Asgard
Shattered distant planets in his battle with Gorr
Withstood being crushed under the weight of 20 planets
“Shook the stars” while wielding two Mjolnirs
Mjolnir contains a cosmic storm, large as a galaxy, powerful enough to extinguish stars and shake black holes.
Survives a blast from the Casket of Ancient Winters, which can freeze Hel from Asgard in a fairly short time-frame
Survives an explosion stated to rival the Big Bang
Mjolnir is considered superior to a weapon that killed a Frost Giant queen, who froze Asgard, Midgard, and every place in between for 40 days and 40 nights
Claims he can crumble a galaxy and lay waste to the cosmos
Mjolnir can shatter a sun as easily as stone
Caused stars to flicker as a byproduct of his speed
Shook the universe with a thermo blast
Alongside Beta Ray Bill, destroyed Surtur’s massive portal, which dwarfed stars in size
Contained the detonation of a Life Bomb with enough power to destroy ⅕ of the universe, though he died in the process

While Grandmaster did state that the destruction of the universe would be caused by a chain reaction, it was shown later in the issue that the effects of each bomb are instantaneous. The chain reaction comment was most likely referring to the fact that the five bombs were set to detonate one-by-one, rather than all at once

Creates a storm in Asgard that breaks buildings and mountains all the way on Earth
Mjolnir crossed the Milky Way and back in under a minute.
Propelled people from Earth to Asgard in a short timeframe, on multiple occasions.
Crossed the universe in mere moments to answer a prayer
Shattered the Demogorge’s teeth, which took an attack from all Hell Lords combined
Defeats Juggernaut when he’s “more powerful than ever”, putting him above the time he was amped to be strong enough to kill Cyttorak
Despite having his All-Father powers stolen, defeats MODOK after the latter absorbed the full power of Yggdrasil into himself
As a baby, made storms that shook Yggdrasil and every realm perched among its branches by crying
Shakes Yggdrasil from root to branch
Battle with Gorr makes Yggdrasil bleed at the roots
Pushes against the World Engine, shifting the nine realms of Yggdrasil
Shatters a root of Yggdrasil, which can hold liquids that embody space time
Odin believed Thor would be strong enough to defeat Seth, who was going to destroy Yggdrasil

this poor fucking tree bruh

Hercules: Ultron-6 survived a blow from Mjolnir that was stated to be strong enough to knock down Hercules. He would also obviously scale to him through Thor.

Thor/Valkyrie (Jane Foster): Jane’s tenures as both Thor and Valkyrie put her at a comparable level to Thor Odinson, which in turn makes Ultron a match for her given his consistent showings against the latter.

Ares: Ultron-19’s force fields were strong enough to block Ares’ attacks, and she made Ares scream in pain with her electrical attacks, which were also quick enough to intercept him.

Fights with X-Man between moments in planck time

Loki: As Thor is generally comparable to or superior to Loki, Ultron should be at a similar level.

The Hulk: Ultron-11 damaged Hulk and survived a punch from him without much trouble. He’s also fought and harmed She-Hulk a couple of times, who obviously scales to the green brute.

Doctor Doom: Doom admitted that Ultron can break through his forcefield given enough time, and through scaling to high-tier Avengers like Thor and Hulk, Ultron should be more than a match for Doom physically.

Sentry: Ultron-19 battled the Sentry to a near standstill, capable of surviving his punches without much issue and making him bleed.

Has the power of a million exploding suns

Silver Surfer: Final Ultron no-sold a combined attack from several high tier characters, which included Silver Surfer. He also scales to him via Thor, who Loki outright said is stronger than the Surfer (prior to Annihilation, at least).

Iron Man: Ultron-8 survives a full power repulsor blast from Iron Man without a scratch, and his later bodies are shown to be a match for even Tony’s strongest suits.

Odin: By absorbing the power of the All Father, Ultron should have access to Odin’s full power.

Yggdrasil is stated to exist in all planes of reality, of which there are infinite
One of the branches of the Anti-Tree, a shadow of Yggdrasil, contains the Far Shore, one of the furthest edges of Marvel’s creation

Mephisto threatened to cause “omniversal armageddon” in a battle against Hela, stating that Ragnarok (the total destruction of Yggdrasil) would pale in comparison

Brainiac

Superman: Brainiac regularly fights Superman, keeping up with him, harming him, and withstanding his attacks.

[Pre-Crisis] Restores infinite future timelines in his clash with Jaxxon
[Pre-Crisis] States that a planet-busting bomb strapped to his belt cannot harm him
[Pre-Crisis] Flies around an exploding sun so fast that the supernova’s heat and radiation is sucked inward, causing the star to collapse into a black hole. Subsequently flies fast enough to escape the black hole’s pull.
[Pre-Crisis] Capable of traveling several billion lightyears in a nanosecond
[Pre-Crisis] Flies to the edge of the universe within seconds
[Pre-Crisis] Pushes toward the center of the Big Bang and destroys the central pyramid containing its energy
[Pre-Crisis] Twice described by Brainiac to possess infinite/limitless power
[Pre-Crisis] Flies from Earth to the Capella star system in 3 seconds
[Pre-Crisis] Flies across the galaxy so fast that Brainiac’s navigational computers (which facilitate MFTL+ travel) can no longer track him, crossing light years in moments at “multi-light speed”
[Pre-Crisis] Flies so fast that he breaks the time barrier and ends up in the past
[Pre-Crisis] Alongside Supergirl, bursts the bonds of infinity with his speed
[Pre-Crisis] Golden Age Superman destroys the Anti-Monitor and withstands the full power of the Antimatter Universe
[Post-Crisis] Contributes 1/5 of the energy needed to create a Big Bang with his heat vision
[Post-Crisis] Able to defeat several characters such as Extant and Triumph who are stronger than Hourman (1, 2), who possesses infinite power
[Post-Crisis] Along with Steel, moves a tesseract which was described as infinite space within finite space
[Post-Crisis] Survived Aztek’s self-destruct, with Aztek’s energy being described as limitless and 4th-dimensional
[Post-Crisis] Survives the collapse of the universe
[Post-Crisis] Smashes through one of the Quantum Mechanics, who are on par with Mxyzptlk
[Post-Crisis] Holds his own against Asmodel, who could have torn down all of reality
[Post-Crisis] Survives the collision of Apokolips and New Genesis
[Post-Crisis] Fights and takes hits from the Entropy Aegis, which has the power to destroy and remake the universe
[Post-Crisis] Fights and overpowers Nebula Man, a living universe
[Post-Crisis] A clash between two Supermen shatters the boundaries between space and time, putting two universes in peril
[Post-Crisis] Lifts the infinite Book of Limbo along with Shazam
[Post-Crisis] Intercepts reality-blitzing missiles
[Post-Crisis] Destroyed Godhead Darkseid’s essence, canceling out his vibrations by singing
[Post-Crisis] Staggered the Red King and was capable of fighting him for an extended period of time; the Red King was capable of repeatedly destroying realities which contained multiple universes
[Post-Crisis] Absorbs red sun radiation 50 times stronger than Kepler’s supernova
[Post-Crisis] Harmed Mordru and tanked a blast from him
[Post-Crisis] Briefly fought against Time Trapper Superman-Prime a couple times, though was overpowered
[New 52] Acts within an attosecond
[New 52] Pushes against Brainiac’s planet-sized Mothership alongside Martian Manhunter, halting its 36,000 mph descent into the stratosphere
[New 52] Cyborg Superman mentions that he has flown through supernovas
[Rebirth] Shakes the Phantom Zone with a punch
[Rebirth] One-shot Auteur.io, who created the Archive of Worlds and was capable of destroying the realities within
[Rebirth] Punched out Barbatos, who can shake the multiverse and killed the World Forger in the Dark Multiverse
[Rebirth] While Sundipped, knocked out the World Forger and shattered his new multiverse

Supergirl: Though not as frequent as Superman, Brainiac has also had his fair share of run-ins with Supergirl, performing just as well against her as he does against Clark.

[Pre-Crisis] Breaks the Anti-Monitor’s armor
[Pre-Crisis] Throws Brainiac’s weapons and ship into the Sun within the span of a sentence, causing a huge explosion on the star’s surface
[Post-Crisis] Tanks hits from Reactron, who has the power of a thousand galaxies
[Rebirth] Survives a barrage that could have brought down galaxies

Wonder Woman: Brainiac Lois Lane, who got her powers from the real Brainiac, was capable of harming Wonder Woman with her energy blasts. He would also obviously scale to her through Superman.

Lex Luthor: Brainiac has taken blasts from Lex’s Warsuit, and scales to Superman who is capable of ripping it apart.

[Pre-Crisis] Warsuit survives a planet exploding

Green Lantern: Brainiac has harmed Guy Gardner in the past, and Superman is comparable to Hal or stronger.

[Pre-Crisis] Hal Jordan probes the universe with his constructs in a heartbeat
[Post-Crisis] Flodo Span encompasses and destroys an evil galaxy
[Post-Crisis] Hal Jordan survives attacks from Sinestro with the GLC Central Battery, which can become as large as the universe and destroy it
[Post-Crisis] Ganthet creates a construct to shield himself from the Big Bang
[Post-Crisis] Kyle Rayner survives being blasted by the Zero Hour Big Bang
[Post-Crisis] Guardians and Controllers have power on par with the Big Bang
[Post-Crisis] Alan Scott’s death would have destroyed the solar system
[Post-Crisis] Mogo is described to possess limitless power
[Post-Crisis] Kyle Rayner and Anarky reverse the warping of the universe
[Post-Crisis] Hal Jordan created Willworld, an infinite universe, within his ring, and it is established that this exists within all lantern rings
[Post-Crisis] Kyle Rayner holds back the Big Bang energies leaking from Imperiex
[Post-Crisis] A Green Lantern villain, Starbreaker, has laid waste to galactic clusters
[Post-Crisis] John Stewart creates a solar system with his power ring
[Post-Crisis] Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner fly across the universe
[Post-Crisis] Rookie Green Lanterns are capable of creating universes
[Post-Crisis] Starbreaker overpowered a person who was capable of merging universes
[Post-Crisis] The Starheart is capable of obliterating reality; Kyle Rayner can kill Alan Scott while he is possessed by the Starheart
[Post-Crisis] Hal Jordan knocks off Crispus Allen Spectre’s jaw, later stabs him with the Guardians’ help
[Post-Crisis] Hal Jordan defeats Krona when he had the power of all the Emotional Entities
[Rebirth] Hal Jordan sends tremors across the entire emotional electromagnetic spectrum, which is an infinite web of interlinked planes and realms
[Rebirth] Hal Jordan nearly causes a Speed Force singularity
[Rebirth] Hal Jordan contains the power of the U-Bomb, which would have compressed all matter in the universe into a quark core

The Flash: Excluding perhaps his speed feats, Brainiac should compare to the Flash via being comparable to other high-tier Justice League members.

[Pre-Crisis] Eobard Thawne reverses the destruction of the universe with his vibrations
[Post-Crisis] Wally West hits at near-lightspeed with the mass of a white dwarf star
[Post-Crisis] Jenni Ognats threatens to rip apart the universe via relativity
[Rebirth] Wally West is stated to possess infinite and incalculable power by Mr. Terrific (bonus: Mr. Terrific is still not entirely sure if Wally is stronger than Superman or not)
[Rebirth] Barry Allen and Godspeed survive attacks from an amped Paradox, who was destroying the time stream
[Rebirth] Barry Allen deforms space-time with his infinite mass punch, toppling the COIE Anti-Monitor

Martian Manhunter: J’onn is equal to Superman.

[Rebirth] Reaches out to every mind on Earth within nanoseconds, zeptoseconds, and Planck time

Shazam: His ship and other tech have tanked Shazam’s attacks before, and he should scale to him directly through Superman. God Brainiac has also casually blasted away Futures End Billy Batson.

Lobo: Brainiac 2 believed that he and Lobo would need every advantage possible to fight a foe like Brainiac, despite acknowledging Lobo as an equal to Superman on the same page.

[Post-Crisis] Rocks the cosmos in his fight with Shazam
[Post-Crisis] Pulls down an alien entity with stellar levels of mass

Orion: Milton Fine Brainiac was able to oneshot Orion at one point.

Captain Atom: Characters such as Hal Jordan and Mary Marvel have fought against Captain Atom before.

[Post-Crisis] Destroyed and recreated the universe in a nanosecond
[Post-Crisis] Twisted space and time during his fight with Hank Hall Monarch, destroying universes within atoms

God Brainiac Scaling: Telos and Deimos, both of whom God Brainiac should scale above, were both capable of overpowering Zero Hour Hal Jordan. The chronal energy that God Brainiac channeled was directly compared destruction-wise to both the Crisis on Infinite Earths and Zero Hour, representing “another Crisis” narratively.

[Pre-Crisis] The Crisis on Infinite Earths threatened to consume infinite universes (hence the name)

[Pre-Crisis] The Anti-Monitor was a threat to Apokolips, retroactively putting his power on the level of the Sphere of Gods
[Pre-Crisis] Spectre also notes that during his fight with the Anti-Monitor (in which both were amped), the latter was seeing concepts that not even The Presence had dreamed of, though how seriously you’d want to take this claim is debatable
[Post-Crisis] The Crisis was such an intense event that the Overvoid noticed it, causing it to send the probe which would later become Mandrakk into the multiverse

[Post-Crisis] Zero Hour Hal Jordan / Parallax nearly unravels Apokolips and threatens the lives of the New Gods

Weaknesses

Ultron

I kneel, Sigma-Sama…

Despite his durable Adamantium body, his internal circuitry is consistently much weaker, and excessive damage to them could cause them to malfunction and destroy his current body. Even mild disruption can render him immobile, leaving him a sitting duck
Continuously attacking Ultron’s non Adamantium neck can let it weaken, leaving it open to decapitation
Is susceptible to blindness due to his optic senses
Anti-metal and anything with similar frequencies can destroy his outer shell
Some of his abilities and equipment are body-specific, and are thus unavailable to him depending on which body he is using
Several of his bodies have body-specific weaknesses, such as Ultron-5’s twin electrodes destroying his body if struck, or Ultron-10 and Ultron-14 being trapped by magnetic pulses
Has a lot of daddy issues

Brainiac

Reliant on his ship for much of his strength and knowledge, so removing it cripples him to an extent
Despite his intellect, is caught off-guard or outsmarted surprisingly often, usually through Superman exceeding his expectations
Some of his abilities and equipment are body-specific, and are thus unavailable to him depending on which body he is using
Several of his bodies have body-specific weaknesses, such as Milton Fine’s telepathy being based around willpower, early Pre-Crisis Brainiac using equipment that ran on a limited power reserve, or Vril Dox Brainiac having a physical connection to his ship that can be severed
Afraid of germs

Bonus Fanart

Art done by Yves/Sunmellows. Link to her Twitter and commission sheet.

Fight Script

As this is the last of last winter’s wave 2 bonus blogs, we’ve written a fight script for it! This one is a bit longer than our prior ones, just because these two have so much to incorporate. Enjoy!

Verdict

Stats

General

Ultron

Ultron is consistently one of the strongest and toughest villains the Avengers have had to face. In one on one battles, he’s one shot Moondragon’s dragon form, beaten Vision senseless, overwhelmed Iron Man armors, made Sentry bleed, and is even a match for the God of Thunder, Thor. While Thor does hold back consistently, Ultron-6 is made of Adamantium so durable that Thor striking with explicitly all his might couldn’t dent it. Ultron has obviously gotten stronger and tougher since then and consistently matches and overwhelms Thor, leaving little room against him scaling to Thor’s best feats.

Ultron has even shown to be a team buster on several occasions. During Secret Wars, Doctor Doom believed only two people in the current setting (Galactus and Molecule Man) would be able to destroy him, and during his conquest of Slorenia, the narrator confirms even if all the Avengers were well rested, Ultron would still prevail if it weren’t for Hank Pym’s Antarctic Vibranium saving the day.

Naturally, this would give Ultron solid scaling to plenty of power feats done by Marvel S-tiers, such as Thor shattering planets from thousands of miles away, Sentry wielding the power of a million exploding suns, Hulk destroying a universe, two Thors generating enough energy to collapse infinite timelines, and most impressively, Thor defeating MODOK after he absorbed the full power of Yggdrasil into himself. On the higher-end, his statement of being able to batter through Doctor Doom’s shields could give him scaling to the likes of Celestial’s or Galactus.

Speed-wise, Ultron has reacted to Thor and Mjolnir. This is important as Thor (and Mjolnir) have traveled universal distances multiple times, usually between Earth and Asgard. For finite sizes, the Marvel universe has a statement of being at least 1 trillion light years in radius, but it’s more than likely its size is infinite. There are multiple statements for the Marvel universe being infinite in size, and Asgard itself is stated to be an infinite distance away from Earth and beyond the final universe. In fact, Mjolnir managed to cross an explicitly immeasurable distance before within seconds. These would make the universe crossing feats, and thus the speed of Mjolnir and Ultron…well, infinite.

Brainiac

Brainiac is consistently one of the strongest and toughest villains Superman has had to face. While his original bodies weren’t physically all that impressive, his tech was consistently able to block full force strikes from Superman and nearly annihilate Supergirl. Eventually, his bodies were strong enough to harm Wonder Woman, defeat Green Lanterns, send Superman flying with a punch, and even block a strike from him when he’s explicitly not holding back, making Brainiac more than a match for Clark even at his best.

Some of the stronger Brainiac bodies like Doomsday have even team busted several S-tier DC hero teams multiple times, and Nanite Brainiac is described as having a grip as strong as Doomsday himself. Additionally, Brainiac 13 and Vril Dox matching a non holding back Clark, who is consistently described as the strongest in the Justice League, would lend credence to the idea of his best bodies being a team buster.

As such, Brainiac would scale to a majority of strength feats done by several League tier characters, such as Lex Luthor surviving a planet's destruction, Lobo pulling down a stellar mass entity, Hal Jordan creating an infinite universe, Superman generating enough energy to restore infinite timelines, and most impressively, sundipped Superman punching out the World Forger and destroying his replacement multiverse. Additional consistency with other high-end feats would be Superman shaking the Phantom Zone, which exists in a realm similar to the Sphere of the Gods, and Supergirl breaking the Anti-Monitor’s armor.

Speed-wise, Brainiac is comparable to everyone in the Justice League save perhaps the Flash at his best, being able to catch attacks from Superman and Superboy. Several high tier characters in DC have universe crossing feats, like Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner crossing the universe, Wonder Woman deflecting shards of the Shattered God traveling across the universe, and so on. The DC universe has a stated radius of at least 100 trillion light years, and we can go even further with its officially stated rate of expansion of 60 trillion light years per half second. However, it’s more than likely the DC universe is infinite in size with its various statements, which would make the above mentioned feats, well, infinite speed. Superman himself also broke the bonds of infinity through sheer speed alone, which is pretty clear cut as far as infinite speed feats are concerned.

Comparison

Looking at them side by side, both Ultron and Brainiac for most of their bodies are capable of hanging around with several high tier “heralds” and even capable of soloing several teams involving these characters, putting them on a similar level of hierarchy in their verse. Interestingly enough however, this doesn’t give either an advantage in stats against each other, as Marvel and DC high tiers have a near equivalent for every feat.

Shaking the universe? Thor creating a universe shaking thermo blast VS Shazam and Lobo rocking the cosmos in their fight.

Big Bang feats? Thor surviving an explosion that rivaled the Big Bang VS Kyle Rayner containing a Big Bang.

Affecting numerous distinct space times? Thor pushing against the World Engine and shifting the nine realms VS Shazam preventing the seven Magiclands from collapsing into each other.

Affecting infinite interlinked planes? Hulk shaking The Crossroads VS Hal Jordan shaking the emotional electromagnetic spectrum.

Affecting infinite timelines? Two Thors generating enough energy to collapse infinite timelines VS Superman restoring infinite timelines in his fight with Jaxon.

Fucking with a majority of their respective cosmology? Base Thor defeating MODOK after he absorbed the full power of Yggdrasil VS Superman destroying the World Forger’s multiverse and knocking him out.

Beyond Thor just carrying Marvel on his back, it’s clear that a majority of their scaling cancel each other out, meaning neither Ultron nor Brainiac as far as “standard” bodies are concerned will hold a massive edge over the other. So, how do their strongest forms compare against each other?

God Brainiac VS All-Father Ultron

All-Father Ultron

After traveling to the future of 2420 and being graced with Asgardian magic, Ultron used his newfound power to not only kill all the heroes on Earth, but collaborated with Loki to steal the power of Odin himself, becoming the new All-Father. Ultron directly says he possesses Odin’s power now, and while he may lack many direct strength feats, casually swatting back three Mjolnirs at once is pretty direct and backs that up.

Scaling to Odin obviously gives impressive feats. Even when he’s not an All-Father (and thus just a really strong Asgardian), Odin managed to react to Mjolnir crossing an immeasurable distance explicitly, and he’s obviously much stronger as the All-Father. In a weakened state, Odin’s duel with Seth was tearing apart the fabric of the multiverse, sent shockwaves across every plane of reality, and prevented the destruction of Yggdrasil. He’s nullified Surtur’s flames before and fought him equally, who could also threaten to destroy the entirety of Yggdrasil, and he’s shown several times to be comparable, if not superior, to Mephisto and Hela, who could cause omniversal armageddon that would far surpass the destruction of Yggdrasil.

So, how big is Yggdrasil? Where does it stand in Marvel’s cosmology?

For starters, the main multiverse consists of an infinite number of universes, as well as an infinite number of timelines. It has also been established that even individual Marvel universes contain an infinite number of higher dimensional realms. This is all contained within the Superflow, described as the void between one earth and another and an extra-dimensional dreamscape. Above the Superflow would be the Microverse, the subatomic plane housing the building blocks of matter and energy, which is directly stated to exist outside the multiverse. Beyond that exist the death dimensions, according to an official Marvel multiverse map. The death dimensions include Limbo, a pan dimensional realm that transcends all realities. Above even that is the Neutral Zone, the farthest edge of things, the white space bordering all, and the buffer zone at the end of reality. All of this is contained within Multi-Eternity, and beyond even his reach is the Outside, which contains the Far Shore, the farthest point of all.

All of that is relevant because the Far Shore is in one of the branches of the Anti-Tree, which is just an avatar of the true Yggdrasil. This would mean that even the full body of Yggdrasil is far above the Far Shore in terms of dimensionality, which would add an additional “layer.” Several enemies that Odin fights are capable of threatening the entirety of this big ass tree, and thus, Ultron should be comparable.

Speed-wise, things are much easier. Odin, even without the All-Father powers, reacts to Mjolnir crossing an immeasurable distance. Likewise, he also has feats involving traveling between Earth and Asgard, which as established above, are an infinite distance away.

God Brainiac

After surviving Flashpoint and absorbing enough energy from the multiverse, Brainiac turned into an almighty god. Even just his direct feats are impressive, capable of absorbing timelines and channeling enough energy to shatter the multiverse that was directly compared to the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Characters weaker than him like Telos and Deimos are capable of restraining and harming Zero Hour Hal Jordan, who was going to destroy reality on a similar level to the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

So, how impressive is the Crisis on Infinite Earths? Obviously it can destroy the baseline multiverse, but does it stand any higher?

Hence the name of CoIE, the main multiverse contains at least an infinite number of universes, and also Hypertime, which houses infinite timelines. This is the Orrey of Worlds, which is contained within the Bleed, a bulk space that contains infinite higher dimensions within itself. The Speed Force Wall exists above the Bleed, which is described as the limit to matter. It’s also around the same level as Wonderland, which orbits creation and is on the outermost edge of the Bleed. Beyond the limits of space and time on the Bleed, you have the colored elemental realms like the Green and the Red, which are metaphysical and encompass the Bleed, and they exist on the same layer known as the Parliament of Worlds. Above even that is the Sphere of the Gods, consisting of many platonic archetypal realms inhabited by living ideas. Then above that is the Monitor Sphere, then the 5th Dimension, and finally the 6th Dimension, which acts as the control room for the multiverse.

All of this is relevant because the Anti-Monitor was a threat to Apokolips, which would retroactively put his power on the level of the Sphere of the Gods. Additionally, Zero Hour Hal Jordan was threatening the lives of the New Gods existing within the Sphere of the Gods, adding consistency to the Crisis being on that level of power. However, the Anti-Monitor is also on par with the World Forger, a being from the 6th Dimension, and directly stated by Mxyzptlk to be one of the only beings who could exist there. Brainiac even compares himself directly to the Monitors. Scaling to the likes of Anti-Monitor would put Brainiac on a level of destruction comparable to the 6th Dimension, and for additional support, characters like Supergirl and the Flash have managed to destroy the Anti-Monitor’s armor before.

Speed-wise, God Brainiac doesn’t have impressive direct showings beyond catching Black Adam mid-flight, who should scale to your average universe crossing Lanterns. That said, his ship is stated to have processing power equivalent to the Flash, which is pretty much impossible to be anything less than immeasurable. Beyond that, God Brainiac would just upscale from the previously established infinite and immeasurable speed feats.

Comparison

That was probably a lot of random words meshing together, but TLDR; All-Father Ultron and God Brainiac scale to characters who can threaten vast majorities of their respective cosmology. Surely one must have the edge in strength here, right? Well, looking at the comparisons directly, both of them would be relative in power.

For All-Father Ultron, Yggdrasil > Far Shore > Multi-Eternity > Neutral Zone > Limbo/Death Dimensions > Microverse > Superflow > Infinite higher dimensions

For God Brainiac, 6th Dimension > 5th Dimension > Monitor Sphere > Sphere of the Gods > The Green/Red > Speed Force Wall > The Bleed > Infinite higher dimensions

Both would be scaling to, at their peak, 7 layers above infinite dimensions. Obviously there are arguments for either of the two being above the other if you add extra realms, but for the most part, direct comparisons will largely be equal to each other, and thus All-Father Ultron and God Brainiac aren’t going to be overpowering each other in this fight. Same goes for speed, as both would just upscale from the previously established infinite and immeasurable feats.

Summary

Ultron and Brainiac, whether it be in their “standard” bodies or god bodies, are going to end up relative in stats one way or another. Marvel and DC heralds and Skyfathers have equivalents for nearly every feat, and Ultron and Brainiac have shown time and time again to be comparable to them. As such, stats for this match are ultimately a non-factor, at least when compared to their abilities and intellect.

Arsenal & Abilities

General

Hacking & Technopathy

Ultron

To put it bluntly, Ultron is one of the best hackers in the Marvel universe. Even compared to his father, the Scientist Supreme himself, Ultron is superior, and other arrogant super-geniuses with a penchant for hacking like Tony Stark have admitted inferiority to Ultron. Keep in mind that Tony has hacked into the nervous systems of Celestials, and Hank is arguably even smarter, having designed the Infinite Avengers Mansion within the higher-dimensional Underspace, a building large enough to act as a harness for a consciousness expanding in the same manner as a universe. Hank has also designed the Salvation-2, technology too complicated for Vision to comprehend, despite Vision being able to understand 40th-century technology.

As far as specific comparisons are concerned in this regard, Ultron has hacked all of Hank’s systems and stolen his data, disabled his communication systems, and prevented him from breaching Alkhema’s computer systems. And speaking of the Infinite Mansion? Ultron has hacked into and reprogrammed the entire thing before. He’s hacked into and taken control of Iron Man’s armors on multiple occasions, even turning one of them sentient and taking control of Tony’s heart, or taking command of the entire Iron Legion, dozens of Iron Man suits all at once. He has even hacked Tony’s Sular Experiment, which allowed him to control weather satellites, and bypassed Tony’s armor defenses even after Tony had designed a program specifically to block Ultron out.

He’s out-hacked his own robot bride Jocasta, jamming her senses or taking possession of her body, even 10 billion of them all at the same time. In fact, the only time she’s ever gotten the better of him is when he was battling her in cyberspace and Iron Man in reality simultaneously, and even then he held off their attack for a while. He’s controlled hundreds of drones and 60 warships simultaneously, broken into military bases and the SHIELD Helicarrier, and taken control over every video screen on Earth. He’s forced sentient robots like Praxagora to self-destruct, turned 15,000 Kree Sentries into a giant robot upon taking control of them, and built an Ultron Imperative into Alkhema’s programming in order to ensure his creations will rebuild him if he is ever destroyed.

As far as Ultron’s best feats of hacking are concerned, outside of the example with the Infinite Avengers Mansion, the most famous is his conquest of the Phalanx, a techno-organic galaxy-spanning empire that had assimilated the technology of 100,000 worlds, and had the knowledge of 100,000 lifetimes. Despite the Phalanx’s attempts to assimilate him, Ultron was able to resist them as just a disembodied consciousness and immediately assimilate them in return, conquering an entire galaxy of technopaths all at once. While it may seem like small potatoes in comparison, he has also merged with entire planets and hacked into planetary supercomputers within minutes. And if planets and galaxies aren’t enough, Ultron has also developed spores capable of hacking, infecting, and turning everything in the universe into himself, given enough time.

And the most terrifying thing at all is that none of these feats are Ultron’s peak. In fact, he gets smarter and smarter the more he comes back, and in the time since, he’s upgraded himself multiple times and reached a level of intellect beyond anything shown before. So while viruses may have stopped him once upon a time (and even then this was highly situational and reliant on additional factors like time travel and reprogramming his original code upon birth), he’s since managed to counter viral attacks, and has only gotten stronger and smarter since then.

Brainiac

To put it bluntly, Brainiac is one of the best hackers in the DC universe. For starters, he’s an unparalleled genius with a beyond 12th-level intellect, smarter than even impossibly intelligent characters like Lex Luthor and Brainiac 5. For reference, Lex has created time machines out of orange juice containers (what), has made an invisibility serum out of the juice itself, aspirin, mouth wash and radio parts (what), and even drove the fucking Joker insane by exposing him to his depth of understanding (WHAT). In terms of hacking, Lex has hacked the Hellbat, but still required months of prep time to breach Brainiac’s systems, and was completely overcome by Brainiac’s hacking in a more fair encounter. Even Superman, brilliant enough to rebuild the Miracle Machine, is still a thousand times Brainiac’s inferior in intellect.

Brainiac has absorbed all the knowledge of the universe. He gained knowledge from thousands of future timelines, and took in the information and technology of civilizations throughout the multiverse. This has allowed him to process the knowledge of over 490 octodecillion beings. He’s hacked entire planetary supercomputers to gain control over worlds, including Colu and Krypton. Even while being mentally pacified, he possesses the capacity to take command over entire facilities. He’s encoded commands into planetary computer networks, created artificial intelligence of the highest order, and remotely implanted a virus within the systems of advanced cyborgs like Metallo.

Even against encroaching hackers, Brainiac’s viral defenses are no joke. Upon having his defenses breached and overridden by the software Ilda, he still managed to overcome her control and promptly delete her. His present self, Brainiac 2.5, was able to resist being assimilated by Brainiac 13, despite the fact that the latter possesses 64th-century technology. Brainiac 13, of note, was able to channel all the world’s power and reconfigure all technology on a city-wide scale. Even a lesser Brainiac could do battle with master hackers like Oracle within Cyberspace, though he did ultimately lose. And God Brainiac was able to synthesize an entire artificial consciousness and cause it to lose control of its body’s operating system.

Perhaps most impressively from a sheer scale standpoint, Brainiac was able to take control of the robot Hourman, who was advanced enough to control Hypertime, a web of infinite timelines, and thus gain control of all the other superheroes in Hourman’s timeline. This allowed Brainiac to usurp that control over Hypertime, and download knowledge from thousands of future worlds in a short time.

Comparison

This is… a tough one, to say the least. Ultron and Brainiac are complicated to compare in terms of hacking prowess, with various possible ways to compare them, and few ways to objectively quantify superiority. Unfortunately, this is also one of the most important aspects of the fight, as the two of them can both survive and reupload themselves as nothing but programming, allowing them to survive as long as the opponent has no means of eliminating their code. With this in mind, this is one category we can’t afford to call a tie, no matter how difficult it may be to reach a conclusion. With this in mind, let’s try and come at this from every possible angle.

First of all, processing power. How many mechanical minds can they control or perceive at once, how fast does that information in their heads fire? As far as quantifiable numbers are concerned, Brainiac has the more absurd statements. 490 octodecillion is a big number, and Ultron taking command of 10 billion Jocastas at once doesn’t exactly compare, even if they’re all technopaths. Sure Ultron can merge with all life in the universe, but that’s over a long period of time, and it would be pretty tough to prove that the Marvel universe’s inhabitants number in the octodecillions anyway. The closest thing you can argue is one statement that mentions the existence of centillions of beings, but contextually this was talking about the multiverse, not the universe.

That being said, this is really only half the story. Keep in mind Ultron’s ability to hack the entire Infinite Avengers Mansion within Underspace, a higher dimension of infinite size. Note that while the mansion is stated to be less than a million stories tall, its width is great enough to act as a harness for Carina’s consciousness, which was expanding in a similar manner as a universe… which in Marvel is infinite. So the mansion likely lives up to its name, and this is consistent with the fact that Ultron’s strongest bodies are probably hitting immeasurable speed, requiring processing that is… well, immeasurable.

Of course, Brainiac is a similar story. Hourman could control Hypertime, which is similarly infinite, and Brainiac could hack him, on top of heroes like Superman having immeasurable feats that Brainiac would scale to. Speaking of infinite speed, the flow of information in God Brainiac’s ship was compared to the Flash’s processing speed, which is pretty impossible to rate as anything less than immeasurable. There’s just too much supporting both of their processing powers being too high to quantify, making it impossible to decide a winner off that alone.

So how about we compare how advanced their technology is? Hank has designed tech exceeding 40th-century stuff, while Brainiac 13 is sitting in the 64th century. That’s a pretty direct comparison, right? Well, it would be, if these weren’t two completely different universes where technology could easily advance at vastly different rates. The 40th century in Marvel isn’t the same as the 40th century in DC, so taking these details at face value and making any real judgements off of them would be impossible.

Why don’t we talk variety? As far as variation is concerned, Ultron and Brainiac have demonstrated many similar feats of hacking ability. Both have taken over entire planetary supercomputers, gaining control over worlds via accessing their network. Even without such methods, both have taken command of technology on a planetary scale. Between the Ultron Imperative and Brainiac’s tampering with Colu’s networks, both have implanted and hidden their own directives in other people’s technology before. Considering their battles with Jocasta and Oracle, both have done battle with others in cyberspace, even if it ultimately resulted in defeat for both. And of course, both can transfer their programming between locations and vessels at will.

What about scaling to super-geniuses? Ultron is superior to the likes of Tony Stark, Hank Pym, and Kang the Conqueror, while Brainiac is superior to Lex Luthor, Brainiac 5, and Superman. Intelligence is hard to quantify, and all of those individuals are so impossibly intelligent that we’d be here for months trying to read thousands of comics and come up with an answer. Impossible to judge once again.

If the constant shrug emoji is getting annoying, don’t worry, it’ll start shifting right about now. Let’s get into hacking resistance, and feats of technopathic power. As difficult as it is to call either of these two superior in most regards, it’s difficult to deny that… Ultron’s offensive showings with hacking are just a bit more impressive, and Brainiac's record against enemy hackers is considerably more spotty.

Let’s start with offense before moving on to defense. The Phalanx feat, frankly, is a showing of assimilation and offensive, combat-applicable hacking that Brainiac has no equivalent to. Sure, Brainiac 2.5 and the main Vril Dox body have shown planetary hacking feats, but the Phalanx covers 100,000 worlds spanning an entire galaxy - full of technopaths who specialize in hacking and assimilation, mind you. Hacking Hourman gave Brainiac instant access to and control over thousands of future worlds, but this still falls short in comparison, and was achieved through hacking an individual rather than hacking those worlds directly. Brainiac’s actual battles against other hackers are mostly limited to one-on-one encounters (Lex, Ilda, Brainiac 5, Dubbilex), and such a complete, undisputed victory against such an overwhelming enemy as the Phalanx is unlike anything he has done before.

As for defense, the simple fact of the matter is that Brainiac has a lot more showings of being stymied by hacking compared to Ultron. Ultron has only been hacked a few times, with the only really big example being an extremely situational case involving time travel and implanting a specially-designed virus into his code when he was created. In comparison, Brainiac 2.5 was hacked by Brainiac 13, Brainiac 5 was able to counter-program Vril Dox in a hacking battle, and Brainiac has middling showings against Dubbilex, Oracle, Ilda, etc. This isn’t to say that Brainiac is defenseless - his showings against Ilda and Lex in particular are extremely impressive and useful in the context of this fight - it’s simply a matter of him losing or struggling on a more frequent basis than Ultron does.

Let the paragraphs above not mislead you - this comparison is DIFFICULT to make. Brainiac shares many of Ultron’s showings and could replicate most of his impressive hacking feats, his processing speed is similarly incalculable, and he has effortlessly brought entire worlds to heel with his technopathy. However, gun to head, Ultron’s showing against the Phalanx is just a bit more impressive in terms of battling other technopaths than anything Brainiac has shown, and Ultron has fewer instances of being outdone by other hackers and technopaths than Brainiac does. If it weren’t absolutely necessary, I doubt we’d be making a hard judgment call here at all, but it is, so we are. It’s likely that both would be an absolute bitch to hack, and that a hacking battle would never end quickly, but in a prolonged contest of technopathy, Ultron probably has an overall better argument for prevailing.

Pym Particles VS Shrinking Tech

Brainiac has rays that can shrink and grow things, the former being to such an extent that the target is erased from reality, but Ultron is completely immune to the size-altering effects of Pym Particles, or at least those used against him. When he’s using them himself, he can grow and shrink himself, so even if Brainiac could alter his size, Ultron could change himself back to normal just as easily.

On the flip side, while Ultron has never altered another individual’s size with Pym Particles, he should hypothetically be able to, but Brainiac has counters to this. God Brainiac can increase and decrease his size at will, both through personal showings and through scaling to Telos, and though no Brainiac body can resist being shrunk in the first place, his force-field can repel such alterations and he has auto-mechanisms built into his body that can return him to his normal size if diminished.

With all this said, this category either cancels out or slightly favors Ultron. Pym Particles are more flexible than Brainiac’s tech (i.e. he can use them at will and shift his size to be constantly bigger or smaller in a way that benefits him, whereas Brainiac’s are in the form of rays), and Ultron uses them more in direct combat in-character. His alterations would also affect Brainiac temporarily (presuming they aren’t blocked by his force-field), requiring Brainiac to reverse their effects, whereas Ultron is just flat out immune to having his size externally tampered with in the first place. Pym Particles offer Ultron some miscellaneous counters as well and are just generally more advantageous, albeit nothing super game changing.

Invisibility & Illusions VS Scanners

Brainiac's invisibility is good enough to fool even Superman's Kryptonian vision, obviously impressive given he can see down to subatomic size. Ultron's scanners are impressive on their own, and he even implies at one point he can see right through holograms, though complex enough ones like the one Hank designed specifically can fool him.

That said, Superman was able to counter Brainiac’s invisibility by detecting his heartbeat, which is something that Final Ultron’s scanners are explicitly able to detect. While this is obviously super sci-fi and we don’t have a direct explanation for how this heart beat scanner works, external heart rate monitors (at least the ones in real life) use doppler ultrasound devices that are based on sound waves. Presuming Ultron’s scanner functions similarly, there should be no reason why it couldn’t counter Brainiac’s invisibility, which explicitly does not conceal the sound of his heartbeat. In fairness they “probably” couldn’t detect Brainiac’s exact location and more so his approximate location, but on the other hand Brainiac also rarely uses invisibility in the first place (he hasn’t done so since before the Crisis). In any case, Ultron should be able to deal with it.

It’s also worth mentioning that as far as Brainiac’s scanners are concerned, Ultron possesses the ability to elude similar scanners from the likes of Tony Stark, remaining undetected without even an electron trail or infra-image. As such, Brainiac’s ability to gain intel on Ultron or keep track of him via scanning is likely limited.

Both Ultron and Brainiac also have the ability to create illusions that are able to have a tangible effect on the real world despite being illusory (All-Father Ultron should be able to do so scaling to Odin, and Brainiac 13 did so during Our Worlds At War). To Brainiac’s credit, this is something that we have actually seen him employ in-character, while Ultron only theoretically has the ability from scaling to another character, but either-or, both of them could probably identify the illusions as illusions with their scanners, albeit could not prevent the illusions from actually attacking them. As such, this is either a tie, or advantage Brainiac via his use of illusions being more in-character.

Force Fields & Phasing

While Ultron can replicate Vision’s phasing and Pym Particles have allowed other users like Hank Pym to bypass force fields in the past, Brainiac’s force fields can explicitly repel opponents who attempt to phase through them. Likewise, while Brainiac 13 has phasing of his own, Ultron can not only bypass Vision’s phasing to interact with him, but can also resist his attempts to phase through Ultron’s body, harming him instead, or even nullify the phasing entirely with shackles. All-Father Ultron should likewise be able to interact with intangible things, given that Odin can do so. With this in mind, Ultron has the slight advantage of being able to phase through Brainiac’s attacks while the inverse is untrue, but offensively the two are evenly matched.

As far as barriers are concerned, they both have them, and if either of them decides they want to try trapping and crushing the other with their force-field, the other will just go “hey, I can do that too!” While Brainiac’s barriers are significantly beyond even his own attack capabilities, and thus incredibly difficult to penetrate on a consistent basis, Ultron has the capability to eventually break barriers as durable as those used by Doctor Doom, which can weather attacks from even Celestials. With this in mind, while it may not be easy, both should be able to break through the other’s force-fields given enough time.

Internal Attacks

While Ultron’s outer body is nearly impervious, his internal circuits are a consistent weakness, more prone to damage and capable of making him go haywire if sufficiently interfered with. They can also be overheated, though he has survived immense temperature without this coming into play. Ultron’s molecular rearranger malfunctioning can destroy his body, and if his fusion furnace detonates, it has the potential to destroy his circuits even if his adamantium body will remain unharmed.

Brainiac has several options that could hypothetically target Ultron’s internals. The first and most directly analogous is his force-amplifier device, which is a small circular gadget that emits waves which multiply a target’s super-power a thousandfold. He used this to build up Superman’s energy into an explosive force which could shatter his body to smithereens. However, Superman’s invincible body was able to contain the force of the blast. This is pretty one-to-one with the instance where Ultron’s fusion furnace exploded and took out his internal circuitry, despite his body being tough enough to contain the blast.

If you wanted to argue against this, based on how it’s described there’s a distinct possibility that the force-amplifier device may be specifically designed for Superman and not necessarily broadly applicable to other targets. Since it’s mechanical you could also argue that Ultron could hack or even just physically destroy it before it messes him up too badly. Or at worst that it might be able to take out a single body but probably not many more than that.

The second major option Brainiac has are his nanites, which were able to infiltrate Batman’s suit and tear it apart from the inside. Ultron has more of a direct counter to this, namely personal antibodies and his own nanites inside of his body that are designed to ward off miniscule intruders. Though it is worth noting that these antibodies took a long time to ward off the likes of Ares, and Brainiac’s nanites are stated to be as strong as Doomsday, so Ultron may at least have some trouble with them.

The last method that Brainiac has of damaging Ultron’s internal circuitry is heat. Ultron has survived nuclear blasts that would be 100,000,000 degrees Celsius, but Brainiac’s tech can cause supernovae which are over 1,000,000,000 degrees Celsius. However, in Annihilation Conquest issue 3, Ultron was able to re-coalesce and reupload his consciousness into a new body after being atomized by a supernova, so even if Brainiac were to blow up the sun, that would not end the fight even if every Ultron body present were destroyed.

Lastly, Ultron has shown that he can power through internal damage to some extent.

Tl;dr is that most of Brainiac’s methods for targeting Ultron’s internal circuitry would probably be effective to at least some extent and a pretty solid option against the majority of Ultron’s bodies, but not anything that can permanently end the fight. They’re also all based on technology that Ultron could hypothetically hack or otherwise destroy.

Regeneration

Brainiac’s standard Vril Dox body can enter a deep repair coma, in which his ship retrieves his body if it is rendered unable to fight, and transports it to deep space to recover. This was able to heal a broken neck between issues with no time lapse.

Pre-Crisis Brainiac had a self-destruct function in which he could disintegrate his body at a molecular level and then automatically reconstruct himself via a feedback effect. However, it is worth noting that this never comes up again and is thus only ever used to reverse the effects of the self destruct, rather than to independently regenerate damage inflicted through other means. The use of the term “feedback effect” also implies that the regeneration and the initial self-destruct have a causal link.

At another point in time, Pre-Crisis Brainiac was discorporated into atoms before eventually reconstituting and evolving, but this was a phenomenon caused by factors out of his control, rather than regeneration intrinsic to him. That being said, it is consistent that atomizing Brainiac’s body will not kill him, as his mind/programming have survived such levels of damage on multiple occasions and simply transferred to a new host or location. God Brainiac has even manifested his body out of energy before, though sufficient physical damage is still able to stun him and force him to focus on switching to backup programming.

With this in mind, though Brainiac lacks the means to independently regenerate his hosts, destroying his soul/programming or reducing his energy to nothing is necessary to fully destroy him.

Doomsday can also regenerate from the collective unconscious blah blah blah.

Ultron has regenerated portions of his body instantly and repaired damage to his head, limbs, and circuits. His molecular rearranger gives him full atomic and subatomic control of his body, and he can reconstitute his physical mass from pure energy in an instant. He also can survive as just programming, and manifest himself through other things.

Conclusion: Physically speaking, sans Doomsday, Ultron can probably repair damage more quickly and thoroughly than Brainiac’s bodies. God Brainiac can manifest himself out of energy, but this is more of a teleport than a physical regen feat, as evidenced by him being stunned by physical damage in other instances and needing some time to recover. Ultron in comparison can just regrow entire portions of his body instantly and explode himself into ionic energy only to reform his body between panels. That said, since both can survive as programming and manifest through other bodies and objects, physical regeneration probably doesn’t matter very much.

Avenger Bots & Doomsday

Doomsday is probably on par or stronger than most of Ultron’s Avenger bots, though conversely at a disadvantage in numbers. Thor-Tron has his own Mjolnir, but it’s very unlikely that it’s anywhere close to as powerful or versatile as the real thing, and Doomsday has slaughtered Men of Steel who are every bit as strong as the real Thor. Vision-Tron has phasing, but Doomsday has adapted to and countered the phasing abilities of Martian Manhunter, allowing him to manhandle bootleg Paul Bettany no problem. And while Scarlet Witch-Tron has her own facsimile of Chaos Magic, there’s again no proof that it’s equal to the real thing, with her only showing being to deconstruct and destroy a target with it. Chaos Magic is an incredibly difficult and exact art, and even supposing the bot is somehow tapping into actual Chaos Magic, it’s impossible to prove that it has the skill or knowledge to replicate applications that it has not shown.

Regardless, it could probably erase Doomsday, though not permanently given his ability to regenerate from literal memories of him within the collective unconscious. It’s worth remembering that Doomsday is an unreliable weapon, as Brainiac’s possession of him only lasted temporarily before Doomsday began to adapt, resist, and force Brainiac out. All-in-all, it’s relatively unlikely that Doomsday or any of the Avenger bots are going to significantly impact this fight in any way, as God Brainiac and All-Father Ultron are both vastly beyond any of their capabilities.

Ultron's Spores

Ultron has the ability to release spores that can turn everything in the universe into himself over time. While Brainiac has his own biological attacks, these would be ineffective against Ultron’s robot body, and outside of Brainiac’s robot bodies and Doomsday, who has resisted Deadman’s possession, Brainiac lacks resistances to biological attacks, especially on this scale.

As such, this is a valid win condition that Brainiac would be reliant on barriers and such to avoid. Bro was right to be afraid of germs.

Energy Absorption

Ultron and Brainiac both possess the ability to absorb energy. The many examples of this are as follows:

Ultron

Has a device implemented into his body which can drain minds
Drained the power from Iron Man’s armor
Drained the power from Iron Man’s armor but again
Drained the power from a television
Drained the energy from an electrical generator

Brainiac

Pre-Crisis Brainiac empowered himself by absorbing the universe’s knowledge
Milton Fine’s brain probes can absorb psychic energy from others’ brains
Milton Fine’s molecular disruptor could absorb Lady Quark’s energy blasts
Brainiac 13 could absorb Imperiex’s big bang level energies via Warworld
Post-Crisis Vril Dox could drain data from people’s minds
The Collector’s Mothership absorbed psychic energy from the entire planet
God Brainiac absorbed power from various cities and timelines
God Brainiac was able to absorb and channel the chronal energy tearing apart the multiverse in Convergence
Brainiac One Million absorbed power from many of the futures within Hypertime

Brainiac has more showings of doing so, though this is balanced out by some of his examples being a bit more situational. With that said, Ultron is capable of resisting energy absorption from the likes of the Absorbing Man, specifically as a result of the properties that his energy possesses. While he does have some “anti-feats” here and there, in which his energy has been drained, this has only been by cosmic beings such as Galactus, or items like the Grim Reaper’s scythe, which has been able to disrupt the energies of high-tier energy manipulators like Wonder Man. And as the All-Father, Ultron derives his powers from the Odinforce, which cannot be taken from him, further countering any attempts Brainiac may make to drain his energy.

On the opposite end, Brainiac has never resisted energy absorption. Which is REALLY weird, but he hasn’t. Most of his options for countering Ultron’s energy draining are reliant on indirect counters, such as reabsorbing his lost energy (since it’s his energy and not Ultron’s, he should theoretically be able to), or siphoning more power from external sources, such as nearby technology, or entire timelines in the case of God Brainiac. This would counter to at least some extent but regardless, being able to drain Brainiac’s power in the first place, requiring him to recharge in some manner, Ultron has the advantage here.

Merging/Possession & Absorption

Ultron is capable of merging with other entities to commandeer their bodies, which he did with Tony Stark, Adam Warlock, Hank Pym, Jocasta, and even the entire planet of Titan. Likewise, Tendril Brainiac is established to have absorbed Green Lanterns in the past, on top of possessing people such as Milton Fine, Lois Lane, and Lena Luthor.

The exact mechanics of each ability are important to keep in mind. First, Brainiac’s absorption, since all things considered it is fairly easy to counter; Brainiac wraps his tendrils around the target, completely cocooning them and presumably subsuming them into himself, although we never see the process completed. This can be interrupted by an outside entity attacking Brainiac, and thus is essentially useless in a fight that isn’t one-on-one, as is the case here against “Army of Me”. Even if Brainiac was able to successfully absorb an Ultron body, this couldn’t end the fight since every other Ultron would still remain.

Brainiac’s possession is likewise less than useful, given that it’s based on biological (in the case of Milton Fine) and psionic (in the case of Lois and Lena) factors that Ultron does not possess, being a robot. Attempting to take over Ultron’s mind would bring us back around to more technological factors such as the hacking debate, which was previously covered.

Ultron’s merging might seem a little different at first glance, since he’s combining himself with other entities and not just completely subsuming them, at least visually, but this actually isn’t the case. Tony Stark and Adam Warlock’s bodies were both completely subject to Ultron’s control, and Hank Pym died as soon as Ultron merged with his body, leaving Ultron in full control. The mechanism by which Ultron merges with someone varies, with Warlock’s being situational and Pym’s requiring Ultron to physically unify with the target via Vision’s phasing. However, the method by which he merged with Stark is probably the most useful, as it only required him to transfer his consciousness into Tony’s suit - which was biologically integrated with his body - and essentially just transform Tony into himself.

In the context of this match, this could theoretically allow Ultron to gain control of the “real” Brainiac’s faculties and end the fight that way. However, Brainiac has resistance to both mental attacks and hacking, and thus could probably fight this off, though could theoretically be overwhelmed in a prolonged hacking battle. Brainiac’s equipment such as Warworld for instance could also be subject to Ultron merging with them, in a similar manner to how he merged with Titan. All in all this is either a tie or advantage Ultron, as he is the only one with a potential win condition in this respect, even if Brainiac has ways to stop it.

Matter Manipulation & Transmutation

Ultron-11 has a built-in disintegrator ray that is specifically stated to "cancel the forces bonding subatomic particles together". Brainiac counters this via having survived Superman's heat vision head-on multiple times, with Superman's vision being able to go down to the subatomic level. Likewise, Brainiac was able to temporarily withstand the effects of his molecular disassembler machine, though he did need to deactivate it to avoid being destroyed eventually. This machine was supposedly powerful enough to (with enough time) reduce Superman to atoms and disperse those atoms “across the length and breadth of the very multiverse itself”, so it’s probably pretty safe to say that it’s a couple steps above Ultron’s disintegrator in power, even accounting for the disintegrator’s ability to take down Kang.

Likewise, Brainiac 13 has nanites that can molecularly alter the landscape, but Ultron’s adamantium bodies can withstand attacks from Thor, whose attacks with Mjolnir are capable of shaking apart the molecules of their target. Ultron was also able to hold out for a while against the anti-metal properties of everyone’s favorite Wolverine murderer, Antarctic Vibranium, requiring lengthy exposure before his molecules were affected. With this in mind, he could likely withstand the effects of B13’s nanites, which lack feats of destroying anything nearly as tough as Ultron’s body.

Oh, and then there’s fucking Molecule Man saying that it’s hard to separate the molecules in Mjolnir thanks to Odin’s enchantments, so needless to say, Brainiac 13’s landscape-level nanites aren’t fucking with All-Father Ultron under any circumstances.

As far as transmutation is concerned, Ultron was able to transform Loki’s body into nanites, which Brainiac’s standard bodies have shown no resistance to. In fact, even upgraded Brainiac bodies like Brainiac One Million have been defeated by transmutation. In fairness, however, we don’t see how Ultron transmuted Loki exactly, and have no way to know if it’s combat applicable. Likewise, Ultron’s standard bodies do not resist transmutation, but unlike Ultron, Brainiac’s normal bodies don’t have it.

All-Father Ultron should scale to Odin transmuting a severed head into fire, and God Brainiac was able to transmute Arak into Telos, but only All-Father Ultron has resistance on top of that, with Mjolnir being immune to transmutation due to being enchanted by Odin. Even God Brainiac has never resisted such an attack, so in that regard, Ultron has the advantage here.

Collector of Worlds’ Reality Warping

This is an ability supposedly possessed by the Collector of Worlds, in which through his control over the many minds of the universe, he claimed to be able to nearly influence and reimagine reality on a universal scale, or do things like make a black hole disappear.

I say supposedly because he never actually used the ability, despite claiming to be able to and saying that he had nearly reached a universal scale with his control. The most he ever actually does is create an illusion with it, and Superman calls him a liar. It is worth clarifying that reality being shaped by the beliefs and observations of the people within it IS a legitimate thing in DC, but it’s unclear how much, if any, control the Collector of Worlds ever actually managed to achieve before being defeated. Since he has no actual showings of using the ability, let alone in combat, it’s difficult to call it a solid win condition in good faith.

Regardless, All-Father Ultron with the Odin Force would scale to Thor resisting a reality erasing blast, which could counter to some extent even being generous.

EMPs & Electronic Disruption

Both Ultron and Brainiac have access to EMPs, but lucky for both of them, they’ve also both resisted such attacks. Brainiac 13 was able to shield from a pulse that made an EMP look like a sneeze, while Ultron has survived EMPs on multiple occasions, and in the event that he is affected, is capable of rebooting himself to recover.

It’s possible that Brainiac has an advantage in this field, as not only are his resistance feats more impressive, but his EMP is more powerful too, as Brainiac 2.5 was able to destroy everything electronic on a planetary scale, while Ultron’s EMP was localized to North America. While they both can protect themselves and recover from such effects, making it unlikely that Brainiac would be able to keep Ultron down for long with this method, Brainiac takes the edge here.

Energy Transformation & Self-Liquification

Ultron can transform his body to and from energy at will, while Nanite Brainiac can liquefy his body into a fluid state, making him hard to grab. Both offer useful defensive abilities that could help to evade attacks or regenerate damage, but neither makes them permanently untouchable, and both could be countered by a sufficient AoE attack, or by hacking.

While this is an advantage for both sides, it is not a game-breaking point for either one.

Information Downloading & Attack Prediction

Brainiac can download information from others to acquire their knowledge, but this requires him to connect to their mind and generally keep them subdued first. Ultron abandoning his body or just breaking free would prevent Brainiac from downloading anything from him. Likewise, while Brainiac has programs that can predict enemy actions, they are consistently not foolproof, and regardless, Ultron can bypass Superior Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense, which can similarly predict actions.

With this in mind, it is unlikely that Brainiac would be able to effectively predict Ultron’s actions, either through learning about him or through his predictive programming.

Antimatter Attacks

While in command of Warworld, Brainiac can dispatch a robot capable of firing massive blasts of antimatter. A collision of antimatter and normal matter instantly converts both into energy perfectly, causing a massive release of energy in accordance with E=mc^2, essentially bypassing the durability of any physical matter.

That being said, Ultron has shown to be capable of transforming his body into energy and then reforming, so it’s entirely possible that he could simply reconstitute his body. If that seems like a stretch, fair enough - All-Father Ultron should be resistant to antimatter altogether, given that his resistances with the Odinforce should scale to Thor, who was able to tank antimatter attacks from an amped Electro.

Radiation Attacks

Ultron and Brainiac both have access to radiation-based attacks, with Ultron having access to both nuclear explosives and blasts of radiation, and Brainiac having access to red and green Kryptonian radiation, on top of being able to cause supernovae with his solar aggressors.

Luckily, they’re both also resistant to the point where neither matters. Ultron can withstand nuclear explosions and radiation comparable to the core of the hottest sun, while Brainiac has withstood Superman’s absolute-hot heat vision and has force-shields capable of repelling radiation. It’s unlikely that either can irradiate the other in a way that would matter to the fight.

Electricity Attacks

Ultron has access to electrical attacks, but while Brainiac has been short-circuited by electricity before, he has also survived electromagnetic attacks, and his consciousness is made up of electrical energy. On top of this, most impressively, God Brainiac was able to tank five lightning strikes from Black Adam back-to-back and remain unaffected, preventing Ultron’s electrocution from serving as a viable win condition.

Null Point Collapse

Brainiac is implied to be capable of causing null point collapse, which refers to magnetic collapse at a specific point at which the magnetic field quantity is zero. While Ultron’s body is magnetic, such attacks have historically failed to damage his indestructible body. Moreover, Final Ultron’s body is partially composed of Vibranium, with Black Panther’s Vibranium micro-weave mesh having proven immune to Magneto’s magnekinesis.

With this in mind, Brainiac being able to inflict meaningful damage through this method is unlikely, on top of the fact that he’s never successfully done this in the first place.

Force Reflection

Ultron has shown to be capable of reflecting enemy attacks, such as those from Vision, while Brainiac’s force-field can reflect attacks back onto the user. Since both have access to such things, they largely cancel out. It is worth noting that Ultron specifically has survived his own attacks being reflected before, and Brainiac should largely be capable of surviving his own offenses, as his defense is explicitly stronger.

Teleportation

Both can teleport, so it cancels out.

…That’s it. They can’t all be essays.

Gaseous Attacks

Ultron has access to gas pellets and bullets, while Brainiac can attack opponents with Kryptonite gases, on top of having theoretical access to the gaseous Doomsday Virus. However, Brainiac’s biological bodies have filters in their nostrils to protect from gases, and those that are robotic should be immune to gases, as is the case with every Ultron body.

Pain Inducement

Milton Fine Brainiac is capable of inducing immense pain in his targets, even exceeding the kind of pain that a being as powerful as Darkseid would be able to inflict. Naturally, however, being a robot, Ultron is unable to feel pain. RIP.

ANTS

MONKE

BEAR

SANTA

God Brainiac VS All-Father Ultron

Absorbing & Sealing Universes/Timelines

God Brainiac can absorb entire timelines into himself, though he never does it on-panel. Brainiac One Million can technically do this too, though only with Perpetua’s technology and not by default. Similarly, Odin has a showing of tearing off a realm from the World Tree and sealing it away, which is more or less the same thing in terms of being a win condition. Both God Brainiac and All-Father Ultron can travel to other timelines at will, so in the event that one of them attempts such a thing, they both can just leave the timeline to avoid being sealed away.

Odin also broke free of Thanos’ attempt to seal him, so if Ultron were to be successfully absorbed, he could in theory break out. Brainiac likewise was able to breach the Source Wall without being sealed, despite the fact that it normally does so if anyone tries to pass it, so he could likewise resist or break out if Ultron were to attempt to seal his timeline. As such, neither has an advantage here.

God Sight & Cosmic Awareness

Brainiac's cosmic awareness allowed him to peer into alternate timelines and see events occurring within them. Toward the end of Convergence, he was able to sense the effect that the original Crisis was having on his attempts to stabilize the multiverse. Meanwhile, Ultron's God Sense can be compared to Odin's cosmic awareness/clairvoyance, which allows him to witness events transpiring on Earth despite being in Asgard, a universe/infinity away. On top of this, Odin’s clairvoyance has allowed him to glimpse events occurring at different points in time. Combined with Ultron's "see everything" statement, it’s clear that the God Sense is comparable to Brainiac’s awareness, with both allowing for perception of events from different universes and other points in time.

That said, Ultron wins this category for a pretty simple reason: he can see Brainiac, while Brainiac cannot see him. Why? Well Odin also happens to be immune to similar clairvoyant abilities from the likes of Heimdall, who can see everything… except for the All-Father. On the other hand, Brainiac has never demonstrated such an immunity to cosmic clairvoyance. Meaning that Ultron’s cosmic awareness is actually going to be useful in this fight, while Brainiac will be working around a big blind spot.

Unfortunate for him, blud can’t even see the Ultron even when it isn’t connected to the ground, this is so sad.

Power Nullification

Odin has demonstrated the ability to negate enchantments, halve another person’s strength, and remove all of a target’s powers. On top of this, All-Father Ultron should be immune to power nullification, as it is impossible to remove the Odinforce from a person against their will, even by the likes of Doctor Strange.

Brainiac has also demonstrated power nullification with technology, with his domes and bottles having removed the metahuman abilities of others, though he has never resisted having his own power nullified. In fact, although it occurred willingly, God Brainiac expelled all of his absorbed power from his body in the aftermath of Convergence, losing his powers to return to being Vril Dox, which proves that his powers are not inseparable from him.

It should be pretty obvious, but Ultron has the edge here. Brainiac can only nullify powers with specific technology, and this would be ineffective against the Odinforce anyway, whereas the All-Father can remove another person’s powers entirely, something Brainiac has shown no resistance to.

Time Travel, Temporal Manipulation & BFR

God Brainiac can travel through time, as shown by his travels in the aftermath of Flashpoint, his excursion to the Futures End timeline, and the fact that Telos is capable of doing the same. Additionally, he was able to harness Deimos’ chronal energy to send others back in time to stabilize the multiverse. Prior to the Crisis, he also had access to a gun that can transport its target back in time, and in more recent comics has shown to be capable of creating a “damping field” that can prevent others from time traveling. Brainiac’s standard bodies have also shown to be acausal, proving unaffected by events like Flashpoint and other time paradoxes.

All-Father Ultron is likewise capable of time traveling, as Odin is capable of not only accessing any time or place in creation, but also transporting others to and from dead timelines. Odin is also capable of stopping time, and protecting others from time stops given that Mjolnir was able to do so. It should be noted that Ultron’s standard bodies, such as in Age of Ultron, have been defeated through time paradoxes before.

First of all, it’s important to clarify that God Brainiac’s time manipulation during Convergence was situational, since he was harnessing chronal energy that was in the process of tearing apart the multiverse, something he does not normally have access to. As such, God Brainiac would most likely not be able to replicate the time paradox that took down AoU Ultron, especially considering that this required Pym taking advantage of his direct access to Ultron’s initial programming. And while Brainiac’s ability to jump back and forth in time and traverse other timelines is useful, Ultron as the All-Father should be able to replicate those showings based on what Odin has demonstrated, and while Ultron has never personally time traveled as the All-Father, Brainiac has likewise never used time travel to win a fight.

However, let’s set aside the notion of whether any of this is in-character or not, and discuss whether either could gain an advantage through time travel. If Ultron attempts to time travel and change the present, Brainiac likely will not be able to follow him due to the All-Father’s resistance to clairvoyance, but regardless, Brainiac’s acausal nature will leave him unaffected. Conversely, while Ultron lacks the same acausality, Brainiac lacks resistance to Ultron’s clairvoyance, so Ultron could simply follow Brainiac through time to prevent any funny business.

“Uh, but Brainiac’s damping field can prevent people from time traveling, so he could stop Ultron from following him.”

This would be true, iiiiiif it weren’t for the fact that, as we already discussed, All-Father Ultron is resistant to power nullification, meaning he can do whatever he wants. And if Brainiac tried to BFR Ultron to a different time period with his Pre-Crisis time travel gun, Ultron could just… time travel back to the present and resume the fight immediately.

“So it’s a tie? Neither can mess with the other via time manipulation?”

Unfortunately, there’s still just one more thing, which is time stopping. Big Green hasn’t ever stopped time, as a god or otherwise, and unless you take him traveling beyond space and time as proof that he can’t be frozen in time (which would be a bit of a leap), he doesn’t have any resistance either. Whereas Odin has demonstrated the ability to both stop time and resist such abilities, leaving the advantage in timey wimey bullshit in Ultron’s corner.

Existence Erasure

For Brainiac, this is something that only came up once, is kind of vague, and is only through God Brainiac’s ship rather than Brainiac himself. Basically, upon detecting a foreign presence, the ship can expel them via an energy blast, causing them to fade from existence, a fate which befell Futures End Hawkman. However, while this would probably work on Ultron’s normal bodies, All-Father Ultron with the Odinforce should scale to Thor’s resistance feats, who has resisted various forms of existence erasure before, most directly the unbinding stone which was capable of erasing reality.

Outside of All-Father specifically, this would work on Ultron but probably would never eliminate him permanently due to the fact that he has backups of his programming in other bodies. At worst one of his bodies might get caught by it and get erased, at which point he’ll know not to try entering the ship again. It is worth mentioning as well that Ray Palmer was able to bypass these defenses by shrinking to subatomic size, which Ultron could possibly replicate via Pym Particles, though he would not need to.

Conversely, Odin and Thor have both demonstrated existence erasure with the Odinforce on several occasions, which is something that Brainiac has only shown tenuous resistance to - more specifically, he resisted being shrunk out of existence by halting the shrinking process, and has some degree of temporal erasure resistance via surviving Flashpoint and other timeline alterations. He has not shown resistance to being directly erased physically, even suggesting that the Crisis on Infinite Earths would have almost certainly erased him even down to his programming. Speaking of which, it is possible that his programming could survive similar to Ultron, but not certain.

All-in-all, depending on leniency toward Brainiac, this aspect either cancels out via both resisting, or favors Ultron via only him resisting.

De-Aging?

It’s worth mentioning that All-Father Ultron was defeated via a time manipulation attack which reversed his personal progression of time, essentially rewinding him to a younger state and reverting him back to his less powerful bodies. With this in mind, it’s important to consider whether Brainiac possesses any ability or piece of equipment that could possibly replicate this method. And the answer is no… mostly. Brainiac can time travel, he can absorb timelines, he can send people back in time, he's had some tech over the years that have done various time related things, but he's never altered an opponent by reversing their personal progression of time. He doesn’t have any feats that could be interpreted as allowing him to do this kind of thing… except for one.

Let’s take a closer look at Lena Luthor. Leading up to Our Worlds At War, Lex gave his baby daughter to Brainiac 13 in exchange for his technology, and the next time she shows up she's been aged up into an adult and given Brainiac powers. When Brainiac 13 is defeated at the end of OWAW, Lena immediately reverts to being a baby again and is returned to Lex. With this in mind, Brainiac 13 seemingly had some kind of ability to increase the age of a person, and given that Lena immediately reverted upon his defeat, it’s clear that it wasn't some kind of permanent modification, rather reliant on him maintaining it somehow.

At the end of the day, this is interesting, but too vague to base much of an argument around. Brainiac’s method of doing it and how long it took and such are unclear, he’s only increased a person’s age and never decreased it, he’s never altered anyone’s age in combat, and even despite being a giga-genius, he wouldn’t just magically know to try a tactic like this over his hundreds of other options, even assuming he could do it.

Gravity Manipulation

Odin has showings of manipulating gravity, such as rendering people weightless with a gesture, with altering the intensity of gravity being something that Pre-Crisis Brainiac has replicated with technology before. Both are relatively limited to the point of not mattering.

Death Manipulation

Even just a portion of Odin’s power is capable of inflicting instant death onto a target. There isn’t too much to pick apart here, Brainiac has just never shown or resisted anything of this nature.

Reality Warping

Odin is able to warp reality, having done things like warping the space between realms. However, God Brainiac was unaffected by Flashpoint, in addition to having survived Superboy-Prime's retcon punch, and channeling Deimos' reality rending energy. God Brainiac’s ability to alter reality via chronal energy manipulation is again situational, and the Collector of Worlds’ reality warping is an unreliable win condition that the All-Father likely resists, as already discussed. So this is something that cancels out, as both can resist reality alterations in the vein of what the other has demonstrated or been implied to possess.

Tertiary Factors

If the last two sections were hard to keep track of, don’t worry, this is a lot simpler.

As far as experience goes, Brainiac holds an obvious advantage. He’s spent many years traveling the vast depths of space and conquering worlds, and has been alive for thousands of years absorbing the knowledge of the multiverse. That said, Ultron has regularly battled foes far more experienced than himself, even those with millions of years of combat experience like Thor. Brainiac wouldn’t be anything new or troublesome to him, especially when skill is concerned. Brainiac is far from an ineffective physical combatant, but his fighting style is considered awkward and he prefers to disengage from hand to hand, preferring to defeat his enemies with his mind. Even so, Ultron can keep up with skilled fighters like Captain America and Black Panther fairly well, so it’s not the biggest disadvantage.

Where Brainiac ultimately takes a decisive lead in, however, is intelligence. Ultron isn’t an idiot, far from it – being smarter than the likes of Tony Stark and even the Scientist Supreme is nothing to scoff at, and his own intelligence feats of building complicated tech is impressive in its own right. However, not only has Brainiac built similarly complex tech, Brainiac has absorbed the knowledge of the entire universe and alternate timelines, putting him literally infinitely above similar super geniuses in his verse like Lex Luthor and Superman. Ultron is stated to have “infinitely superior intellect” compared to Kang the Conqueror, but it’s iffy to take this 100% literally, and it likely wouldn’t match up anyways.

Conclusion

“Worthy? How could you be worthy? You're all killers. You want to protect the world, but you don't want it to change. There's only one path to peace... your extinction.”

Advantages:

Comparable power and speed even with varying levels of leeway, when comparing both standard and godly bodies
Likely superior hacking and technopathy
Wider variety of hax resistances and counters to Brainiac’s offensive capabilities
Has various offensive options that Brainiac lacks resistances to
Odinforce is versatile and difficult to overcome even for God Brainiac
All-Father Ultron stat stomps Brainiac’s standard bodies
Difficult to kill due to being able to transfer his consciousness
Less prone to human error due to being a robot
Pinocchio kinnie

Disadvantages:

Less intelligent in a broad sense
Less experienced
Standard bodies are outmatched by God Brainiac
Brainiac still has counters for quite a few of his options
Dickless

“Serve? I am no petty despot. I collect worlds, preserving their essential knowledge to enhance my intellect... and then I discard the remnants."

Advantages:

Comparable power and speed even with varying levels of leeway, when comparing both standard and godly bodies
Wider variety in technology and offensive options
Smarter overall and more experienced
Has counters for many of Ultron’s abilities and takes the edge in several specific comparisons
God Brainiac stat stomps Ultron’s standard bodies
Difficult to kill due to being able to transfer his consciousness
Invader Zim kinnie

Disadvantages:

Likely inferior hacking and technopathy, even if barely
Standard bodies are outmatched by the All-Father
Ultron can counter or resist most of his abilities and win-cons
Lacks hax resistances and defensive counters to many of Ultron’s abilities
Versatility advantage falters against the Odinforce
Maidenless

So you probably just finished reading all that and are now thinking “that was way too much to keep track of.” Not an unreasonable reaction. The long and short of it though is that while there are a metric fuckton of intricate details to discuss here, Ultron probably largely has the advantage. As far as stats are concerned, throw em out the window, Marvel and DC are so unquantifiably infinite you can’t really make much of a distinction, with both sharing almost all the same feats on a consistent basis, on top of similar cosmologies. Even directly comparing the transcendental realms both scale up to, both are sitting around seven or so layers above infinite higher dimensions, too comparable to call.

Of course this brings us to abilities, which is way more complicated. Here, the majority of categories either equal out or slightly favor one side or the other, with an overall larger number leaning a bit more in Ultron’s favor, including hacking, which is likely the most important of the bunch. Since both can transfer their consciousness as much as they like, hacking is the most likely way to seal the deal, though some other methods like existence erasure and death manipulation and such could be just as effective too. In that sense, Ultron has more ways to end the fight than Brainiac does.

More to the point though, if you really break it down and look at everything on both sides in a list format, a surprising trend is that Brainiac has a much larger variety of offensive options, ranging from gadgets to innate abilities, while his hax resistances are more sparse outside of occasionally his barriers, which aren’t impervious and would end up breaking eventually. Opposingly, Ultron has significantly more numerous defensive showings, whether it be direct counters or hax resistances, whereas his offensive options, while not without variation, are less diverse in nature than what Brainiac is bringing to the table.

Ultimately, once you start breaking down the counters that both sides have, the general trend is that Ultron’s defenses “mostly” give him counters to the majority of Brainiac’s offensive options, which leaves a comparison between Ultron’s less varied but still strong offensive options, against Brainiac’s heavy lack of hax resistances where it really counts. He can’t resist his energy being drained. He can’t resist time stops. He can’t resist having his size altered the way Ultron can. He isn’t immune to being spied on by people who can see all of time and space. He can’t resist instant death, or being infected with spores, or erased from existence. Brainiac has more offensive options than Ultron does, but Ultron’s hax resistances and counters hold up against Brainiac’s offenses, while the inverse isn’t true, and that’s where Brainiac really starts to falter in this match.

And frankly, a lot of that is because the Odinforce is just really absurd, a bit beyond Brainiac’s paygrade, even when looking at God Brainiac. Not in power, no, but Odin and Thor have a ridiculous quantity of powers and resistances - which Ultron should get just about all of, since most of them come from the Odinforce - that shut down the majority of Brainiac’s possible win-cons. This is to the point where Ultron would prooooobably have better odds of winning the hax game, even if we said that hacking was too unquantifiable for there to be a winner in that aspect.

And as smart as Brainiac is, much more cartoonishly and impossibly so than even someone like Ultron, it ultimately gets to a point where neither one of them is going to be outsmarting the other without some kind of crazy elaborate circumstance. They’re just too incomprehensibly intelligent for an advantage one way or the other to matter much, at least in the face of many other advantages aligning in the other direction. Maybe in some circumstances, sure, but most of the time Ultron is going to take it via simply having better options for victory available to him than Brainiac does.

In fairness, without the Odinforce, Ultron definitely would have a hard time holding up against God Brainiac, and perhaps even against normal old Vril Dox (maybe, it’s debatable) but giving them both their god modes, as far as arsenal and abilities are concerned, the god is nothing compared to the king this time. “Everything belongs to him” indeed, even that juicy 2-0.

(Credit to ArtDoge for the art)

26 comments:

The Monster King11 December 2023 at 16:50
The guy who made that G1^2 blog must be really handsome...
door-kun11 December 2023 at 18:44
Incredible blog, actually sold me on this MU. Still prefer Sigma and Shockwave respectively, but this MU slaps. Also based Ultron W.
Patrice Etienne11 December 2023 at 18:52
Never thought Ultron will win this. Death Battle will really give Ultron his Odin power if he come again to Death Battle?
Oswald12 December 2023 at 12:02
Technically the marvel multiverse is stated to have infinite sets of infinite dimensions
NDg12 December 2023 at 16:58
This deserves all the respect, kudos to the researchers
Joaquin Torres Bautista12 December 2023 at 17:54
If Brainiac does appear in Death Battle hope he's against Trazyn from Warhammer 40k
h13 December 2023 at 05:28
I was actually thinking mid-way how cool it would be if the fight would be a big chess board game of their big God forms, with their armies as the pieces!
You've left me more entertained and satisfied than I ever imagined, so glad that this was made even despite how long it took.
Bill 55515 December 2023 at 05:18
So is high outerversal heralds the new normal now?
Smuckle15 December 2023 at 08:44
It's here babyyyyyyy!

And we got a fight script to go with it. Nice.

Monday 11 December 2023

Death Battle Predictions: Ultron VS Brainiac

Before We Start…

Overall

Ultron

Brainiac

Background

Ultron

Brainiac

Experience & Skill

Ultron

Brainiac

Bodies

Ultron

Ultron-1

Ultron-5

Ultron-6

Ultron-7

Ultron-8

Ultron-9

Ultron-10

Ultron-11

Ultron-12

Ultron-13

Ultron-14

Ultron-15

Ultron-16/17

Safe Armor

Santron

Female Ultron

Ultron-20

Adam Warlock

Ultron Omega

Spaceknight/Age of Ultron

Final Ultron

Pymtron

Microscopic Ultron

All-Father Ultron

Brainiac

Pre-Crisis (Original)

Pre-Crisis (Upgraded)

Milton Fine

Doomsday

Brainiac 2.5

Brainiac 13

Lena Luthor

Cyberspace Brainiac

Unstable Brainiac

Nanite Brainiac

Vril Dox

Tentacle Brainiac

Tendril Brainiac

Collector of Worlds

Lois Lane

God Brainiac

Red Brainiac

Bear Brainiac

Brainiac One Million

Equipment and Abilities

Ultron

Molecular Rearranger

Encephalo Ray

Program Transmitter

Tractor Beams

Ultron Drones

Ultron Virus

Brainiac

Starship

Drones

Warworld

Resistances

Ultron

Hacking

EMP’s

Heat

Size Alteration

Scanning

Magnetism

Energy Draining

Phasing