The House of Brainiac is officially underway with Action Comics #1064, though the seeds of the storyline were planted all the way back in Superman #1. While the issue begins with a much-needed day off for Lois Lane, things quickly descend into chaos when Brainiac’s army of Czarnian army attacks Metropolis, and the Superman family will feel the impact of that attack for some time. Speaking of the Superman family, they are set to have a major role to play in this story, and ComicBook.com had the chance to speak with Action Comics and Superman writer Joshua Williamson about their roles in the story and which members of the family might be getting some standout shine throughout the story.
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“I think everybody’s going to get a moment, particularly the characters that are in space. Lois is still going to be in Metropolis, and then she’s dealing with some of the stuff, the aftermath of what’s happening there. And we have a lot of really cool stuff with Lois coming throughout the summer that tees up here a little bit. We’re definitely doing more with Lois, and I think we’ve been doing more with Lois this whole time,” Williamson said.
“The character that surprised me, actually, was Supergirl, because Supergirl, I knew she was going to play an important role. So was Superboy. I always knew Conner would play an important role, but Supergirl, I really like writing her, and she kind of took over a couple scenes,” Williamson said. “Because when you’re with a character, you have to sometimes stop yourself and think, ‘Not what I would do. What would that character do? What would Supergirl, what would Kara do in this moment?’ And I found that Kara is also angry and she is experienced in seeing what Brainiac is capable of, and she’s not afraid of him anymore, but she has enough knowledge to be like, ‘I know what I have to do in these moments.’ And so Kara does some really bold stuff.”
“There’s a moment, I think it’s in the fourth issue, she does something kind of crazy. I’m not sure I’d call it crazy. She makes a decision to do something that might be a little nutty, and then she’s just like, ‘No, I’m going forward. We’re doing this.’ And that came from just writing her. I’m not even sure if it was even … What she does wasn’t even the original plan. It was just like, ‘Oh, no, she would do this and this is actually a really cool thing. She should totally do that.’ Yeah. So she took over in a couple places that I was surprised by while I was writing it,” Williamson said.
The Luthors aren’t being left out of the fun either though, with both Lena and Lex having major roles to play throughout the story. “And then Con has a big moment, and then Lena has a couple big pieces just based on even her history with Brainiac, and then Lex does something… It’s funny. When I started writing Superman, I had certain rules for myself where I was going to try not to go backwards too much. I have a habit, you can see with some of my work, I go backwards. I look at stuff in the past and bring it forward sometimes,” Williamson said. “With Superman, I was like, ‘No, we want to try to focus a little bit more on the new.’ This story is the only one that I feel like we went back a little bit because we were referencing a lot of older Brainiac stories and some of this stuff with Lena, but it was the same idea.”
“It was like, take those things and then take the next step with them. Don’t live there. Take the next step, and then Lex has some really big moments in here, and the reason I bring that up is because Lex has something that definitely references a story from the past in a major way that some people are going to be like, ‘Holy s***’ when it happens. And I think we answer the question, is Lex lying or not? Is he really trying to do the right thing or not? And we do answer that here. You get to see it,” Williamson said.
Williamson is going above and beyond to make sure everyone gets their time to shine, and for fellow fans of the work he’s done with villains like Livewire and Parasite, you need not worry, as they’ll get their limelight as well. “So Lex has a really big moment. I mean, this story’s been crazy, because I have whiteboards all over my office and one of the whiteboards is just a list of every character in it just to make sure I don’t forget somebody, just make sure everybody always has a moment,” Williamson said. “Livewire and Parasite have a cool scene in here. Yeah, there’s a lot that happens in this story. It’s a lot of characters in this one.”
Action Comics #1064 is in comic stores now, while Superman #13 continues the House of Brainiac when it hits comic stores next Tuesday, April 16th.
What have you thought of House of Brainiac so far? Let us know in the comments and you can talk all things comics with me on Threads @mattaguilarcb!
