Code Name: Brainiac 5

Real Name: Querl Dox

Age: 17

Appearance: At 5'7" tall and weighing in at an insubstantial 135 pounds (soaking wet), Querl is not an especially imposing example of humanoid development. However, what he lacks in physical presence he makes up for many, many, many times over in self-confidence. Some would call this healthy sense of ego arrogance. Still others would label it an utterly transparent and overly-zealous attempt to compensate for a variety of other shortcomings. But such petty slanders have no place in an honest biographical account.

Despite his obviously superior abilities--abilities which distinguish Dox as a being head and shoulders above the average Coluan--he is superficially similar to the run of his species: green-skinned and blond and a bit on the waifish side.. But he likes to think that he carries it off with uncommon panache.

Abilities: Querl's primary asset is his intellect: specifically, a twelfth-level effector intellect. Such genius makes him unique even among his fellow Coluans, who are as a race justly renowned for their extraordinary intelligence and technological adeptitude. In order to provide a frame of reference, it should be known that the unaugmented human mind is rated as a sixth-level effector. Which means, of course, that Brainiac 5's singularly evolved brain is exponentially more powerful than anything to be found in the Solar system. There is a word for such a vast disparity in ability, a word which differentiates individuals of greater capacity from those more humbly endowed. It is, however, also a word that has garnered certain negative associations over the years, due to its unfortunate association with bigots, fanatics, and violent extremists of all stripes. For this reason, the word "superior" will not appear in this description--or rather, no more often than is essential to maintaining an acceptable level of accuracy.

All digressions aside, the majority of Querl's equipment is a direct result of the constant workings of his powerful mind. This includes, most notably, his force shield belt and standard-issue Legion Flight Ring. The former device is capable of projecting an impenetrable energy barrier around its wearer, which serves to deflect bullets, plasma rays, particle beams, spears, punches, spitballs, Butterfly Crane-style high kicks, and the occasional smack to the back of the head from an irritated teammate with equal efficacy. It can also project a blast of force powerful enough to blast a hole in a concrete wall. The function of the Flight Ring should be quite evident to all but the least astute. This creation, in all candor, was less the result of deliberate effort and experimentation than a happy accident, though it seems as if the kind of person who would feel the need to point out such a thing would be far better off thanking his lucky stars for those persons gifted with the impulse towards scientific innovation and all they have given him than spending his time dredging up and gloating over such embarrassing details.

Interestingly, Querl appears to be immune to hypnotism, illusions of many kinds, and The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer. His brain is, evidently, a bit too complicated to be affected by such things.

Weaknesses: Difficult as it might be to accept, even one posessed of unlimited intellectual potential such as Querl must admit to his share of imperfections, minor as these may be when weighed against his contributions to the scientific community and galactic civilization as a whole. Concerning his strictly physical limitations, he is severely lacking in anything even remotely akin to combat prowess. In any kind of "mano a mano" altercation, Querl is more than likely to come out the worse for the encounter--particularly if one of the "manos" in question belongs to any of the hyper-strong villains (or heroes, conceivably) with whom he all too often comes into conflict.

Nor is his force shield belt always a reliable means of leveling the playing field. True, it is highly resistant to external energies of all kind, but the field can be penetrated by sufficiently powerful solar energies. Also, while protected by the shield, Brainiac is vulnerable to being violently tossed about within, in which case it becomes less an unbreachable defense than a sort of improvised cocktail shaker suitable for serving liquified Coluan. And the life of the force shield is shortened radically when taken back through the time barrier into the past--should its use threaten to compromise unalterable history in some way. It's one of those curious scientific oddities that seems a bit like a ham-fisted plot contrivance at first glance. But it's not. It is an incontrovertible fact of temporal mechanics.

Psychologically, Querl is a melange of what could be diplomatically described as pronounced personality quirks. He devotes inordinate amounts of time to suppressing his feelings, which means that emotion does not play any great role in his daily functioning. This behavior has resulted in an absence of any empathic capacity to speak of on Querl's part, and a basic inability to play nicely with others. Not for very long, anyway. His impatience for "irrational outbursts of histrionics" and preoccupation with his scientific pursuits have together done a fairly complete job of isolating him from the fellowship of other sentients.

When it comes to his technical work, Brainiac is more adaptive than creative, better suited to perfecting or improving upon existing ideas and devices rather than producing entirely new ones. This limitation is one that he finds especially frustrating.

It has been suggested that Querl's weakness for tall, statuesque blonds springs from a repressed Oedipal fixation upon his mother, herself a tall, statuesque blond who abandoned her son in his infancy and promptly disappeared. Thus far, Querl has declined to participate in such vulgar, pointless speculation.

History: Querl Dox is the thirty-first century's most brilliant Coluan. So brilliant, in fact, that he almost got himself arrested before his career in the Legion of Super-Heroes got started.

The great-grandson of the twentieth century Coluan hero, Vril Dox II, Querl inherited his ancestor's twelfth-level effector intelligence, far above average even for a Coluan. However, the young Dox's research methods were just a bit too unorthodox for comfort, and so the government of Colu--rather disingenuously--"lent" him to the obscenely wealthy R.J. Brande for a time. Unfortunately, after a string of laboratory-demolishing disasters, Brande came to the inescapable conclusion that he could not afford to bankroll Querl any longer. Knowing of the Coluan prodigy's personal interest in time research (driven, most believe, by Querl's desire to see his long-lost mother, who deserted him in his infancy and of whose fate nothing is known), his benefactor set him up with an internship on the planetoid of Talus. There, Dox was able to work with the noted temporal physicist Rond Vidar.

Regrettably, Querl became so absorbed by his experiments that he remained completely oblivious to the draft notice alerting him that he had been selected to become Colu's Legion of Super-Heroes representative. This was a mistake that could have ended in grave circumstances for him--most likely a lengthy incarceration, at least--had he not agreed to make the journey to earth as soon as his absence was noticed.

As Brainiac 5, Dox was, to put it mildly, slow in endearing himself to his fellow Legionnaires. In point of fact, he barely interacted with them at all. The only exception to this general lack of interest was the Daxamite Laurel Gand, alias Andromeda, who was something of an outsider within the Legion due to her unique views on the matter of inter-species cooperation. In fact, when Andromeda was later believed killed, Querl was the only one who truly mourned her. It was a wrenching experience indeed for one so used to suppressing emotion. However, he had felt a certain kinship with Gand, being himself an outsider, both within the Legion and among his fellow Coluans, due to his greater intelligence, interest in practical experimentation rather than "pure" thought, and lamentable lack of concern regarding the often-dire consequences of his experiments.

Despite his aloofness, Dox proved himself a valuable member of the Legion. Among his accomplishments were the construction of a mini-stargate which saved the earth from the onslaught of the White Triangle Daxamites, his healing of teammate Triad from a vicious beating she suffered at the hands of several of the aforementioned Daxamites, curing Andromeda of her lead poisoning (a bit more serious a problem to her alien physiology than it would have been to, say, a human), and his accidental creation of the substance from which the Legion's flight rings are fashioned. But perhaps Brainiac's most significant feat was converting the obstinate Andromeda to the ways of inter-species tolerance, although this was only accomplished after a moderately brutal browbeating of Gand as she lay on what was assumed at the time to be her deathbed. Still, a victory is a victory.

After Andromeda's death, Brainiac was quick to bury himself once more in his research into time travel, his first true love. Indeed, such aid as he has rendered to his fellow Legionnaires often seemed, from Dox's perspective, to be nothing more than a temporary distraction from his real work. Most of his comrades joined the Legion out of some idealistic aspiration towards universal peace and harmony; Querl heeded the summons in order to gain access to the exotic equipment and ample lab space at the Legion's disposal.

Given Querl's obsession with traveling back in time and his history of spectacularly shortsighted experimentation, it is likely only a matter of time before he successfully manages to poke a sizeable hole in the fabric of the space-time continuum. The results of this tampering promise to be interesting, to say the least.

Other information: Querl has a monkey. The monkey's name is Koko. Everybody likes monkeys. Or so I have read.