In the third comic listed as inspiration, "Action Comics #866," Superman hears something hurtling toward Earth and goes to stop it. When he makes contact, it turns into a skeletonized version of Brainiac's bot and tries to lobotomize him. Superman defends himself, but the bot draws blood and does a scan before shutting down. At the end of the comic, we find Brainiac awakening in his ship shaped like a skull, surrounded by hundreds of bottled cities.

There are a handful of villains that would work well in a live-action medium. Lex Luthor is the obvious one, and Doomsday and Darkseid are veritable certainties to meet our hero face-to-face. But Brainiac has inexplicably never gotten his moment in time. While he almost got his debut in a 1997 Kevin Smith project, it fell apart, and we never got an opportunity to see the self-proclaimed comic book fan's faithful adaptation come to life.

This tweet from DC gives us hope that James Gunn is about to drop a significant DC/"Superman" villain on us as a way to kick off the new DCU with a bang. But there is another possibility that cannot be ignored. This is the third comic listed as an inspiration, which means it could be a subplot to the other two. Just like the comic that was teased as the inspiration, it could be introducing Brainiac but only hinting at his existence for a later installment. If that is the case, and we will only see Superman battle a bot at the end and a scan awakening Brainiac, then someone else will need to be the big bad in "Superman: Legacy."