Krypton to bring Brainiac and Adam Strange to live action TV

The Superman prequel TV series Krypton premieres tonight on the SyFy Network.

For those who don’t know about the series, Krypton tells the story of Superman’s grandfather Seg-El and his work to try to save Krypton from an impending apocalypse. However, don’t expect this series to have a boring timeline that everyone already knows.

Creators David S. Goyer (Man of Steel) and Damien Kindler (Sanctuary) have put together a storyline along with showrunner Cameron Welsh (Constantine) that they hope will put everything people know about Superman’s origin planet in danger.

See, Brainiac is coming to Krypton and he wants to do everything he can to stop the birth and arrival of Superman and the only men who can stop him are Seg-El and the time-traveling DC Comics superhero Adam Strange.

"“What you thought you knew about Krypton, you can forget,” Welsh told Variety. “[This setting] really opens us up for anything is possible.”"

The setting is 200 years before the birth of Kal-El, who would later become Earth’s greatest hero, Superman. Fans of medieval shows might see something in this comic book adaptation that seems familiar. Krypton is a “xenophobic society with an implacable caste system and a yawning chasm between rich and poor.”

That sounds like the exact opposite of the ideals that Superman grew up with on Earth, and that might be the point. His family line was never in support of this system and his own great-great-grandfather  Val-El was tried for treason and this world is more Game of Thrones than Superman.

Seg-El (Cameron Cuffe), the grandfather of Superman, is not much more than an outcast, his family stripped of their rank and him getting into bar fights.

Cuffe said that Krypton is not a superhero show with people in masks battling villains. He said that Seg-El is not even fighting for “truth and justice” but is just about the people on the troubled world trying to survive and make a difference.

KRYPTON — Season:1 — Pictured: Shaun Sipos as Adam Strange — (Photo by: Gavin Bond/Syfy)

So, where do Brainiac and Adam Strange come into the story on Krypton?

Well, Adam Strange (Shaun Sipos) shows up in the pilot tonight from the future. He has Superman’s cape and a warning that they need to protect Krypton so Superman can live.

In an interview with Comic Book, Sipos described his character.

"“He has a lot of pain. He had a difficult childhood. He didn’t feel that he fit in. He didn’t think that he would be a superhero. He would be the last one to say that he would be one. But, I think that’s what draws people to him, is that he’s the unlikely superhero. If he can be a superhero, then anyone can be.”"

If Cuffe said there are no superheroes but Sipos said he plays an unlikely superhero, that makes it seem confusing to figure out what to expect. It sounds like Strange is a superhero but did not come to Krypton to fight villains but to convince Seg-El to stand up for his family name.

SyFy

As for Brainiac, Nerdist claims that the Brainiac in Krypton is “comics all the way.”

Blake Ritson plays the villain and reportedly said that this character is “infinitely more terrifying” than anything fans have seen from the villain in the past.

"“He is taking these flawed, broken, temporally finite cultures, and he’s trying to make them permanent and perpetual,” said Ritson. “He’s trying to fix their temporal deficiency.”"

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It sounds just like Geoff Johns’ Brainiac from the 2008-2009 run in Action Comics. Whether he is as iconic as many Superman fans have come to expect, we will just have to wait and see when Krypton premieres tonight on SyFy at 10 p.m. EST.