“Tyrannical count”

The main character isn’t really named in the story. “Malignant brain” and “tyrannical Count” are the two most distinctive ways he’s called in the captions. So we used that as an arbitrary name – hence the quote marks.

For what it’s worth, this story occurred 10 years after the first appearance of Monsieur Mallah and the Brain.

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Background

Powers and Abilities

The Count was apparently some sort of mad scientist. He designed a method to artificially enhance the brain of gorillas to turn them into skilled and fanatically loyal servants. Our game stats assume that he could design inventions but needed engineers to build them, since that was his modus operandi in the story.

After he became a disembodied brain, he could fly and shoot lightning. Furthermore, the Malignant Brain could absorb immense quantities of electricity. It presumably fed off of electrical energy, since it had no other apparent mean to sustain itself.

When infused with gigantic quantities of electricity, the brain would grow larger and develop other mental powers.

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History

The Tyrannical Count lived in an unspecified — but mountainous — Eastern Europe country. From context Yugoslavia is the likeliest possibility. As per Hammer horror movies  tradition he ruled through terror over the nearby village.

The locals feared his cybernetic zombie gorillas. These apparently were his crowning achievement in the unnatural sciences. However, the natives grew restless, and the Count drew a contingency plan were they to attack en masse.

When the villagers stormed the castle with literal torches and pitchforks, they killed a number of zombie gorillas. But by the time they reached the Count, he had drunk a poison and killed himself rather than face them. Some days later, monks sent by relatives came to take custody of the body. The now-free peasants let them proceed.

This was all part of the plan. The “monks” were actually disguised gorillas, the Count’s three remaining zombie servants. They drove to a port and rode a boat to America with the coffin.

In New York, they were greeted by Dr. Rundhaven. This mad genius had devised a process to surgically extract a brain from a corpse. Then Rundhaven would reanimate it as a disembodied encephalon floating in a special liquid.

Brain in a jar

As soon as the process was done, the Malignant Brain slew Rundhaven with a lightning discharge. Continuing with his plan, he then endeavoured to steal the work of Dr. Ralph Ervin on psycho-kinetics. This would give him the means to fly and exist outside of his liquid tank.

The Count invaded the dreams of little Susie Ervin to mesmerise her into stealing the papers. But the Sandman (Dr. Sanford), eternal and immortal guardian of dreams, detected the intrusion and chased the telepathic brain away.

This was but a setback. The Brain sent in his two remaining zombie gorillas, who bushwhacked the scientist and brought back the notes. He then sent them to steal scientific equipment. The brain’s goal was to build a machine based on Ervin’s work.

The gorillas were spotted by the NYPD. But working quickly, they built the machine before the cops came in to arrest the strange thieves. A fight erupted, with the police gunning down the gorillas and being electrocuted by the Malignant Brain in return.

attack of the giant evil brain

Now much larger, flying and glowing, the Malignant Brain took to the sky. It slowly, ominously drifted toward the Con Edison’s Bronx power plant. His plan was to lure the authorities into electrocuting him using the power from the plant.

It was indeed what the police intended to do. Presumably, the Count planted the idea in their dreams. Thus, as the flying brain descended upon the power plant, it was struck by an enormous discharge. But it just absorbed it and then the energy within the whole plant, blacking out the Bronx.

The Sandman intervened again, but the Malignant Brain demonstrated new psychic abilities of great power. Considering that there was no other way, the Sandman used his Hypnosonic Whistle and made the Malignant Brain explode.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Count was never seen again.

And now, a continuity note

Years later, the Sandman (Garrett Sanford) would meet Wonder Woman and then the JLA. This meant that his previous adventures – and thus the Malignant Brain – took place on Earth-1 of the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe.

However in 1989 the Jed Paulsen adventures were retconned into having been dreams of a little boy named Jed Walker. It is thus likely that the Malignant Brain was but a child’s nightmare. He certainly feels like one.

*However*, at least one character (General Electric) appeared both in the Jed Paulsen dreams and on Earth-1. Thus, it is possible that the Tyrannical Count existed on Earth-1.

Description

See illustrations.

Personality

Stock moustache-twirling villain.

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Pre-Crisis DC Universe (Earth-1)… or is it ? (Sandman vol. 1 #3).

Helper(s): Ethan Roe.

Writeup completed on the 29^th of January, 2012.