Brain Wave (Henry King Sr.) is a supervillain appearing in the DC Comics Universe, a recurring foe of the Justice Society of America and a founding member of the Injustice Society; he is also the father of the superhero Brainwave.
Brain Wave appeared on the first season of the DC Universe streaming service show and The CW network Stargirl, played by Christopher James Baker.
Publication history
Brain Wave battled the Justice Society of America with his psionic powers in the 1940s, first appearing in All-Star Comics #15 (February/March 1943). The character made his first appearance in a story titled "The Man Who Created Images" written by Gardner Fox with art by Joe Gallagher.
In October 1947, Brain Wave was one of the six original members of the Injustice Society, who began battling the Justice Society of America in All Star Comics #37 (October 1947).
Fictional character biography
Henry King Sr. was born in the early 1910s as a metahuman with vast mental attributes. An introvert, he found solace in reading books, and he one day learned to create three-dimensional images of the characters from them, such as Sir Lancelot of the Round Table. He had developed a crush on a neighbor girl named Lucy who eventually married his acquaintance Edwin Ackerman, causing King tremendous jealousy. As an adult, King was a college and later medical school graduate, obtaining a psychiatry degree. He decided to use his now more fully developed image-projecting abilities in a secret life of crime. When Henry's powers grew, his head grew abnormally tall and he lost all his hair. His first criminal act was creating thought-constructs that stole money needed by him to fund his new activities. He then became a crime lord. In early 1942, Brain Wave contacted Professor Elba, developer of the "insanity serum", augmented by Brain Wave's mental abilities. It was administered to people around the nation, causing them to commit crimes. Professor Elba was defeated by the Justice Society of America when he tried to inject Johnny Thunder with it. Doctor Mid-Nite caused him to inject himself, and he was killed when he fell out of a window.
Noticing this team of vigilantes, Brain Wave approached individual members of the JSA as psychiatrist Dr. Henry King. Implanting a post-hypnotic suggestions to assemble at the 1939 World's Fair Perisphere, he attached each of the JSAers (except Green Lantern) to a mental chamber which immersed them in a fantasy of wartime conflict. Brain Wave next assembled the All-Star Squadron at the World's Fair's Trylon tower, imprisoning each of them in the same device. Once Green Lantern was connected to the device, his willpower proved too great for the chamber and its orchestrator, leaving it in ruins and King mentally unstable.
In 1943, Brain Wave again battled the Justice Society, when its individual members traced various criminal operations back to Dr. King. At this time, he vented his revenge on Edwin Ackerman. Starman tracked King to his office of psychiatry, but was unable to produce sufficient proof to arrest the villain. Each of the JSAers, plus heroines Wonder Woman, Hawkgirl, Inza Cramer, Dian Belmont, Doris Lee and Peachy Pet Thunder, who were dressed as their male counterparts, eventually converged on King's Sharktooth Bay tower. He used images of their boyfriends to capture them, but when he tried to gas the group, Wonder Woman broke her fetters and went after King, who jumped off of his tower to his presumed death.
However, King's smock was caught on the limb of a tree as he fell. Thus saved, he sought revenge by utilizing his shrinking ray device to shrink the JSAers to a height of 8 inches. He lured Wonder Woman away by having the minutes from the past JSA meetings stolen. She went to get the copies, and while she was gone, Brain Wave shrunk the male members and took them with him. Storing them as trophies in his lair, King left his foes to meet with his minions. With the aid of Hawkman's bird allies, the JSAers left to confront the criminal henchmen directly as they attempted to commit crimes. Eventually, Johnny Thunder commanded his Thunderbolt to restore each member to their proper height, and when he got into trouble, his Thunderbolt got the other members to the Tower. The JSA then converged once more at the Sharktooth Bay tower, but didn't realize that the road leading there was mined. Thunderbolt teleported the bombs underneath the tower, and Brain Wave seemed to die once again.