title: Thank U, Next

text: The ninth track "In My Head" begins with an excerpt of a voicemail from by Grande's close friend Doug Middlebrook. It is a trap-pop hybrid with many R&B influences. "7 Rings," the tenth track, is a trap-pop and R&B song. It features a heavy bass and sees Grande discuss "how global success has allowed her to enjoy the finer things". "Billboard" magazine noted it's "the most hip-hop-leaning song Grande has released in the post-"Sweetener" era yet, with Grande almost rapping the song's verses". The album's lead single, "Thank U, Next" is the eleventh track on the album. A self-empowerment pop and R&B song with elements of synth-pop, its lyrics discuss many of Grande's past relationships. Grande explained in an interview that "thank u, next..." is a phrase that she and fellow singer/songwriter Victoria Monét use. The final track "Break Up with Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored" is a trap-pop and R&B song. It was said to be Grande's most eye-catching song from the album. The track replaced "Remember", a song previously planned to be on the album, but was too personal for Grande to release. It samples "It Makes Me Ill" by NSYNC in the bridge.


title: Thank U, Next

text: "Thank U, Next" was released worldwide on February 8, 2019, by Republic Records, five months and 22 days after "Sweetener", which was released on August 17, 2018. On releasing the album so soon after her previous offering, Grande said she dreamed of putting out music like a rapper does and break "certain standards that pop women are held to that men aren't." Commenting on previous release strategies, she explained that "we have to do the teaser before the single, then do the single, and wait to do the preorder, and radio has to impact before the video, and we have to do the discount on this day, and all this shit. It's just like, 'Bruh, I just want to fucking talk to my fans and sing and write music and drop it the way these boys do. Why do they get to make records like that and I don't?' So I do and I did and I am, and I will continue to."


title: Thank U, Next

text: The album cover art, shot by Alfredo Flores, shows Grande laying upside-down on the floor with the album title painted on her neck. The digital edition cover features a pink border, whilst the physical edition features a black border.


title: Thank U, Next

text: On October 25, 2018, Grande officially announced the Sweetener World Tour, in promotion of both "Thank U, Next" and "Sweetener". The tour began on March 18, 2019, with the first leg consisting of 50 shows across North America. The second leg of the tour began on August 17, 2019, consisting of 30 shows across Europe. The third leg of the tour visited 18 cities across North America and finished in Inglewood, California at The Forum. Normani and Social House were announced as the opening acts for the first leg of the tour.


title: Thank U, Next

text: The title track was released as the lead single from the album on November 3, 2018, without prior announcements. Commercially, the single was a massive success, peaking at number-one of the charts of 12 countries and breaking a string of records. The song also became Grande's first number-one single on the US "Billboard" Hot 100. She performed the song on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" on November 7. Its accompanying music video was released on November 30, which broke the records for both the most-watched music video in YouTube within 24 hours and the fastest Vevo video to reach 100 million views on YouTube. The song spawned an Internet meme, inspired by the lyrics "One taught me love/one taught me patience / one taught me pain". In a similar fashion, it has also been used as a slogan.


title: Thank U, Next

text: "7 Rings" was released as the second single on January 18, 2019. The track was also commercially successful, peaking atop the charts of 15 countries, including the US, debuting atop of the "Billboard" Hot 100, making Grande the third female artist to have two or more songs debuting at the top slot of the Hot 100. This also made Grande the third artist in history to have an album with two songs that debuted at number one on the Hot 100, after Drake's "Scorpion" in 2018 and Mariah Carey's "Daydream" in 1995. It received generally mixed reviews from music critics, and was the center of plagiarism accusations from multiple artists. "7 Rings" was also nominated for Record of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards.


title: Thank U, Next

text: "Break Up with Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored" was released as the third single on February 8, 2019, the same day the album came out. The song debuted atop of the charts in Ireland and the United Kingdom. In the latter, Grande became the first female artist to replace herself at number one on the chart, and joined only three other artists in having three chart-topping singles in under 100 days. As the track became her fifth number-one single in Ireland, Grande now also holds the record for the most number ones in the 2010s decade on the chart, alongside Rihanna. "Break Up with Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored" debuted at number two on the "Billboard" Hot 100, becoming Grande's 13th top ten single on the chart. With this single at number two, "7 Rings" at number one and "Thank U, Next" at number three, Grande became the first artist to hold the top three on the chart since the Beatles in 1964.


title: Thank U, Next

text: "Imagine" was released as the album's only promotional single on December 14, 2018. Grande performed the song on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" on December 18.


title: Thank U, Next

text: Upon release, "Thank U, Next" received widespread acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 86 based on 24 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim"; it is the highest Metascore for any of Grande's albums.


title: Thank U, Next

text: Rob Sheffield of "Rolling Stone" stated that "Thank U, Next" is "one of the year's best pop albums so far, even in a 2019 that's already turning out to be a great one for new music. "Thank U, Next" makes you suspect that the best Ariana is yet to come." Ross Horton from "The Line of Best Fit" praised both the songwriting and production of the album, stating that it is an "airtight, dense pop record with an obnoxiously brash production" and commenting that "even the most delicate, sensual things here are tightly compressed and scrubbed of anything resembling acoustics." AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine also gave the album a positive review, commenting that "Grande is swaggering with [...] confidence" and concluding that the album "embodies every aspect of Ariana Grande, the grand pop star." Mikael Wood of the "Los Angeles Times" said, ""Thank U, Next" flaunts Grande's emotional healing; it's suffused with the joy of discovering that what didn't kill her really did make her stronger."


title: Thank U, Next

text: Michael Cragg of "The Guardian" commented that "Thank U, Next" seems to be a "result of a burst of creativity and a prevailing mood", yet criticized "7 Rings" as a "braggadocious, ice-cold low point" of the album. He concluded positively, stating that Grande is a "pop star [...] finally working out who they are and what they want to say" and compared the album to Rihanna's "Anti". Helen Brown from "The Independent" stated that Grande is "embracing her inner mean girl (on the sexy "Break Up with Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored") [and] owning her flaws and contradictions" on tracks such as "Needy" and "NASA", yet concluded that the album lacks enough "vocal grit". Sal Cinquemani from "Slant Magazine" awarded the album three-and-a-half stars out of five, believing that the album "is easily Grande's most sonically consistent effort to date". He criticized that "some of the [...] tracks tend to blur together", but ultimately concluded in saying that Grande's "refusal to fake a smile that proves to be what makes her so damn likeable." In a capsule review for "Vice", Robert Christgau gave the album a three-star honorable mention () and summed it up as Grande's "maturing from multitracked studio trickeration to straight love songs—love songs an old grouch might complain are all too superstar-specific"; the title track and "Ghostin'" were cited as highlights.


title: Thank U, Next

text: "Thank U, Next" was named as one of the best albums of 2019. "MTV" named it as one of the ten albums of 2019, stating that the album "unpacks love, lust, and pain in a metallic pop coating. It's cooler, weirder, and deeper than "Sweetener", and manages to make that project look shockingly surface-level". "Billboard" ranked "Thank U, Next" as their number best album of 2019, stating that "the pop princess officially became a queen".


title: Thank U, Next

text: This was also the second consecutive year that "Billboard" ranked Grande's album as the best of year after naming the artist's previous album, "Sweetener", as their number one best album of 2018. "Billboard" complimented Grande's liberation to guilt, emotional restraint and independence, they said "in the aftermath of her personal struggles from that year, she found solace in the studio, sipping champagne with her friends and collaborators, while writing and recording the best album of her career in just two weeks". "Thank U, Next" placed on "Billboard"'s decade end album's list "The 100 Greatest Albums of the 2010s", at number eight.


title: Thank U, Next

text: "Thank U, Next" debuted at number-one on the US "Billboard" 200 chart, earning 360,000 album-equivalent units in its opening week, of which 116,000 came from pure sales. It was Grande's fourth number one album, and second in less than six months; marking the shortest gap between number one albums for a woman at the time since Olivia Newton-John's "If You Love Me, Let Me Know" (1974) and "Have You Ever Been Mellow" (1975). Its opening week figure of 360,000 was also the largest for a pop album since Taylor Swift's "Reputation" (2017). "Thank U, Next"'s tracks collected a total of 307 million on-demand audio streams in its first week, representing the largest US streaming week ever for a female artist and pop album. Overall, it earned the eighth-largest streaming debut ever in the US. "Billboard" also noted that of the 20 largest album streaming weeks at the time, "Thank U, Next" was the only non-hip hop title present.


title: Thank U, Next

text: On the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart, issue dated February 20, all 12 songs from "Thank U, Next" appeared simultaneously; eleven of those songs appeared in the top 40, breaking the record for the most simultaneous top 40 entries by a female artist. The following week, issue dated February 27, all 12 of the album's tracks remained on the chart for a second consecutive week. In its second week, the album remained atop the chart, earning an additional 151,000 units, consisting of 20,000 pure album sales, becoming Grande's first album to spend multiple weeks at number one. It earned 168.6 million on-demand streams in its second week, marking (at the time) the third-largest streaming week ever by a woman, and the second-largest for a pop album, behind its own first week figure.


title: Thank U, Next

text: "Thank U, Next" was 2019's second-best-performing album on the "Billboard" 200 chart. It spent 164 weeks on the chart, becoming Grande's longest-running album. Combining singles sales and streaming, "Thank U, Next" sold 2.056 million units throughout 2019, and was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for exceeding two million units in the US in June 2020. As of June 2020, the album has sold 302,000 units in the country.


title: Thank U, Next

text: In the United Kingdom, "Thank U, Next" debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart with 65,000 album-equivalent units. The album became Grande's third number-one on the chart and marked her largest album opening week to date there. Earning 59 million streams, "Thank U, Next" set a new record for most album streams ever by a female artist in a week in the country, beating her previous album, "Sweetener". Following its release, "Break Up with Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored" debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart, replacing "7 Rings", with the latter returning to number one the following week, making Grande the first female solo artist since Madonna in 1985 to simultaneously hold the number one and two spots on the UK Singles Chart and the first musical artist to replace herself twice consecutively at number one in UK chart history. Also, "Needy" peaked at number eight on the chart. "Thank U, Next" also was 2019's third fastest-selling download by a female artist in the UK, behind Taylor Swift's "Lover" and Pink's "Hurts 2B Human".


title: Thank U, Next

text: In Ireland, "Thank U, Next" also became Grande's third number one on the Irish Albums Chart, selling nearly 5,389 units, more than the rest of the top five combined (according to Official Charts Company). Upon its release, "Thank U, Next" became the only female album this decade to feature three Irish number-one singles. Following the success of the album, "Sweetener" (2018) arose three places to number eight, and "Dangerous Woman" (2016) re-entered the top 50 at number 43. In Australia, "Thank U, Next" debuted at number one on the Australian Albums Chart, becoming Grande's fourth number one in the territory. All 12 album tracks also appeared on the ARIA Singles Chart.


title: Thank U, Next

text: "Thank U, Next" has sold more than one million pure copies worldwide. It was the eighth best-selling album of 2019 globally and ranked fourth among female artists.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provided to the other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network. A service is a discrete unit of functionality that can be accessed remotely and acted upon and updated independently, such as retrieving a credit card statement online. SOA is also intended to be independent of vendors, products and technologies.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Service orientation is a way of thinking in terms of services and service-based development and the outcomes of services.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Different services can be used in conjunction as a service mesh to provide the functionality of a large software application, a principle SOA shares with modular programming. Service-oriented architecture integrates distributed, separately maintained and deployed software components. It is enabled by technologies and standards that facilitate components' communication and cooperation over a network, especially over an IP network.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: SOA is related to the idea of an API (application programming interface), an interface or communication protocol between different parts of a computer program intended to simplify the implementation and maintenance of software. An API can be thought of as the service, and the SOA the architecture that allows the service to operate.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: In SOA, services use protocols that describe how they pass and parse messages using description metadata. This metadata describes both the functional characteristics of the service and quality-of-service characteristics. Service-oriented architecture aims to allow users to combine large chunks of functionality to form applications which are built purely from existing services and combining them in an ad hoc manner. A service presents a simple interface to the requester that abstracts away the underlying complexity acting as a black box. Further users can also access these independent services without any knowledge of their internal implementation.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: The related buzzword service-orientation promotes is "loose coupling" between services. SOA separates functions into distinct units, or services, which developers make accessible over a network in order to allow users to combine and reuse them in the production of applications. These services and their corresponding consumers communicate with each other by passing data in a well-defined, shared format, or by coordinating an activity between two or more services.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: A manifesto was published for service-oriented architecture in October, 2009. This came up with six core values which are listed as follows:


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: SOA can be seen as part of the continuum which ranges from the older concept of distributed computing and modular programming, through SOA, and on to practices of mashups, SaaS, and cloud computing (which some see as the offspring of SOA).


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: There are no industry standards relating to the exact composition of a service-oriented architecture, although many industry sources have published their own principles. Some of these


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: The service consumer–provider relationship is governed by a standardized service contract, which has a business part, a functional part and a technical part.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Service composition patterns have two broad, high-level architectural styles: choreography and orchestration. Lower level enterprise integration patterns that are not bound to a particular architectural style continue to be relevant and eligible in SOA design.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Service-oriented architecture can be implemented with web services or Microservices. This is done to make the functional building-blocks accessible over standard Internet protocols that are independent of platforms and programming languages. These services can represent either new applications or just wrappers around existing legacy systems to make them network-enabled.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Implementers commonly build SOAs using web services standards. One example is SOAP, which has gained broad industry acceptance after recommendation of Version 1.2 from the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) in 2003. These standards (also referred to as web service specifications) also provide greater interoperability and some protection from lock-in to proprietary vendor software. One can, however, also implement SOA using any other service-based technology, such as Jini, CORBA, Internet Communications Engine, REST, or gRPC.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Architectures can operate independently of specific technologies and can therefore be implemented using a wide range of technologies, including:


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Implementations can use one or more of these protocols and, for example, might use a file-system mechanism to communicate data following a defined interface specification between processes conforming to the SOA concept. The key is independent services with defined interfaces that can be called to perform their tasks in a standard way, without a service having foreknowledge of the calling application, and without the application having or needing knowledge of how the service actually performs its tasks. SOA enables the development of applications that are built by combining loosely coupled and interoperable services.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: These services inter-operate based on a formal definition (or contract, e.g., WSDL) that is independent of the underlying platform and programming language. The interface definition hides the implementation of the language-specific service. SOA-based systems can therefore function independently of development technologies and platforms (such as Java, .NET, etc.). Services written in C# running on .NET platforms and services written in Java running on Java EE platforms, for example, can both be consumed by a common composite application (or client). Applications running on either platform can also consume services running on the other as web services that facilitate reuse. Managed environments can also wrap COBOL legacy systems and present them as software services.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: High-level programming languages such as BPEL and specifications such as WS-CDL and WS-Coordination extend the service concept by providing a method of defining and supporting orchestration of fine-grained services into more coarse-grained business services, which architects can in turn incorporate into workflows and business processes implemented in composite applications or portals.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Service-oriented modeling is an SOA framework that identifies the various disciplines that guide SOA practitioners to conceptualize, analyze, design, and architect their service-oriented assets. The Service-oriented modeling framework (SOMF) offers a modeling language and a work structure or "map" depicting the various components that contribute to a successful service-oriented modeling approach. It illustrates the major elements that identify the "what to do" aspects of a service development scheme. The model enables practitioners to craft a project plan and to identify the milestones of a service-oriented initiative. SOMF also provides a common modeling notation to address alignment between business and IT organizations.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Some enterprise architects believe that SOA can help businesses respond more quickly and more cost-effectively to changing market conditions. This style of "architecture" promotes reuse at the macro (service) level rather than micro (classes) level. It can also simplify interconnection to—and usage of—existing IT (legacy) assets.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: With SOA, the idea is that an organization can look at a problem holistically. A business has more overall control. Theoretically there would not be a mass of developers using whatever tool sets might please them. But rather they would be coding to a standard that is set within the business. They can also develop enterprise-wide SOA that encapsulates a business-oriented infrastructure. SOA has also been illustrated as a highway system providing efficiency for car drivers. The point being that if everyone had a car, but there was no highway anywhere, things would be limited and disorganized, in any attempt to get anywhere quickly or efficiently. IBM Vice President of Web Services Michael Liebow says that SOA "builds highways".


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: In some respects, SOA could be regarded as an architectural evolution rather than as a revolution. It captures many of the best practices of previous software architectures. In communications systems, for example, little development of solutions that use truly static bindings to talk to other equipment in the network has taken place. By embracing a SOA approach, such systems can position themselves to stress the importance of well-defined, highly inter-operable interfaces. Other predecessors of SOA include Component-based software engineering and Object-Oriented Analysis and Design (OOAD) of remote objects, for instance, in CORBA.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: A service comprises a stand-alone unit of functionality available only via a formally defined interface. Services can be some kind of "nano-enterprises" that are easy to produce and improve. Also services can be "mega-corporations" constructed as the coordinated work of subordinate services.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Reasons for treating the implementation of services as separate projects from larger projects include:


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: SOA promises to simplify testing indirectly. Services are autonomous, stateless, with fully documented interfaces, and separate from the cross-cutting concerns of the implementation. If an organization possesses appropriately defined test data, then a corresponding stub is built that reacts to the test data when a service is being built. A full set of regression tests, scripts, data, and responses is also captured for the service. The service can be tested as a 'black box' using existing stubs corresponding to the services it calls. Test environments can be constructed where the primitive and out-of-scope services are stubs, while the remainder of the mesh is test deployments of full services. As each interface is fully documented with its own full set of regression test documentation, it becomes simple to identify problems in test services. Testing evolves to merely validate that the test service operates according to its documentation, and finds gaps in documentation and test cases of all services within the environment. Managing the data state of idempotent services is the only complexity.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Examples may prove useful to aid in documenting a service to the level where it becomes useful. The documentation of some APIs within the Java Community Process provide good examples. As these are exhaustive, staff would typically use only important subsets. The 'ossjsa.pdf' file within JSR-89 exemplifies such a file.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: SOA has been conflated with Web services; however, Web services are only one option to implement the patterns that comprise the SOA style. In the absence of native or binary forms of remote procedure call (RPC), applications could run more slowly and require more processing power, increasing costs. Most implementations do incur these overheads, but SOA can be implemented using technologies (for example, Java Business Integration (JBI), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and data distribution service (DDS)) that do not depend on remote procedure calls or translation through XML or JSON. At the same time, emerging open-source XML parsing technologies (such as VTD-XML) and various XML-compatible binary formats promise to significantly improve SOA performance.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Stateful services require both the consumer and the provider to share the same consumer-specific context, which is either included in or referenced by messages exchanged between the provider and the consumer. This constraint has the drawback that it could reduce the overall scalability of the service provider if the service-provider needs to retain the shared context for each consumer. It also increases the coupling between a service provider and a consumer and makes switching service providers more difficult. Ultimately, some critics feel that SOA services are still too constrained by applications they represent.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: A primary challenge faced by service-oriented architecture is managing of metadata. Environments based on SOA include many services which communicate among each other to perform tasks. Due to the fact that the design may involve multiple services working in conjunction, an Application may generate millions of messages. Further services may belong to different organizations or even competing firms creating a huge trust issue. Thus SOA governance comes into the scheme of things.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Another major problem faced by SOA is the lack of a uniform testing framework. There are no tools that provide the required features for testing these services in a service-oriented architecture. The major causes of difficulty are:


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Application programming interfaces (APIs) are the frameworks through which developers can interact with a web application.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Tim O'Reilly coined the term "Web 2.0" to describe a perceived, quickly growing set of web-based applications. A topic that has experienced extensive coverage involves the relationship between Web 2.0 and service-oriented architectures.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: SOA is the philosophy of encapsulating application logic in services with a uniformly defined interface and making these publicly available via discovery mechanisms. The notion of complexity-hiding and reuse, but also the concept of loosely coupling services has inspired researchers to elaborate on similarities between the two philosophies, SOA and Web 2.0, and their respective applications. Some argue Web 2.0 and SOA have significantly different elements and thus can not be regarded "parallel philosophies", whereas others consider the two concepts as complementary and regard Web 2.0 as the global SOA.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: The philosophies of Web 2.0 and SOA serve different user needs and thus expose differences with respect to the design and also the technologies used in real-world applications. However, , use-cases demonstrated the potential of combining technologies and principles of both Web 2.0 and SOA.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Microservices are a modern interpretation of service-oriented architectures used to build distributed software systems. Services in a microservice architecture are processes that communicate with each other over the network in order to fulfill a goal. These services use technology agnostic protocols, which aid in encapsulating choice of language and frameworks, making their choice a concern internal to the service. Microservices are a new realisation and implementation approach to SOA, which have become popular since 2014 (and after the introduction of DevOps), and which also emphasize continuous deployment and other agile practices.


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: There is no single commonly agreed definition of microservices. The following characteristics and principles can be found in the literature:


title: Service-oriented architecture

text: Interactive applications requiring real-time response times, for example low-latency interactive 3d applications, are using specific service oriented architectures addressing the specific needs of such kind of applications. These include for example low-latency optimized distributed computation and communication as well as resource and instance management.


title: 2018 NHL Entry Draft

text: The 2018 NHL Entry Draft was the 56th NHL Entry Draft. The draft was held on June 22–23, 2018, at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas.


title: 2018 NHL Entry Draft

text: The 2018 NHL Entry Draft was the second of two professional sports drafts to be held in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex during the calendar year, as the Dallas Cowboys hosted the 2018 NFL Draft in April.


title: 2018 NHL Entry Draft

text: The first three selections were Rasmus Dahlin going to the Buffalo Sabres, Andrei Svechnikov being selected by the Carolina Hurricanes, and Jesperi Kotkaniemi being picked by the Montreal Canadiens.


title: 2018 NHL Entry Draft

text: The 2018 draft featured both the first player trained in England to be drafted in Liam Kirk and the first Jamaican-born player drafted in Jermaine Loewen.


title: 2018 NHL Entry Draft

text: Ice hockey players that were born between January 1, 1998, and September 15, 2000, are eligible for selection in the 2018 NHL Entry Draft. Additionally, undrafted, non-North American players born in 1997 are eligible for the draft; and those players who were drafted in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft, but not signed by an NHL team and who were born after June 30, 1998, are also eligible to re-enter the draft.


title: 2018 NHL Entry Draft

text: Since the 2012–13 NHL season all teams not qualifying for the Stanley Cup playoffs have a "weighted" chance at winning the first overall selection. Beginning with the 2014–15 NHL season the NHL changed the weighting system that was used in previous years. Under the new system the odds of winning the draft lottery for the four lowest finishing teams in the league decreased, while the odds for the other non-playoff teams increased. The Buffalo Sabres, Carolina Hurricanes and Montreal Canadiens won the lotteries that took place on April 28, 2018, giving them the first, second and third picks overall. The Buffalo Sabres retained the top pick, while Carolina moved up nine spots and Montreal moved up one spot. In the process, the Ottawa Senators and Arizona Coyotes moved down two spots from second and third overall, respectively, while the Detroit Red Wings, Vancouver Canucks, Chicago Blackhawks, New York Rangers, Edmonton Oilers and New York Islanders each dropped one spot.


title: Pollyanna McIntosh

text: Pollyanna McIntosh (born 15 March 1979) is a Scottish-born actress known for her roles in films "Exam" (2009), "The Woman" (2011), "Let Us Prey" (2014), the first season of Joe R. Lansdale's "Hap and Leonard" (2016), a starring role in "The Walking Dead" (2017–2018) and "" (2021), and social issue horror film "Darlin'" (2019) which she wrote, directed and starred in. McIntosh also portrays Queen Ælfgifu of Denmark in the Netflix series "" (2022).


title: Pollyanna McIntosh

text: Pollyanna McIntosh was born in Dunbartonshire, Scotland. From ages two to five, she and her family lived in Portugal. They then lived in Edinburgh before moving to Colombia. Her father was an actor, but he became a businessman working for a thread company so that he could spend more time with his family. McIntosh attended St. George's School for Girls.


title: Pollyanna McIntosh

text: McIntosh debuted as an actress aged 16, appearing in London's independent film and theatre as both an actress and director. In 2004 she moved to Los Angeles and directed the stage production "The Woolgatherer" with Anne Dudek and Dyan David Fisher. In 2005, she received her first film role in "Headspace". In 2009 she starred in "Exam" and was nominated for both Best Work of a Rookie at the BAFTA Awards and the Raindance Award at the British Independent Film Awards. In 2011, she was cast in the film "The Woman" for which she was nominated for Best Actress at the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards. In 2016 she was cast as Angel in the SundanceTV series "Hap and Leonard" and was cast the following year as Jadis ("Anne") in a starring role on "The Walking Dead".


title: Pollyanna McIntosh

text: Her debut feature as a script writer and director, the social issue horror film "Darlin'", premiered at the South-by-Southwest festival in Austin, Texas in March 2019.


title: Pollyanna McIntosh

text: McIntosh also pursues a career in fashion and works in support of young people's charity the Joshua Nolan Foundation.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: Mateusz Jakub Morawiecki (; born 20 June 1968) is a Polish economist, historian and politician who has served as prime minister of Poland since 2017. A member of Law and Justice (PiS), he previously served in the cabinet of prime minister Beata Szydło as deputy prime minister from 2015 to 2017, Minister of Development from 2015 to 2018 and Minister of Finance from 2016 to 2018. Prior to his political appointment, Morawiecki had an extensive business career.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: Born in Wrocław, Morawiecki became heavily engaged in anti-communist movements in his youth. He attended the University of Wrocław and extended his education at the University of Hamburg and University of Basel. He obtained degrees in arts, business administration and advanced studies. From 1996 to 2004, Morawiecki lectured at the Wrocław University of Economics, as well as from 1996 to 1998 at the Wrocław University of Technology. From 1998, Morawiecki worked for Bank Zachodni WBK from the Santander Group, where he was promoted to the position of managing director and eventually chairman.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: On 11 December 2017, following prime minister Szydło's resignation, Morawiecki was nominated to succeed her by the chief staff of the Law and Justice party, which he joined in 2016.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: Mateusz Morawiecki was born 20 June 1968 in Wrocław, Silesia, to Kornel Morawiecki (physicist and Fighting Solidarity leader) and his wife Jadwiga. Morawiecki is of distant German descent.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: Morawiecki stated in a press interview that at the age of 12 he helped his father copying underground political literature and in August 1980 he plastered the streets of Wrocław with posters calling for a general strike. After martial law was declared in 1981, he helped print and distribute underground Solidarity magazines. As a son of a well known opposition activist, he was sometimes detained and intimidated by the police. In an interview, he said he threw Molotov cocktails at police cars and was on many occasions stopped and beaten by Poland's secret police ("Służba Bezpieczeństwa", "SB"). Another reason for this was his sympathizing with the Hippie movement as an early teenager, a time during which he underwent an arrest due to alleged marijuana possession. This was also the time he first encountered Ryszard Terlecki – a precursor of the Hippie movement in Poland, and later one of his close coworkers. In connection to this, Morawiecki has mentioned that his colleague from the PiS party "knows perfectly well what fighting for freedom means".


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: In the 1980s, he edited an illegal political newspaper "Lower Silesia Bulletin" and was active in the Independent Students' Association. He continued taking part in political demonstrations until the late 1980s and participated in occupation strikes at the University of Wroclaw in 1988 and 1989. He co-organized the Club for Political Thought "Free and Solidary".


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: Morawiecki is an alumnus of the University of Wrocław (history, 1992), Wrocław University of Technology (1993), Wrocław University of Economics (Business Administration, 1995), the University of Hamburg (European Law and Economic Integration, 1995–97), and the University of Basel (European Studies, 1995–97). While at the Wrocław University of Technology, he studied abroad at Central Connecticut State University and completed an advanced executive program at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: In 1991 Morawiecki began work at Cogito Company and co-created two publishing firms, Reverentia and Enter Marketing-Publishing. That same year he co-founded the magazine "Dwa Dni" (Two Days), later becoming editor-in-chief.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: In 1995 he completed an internship at Deutsche Bundesbank in credit analysis, financial restructuring, banking supervision, and financial market supervision. In 1996–97 he conducted banking and macroeconomic research at the University of Frankfurt. In 1998, as deputy director of the Accession Negotiations Department in the Committee for European Integration, he oversaw and participated in numerous areas, including finance, of the negotiations for Polish accession to the European Union.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: With Frank Emmert, he co-authored the first textbook on "The Law of the European Union" published in Poland.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: From 1996 to 2004 Morawiecki lectured at the Wrocław University of Economics, and from 1996 to 1998 also at the Wrocław University of Technology. He sat on policy committees at many institutions of higher education. From 1998 to 2001 he was a member of the supervisory boards of the Wałbrzych Power Company, Dialog (a local telephone-service provider), and the Industrial Development Agency. From 1998 to 2002 he was a member of the Lower Silesian Regional Assembly.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: From November 1998 Morawiecki worked for Bank Zachodni WBK, Santander Group, where he began his career as deputy chair of the supervisory board, and supervisor of the economic analysis bureau and the international trade department. In 2001 he became managing director and a member of the board. In 2007–15 Morawiecki was chairman of Bank Zachodni WBK.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: On 16 November 2015, President Andrzej Duda appointed Mateusz Morawiecki as both Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Development in the Cabinet led by Prime Minister Beata Szydło. (This took place soon after Mateusz Morawiecki's father, Kornel Morawiecki, was elected to Poland's lower chamber of the parliament and the Law and Justice party won the 2015 parliamentary elections.)


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: On 28 September 2016, in addition to his other positions, Morawiecki was appointed Minister of Finance, becoming the second most powerful member of the Government, overseeing the budget, government finances, European Union funds, and overall economic policy.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: As Finance Minister, Morawiecki outlined an ambitious "Plan for Responsible Development", known colloquially as the "Morawiecki Plan", aimed at stimulating economic growth and raising revenues for generous government plans, including "Family 500+" child benefits for all families with two or more children. In March 2017, he took part in a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Baden-Baden, becoming Poland's first-ever representative at that summit.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: In December 2017, Jarosław Kaczyński, the Chairman of the Law and Justice party, declared that he no longer had confidence in Beata Szydło to be the party's prime ministerial candidate, in part due to perceived conflict between her and other European Union leaders. With her position untenable, Szydło resigned, and Morawiecki quickly won internal party approval to be nominated as her successor. He was sworn in as prime minister of Poland on 11 December, immediately appointing Szydło as his deputy. In his first major address to Sejm, he pledged "continuity" rather than radical change.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: In January 2018, following a highly public racist incident in Warsaw, Morawiecki declared: "There is no place in Poland for racism. The attack on a girl because of her skin color deserves the strongest condemnation. We shall do everything to make Poland safe for everyone."


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: At the Munich Security Conference on 17 February that year, Morawiecki said "it is not going to be seen as criminal to say that there were Polish perpetrators, as there were Jewish perpetrators, as there were Russian perpetrators, as there were Ukrainian perpetrators, not only German perpetrators." His remark roused controversy and prompted criticism by prominent Israeli politicians, including Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. The crisis was resolved in late June that year when the Polish and Israeli prime ministers issued a joint communiqué endorsing research into the Jewish Holocaust and condemning the expression, "Polish concentration camps".


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: As other Visegrád Group leaders, Morawiecki opposes any compulsory EU long-term quota on redistribution of migrants. In May 2018, Morawiecki said: "Proposals by the European Union that impose quotas on us hit the very foundations of national sovereignty."


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: In July 2018 Morawiecki said he "will not rest" until "the whole truth" of the World War II-era massacres in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia has been explained. Between 1942 and 1945, members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) killed up to 100,000 civilians in nowadays Western Ukraine.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: On the issue of Brexit, Morawiecki told the BBC in January 2019 that more and more Polish people are returning to Poland from the UK and he hoped the trend would continue to help boost the Polish economy.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: In January 2019 Morawiecki said that "Hitler's Germany fed on fascist ideology... But all the evil came from this (German) state and we cannot forget that, because otherwise we relativise evil."


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: Morawiecki wants Germany to pay World War II reparations for the destruction it caused during World War II. In August 2019, he said that "Poland has yet to receive proper compensation from Germany… We lost six million people over the course of the war — many more than did countries that received major reparations."


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: On 15 September 2020, the Voivodeship administrative court in Warsaw ruled that the decision of prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki to hold the elections only by postal vote on 10 May 2020 was a "gross violation of the law and was issued without [legal] grounds" and violated article 7 of the Polish Constitution, article 157, paragraph 1 and article 187, paragraph 1 and 2 of the Electoral Code. The opposition demanded Morawiecki's resignation.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: In October 2021, Morawiecki accused the European Union of blackmail over several issues, however, he downplayed the possibility of a "Polexit" and said that the threat of economic sanctions was a "direct challenge".


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: In December 2021, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz came to Warsaw for talks with Morawiecki. They discussed Poland’s dispute with the EU over the rule of law, the long-term EU climate policies and the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which would bring Russian gas to Germany and bypass Poland. Morawiecki said "we do not want people to suffer as a result" of EU's Green Deal, accusing the bloc's Emissions Trading System of contributing to the 2021 global energy crisis.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: In March 2022, Morawiecki announced that Poland would be prepared to give MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, but only via NATO as a whole. He stated that such a decision had to be unanimously made by the member states of NATO.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: In 2008 Morawiecki was made Honorary Consul of the Republic of Ireland in Poland. In 2013 he was awarded the Cross of Freedom and Solidarity. In 2015, he became the recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. In 2019, he was awarded the title "Man of the Year" at the annual Krynica Economic Forum. He has also received other distinctions from economic clubs, universities, publishing houses, and cultural institutions.


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: Morawiecki is married to Iwona Morawiecka, with whom he has four children: two daughters (Olga and Magdalena) and two sons (Jeremiasz and Ignacy).


title: Mateusz Morawiecki

text: Two of his aunts married Jewish men and converted to Judaism. One aunt was saved during the Jewish Holocaust by a Righteous among the Nations.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Stewart Granger (born James Lablache Stewart; 6 May 1913 – 16 August 1993) was a British film actor, mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. He was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the early 1960s, rising to fame through his appearances in the Gainsborough melodramas.


title: Stewart Granger

text: He was born James Lablache Stewart in Old Brompton Road, Kensington, West London, the only son of Major James Stewart, OBE and his wife Frederica Eliza (née Lablache). Granger was educated at Epsom College and the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. He was the great-great-grandson of the opera singer Luigi Lablache and the grandson of the actor Luigi Lablache.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Stewart Granger lived in Bournemouth at 57 Grove Road with his mother. His mother owned the property now called "East Cliff Cottage Hotel" until 1979.


title: Stewart Granger

text: When he became an actor, he was advised to change his name in order to avoid being confused with the American actor James Stewart. Granger was his Scottish grandmother's maiden name. Offscreen friends and colleagues continued to call him Jimmy for the rest of his life, but to the general public he became Stewart Granger.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Granger made his film debut as an extra in 1933, starting with "The Song You Gave Me" (1933). He can also be glimpsed in "Give Her a Ring" (1933), "Over the Garden Wall" (1934) and "A Southern Maid" (1934). It was at this time that he met Michael Wilding and they remained friends until Wilding's death in 1979.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Years of theatre work followed, initially at Hull Repertory Theatre and then, after a pay dispute, at Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Here he met Elspeth March, a leading actress with the company, who became his first wife. His productions at Birmingham included "The Courageous Sex" and "Victoria, Queen and Empress"; he also acted at the Malvern Festival in "The Millionairess" and "The Apple Cart" and was in the movie "Under Secret Orders" (1937).


title: Stewart Granger

text: Granger began to get work on stage in London. He appeared in "The Sun Never Sets" (1938) at the Drury Lane Theatre and in "Serena Blandish" (1938) opposite Vivien Leigh.


title: Stewart Granger

text: At the Buxton Festival, he played Tybalt in a production of "Romeo and Juliet" opposite Robert Donat and Constance Cummings. He also acted opposite them both in "The Good Natured Man". In London he was in "Autumn" with Flora Robson and "The House in the Square" (1940).


title: Stewart Granger

text: At the outbreak of the Second World War, Granger enlisted in the Gordon Highlanders, then transferred to the Black Watch with the rank of second lieutenant. However he suffered from stomach ulcers and he was invalided out of the army in 1942.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Granger had a small role in the war movie "Secret Mission" (1942) and a bigger one in a comedy "Thursday's Child" (1943). He was in a stage production of "Rebecca" when he was asked to audition for the film that turned him into a star. Granger had been recommended by Donat, who most recently worked with Granger on stage in "To Dream Again".


title: Stewart Granger

text: Granger's first starring film role was as the acid-tongued Rokeby in the Gainsborough Pictures period melodrama "The Man in Grey" (1943), a movie that helped to make him and his three co-stars – James Mason, Phyllis Calvert and Margaret Lockwood – box-office names in Britain.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Granger followed it with "The Lamp Still Burns" (1943), playing the love interest of nurse Rosamund John. More popular was "Fanny by Gaslight" (1944), another for Gainsborough Pictures, which reunited him with Calvert and Mason, and added Jean Kent. "The New York Times" reported that Granger "is a young man worth watching. The customers... like his dark looks and his dash; he puts them in mind, they say of Cary Grant." It was the second most popular movie at the British box office in 1944.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Another hit was "Love Story" (1944), where he plays a blind pilot who falls in love with terminally ill Margaret Lockwood, with Patricia Roc co-starring. Granger filmed this at the same time as "Waterloo Road" (1945), playing his first villain, a "spiv" who has run off with the wife of John Mills. This movie was popular too, and it was one of Granger's favourites.


title: Stewart Granger

text: "Madonna of the Seven Moons" (1945), with Calvert and Roc, was more Gainsborough melodrama, another hit. Also popular was "Caesar and Cleopatra", supporting Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh; this movie lost money because of its high production cost but was widely seen, and was the first of Granger's movies to be a hit in the U.S. At the end of 1945 British exhibitors voted Granger the second most popular British film star, and the ninth most popular overall. "The Times" reported that "this six-foot black-visaged ex-soldier from the Black Watch is England's Number One pin up boy. Only Bing Crosby can match him for popularity."


title: Stewart Granger

text: "Caravan" (1946), starring Granger and Kent, was the sixth most popular movie at the British box office in 1946. Also well liked was "The Magic Bow" (1946), with Calvert and Kent, where Granger played Niccolò Paganini That year he was voted the third most popular British star, and the sixth most popular overall.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Granger went over to Rank, for whom he made a series of historical dramas: "Captain Boycott" (1947), set in Ireland, directed by Frank Launder; "Blanche Fury" (1948), with Valerie Hobson; and "Saraband for Dead Lovers" (1948), an Ealing Studios production. Granger was cast as the outsider, the handsome gambler Philip Christoph von Königsmarck who is perceived as 'not quite the ticket' by the established order, the Hanoverian court where the action is mostly set. Granger stated that this was one of his few movies of which he was proud. However it was a disappointment at the box office, as was "Blanche Fury".


title: Stewart Granger

text: Granger wanted a change of pace and so appeared in "Woman Hater" (1948), a comedy with Edwige Feuillère. In 1949, Granger was reported as earning around £30,000 a year.


title: Stewart Granger

text: That year Granger made "Adam and Evelyne", starring with Jean Simmons. The story, about a much older man and a teenager whom he gradually realises is no longer a child but a young woman with mature emotions and sexuality, had obvious parallels to Granger's and Simmons' own lives. Granger had first met the young Jean Simmons when they both worked on Gabriel Pascal's "Caesar and Cleopatra" (1945). Three years later, Simmons had transformed from a promising newcomer into a star. They married the following year in a bizarre wedding ceremony organised by Howard Hughes: One of his private aircraft flew the couple to Tucson, Arizona, where they were married, mainly among strangers, with Michael Wilding as Granger's best man.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Granger's stage production of Leo Tolstoy's "The Power of Darkness" (a venture he had intended as a vehicle for him to star with Jean Simmons) was very poorly received when it opened in London at the Lyric Theatre on 25 April 1949. During the run, two men attempted to cut some locks from Granger's hair. The disappointment added to his dissatisfaction with the Rank Organisation, and his thoughts turned to Hollywood.


title: Stewart Granger

text: In 1949 Granger made his move; MGM was looking for someone to play H. Rider Haggard's hero Allan Quatermain in a movie version of "King Solomon's Mines". Errol Flynn was offered the role but turned it down; Granger's signing was announced in August 1949.


title: Stewart Granger

text: On the basis of the huge success of this movie, released in 1950 and co-starring Deborah Kerr and Richard Carlson, he was offered a seven-year contract by MGM. He signed it in May 1950, and MGM announced three vehicles for him: "Robinson Crusoe", a remake of "Scaramouche" and an adaptations of "Soldiers Three".


title: Stewart Granger

text: His first movie under the new arrangement was an action comedy "Soldiers Three" (1951). Granger followed it with location work for "Constable Pedley" in Canada. This was put on hold so Granger could make a light comedy, "The Light Touch", in a role meant for Cary Grant. It was a box office disappointment. However filming resumed on "Constable Pedley" which became "The Wild North" (1953) and that was a big hit.


title: Stewart Granger

text: In 1952, Granger starred in "Scaramouche" in the role of Andre Moreau, the bastard son of a French nobleman, a part Ramón Novarro had played in the 1923 version of Rafael Sabatini's novel. Granger's co-star Eleanor Parker said Granger was the only actor she did not get along with during her entire career. "Everyone disliked this man...Stewart Granger was a dreadful person, rude...just awful. Just being in his presence was bad. I thought at one point the crew was going to kill him." However, the resulting movie was a notable critical and commercial success.


title: Stewart Granger

text: After this came the remake of "The Prisoner of Zenda" (1952), for which his theatrical voice, stature (6'2") and dignified profile made him a natural. It too was popular.


title: Stewart Granger

text: In 1952 he and Jean Simmons sued Howard Hughes for $250,000 damages arising from an alleged breach of contract. The case was settled out of court.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Columbia borrowed him to play the love interest of Rita Hayworth in "Salome" (1953), another big hit. Back at MGM he co-starred with his wife in "Young Bess" (1953), playing Thomas Seymour. The movie was popular, though it did not recover its cost, and it remained a favourite of Granger's.


title: Stewart Granger

text: He had a commercial success in "All the Brothers Were Valiant" (1953), playing a villain opposite Robert Taylor. Granger lost the role in "A Star Is Born", which went to James Mason. He had the title role in "Beau Brummell" (1954), opposite Elizabeth Taylor, and it was a box-office disappointment. More successful was the adventure story "Green Fire" (1954), co starring Grace Kelly.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Granger went to Britain to make "Footsteps in the Fog" (1955), a movie with Simmons, for Columbia. Back at MGM, he was in "Moonfleet" (1955), cast as adventurer Jeremy Fox in the Dorset of 1757, a man who rules a gang of cut-throat smugglers with an iron fist until he is softened by a 10-year-old boy who worships him and who believes only the best of him. The film was directed by Fritz Lang and produced by John Houseman, a former associate of Orson Welles. It was a flop.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Granger and Taylor were reunited in "The Last Hunt" (1956), a Western, with Taylor playing the villain, and a box office disappointment. So too was "Bhowani Junction" (1956), adapted from a John Masters novel about colonial India on the verge of obtaining independence. Ava Gardner played an Anglo-Indian (mixed race) woman caught between the two worlds of the British and the Indians, and Granger the British officer with whom (in a change from the novel) she ultimately fell in love.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Gardner was teamed with Granger in "The Little Hut" (1957), a sex farce that proved a surprise smash at the box office. He followed it with "Gun Glory" (1957). It was his last movie under his MGM contract, which ended September 10, 1957. Granger had turned down the role of Messala in the 1959 film "Ben-Hur", reportedly because he did not want to take second billing to Charlton Heston.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Granger had become a successful cattle rancher. He bought land in New Mexico and Arizona and introduced Charolais cattle to America.


title: Stewart Granger

text: In order to finance this he kept acting. He played a professional adventurer in "Harry Black" (1958), partly shot in India. He went to Britain to be in a thriller "The Whole Truth" (1958) for Romulus, for whom he was to make "The Nightcomers" but it never was filmed.


title: Stewart Granger

text: He returned to Los Angeles to support John Wayne in "North to Alaska" (1960). By now his marriage to Simmons had ended, and Granger decided to move to Europe.


title: Stewart Granger

text: In June 1960, Granger announced he would appear in "The Leopard"; two movies for MGM in Britain, one of which was "I Thank a Fool" alongside Susan Hayward; "Pontius Pilate" for Hugo Fregonese; and "The Tumbled House" for John Farrow. The role in "The Leopard" ultimately went to Burt Lancaster, the one in "I Thank a Fool" to Peter Finch, and the Fregonese and Farrow movies were never made. Granger did go to Britain to appear in the thriller "The Secret Partner" (1961) for MGM.


title: Stewart Granger

text: He went to Italy and played Lot in Robert Aldrich's "Sodom and Gomorrah" (1962), filmed in Rome. When "Sodom" started filming, Granger announced he had signed a three-picture deal with MGM, which would include "I Thank a Fool", "Swordsman of Siena" and a third movie for Jacques Bar. He also announced he had reactivated his production company, Tracy Productions, which was scheduled to make "Dark Memory" by Jonathan Latimer. Granger did not appear in "I Thank a Fool", and "Dark Memory" was not made. Instead Granger stayed in Italy to make "Commando" (1962), an action movie and "Swordsman of Siena" (1963), a swashbuckler. Granger was in the war movie "The Secret Invasion" (1964) for Roger Corman shot in Yugoslavia.


title: Stewart Granger

text: In West Germany, Granger acted in the role of Old Surehand in three Western movies adapted from novels by German author Karl May, with French actor Pierre Brice (playing the fictional Indian chief Winnetou), in "Among Vultures" (1964), with Elke Sommer; "The Oil Prince" (1965) ("Rampage at Apache Wells") (1965), shot in Yugoslavia; and "Old Surehand" ("Flaming Frontier") (1965). He was teamed with Brice and Lex Barker, also a hero of Karl May movies, in the crime movie "Gern hab' ich die Frauen gekillt" ("Killer's Carnival") (1966).


title: Stewart Granger

text: Granger starred in several Eurospy movies such as "Red Dragon" (1965), a West Germany-Italian movie shot in Hong Kong; and "Requiem for a Secret Agent" (1966). He did "The Crooked Road" (1965), with Robert Ryan under the direction of Don Chaffey in Yugoslavia; "Target for Killing" (1966), a crime movie with Karin Dor; "The Trygon Factor" (1966), a British co-production based on a novel by Edgar Wallace.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Granger's last studio picture was "The Last Safari" (1967), shot in Africa and directed by Henry Hathaway. Granger was billed under Kaz Garas. He later called this "my last real film...the worst film ever made in Africa!"


title: Stewart Granger

text: In 1970, he described his recent movies as "movies not even I will talk about". He later estimated that he made more than $1.5 million in the 1960s but lost all of it.


title: Stewart Granger

text: In 1970, he appeared as Colonial Mackenzie on the TV western series "The Men from Shiloh" in the episode titled "Colonial Mackenzie Versus the West". "The Men from Shiloh" was previously known as "The Virginian". The new version changed the costumes and added moustaches and beards to some of the characters, making the actors look more dashing and realistic for the time. He followed actors Lee J. Cobb, Charles Bickford and John McIntire as the new owner of the Shiloh ranch on prime-time TV for its ninth year (1971). Granger said he accepted the role for money and because it "seemed like it could be a lot of fun", but was disappointed by the lack of character development for his role.


title: Stewart Granger

text: He played Sherlock Holmes in a poorly received 1972 TV film version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles".


title: Stewart Granger

text: In the 1970s, Granger retired from acting and went to live in southern Spain, where he invested in real estate and resided in Estepona, Málaga. While living there, he became a friend and business partner of former barrister and television producer James Todesco ("Eldorado" TV series). Together they were involved in real estate investment and development.


title: Stewart Granger

text: He appeared in "The Wild Geese" (1978) as an unscrupulous banker who hires a unit of mercenary soldiers (Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris and others) to stage a military coup in an African nation. His character then makes a deal with the existing government, and betrays the mercenaries.


title: Stewart Granger

text: In 1980, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and was told he had three months to live. Granger later said "I was 67 and had smoked 60 cigarettes a day for 40 years, but the doctor said if I had an operation there might be a chance of two to four more years of life. So I said "Who the hell needs that? But you better give me three months to put my house in order.'" Granger underwent the operation, had a lung and a rib removed, only to be informed he didn't have cancer after all – he had tuberculosis.


title: Stewart Granger

text: He was the subject of "This Is Your Life" in 1980 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the New London Theatre.


title: Stewart Granger

text: He returned to acting in 1981 with the publication of his autobiography "Sparks Fly Upward", claiming he was bored. Granger spent the last decade of his life appearing on stage and television including playing Prince Philip in "The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana" (1982), a guest role in the TV series in "The Fall Guy" starring Lee Majors, and as a suspect in "Murder She Wrote" in 1985. He even starred in a German soap-opera titled "Das Erbe der Guldenburgs" (The Guldenburg Heritage) (1987).


title: Stewart Granger

text: One of his later roles was in the 1989–1990 Broadway production of "The Circle" by W. Somerset Maugham, opposite Glynis Johns and Rex Harrison in Harrison's final role. The production actually opened at Duke University for a three-week run, followed by performances in Baltimore and Boston, then opening on 14 November 1989 on Broadway.


title: Stewart Granger

text: Granger claimed in his autobiography that Deborah Kerr had approached him romantically in the back of his chauffeur-driven car at the time he was making "Caesar and Cleopatra". Although he was married to Elspeth March, he states that he and Kerr went on to have an affair. When asked about this revelation, Kerr's response was "What a gallant man he is."


title: Stewart Granger

text: He died in Santa Monica, California, on August 16, 1993, from prostate and bone cancer at the age of 80.


title: Stewart Granger

text: In 1970, Granger said, "Stewart Granger was quite a successful film star, but I don't think he was an actor's actor."


title: Stewart Granger

text: Among the movies that Granger was announced to star in but were made with other actors instead were "Ivanhoe" (1952), "Mogambo" (1953), "The King's Thief" (1955) and "Man of the West" (1958).


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Brainiac is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by Otto Binder and Al Plastino and first appeared in "Action Comics" #242 in July 1958. Brainiac is usually depicted as an extraterrestrial android or cyborg who serves as one of Superman's greatest enemies and a major adversary of the Justice League. He is known for shrinking and stealing Kandor, the capital city of Superman's home planet Krypton, and is even responsible for Krypton's destruction in some continuities.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: The character's name is a portmanteau of the words "brain" and "maniac". In 2009, Brainiac was ranked by IGN as 17th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time. He has been substantially adapted into various forms of media, having been voiced by Corey Burton in various television shows set within the DC animated universe, by John Noble in animated film "", and by Jeffrey Combs in the video game "Injustice 2". In live-action television, Brainiac has been portrayed by James Marsters on "Smallville" and by Blake Ritson on "Krypton".


title: Brainiac (character)

text: The first Brainiac/Kandor comic book story in "Action Comics" #242 (July 1958) was based on a story arc in the "Superman" comic strip from April through August 1958. In the comic strip story, Superman's foe was named Romado, who traveled the cosmos with a white alien monkey named Koko, shrinking major cities and keeping them in glass jars. The strip's Kryptonian bottled city was named Dur-El-Va. This cross-continuity conflict was not unprecedented; in 1958 and '59, editor Mort Weisinger used the comic strip to prototype a number of concepts that he planned to introduce in the book, including Bizarro and red Kryptonite.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Brainiac is a bald, green-skinned humanoid who arrives on Earth and shrinks various cities, including Metropolis, storing them in bottles with the intent of using them to restore the then-unnamed planet he ruled. He was originally notable only for having shrunk the bottle city of Kandor with his shrinking ray and for using a force field. In his initial story, he also traveled with a white alien monkey named Koko; the monkey also appears in a 1960 "Superman" story retelling the story of Kandor's disappearance ("Superman" #141 (November 1960)). Koko was quickly dropped from Brainiac's stories, but a version of the monkey has made sporadic appearances as the villain's pet in the series "Justice" and the 2008 storyline "Brainiac" in "Action Comics". The villain's descendant Brainiac 5 also had a pet named Koko for several stories in the 1990s.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: In subsequent appearances in this early period, Brainiac was used mostly as a plot device rather than as a featured villain of the month. Brainiac's next appearance was mostly behind the scenes, when he tried to kill Lois Lane and Lana Lang, prompting Superman to give Lois and Lana superpowers. But the villain remained unseen except as a plot twist at the end of the story. Brainiac's next appearance was in "Superman's Return to Krypton" in "Superman" #141 (November 1960), in which the villain stole the bottle city of Kandor, the only city on Krypton that believes Jor-El's warning of doom for the planet, and which had already built a space ark within the city to save the population. Brainiac's next present-day appearance was in "Action Comics" #275 (April 1961), which showed the villain planning to defeat Superman by exposing him to red-green kryptonite, which he had created, giving Superman a third eye on the back of his head, forcing him to wear various hats to hide it. Superman soon defeated Brainiac and sent him off into the distant past. This was the first in-story appearance of Brainiac's iconic red diode/electrode-like objects atop his head, which had previously appeared on the cover of his first appearance in "Action Comics" #242 (July 1958), but were not shown in the actual story. In "Superboy" #106 (July 1963), an infant Superman meets Brainiac, and it is explained that Brainiac looks the same due to his 200-year life span. In "Superman" #93, Brainiac regenerates himself. It is revealed that he came from a planet called Bryak and, after a voyage in space, he returned to find everybody dead from a plague. He intended to get people from other planets (in shrunken cities to be enlarged with his growth ray) to repopulate Bryak, where he would rule them.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Brainiac's legacy was revealed in "Action Comics" #276 (May 1961), in a "Legion of Super-Heroes" back-up story. This story introduced a green-skinned, blond-haired teenager named Querl Dox (Brainiac 5), who claimed to be Brainiac's 30th-century descendant. Unlike his ancestor, Brainiac 5 used his "twelfth-level intellect" for the forces of good and joined the Legion alongside Supergirl, with whom he fell in love. His home planet was given variously as Bryak, Yod, Yod-Colu, or simply Colu. 20th century Colu is a rim world found on the approach to the Magellanic Clouds.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: In "Superman" #167 (February 1964), it was retconned that Brainiac was a robotic Coluan entity created by the Computer Tyrants of Colu to spy on and invade other worlds. Brainiac's distinctive gridwork of red diodes on his head are explained as "electric terminals of his sensory 'nerves'" necessary for him to function. To explain the 1961 introduction of the villain's living descendant Brainiac 5, the story reveals the Computer Tyrants provided the villain with an assistant, a young Coluan boy named Vril Dox tasked with masquerading as his "son" so others would believe Brainiac to be a trustworthy organic alien scientist with a family rather than a deadly robot. The young boy Vril Dox was designated "Brainiac 2". In the same issue, the letter column contained a "special announcement" explaining that the change in the characterization of Brainiac was "in deference" to the "Brainiac Computer Kit", a toy computer created by Edmund Berkeley (and based on the Geniac) that predated the creation of the comic book character.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: In this same story, Luthor discovers the Computer Tyrants could have given their robot villain a twelfth-level intellect but only gave him a tenth-level, the same as them, so he would not dominate them. Luthor frees Brainiac from imprisonment and increases his intellect to a twelfth-level one. He also implants a device to temporarily disable him or destroy him if necessary. The two join forces, but Brainiac later removes the device and blocks out Luthor's memory of his inner workings and the fact that he is a machine. This story becomes the first of many Brainiac/Luthor team-ups. Meanwhile, Vril Dox leads a revolt against the Computer Tyrants, eventually destroying them and freeing Colu. Brainiac sees a monument to this when he returns to Colu later on.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: King Kull later enlisted Brainiac and Mister Atom of Earth-S to attack the city of Tomorrow and speed up the rotation enough for the people of Earth to fly into the air. They are defeated by Green Lantern of Earth-Two, Green Lantern of Earth-One, Flash of Earth-Two, Flash of Earth-One, Mercury of Earth-S, and Ibis the Invincible of Earth-S.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: At some indeterminate point in time, Brainiac fled into the 30th century. Developing the ability to absorb and manipulate massive amounts of stellar energy, he remade himself as "Pulsar Stargrave". He became a powerful enemy of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and once masqueraded as Brainiac 5's biological father. In current continuity, Brainiac's connection to Pulsar Stargrave remains an open question, one even Brainiac 5 has yet to resolve.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: After being revealed to be a robotic being, some Brainiac stories would end with the villain seemingly destroyed, only for him to appear again in a repaired body or having transmitted his consciousness into a new robotic form. Since he was essentially a living computer program that could be housed in different forms if "killed," Brainiac was sometimes referred to on comic book covers as "the villain who won't die!"


title: Brainiac (character)

text: In the 1980s, DC Comics attempted to re-define several aspects of Superman's stories to boost sagging sales. In "Action Comics" #544-546 (June–August 1983), Lex Luthor acquires a renewed sense of purpose and dons a high-tech "warsuit," while Brainiac is reimagined by writer Marv Wolfman and artist Gil Kane and given a new appearance designed by Ed Hannigan. In a previous story, Brainiac had constructed a giant, computer-controlled planet to destroy Superman only to then be defeated by the hero and then trapped in the planet's core. In Wolfman and Kane's story "Rebirth", published in "Action Comics" #544, Brainiac attempts to free himself by causing the nearby star, Epsilon 4, to go nova and utilize its energy. Instead, his body is converted into energy; his living program, his consciousness, experiences a strange journey before returning to his technology, where a new body is created for him over the next few months. As Brainiac recollects, during his journey he saw a great hand reach out from a void, ensnaring him briefly before releasing him. He also remembers seeing Superman's face at the same time. Reborn in a new body, the villain believes he has seen the Master Programmer, the divine force behind the universe's creation, and that this entity created Superman as an "angel of death" to destroy Brainiac. More determined than ever to kill and study Superman, Brainiac now has a colder, more merciless, and robot-like personality than before (he claims he is without emotions, yet shows signs of hatred and fear in regards to Superman). His new body is overtly robotic with a skull-like face and a reflective, iridescent honeycomb-patterned "braincase." He also creates a starship shaped like his new skull and adorned by metal tendrils, often referred to by fans and comic creators as the "skull ship." The ship acts as an extension of Brainiac himself. Brainiac retains this robotic appearance until after the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" miniseries ends in 1986, rebooting DC Comics continuity.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: This incarnation of Brainiac meets his final end in the "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" storyline that ended the Pre-"Crisis" Silver/Bronze Age Superman chronology. Lex Luthor finds Brainiac's robotic head unit, with barely any power left. He hopes to team up with the evil living program again, only to become an unwilling host body for Brainiac instead. Fighting Brainiac's control, Luthor begs a superpowered Lana Lang to kill him, who complies by breaking his neck. Luthor dies and Brainiac retains control of the body for a short time until rigor mortis sets in. "Propelled by sheer malice", Brainiac's head unit leaves Luthor's corpse and crawls a few inches before finally running out of power for good.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: In the Post-"Crisis" DC Universe, Brainiac's history was completely rewritten. The Post-"Crisis" version of Brainiac was now a radical Coluan scientist called Vril Dox who, having attempted to overthrow the Computer Tyrants of Colu, was sentenced to death. In his last moments before disintegration, his consciousness was attracted light years away to Milton Moses Fine, a human sideshow mentalist who worked under the alias "The Amazing Brainiac". Needing cranial fluid to maintain his possession of Fine, Dox went on a murder spree. He discovered that Fine had genuine psychic powers and was thus a metahuman, which he frequently wielded against Superman.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: In 1990, Brainiac is able to take over the minds of several LexCorp staffers. He makes the scientists create a new version of the skull ship (saying he thought of the design "in a dream") and use advanced genetic science to grow a new body for himself, resembling Milton Fine's form but taller, more physically fit, and with the green skin of a Coluan. He also has a new braincase helmet that resembles his Silver Age diodes. Now free of Fine's body and consciousness completely but still possessing the man's metahuman telepathic powers, Brainiac confronted Superman and then left Earth to plan another attack.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Brainiac returned in the "Panic in the Sky" storyline after seizing control of the mobile planetary fortress Warworld and recruiting assistance from Maxima and the alien warrior Draaga. Discovering a lost and confused Matrix (an artificial life form who at this time operates as Supergirl), Brainiac brainwashes her into becoming his soldier. He clashes with the New Gods and then launches a pre-emptive strike on Earth. Rather than wait for an invasion, Superman gathers a large group of superheroes and allies, one team attacking Warworld directly while the other remains on Earth to counter further attacks. Through duplicates of his braincase, Brainiac briefly takes control of some of Earth's heroes, but ultimately he fails. Supergirl and the other heroes are freed from mental control and the villain is rendered catatonic. His vegetative body is taken back to New Genesis for observation.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: A year after the seeming death and then return of Superman, a dead body matching the Kryptonian's appearance is found in his abandoned tomb, leading some to wonder if the hero's return was a deception. It is revealed that Brainiac is no longer on New Genesis but revived and returned to Earth, leaving behind an illusion that he remained in a coma. While hidden, he created more delusions to turn the public against Superman and make the hero question his own sanity. The two battle and Superman taunts the villain by insisting he is just Milton Moses Fine, a cheap entertainer. Fine's personality seemingly emerges and shuts down the Brainiac persona. Fine was then escorted off to a psychiatric facility.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: During a later skirmish with Superman, Fine's body is irreparably damaged, leaving Brainiac with only a short time to live. With help from a new Coluan assistant named Prin Vnok, Brainiac retrieves Doomsday, the monster that seemingly killed Superman before, and uses him as a new host body. Now a cunning psychic with a super-strong, near-indestructible body, Brainiac attacks the Justice League. But Doomsday's own raging mind fights back and Brainiac realizes he still needs a suitable host. Hoping to create a clone Doomsday form by manipulating human DNA, Brainiac attempts to steal a prematurely born baby Superman is transporting to a Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit, the newborn child of Pete Ross and Lana Lang. Brainiac sees this as an opportunity for revenge, correctly concluding that Ross and Lang are close to him. Using a 'psi-blocker' device, Superman thwarts Brianiac's plans and the villain is forced to house his consciousness within a completely robotic body. Dubbing his new form Brainiac 2.5, the villain fears he is now trapped in this form.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: At the turn of the millennium, Brainiac 2.5 revealed that he had placed a sleeper virus in LexCorp's Y2K bug safeguards. This virus was intended to dramatically boost his abilities. However, the virus instead allowed his upgraded future self, Brainiac 13 (or "B-13"), to travel from the 64th century to the present day and take control of Brainiac 2.5's body.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Brainiac 13 then began transforming Metropolis into the 64th-century version of the city, which he controlled, and also began upgrading Metallo into a giant-sized version of himself. Brainiac 13 then took control of several android superheroes, such as the Red Tornado and Hourman, and used them against Superman. The Metal Men's responsometers were able to protect them from his programming, and allowed them to help defeat Metallo.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: During a fight with the Eradicator (who was attempting to 'hijack' the B13 virus and use it for its own ends), Superman discovered that Brainiac 13 could not cope with Kryptonian technology, due to incompatibility issues. This gave Superman a plan to stop Brainiac 13's scheme. With the aid of the rebuilt Kelex, Superman tricked Luthor into connecting a Kryptonian battlesuit to one of Brainiac 13's power conduits. Kelex then reactivated the Red Tornado to help Superman break Brainiac 13 down into his respective nanobots and trap him in the suit.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Brainiac 13 was able to work with Brainiac 2.5—now transferred into the aged body of Lena Luthor—and prepared a tactic against Imperiex for the upcoming Imperiex War. The Brainiacs successfully engineered Imperiex's defeat, allowing Brainiac 13 to absorb Imperiex's power and use it to overpower the combined heroes and villains of the universe while simultaneously devastating both Earth and Apokolips. Brainiac 13 planned to use the power he stole from Imperiex to conquer the universe and reshape it in his image, and is made so powerful by the absorption that none of the heroes, not even Superman, can hope to damage him. However, with help from Lex's temporal displacement technology and Darkseid's Boom Tube technology boosted by magic supplied by Tempest and the Amazons, Superman was able to destroy Brainiac 13 and Imperiex by sending them through a temporal Boom tube where they were annihilated in the Big Bang. Brainiac 13 had his body disintegrated and the remnants of his mind scattered across sixty trillion light years, finally killing the chronologically last known version of Brainiac.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: After the death of Brainiac 13, Superman discovered that the version of Krypton he previously visited via the Phantom Zone was, in fact, a trap created by Brainiac 13. Having been defeated by Kryptonian technology, Brainiac 13 had traveled back in time to the real Krypton prior to its destruction. There, he stole the Eradicator matrix and Jor-El's diaries, and created a false Krypton based on Jor-El's favorite period in history.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Sometime later, Superman traveled into the future and battled Brainiac 12. He learned that everything Brainiac 13 did in the past was designed to ensure things reached the point where Brainiac 13 would be created. Brainiac 12's defeat before his upgrade apparently reversed the advances Brainiac 13 had made to Metropolis.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Around the time of the "" event, a future version of Brainiac, called Brainiac 6, used his "granddaughter", Brainiac 8 (also known as Indigo), to kill Donna Troy to ensure the fate of Colu. Indigo then infiltrated the Outsiders until she attacked the team, along with Brainiac 6 and his allies, Lex Luthor, and a brainwashed Superboy, who had attacked the Teen Titans. In the ensuing battle, Indigo died and Superboy broke away from the brainwashing, while Luthor escaped. While his ship was destroyed, Brainiac's condition and whereabouts after the battle are unknown.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Later stories revealed that elements of Brainiac's Pre-"Crisis" history occurred in the Post-"Crisis" character's history prior to his possession of Milton Moses Fine and his first encounter with Superman. The citizens of Kandor recall that Brainiac stole their city from Krypton, and not the alien wizard Tolos.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: "History of the DC Universe" mentions his defeat by the Omega Men, although this is not seen in "Crisis on Infinite Earths" itself, and noted a second Brainiac was created in a laboratory on Earth two years later. In the "Silver Age: JLA" one-shot, the Injustice League discovered numerous shrunken alien cities found in Brainiac's abandoned spaceship.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Brainiac later reappeared as a swarm of interlinked nanotechnological units. Its operation was to sabotage a Waynetech research facility accomplished by infecting Metallo with a computer virus and controlling him from orbit. Superman and Batman tracked Brainiac's signal to an orbital facility and attacked. Brainiac's nanoswarm body was destroyed, though he had infected the Metal Men during their previous encounter with Metallo. Brainiac proceeded to use them to acquire a prototype OMAC unit, which Bruce Wayne had developed through the use of Brainiac 13 nanotechnology. Superman and Batman destroyed the OMAC body with the aid of the Metal Men, after the Metal Men overcame Brainiac's control.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Following revisions to Superman's continuity in "Infinite Crisis" and "Action Comics" #850, Brainiac reappeared in a self-titled five-part story arc in "Action Comics". In "Action Comics" #866 (August 2008), a Brainiac robot probe (resembling his skeleton-esque Pre-"Crisis" incarnation, and mistaken for the real Brainiac by Clark) arrives on Earth and battles Superman. After the probe is defeated, information about Superman's blood is sent to the original Brainiac. As Brainiac wakes up, his computer announces "Attempt #242 in progress", a reference to Brainiac's first appearance in "Action Comics" #242, and to the many encounters between Brainiac and Superman. In the following issue, Supergirl reveals to Superman that Brainiac shrunk the Kryptonian city of Kandor and placed it in a bottle, and that all previous incarnations of Brainiac that Superman has encountered were just probes, clones, and nanite-controlled bodies. She notes that no one has ever actually seen Brainiac. Inspired by Supergirl's story, Superman attempts to find Brainiac and stop him. He heads to a world under attack by Brainiac just in time to be caught in a supernova as Brainiac destroys the system's star and the populated world along with it. The supernova knocks Superman out, and he is caught and brought onto Brainiac's ship.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Superman escapes from his imprisonment and sees Brainiac emerging from his "bio-shell". This version of Brainiac resembles a much larger and more muscular version of the original, Pre-"Crisis" Brainiac, and has motives similar to the "" incarnation of the character in that he travels the universe and steals the knowledge of various alien cultures, abducting and shrinking cities from each planet as samples, and then destroys the planet so that the value of the destroyed civilization's knowledge is increased. Superman attacks Brainiac, but Brainiac manages to overpower the Man of Steel before restraining him with the help of his ship's internal systems. Brainiac inserts the subdued Superman into a machine that allows him to read the Kryptonian's mind, with the intent of assimilating his brain. Brainiac's ship then travels to Earth and prepares to abduct the city of Metropolis.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Brainiac successfully steals Metropolis, and prepares to fire a missile that will destroy the Sun and the Earth itself. Supergirl ends up captured along with the rest of Metropolis, but Superman breaks out of his restraints again and frees her. Supergirl stops the missile, while Superman battles Brainiac. Brainiac appears to have the advantage in physical combat yet again, but Superman knocks Brainiac out of his ship and into a swamp, where Brainiac is overwhelmed by the microscopic organisms covering his body. Superman uses this distraction to defeat Brainiac. While Superman frees the cities of Metropolis and Kandor, the villain launches a missile to the Kent farm in an act of spite. The farm is destroyed, and Jonathan Kent suffers a fatal heart attack because of it. Brainiac is brought to a top-secret military base, where the imprisoned Lex Luthor is assigned to discover his secrets. Luthor eventually manages to use Brainiac's connection to his ship to kill the soldiers assigned to watch him. Brainiac manages to free himself from Luthor's control, forcing him on board the ship, and the two make their escape.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Notably, upon learning of Brainiac's modus operandi of destroying planets by destabilizing nearby stars when he is done collecting cities and knowledge from said planets, Superman openly speculates that Brainiac destroyed Krypton, which was destroyed when its sun went nova soon after Brainiac abducted Kandor and Argo. He also asks the alien what he did to Krypton's sun. Brainiac ignores the query, neither confirming or denying his responsibility, though he does heavily imply it ("In fifty-seven minutes, my solar aggressor will reach your sun. It will flare up, and the Earth will be incinerated. Just like Krypton."). Superman still believes Brainiac had a part in Krypton's destruction after the end of this story arc.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Following this, Brainiac, now in possession of his ship again, unleashes his robot army against the newly created planet of New Krypton, and the Kryptonian citizens rise up to fight the drones. General Zod's army proves totally unable to fend them off, as the Brainiac's ship's force fields are seemingly invulnerable and his drones are equipped with red sunray guns, allowing them to kill tens of thousands of Kryptonians. Superman, being the only one who knows how to penetrate his force fields (having learned the trick in the previous story arc), manages to enter Brainiac's ship. Supergirl leads the Kryptonians against the drones, but is attacked by an anti-Kryptonian Brainiac probe. Superboy, Mon-El, and the Legion of Super-Heroes join the fight and save Supergirl.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: After this, Brainiac shrinks Kandor again and re-bottles it, including a miniature red sun to de-power all the Kryptonians inside. The Legion, Supergirl, Superboy, Zod, and Superman all make it on to Brainiac's ship, thanks to Brainiac 5 hacking his ancestor's force fields and allowing them entry. The Legion explains to Zod that, just as Krypton's city of Kandor is held in a bottle onboard Brainiac's ship, other planets' cities are also imprisoned, and, therefore, Zod cannot destroy Brainiac's ship until the cities can be rescued. Zod sends Supergirl off and then arrests the Legionnaires, branding them terrorists. Meanwhile, Superman is about to face off against Brainiac when he is knocked down by a kryptonite energy blast fired by Lex Luthor and subsequently captured. Brainiac locks him in captivity with the intent to experiment on him, but Superman escapes and meets up with the rest of the superheroes and Zod on a separate section of the ship. Zod enters the scene and engages Brainiac in combat while Supergirl, Superboy, and the Legion recover the bottled cities on Brainiac's ship, including Kandor. Zod seems to be losing his fight with Brainiac, when suddenly Superman gets up and tackles Brainiac from behind. Before the battle between the two Kryptonians and the villain can continue, Brainiac's ship starts to destabilize and descend towards the planet. It is revealed that Lex Luthor sabotaged the ship and re-sized one of the cities while inside.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Luthor's intervention causes the ship to crash into New Krypton, destroying it while Supergirl and the Legion re-size Kandor. However, the city that Luthor expanded is still growing, now putting Kandor at risk. As Brainiac 5 works on the problem, Supergirl is shocked to discover Superman impaled by pieces of Brainiac's ship as a result of the explosion. Superman appears to have been fatally stricken. Luthor, though reeling from the explosion, is pleased with all the destruction he has caused. Brainiac confronts Luthor in the ruins of the ship and is furious that Lex sabotaged his ship. Luthor mocks him and spits in his eye before Brainiac angrily snaps Luthor's neck, killing him.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Now deprived of his ship and technology, and seemingly depowered by his ship's destruction, Brainiac finds himself faced by an entire city of angry, solar-powered Kryptonians. Zod is eager for a final showdown with Brainiac, who calls Zod a coward for confronting Brainiac with his powers intact and an army of super-powered Kryptonians at his back. In response, Zod fires the red sun radiation from an Archer rifle at himself, to remove his powers and thus supposedly level the playing field as he prepares to take Brainiac down. Brainiac 5 gives Superman a transfusion of Conner's blood and exposes him to a very large dose of concentrated synthesized yellow sun rays. Using these techniques, Brainiac 5 is able to revive Superman.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Despite the loss of his powers, Zod is able to get the upper hand on the similarly powerless Brainiac and force him to his knees. Zod is about to shoot Brainiac when Superman intervenes. This causes a heated argument between Superman and Zod. Zod commands his soldiers to restrain Kal-El so Zod can proceed with the execution of Brainiac. Brainiac 5, sensing that this is his moment of destiny, steps in and teleports himself and Brainiac off of New Krypton.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: It is revealed that Lex used a Luthor robot, supplied by the Toyman, to accomplish his mission on New Krypton, and that Brainiac killed the robot instead. Lex is very much alive and discussing with General Lane how his objective, to bring chaos to New Krypton, was achieved. Lex has been working as an agent of General Lane all along. The disarray that Lex caused provides Lane with a window of opportunity as he prepares for the impending war with New Krypton. Lex receives a Presidential pardon for his efforts. The story ends with Zod rallying his people as he declares war on the planet Earth. The story concludes in the next miniseries, "".


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Mon-El plants the many bottled cities that Brainiac has captured over the years on various planets across the galaxy. These cities will one day become the United Planets by the 31st century, the same planets that will produce the members of the Legion of Super-Heroes.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Brainiac 5 takes Brainiac to their homeworld of Colu where he hands him over to Vril Dox II, a.k.a. Brainiac 2. Vril Dox happily turns his "father" over to his people for his crimes. However Lyrl Dox, a.k.a. Brainiac 3, releases his "grandfather" with a weapon called Pulsar Stargrave. What then occurs is an all-out battle for Colu between all three present-day Brainiacs. Vril Dox even calls in Lobo for help. Brainac breaks out of his prison and, after causing much damage on Colu, escapes with Pulsar Stargrave in tow for parts unknown.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Brainiac's origin in "The New 52" is revealed in "Superman" #23.2. Vril Dox was acknowledged as the greatest scientist on his homeworld, Yod-Colu, given his advances in force field technology and miniaturization. He developed an artificial intelligence, C.O.M.P.U.T.O., allowing him to discover the fifth dimension. Dox discovered the fifth dimension was in a state of war, and a group of its inhabitants, the Multitude, had entered their dimension and destroyed over a hundred planets. Realizing Yod-Colu was next in the Multitude's path, Dox tried to find a way to save his planet, even performing experiments on his son. The magistrates of Yod-Colu sentenced Dox to exile, but Dox used C.O.M.P.U.T.O. to take control of Yod-Colu's computer networks. Copying the planet's database, Dox constructed an army of robot servants called Terminauts and miniaturized the city his wife and son lived on and bottled it in a force field, while the rest of Yod-Colu was destroyed by the Multitude.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: After the destruction of Yod-Colu, Dox constructed an army of starships and distributed his consciousness across a series of robots that would each travel the universe to preserve planets from the Multitude, becoming known as the Collector of Worlds. One of these robots attacked Krypton. Dox became fascinated by Jor-El, a Kryptonian scientist who actually saved his homeworld from the Multitude. Upon returning to Krypton, however, Dox discovered Krypton had been destroyed.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: Referred to at first as 'The Collector of Worlds', Brainiac is first seen as the mysterious informant that supplies Lex Luthor information of Superman and his alien nature. Clark is having a dream of Krypton's final moments in which an artificial intelligence that controls the planet wakes up robots in an attempt to preserve the Kryptonian culture. Later, while Clark conducts an interview in a robotic factory, the same harvester robots appear.


title: Brainiac (character)

text: John Corben (the soon-to-be supervillain Metallo) is suddenly possessed by the artificial intelligence. It demands Superman. The robots create havoc throughout Metropolis, but Superman soon realizes that they are really after him. Superman fights the possessed Corben with the help of John Henry Irons.