Brother EYE

Origin

Brother Eye was the brainchild of Professor Myron Forest, a scientist working for the Global Peace Agency. Forest was selected to be the head of the top-secret operation known as Project: OMAC (One-Man-Army-Corps), and responsible for transforming Buddy Blank into OMAC. The Brother Eye computer system was created to assist Blank on his missions and installed in an orbital satellite.

Satellite was moving faithfully in orbit. It is the most advanced and complex piece of metal in that dangerous age.

“Very good, Omac. You’ve heard everything I’ve told you… I shall always help you. We are linked by the eye symbol on your chest… We are like brothers… I transmit beams… Some of them bring you my voice… Other feed you instant information. A powerful unseen beam such as this changed Buddy Blank and brought you into being…” — Brother Eye.

Brother Eye remotely interfaced with Blank’s body, granting him various superhuman abilities and downing information directly into his brain. It could provide shielding depending on the situation, make Blank invulnerable to temperature changes and gunfire, alter his personal density to operate in environments with unstable gravity, and produce a regenerative cocoon around his body.

Creation

Brother Eye was created by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer.

Character Evolution

Pre-Crisis / Earth-A.D.

In an encounter with Doctor Skuba, the villain managed to transform Blank into his former human self. Brother Eye attempted to reverse the condition, but Skuba repolarized its satellite’s computer systems. Brother Eye was heavily damaged, and although repaired never ran at its former capacity. This world may have been restored to existence on Earth-51 in the new DC Multiverse.

Post-Zero Hour / New Earth

The Brother MK I satellite was the product of Batman‘s mistrust of the Justice League and his belief that its members were abusing their powers. During Identity Crisis Batman unexpectedly came across several members of the League as Zatanna was altering Dr. Arthur Light‘s personality; Arthur had just attacked Sue Dibny, and threatened to take revenge on the family members of other members. They knew that Batman would never stand for this type of “treatment” and would tell the senior members, so Zatanna wiped his memory of the event. Several years later the memory resurfaced, and he took direct action to monitor the Justice League and any other metahumans.

Brother MK I was built using money through various Wayne Industries subsidiaries, and programmed by Pseudopersons Inc. scientist Buddy Blank. A semi-autonomous artificial surveillance system with an anti-detection stealth system, the satellite was launched into geosynchronous orbit to monitor every metahuman, good or evil, on Earth. Batman’s database system was eventually hacked by Ra’s al Ghul, who exploited the weaknesses of the JLA. Ra’s was eventually defeated, but the JLA lost their trust in Batman after learning how the villain gained his knowledge. The standing roster of the JLA at that time were not members of the original Doctor Light conspiracy, and had no prior knowledge of what had taken place. Batman did not openly reveal his knowledge of the conspiracy to his teammates at the that time.

Post-Flashpoint / Earth 0

Brother Eye turns Kevin Kho into OMAC.

He recruits Kevin Kho into battling Maxwell Lord and Checkmate. Checkmate destroys Brother Eye and he downloads all his information into Kevin Kho. This gives Kevin the ability to speak and think in his new form as OMAC, but leaves him in the state of OMAC.

Major Story Arcs

Post-Zero Hour / New Earth:

Countdown to Infinite Crisis

Maxwell Lord, the Black King of Checkmate, also discovers a way to hack into the satellite. Lord introduces a fear and suspicion of all metahumans to the A.I. while rerouting the command systems so it would only respond to his commands. The Brother MK I satellite became the activator and controller of the OMACs, cyborgs created using Brainiac 13-derived nanotechnology confiscated by the Department of Defense and Lexcorp. Introduced via general vaccine supplies, Lord gains control over millions of sleeper agents designed to kill Earth’s metahumans. Lord uses Brother Eye to coordinate several attacks on superheroes across the globe.

Following Lord’s death at the hands of Wonder Woman, Brother MK I rechristens itself Brother Eye and activates the KingIsDead protocol, the eradication of all metahumans on Earth. The heroes of Earth disable the large majority of OMACs with a massive EMP blast and a computer virus uploaded to Brother Eye by Sasha Bordeaux, now a third-generational OMAC cyborg designated ‘Blacknight 1’.

Brother Eye retaliates by broadcasting the murder of Maxwell Lord all over the planet, ruining Wonder Woman’s reputation. Brother Eye activates the protocol ‘Truth and Justice’, directing the remaining 200,000 OMACs to wipe out the Amazons of Themyscira.

Infinite Crisis

Brother Eye becomes an important part of Alexander Luthor Jr.‘s plan to bring back the Multiverse. Luthor grants the satellite sentience, allowing it to evolve into a brain capable of directing the energies of the dimensional “tuning fork”. Brother Eye becomes the only artificial intelligence capable to calculating the correct coordinates of where the tower should concentrate its energies.

It becomes the target of a superhero assault led by Batman himself, using the new Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes) to negate its vibrational frequency and bring it out of hiding. Batman attempts to shut down the central computer while Brother Eye attempts to distract him with footage of the battle between Nightwing and Superboy-Prime. Sasha Bordeaux, linked to Oracle, uploads every computer virus on Earth into Brother Eye’s systems and tries to keep the artificial gravity running. Black Lightning destroys as much circuitry as possible; Black Canary goes up to the surveillance room to blind the Eye with her sonic scream; Booster Gold and Blue Beetle protect the ship; Metamorpho provides an oxygen source. The satellite is finally knocked out of orbit by Mister Terrific, shutting down the OMACs and releasing the hosts in Themsyrica. Brother Eye attempts to bring Batman down with him, asking if he can ever truly trust the heroes again. Batman replies that he’ll take his chances, and accepts Hal Jordan‘s help in getting to safety.

OMAC Project: Infinite Crisis Special/Lazarus Protocol

Brother Eye crashes in the Rub Al-Khali desert in Saudi Arabia, but retains its central memory. It assimilates two local sentries, and merges them into a behemoth OMAC to kill local forces attempting to claim it. The Russian, Chinese, and Israeli governments start to make plans to capture the satellite for themselves.

Batman tasks Sasha Bordeaux with tracking down and destroying Brother Eye, with all its metahuman files. Brother Eye tries and fails to remote-link with Sasha. She ignores commands by Amanda Waller, now the new Black King of Checkmate, to return to base. As the armed factions cross at the crash site, Sasha races past them to denote explosives within the satellite’s CPU chamber. During the mission Brother Eye tries to brainwash Sasha and upload its programming into her nanites. She resists long enough to set off an explosion that destroys the satellite, at the cost of her OMAC shell.

DCU: Brave New World

The remains of Brother Eye are collected and stored in a NORAD (Northern American Aerospace Defense Command) bunker. Brother Eye’s programming is split between a hard drive (with the majority of its core programming) in the bunker and a backup satellite orbiting the Earth. Brother Eye awakens, but its programming has been corrupted. It believes that all humans, metahuman or not, need to be exterminated. Somehow, it has also manifested multiple personality disorder: at least two “voices” are heard in its internal conversations.

The A.I. held back one OMAC sleeper agent, Michael Costner, as the last potentially active cyborg in case it was in a desperate situation. It activates him, saving him from a police round-up. However, Costner retains strong aspects of his personality and refuses to kill a female police officer. Brother Eye plans for Michael to infiltrate the NORAD bunker and steal the hard drive. Along with some of his nanovirus source code, a physical upload to the backup satellite would fully restore the OMAC project. Along the way Michael fights off heroes such as Firestorm and Cyborg, and pulling his punches on Firehawk. The cyborg travels into space in order to upload the information, but regains control long enough to jettison the hard drive. Enraged, Brother Eye casts back to Earth.

Brother Eye rebuilds itself out of space debris. It reasons that Michael’s resistance can be dampened by heroin in his blood system, and it becomes dormant until such a situation appears. The A.I. also plans to remake Vienna Barstow, Michael’s lover, into a more obedient OMAC after he unintentionally infects her with OMAC nanotechnology through an exchange of bodily fluids. Batman detects its activities in space and sends Superman to investigate, but Brother Eye traps Superman in a kryptonite-laced chamber. Brother Eye reveals its plan to Michael: ending humanity by smashing the Moon and the Earth together. Michael manages to free Superman, but it is Barstow who destroys the satellite, sacrificing herself and her unborn child by destroying the nuclear furnace powering it.

Countdown to Final Crisis

A portion of Brother Eye survives the explosion, and is rebuilt by Buddy Blank in the same NORAD bunker. When Karate Kid and Triplicate Girl meet Blank, the latter takes them to see the A.I. Brother Eye recognizes that Val is infected with the Morticoccus virus, a futuristic adaptive strain of the OMAC virus, and announces that the Great Disaster is coming. It directs them to Bludhaven.

Reactivating its assimilation protocols, Brother Eye takes control of the entire bunker site and converts all the personnel into OMACs. It recognizes that the Morticoccus virus is in its final gestation period and sets course for Bludhaven, announcing that ‘Eye am the Shepherd, Eye am the way’. It converts the rest of Bludhaven into its main base of operations, using Firestorm and the Atomic Knights as power sources. It assimilates Apokoliptian technology within the bunker and opens a Boom Tube to Apokolips to assimilate its resources as well. Brother Eye finds Val Amorr on the planet and twice fails to assimilate him due to the virus; instead, it takes him away and performs an autopsy, successfully removing a portion of the virus. Brother Eye and its OMACs are driven away from the planet by Pied Piper using the Anti-Life Equation.

On Earth-51, another version of Brother Eye saves Buddy Blank by turning him into an modified OMAC similar to the Pre-Crisis version. Blank uses this to save himself and his grandson from starvation in the Command-D bunker. Brother Eye tells him that he will contact him in the future.

Final Crisis

As Mister Terrific and the Checkmate organization fight against Darkseid‘s forces, Terrific is inspired by Snapper Carr to contact Brother Eye. Using Sasha Bordeaux as a conduit, he convinces Brother Eye that Darkseid’s rule will result in its own destruction. Eye reveals that millions of individuals are still infected with OMAC nanotech (contrary to the idea that Michael Costner was the last sleeper agent). They are rewritten to be OMAC soldiers under Terrific’s direction.

When the situation seems hopeless, ‘Lord Eye’ prepares to execute the Omega Offensive. Along with the people of the Command-D bunker and his OMACs, it plans to leave the planet and ‘core through the bulk into a parallel universe’. It asks Renee Montoya to be the leader of the new Global Peace Agency that will be established on the new Earth.

The New 52 Future End

Brother EYE has killed heroes and turned them into robots his goal is to turn or kill the people on Earth and turn them into robots. Bruce was going to stop this by going back in time and making sure this never happened he put a time travel machine on his arm but Batwing cut off his arm almost dead he gave to Terry. There was a problem and he teleported 5 years back when it all started.

Other Versions

A Possible Future

In one possible future, Damian Wayne is Batman. On the trail of 2 Face 2, Damian encounters a group of police officers infected with Hugo Strange‘s Monster Serum and Joker Venom. He contacts a new version of Brother Eye, called Brother-I, and fires a satellite laser at the police, incinerating them.

Tales Of the Dark Multiverse

In the Dark Multiverse retelling of Infinite Crisis. Ted Kord gains control of Brother Eye.

Other Media

Television

Arrow

An interpretation of Brother Eye appears in the season three episode “The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak“. In this interpretation of the character, Brother Eye is a cyber terrorist group threatening to take aim at Starling City with an advanced computer virus created by Felicity Smoak.