The CYBORG!

In the wake of Doomsday's attack on Metropolis, which left both the monster and the Man of Steel dead, four new heroes arose, each claiming to be the reincarnation of Superman. One of these was the Cyborg Superman.

The Cyborg seemed to have a more valid claim to the name Superman based on genetic testing which matched Superman's DNA, and Kryptonian technology. This led to his being endorsed by the President of the United States as the true Superman come back to life.

One of his first deeds was to raid the bowels of Cadmus laboratories, where Doomsday's corpse was being held. Over the protestations of Cadmus' staff, the Cyborg brought the body into deep space and chained it to an asteroid, there to float forever, or so it was thought.

The Cyborg Superman's actions were enough to engender a cultlike following for him. Worship groups soon arose claiming that the Cyborg was, indeed, the reincarnation of Superman, and calling the other heroes heretics. A particular division arose between these Cyborg fanatics and those who claimed the so-called Last Son of Krypton as the true Superman.

No sooner had this pretender to the throne achieved widespread public recognition than he was called upon to deal with a horrifying situation. An alien vessel had begun a campaign of biological warfare on the Earth, concentrating its attacks on the metropolitan region known as Coast City, known stomping grounds of the venerable Green Lantern, Hal Jordan.

The Superman heir known as the Last Son of Krypton accompanied the Cyborg on his mission. This was to prove to be his undoing.

As the pair flew over the carnage that had once been Coast City, the Cyborg Superman revealed his true colors and attacked his companion! The Last Son of Krypton had no chance to retaliate or to send a message of the Cyborg's betrayal to anyone. The Cyborg, meanwhile, radioed back to the White House that it was the Last Son, and not himself, who had proven to be the traitor.

Confident that he had destroyed his companion, the Cyborg continued on, and the true horror of his plan was revealed.

The Cyborg had himself engineered the destruction of Coast City, and had done so through the despotic warlord Mongul, ruler of the planet-sized engine of destruction Warworld. Together the two planned to destroy the Earth and enslave mankind. The timing was nearly perfect; with Superman gone no force on Earth could legitimately stand against them.

Fortunately, Superman returned. Accompanied by Supergirl, the heroes known as the Man of Steel, Superboy, the Last Son of Krypton, and Green Lantern, the one, true Superman faced off against the Cyborg in his robotic fortress in Coast City and destroyed him by vaporizing his body before he had a chance to transfer his consciousness to another machine.

But that was not the end of the Cyborg. Not by a long shot.

When he had taken Doomsday's lifeless corpse into space, the Cyborg had attached a small piece of himself to the monster's body. When the asteroid which was intended to be Doomsday's sarcophagus was taken to Apokolips, and the monster revived, the Cyborg awoke as well. Once again Superman had to face the robotic villain, but this time he did so on Apokolips, and with the aid of Darkseid's Omega Beams was able to triumph.

And yet still the Cyborg was not ultimately defeated. Just as he had secreted part of his consciousness in a small node attached to Doomsday's corpse, so too did Darkseid retain a tiny portion of the Cyborg's essence, planning to some day release it and persuade the Cyborg to do his own evil bidding.

When Darkseid released the Cyborg, telling him to leave Apokalips and never return, the Cyborg flew into deep space. There he encountered the Tribunal, an alien judgement panel who enforced their laws strictly. Cyborg allied himself with these, and persuaded them to offer a bounty on the head of the Last Kryptonian, whom they saw as guilty by bloodline of the destruction of the planet Krypton. When Superman was captured and brought before the Tribunal, Superboy, Supergirl, Steel, the Eradicator (now working with the Outsiders), and the Alpha Centurion came to his rescue. They all learned that the Cyborg had been responsible for the Tribunal's desire to see Superman brought to justice. However, the Tribunal also considered the Cyborg as guilty of several crimes as well, and sentenced him to be cast into a black hole.

The black hole did not destroy the Cyborg; rather it deposited him at the Source Wall at the end of the universe. This giant wall protected the Source, energy which flowed through and helped shape the cosmos. The Wall not only protected and filtered the energy of the Source, it held prisoner all those who would try to access the Source directly.

Hal Jordan, once the greatest Green Lantern of all but now calling himself Parallax, tracked the Cyborg to the Wall, seeking to make him pay for the destruction of Coast City. Using his power, stolen from the central Lantern battery on Oa, Parallax forced the Cyborg into the Source Wall.

Some time later, Superman flew to investigate a disturbance at the Wall and encountered the Cyborg, who had managed to retain and divert enough of his consciousness to allow him to take control of a portion of the Wall. The two fought, but Superman was able to use his new energy-based powers to destroy the rubble Cyborg was using to create his own form, and fuse it fully to the Wall. Superman left, believing the Cyborg to be a prisoner for all eternity.

Unfortunately, Superman had forgotten for a moment that his new suit was filled with microcircuitry. The Cyborg saw this, and used his ability to join with any electric devices to escape the Wall by fusing with Superman himself! When Superman returned to Earth, Cyborg took the first opportunity he could to transfer his consciousness out of Superman's suit and into some nearby televisions, leaving him free to create a new body and resume his campaign of vengeance against the Man of Steel.

His next encounter with Superman was at Maggin High School in Metropolis, where Cyborg had been masquerading as Mr. Sormon, the art teacher. He claimed that he was simply trying to start fresh, with a new life, and it may have been true; but a district-level requirement that his art class had to create commemorative projects for the upcoming Superman Appreciation Day touched off the Cyborg's hatred of the Last Son of Krypton, leading him to endanger the lives of his students. Superman arrived and tried to contain the Cyborg, but the villain escaped.

The Cyborg engineered a brilliant scheme to defeat the Man of Steel. Allying himself with the Toyman, Cyborg built an energy containment vessel into which he lured Superman, then used the machine to draw Superman's energy out of his containment suit and disperse it to the far reaches of the universe.

Unfortunately for the Cyborg, instead of spreading Superman's energy across the cosmos, his device actually created two Supermen! The two energy-based Supermen, one colored red and the other blue, were able to capture both the Toyman and the Cyborg. Superman-Red faced the Cyborg and hurled him into the heart of the sun, certain that he had seen the end of his nemesis.

The Cyborg was not defeated, however. His energy managed to survive the sun, and infiltrated the city of Kandor, a city which had been miniaturized and placed in a giant glass bottle which Superman kept safe in his Fortress. In Kandor, the Cyborg passed himself off as an Inventor who promised the people of Kandor he would find a way to free them from their interdimensional prison. However, his plan threatened both the city of Kandor and that of Metropolis! Investigating the appearance of Kandorian structures in the middle of his home town, Superman travelled to Kandor where he fought the Cyborg, trapping him in the Phantom Zone.

The matter of the Cyborg was thought to be completely settled once Superman's Fortress of Solitude was destroyed. But after Brainiac 13 brought the technology of tomorrow into the City of Tomorrow, Superman, aided by John Henry Irons, designed a new Fortress of Solitude using B13 technology. This new Fortress, situated as it is within a tesseract (a sort of "wrinkle" in time), seems to have access to other dimensions and planes of reality.

One such plane is the Phantom Zone. No sooner had Superman begun exploring his new Fortress than the Phantom Zone opened and the Cyborg escaped. Although this time the battle was cut short by the timely intervention of the Kandorian Emergency Squad, and the Cyborg quickly returned to his prison within the Phantom Zone, even his brief appearance shows that his hatred of the Man of Steel has not abated. Who can say how long he will remain a prisoner?