Brain Boys & Bad Babes: Betrothed or Bothered

The first meeting of Henry “Brain Wave” King and his future wife Merry Pemberton was not overly… or remotely… romantic. In an apparent reunion of the Injustice Society along with later members Solomon Grundy** and the Shade, Brain Wave was outsmarted by Merry’s Gimmick Girl gadgets. She was joined by various heroes once members of the All-Star Squadron*.

Nevertheless, the two eventually bridged the gap between his criminal way of life and her adherence to a moral code. Their marital reunion resulted in a son … Henry Junior… who barely knew his father as King was kept in prison for several years

It seems that when Brain Wave escaped prison in 1976, his estranged wife Merry had passed away. The fact that she was important to him is evident in his actions in 1981 as a member of the Secret Society of Super-Villians, when he kidnapped a red haired actress that reminded him of her. 

When Psimon attempted to rejoin the Fearsome Five, which had just been formed and had then been betrayed by him, his teammates initially rejected his plea for help. In fact, Shimmer threatened to transmute his body. Still, cooler heads prevailed, as the Five rescued him from dimensional exile, resulting in his later betrayal of their team leader and founder Doctor Light.

Nevertheless, something about Psimon’s drive and determination led Shimmer and her comrades to support him through his various schemes versus the New Teen Titans, and later, Batman and the Outsiders. Although, unlike their Earth-Two counterparts Brain Wave and Gimmick Girl, the Earth-One Psimon and Shimmer remained plutonic partners instead.

* During this untold tale, which had to have taken place in or shortly after June 1948 when Merry debuted, Doll Man was shown among the various heroes. This confirms that he traveled back on time to the 1940s, having left the world of his birth for Earth-X, where he was until the 1970s. So he too reunited with his long lost love, the Martha Roberts of Earth-Two around this time.

**This is evidently the imposter Grundy who troubled Johnny Thunder previously, rather than the real Solomon who was stranded on the moon at this point.