Cover Story - Top 12 Lex Luthor Covers

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Lex Luthor.  It’s a name that wrings loudly through the halls of supervillain infamy alongside such titans as Dr. Doom, the Joker, Loki, and Thanos.  Created in 1940, Lex Luthor is one of the oldest and most well known super villains of all time.  He’s appeared in almost every Superman-centric piece of media we’ve had, played by countless actors and enjoyed numerous solo comic appearances as a protagonist in his own right.  

His obsessive dedication to destroying the man of steel has shaped up to be one of pop culture’s greatest David vs. Goliath stories running across decades and multiple iterations of the character: he’s been a rogue scientist, a business guru, President, and a superhero in his own right.  This Sunday will mark Luthor’s first live-action appearance on the CW show Supergirl, played by Jon Cryer, and while that’s not quite as momentous as it might’ve been given we live in the Superhero Age I’ve still decided to mark the occasion with a deep dive into the top 12 Lex Luthor comic covers.

 

Panel Vision - History of Lois Lane

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Yesterday, Noel Neill tragically passed away at the age of 95.  Though Ms. Neill enjoyed a long and storied career, her most famous role was as the very first actor to play Lois Lane, appearing initially in a pair of serials and on the Superman radio program.  Later, Neill would continue her role on the first live action Superman television series The Adventures of Superman and cement her place as one of the most iconic figures in comic adaptations. 

Seriously, alongside Dana Delany on Superman the animated series and Margot Kidder in the 1978 film series Noel Neill is one of the three women who define Lois Lane as a character and helped shape her history in the comics and the public eye.  Given that, and the fact I haven’t seen The Adventures of Superman, I thought I’d focus in on that history and break down the strange evolution of Lois Lane from girl reporter to the wife of Superman. 

Panel Vision - Superman & The Legion of Superheroes

Edited by Robert Beach 

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As I currently write this, the political world is in something of a weird place. Honestly, “weird” feels like an understatement. American politics are blighted by vicious strains of white supremacy and xenophobia; the world is still gripped in the midst of a refugee crisis, and the UK is deciding whether or not it wants to drop out of the EU (Editor's Note: they did). It’s a tumultuous time, and the elements of racism, hatred, and general petty bigotry that inform the political climate are hard to ignore. 

While all of this is an issue to be dealt with through political action, it’s also a massively stressful and emotionally taxing ordeal to live with. The situation that fiction can exist to reflect and give us some semblance of ease through. And where some of the ugliest beliefs and ideologies of humanity can rear their head with pride and a legitimate chance at power, there’s no greater fictional reflection of our current state than Superman and the Legion of Superheroes.

Supergirl Adds Superman to Season 2

Edited by Robert Beach

One of the bigger problems with Supergirl season 1 was the presence, or rather lack of presence, of Superman. Due to copyright issues, the show was unable to show Superman on-screen as a fully realized character. Instead, they were forced to keep him always just off-camera and never speaking. That plot device ended up getting very taxing by the end of season 1 and left the show with a big problem to solve going into season 2.

I already proposed some ways they could solve it, but it seems CW, CBS, and WB have hammered out an arrangement to fix the big issue of Superman as an actual character on Supergirl.  This will mark the first time Superman has appeared on TV since the end of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in 1997 (Smallville doesn’t count as Clark was never really Superman till the very last minute.)  So what does this mean for Supergirl going forward? Let’s find out. 

Cover Story - Top 25 Supergirl Covers

Edited by Robert Beach 

This Monday could mark the end of a brief, but amazing, era in geek culture. Supergirl season 1 is coming to an end. At time of writing, it’s unclear if Supergirl is getting renewed for a second season, which means this Monday could be the last time Kara Zor-El gets to grace our scenes for a good long while. It’d be a damn shame if that happened given Supergirl is really good and the best adaptation of the Superman mythos since Christopher Reeves’ Superman in 1978. 

With that level of awesomeness, I figured we’d give the show a proper send off if this really is the end for Supergirl 2015. So I’ve culled covers from across Supergirl’s massive history from early appearances in Action Comics, her cavalcade of ongoings and minis in the ‘70s, the metaphysical weirdness of the 2000s show, and even the New 52. Let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on Supergirl. 

Comics Rainbow - Lex Luthor

Well this has been a strange year for the Superman franchise.  On the one hand it enjoyed what has been easily the franchise’s best live action installment since Superman 2 in the form of CBS’ Supergirl.  On the other hand, it was struck a possible deathblow by the worst live action Superman entry of all time in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, a film so bad it killed any future plans for more Superman movies.  Given my maniacal obsession with topicality and the fact we’re still talking about Superman related things I figured I’d jump on board with a look at Superman’s greatest foe Lex Luthor. 

Lex Luthor is one of the most well-known and oldest super villains of all time, first being introduced in 1940 and working his way through numerous live action and animated adaptation.  In the 70 plus years of his time in the comics he’s gone through numerous changes and re-imaginings, some terrible, some brilliant, some meh and we’re going to dive in to get the full spectrum on all of them.  

Action Comics #43 Review

My look at the DC You continues with Action Comics #43 and how grounded the series is in real world events of police misconduct and xenophobia, check it out over on All-Comic:

http://all-comic.com/2015/action-comics-43/

Panel Vision - Super Villain Comics

An odd subsection of comic books that’s gaining quite a bit of notoriety in recent years are villain comics.  Partially this is due to the build up for things like the Suicide Squad movie but overall there have just been more villain comics in the works nowadays.  Just the week we’ve seen installments of Sinestro and Magneto comics as well as the ongoing Secret Wars: Future Imperfect comic which follows the villain Maestro’s point of view.  Villain titles are hardly anything new for superhero comics so I thought it’d be cool to go through the plethora of previous books about the bad guys.  This won’t be touching on every villainous ongoing, one-shot, graphic novel, and mini-series ever because we really don’t have the time, just the ones I think are worthy of checking out for the curious.  What’s more I won’t be touching on comics that feature reformed villains like Thunderbolts, Superior Spider-man, or the Flash Thompson Venom comic.  This is just comics about villains doing their villain thing, with that said let’s look at the comic that arguably started this whole trend with…

Action Comics #41 Review

 

In my Panel Vision about Ghost Fleet I mentioned how I have a weekly job reviewing comics for Front Towards Gamer.  As such I'll be posting links to all new reviews on this blog as well just to let people know when they come out and what I'm reviewing.  This week I'm taking a look at Action Comics #41, a radical reinvention of Superman that features him being mostly depowered and completely ditching his traditional costume.  Check out the full review here.