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.
Firstly let me just assure you that this Lex Luthor did not
dye his hair that color, it was apparently just that red. Okay, a little background is required
here. After DC re-invented itself
in 1986 with Crisis on Infinite Earths
Lex Luthor underwent some radical changes.
We’ll cover those a little later on but as the momentum of
the DC reboot slowed the Superman writers decided to kick start interest by
having Luthor seemingly die and get replaced by his son Lex Luthor Jr. Lex Jr. was his father’s opposite;
hunky and well built, hairy as all get out, and outwardly altruistic. One other way he was Luthor’s opposite
was that the fans hated him.
Yeah, in a shocking twist it turns out nobody was interested
in a good Lex Luthor sporting a full head of hair and banging Supergirl. That was another weird twist of the
era, introducing a new Supergirl who became involved with Lex Jr. even though
they were basically siblings (it was complicated and gross.)
Eventually Luthor Jr. ran his course of
fan hatred and disinterest and it was revealed he was actually just a clone
that the real Luthor had put his brain inside of. Since then we’ve all agreed to just never mention Luthor Jr.
again, to the point that he tends to get excised from adaptations of Death of Superman despite being a key
figure in that story.
Fun fact about the set-up for Comics Rainbow, the color
alignment is actually based on the emotional spectrum from the Green Lantern
mythos. If you’ve never
encountered it before, it’s basically a set-up of colors to emotions so red
becomes anger/hate, orange is avarice, yellow is fear, green is courage, blue
is hope, indigo is compassion, and violet is love.
This was all revealed in a big, multi-year storyline where
each color got its own core and then fought ring-powered zombies called Black
Lanterns. In the midst of that
event, a bunch of Earth heroes and villains got lantern powers like the Flash
became a blue lantern and Lex Luthor became an Orange Lantern of Avarice.
That’s a lot of set-up for “Lex Luthor has power equal
to/greater than Green Lantern” but the set-up is part of why I like this
version of so much. He’s steeped
in DC myth and lore but in a way that makes use of the company’s history and
concepts and expands on them well.
Throwing a character like Luthor into a completely different corner of
the DCU is the entire point of a shared universe.
What’s more, Luthor is a perfect fit for the Orange Lantern
role. I think a lot of people tend
to interpret the idea of avarice as just being “greedy” but it’s more about
control and Lex Luthor is all about control in a lot of his best
interpretations. That’s the big
contribution of making Lex a business overlord, it emphasizes his obsession
with control and egomania to set himself up as Superman’s ideal opposite.
This is an even more recent reworking of Lex Luthor but I’ll
be damned if I’m letting it slide.
So, a while back DC had an event called Forever Evil. In it,
the JLA was rendered incapacitated by their evil counterparts from a parallel
universe and it fell to a handful of villains to actually stop the evil version
of the Justice League. It’s a big,
dumb, weird idea that was dumb in concept and twice as dumb in execution but
part of the aftermath was that Lex Luthor ended up a key member of the Justice
League, which is also dumb.
All the stuff I just mentioned about Luthor’s massive ego
and desperate need for control are part of why he’s such a poor fit for the
league. He’s a villain through and
through, some might say he’s THE villain and it’s all because he’s too
stubborn, petulant, and self-important to even consider acting
altruistically. Having Luthor join
the JLA completely ruins why his character works or is even remotely
interesting, turning him into just another smart guy hero. The entire concept forced him into the
role of diet Iron Man and it was a terrible look.
A lot of folks seemed convinced this was a bold expansion of
Luthor’s character but I’m really not sure why. I understand the desire to see a villain redeemed but this
really doesn’t feel like the path Luthor would take to being a good guy,
especially cause his various character flaws weren’t really solved by his
joining the league. Even though he
was now counted as one of Earth’s mightiest heroes he was still a smug, self-obsessed
jackass who often put the team in jeopardy for his own ego.
I’ve discussed this period of Luthor’s time as a villain
previously but in case you missed that here’s the skinny. After Luthor lost the Orange ring at
the end of the Blackest Night event he took over as the main character of Action Comics. During this time, Luthor was obsessed with regaining his
lost power and went on a massive adventure to the corners of the universe to
regain it. It’s one of the all-time
great villain comic books and the perfect blend of Luthor’s greatest
attributes.
Right from the start
Luthor’s ego and sociopathy are put front and center, with the arc of the comic
being how we relate to this madman.
We see him as the embodiment of cold, villainous inhumanity, as a bold
adventurer fueled by his own unwavering self importance, as a necessary evil
against threats greater than himself, even as a human with the need to be
challenged and doubted.
Aside from how fully realized as person Luthor is, the
series also draws from the character’s entire comic history. Ever since the 1986 DC reboot Luthor’s
often been locked into the role of evil businessmen but Action Comics manages to bring back his rogue scientist roots
without alienating the stuff that worked about modern Luthor.
He’s the billionaire head of a massive
corporation but that’s just used to give him the resources to run all over the
galaxy doing crazy science and make companion robots. The series does a great job finding the complexity and
multi-facetted identity that’s kept Luthor so popular for over 75 years.
Speaking of Luthor’s rogue scientist days, let’s talk about
that for a minute. Most folks
nowadays tend to associate Luthor with his company Lex Corp, and think of him
as an evil businessmen type bad guy.
It’s actually pretty surprising how well known this version of Luthor
has become, given that it only came into being in 1986 and for the most part
hasn’t been adapted that often.
By
the time Luthor got his corporation most of the live action adaptations of
Superman had come and gone, and even some of the remaining ones didn’t include
it, such as Superman Returns. As such, a lot of folks forget that for
most of Luthor’s existence, for about 40 years or so, he was a
jack-of-all-trades rogue scientist.
Given how closely tied this classic version of Lex Luthor is
to the goofiest elements of the Silver Age (the dude had statues of history’s
greatest criminals in his secret lair) a lot of modern fans have been happy to
turn their back on this era and I think that’s a big mistake. I love business Luthor, we’ll get to
him in a bit, but Lex’s time as a crazy underground scientist, building power
armor out of stolen and salvaged components in secret headquarters is some of
the character’s greatest stuff.
It
emphasized the more whimsical and crazy sci-fi aspects of the Superman universe
without needing to be self-conscious over its own high concept nature. What’s more, Luthor was brimming with
personality in this era, even he was more linked in identity to Superman than
ever before. The whole concept of
the character in these books was that he had such a vendetta against Superman
he was more willing to create evil science than just patent his inventions and
get rich, that’s dedication to your villainy.
I’ve spoken before about Luthor’s time as President but in
case you missed that post firstly: no, this wasn’t a scheme. Luthor actually ran and was elected
President of the United States fairly by the people of America. It’s an odd story owing to how much it
has to bend over backwards to explain why everyone would just shrug and vote
Luthor.
Part of this came from the
era, this was the later ‘90s, after the Clinton sex scandal had crystallized
the growing faux anti-establishment vibe and directionless nihilism of the
era. Basically, the prevailing
societal attitude was “screw everything” so the comics reflected that by having
folks just say “whatever” and vote Lex the presidency.
It was stupid and I mean laughably stupid, especially given
that none of the DCU’s superheroes did a damn thing to keep the populous from
voting for a man with a skull shaped orbital death satellite (yes,
really.) The idea of Luthor buying
his way into the presidency is pretty cool in the same vein as Penguin becoming
mayor of Gotham, as it creates a new dynamic for the heroes as they now have to
work against the government grain, but it never amounted to anything. Not long after Luthor became President
9/11 happened and suddenly no one really wanted “evil US government”
storylines.
The Luthor administration lasted awhile longer with really
no major surprises. The biggest
involvement President Luthor had with continuity was just being around during a
big dumb event comic called Our Worlds At
War, a book so directionless and dumb it’s been stricken from collective
memory. Eventually Luthor was
impeached for using the super steroid venom while in office, even though he was
using the steroid to try and kill Batman and Superman, for some reason that
wasn’t a good enough reason to impeach just the steroid abuse. The whole thing was a shabby end to a
shabby business.
Businessmen Luthor has been looming over this entire list
from the word go. As I mentioned,
Luthor spent his first 40 years as a classic super villain, a rogue mad
scientist with mechanical armor jumping from secret lair to secret lair and
building gadgets to pester the heroes.
That all changed in 1986 when DC rebooted its whole universe in attempts
to make things more adult. Rogue
scientist Luthor was out and Machiavellian businessman Luthor was in. Making Luthor a rich CEO was a smart
move to evolve the character as, after all, if Luthor could invent robots and
super suits why not just patent his inventions and make a fortune?
Obviously, fans loved the change as it became immediately
accepted and so ingrained in the character’s history it now seems odd if he
ISN’T a Lex Corp billionaire. The
weird thing is that the initial rich Luthor re-imagining wasn’t all that
great. His wealth came with a
trade off of being interesting as he tended to just sit back and taunt Superman
from afar while pretty much inventing every Superman villain like Metallo and
the Parasite. Eventually writers
realized it was cooler to have Lex Corp build all kinds of crazy science
projects and keep Luthor as a science genius as well as a savvy businessman and
the whole idea got a lot cooler.
The reason I think LexCorp is so beloved and so many authors
come back to it so often comes back to that control aspect I mentioned earlier. Luthor’s wealth allows him to own and
control Metropolis through power that Superman actually can’t match: financial
and political power. It’s a
maneuvering tactic to give him an edge on Superman beyond just weird science
and it emphasizes the idea that Luthor exists as an opposite of Superman’s
inspirational aspects. It makes
LexCorp this looming, monolithic construct in its own right that can blot out
the sun and step on people’s lives, where Superman exists to raise us up Luthor
and LexCorp exists to keep us underfoot.
I wasn’t originally going to comment on this version of
Luthor as he’ll likely be gone in a few months but I promised the full spectrum
on Lex Luthor and I’d be remise in my duties if I didn’t touch on Super
Lex. Recently, as in this year, DC
is undergoing yet another rebranding/reboot event entitled DC Rebirth. Rebirth is more or less an attempt to
reverse the past 5 years of disappointment and destruction worked by the
disasters New 52, whose early high
sales quickly gave way to fan disinterest and alienated audiences.
A big part of DC Rebirth is that DC is
greatly expanding its roster of Superman titles in the wake of its New 52
Superman getting killed and replaced by the classic Superman we all knew prior
to 2011. This return comes with a
weird caveat as classic Superman must now contend with a new quasi-heroic Lex
Luthor: Super Lex.
While it might seem like this is the same as Luthor joining
the JLA I actually really like the core concept of Super Lex. Luthor’s obsession with Superman has
evolved into a unique form of inferiority, which is one of his most interesting
facets. Luthor hates Superman for
much the same reason Ozymandias hates Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen: because Superman invalidates Lex as the Earth’s great person.
What makes Lex even pettier and unique
is that deep down he knows that invalidation is well deserved. He secretly knows that he’s actually
just a miserable selfish jerk but Superman is his ultimate excuse to live down
to the lofty goals he sets for himself.
The whole thing is like some brilliant Greek tragedy.
Having Lex dawn Superman’s costume and go forth to fight
crime is a great way to blend his pre-existing egomania with the possibility of
redemption. Outwardly, his
rejection of his identity as Luthor and embrace of Superman’s iconography
speaks to personal growth, finally learning to put aside his own need for
validation and emphasize action as a way to showcase his own abilities,
importance, and potential.
On the
flip side, Lex Luthor is still the iconic villain of all time and setting
himself up as a replacement Superman could easily be a twist, a way to get
people to worship him and pander to his already massive inflated ego. Only time will tell which it was
(though it’s probably the latter) but in the meanwhile it’s a great new
direction to take this character in.
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