The DCU needs a new Lex Luthor as much as Superman

Homelander, Black Adam, Omni-Man — it’s like you can’t shake a stick these days without tapping the bicep of some evil version of Superman. And that’s leaving out the evil or darkly conflicted versions of the ActualSuperman is involved in such projects as Injustice, Killing the Justice League: Suicide SquadOr the Snyderverse movies.

In space, no one can hear you scream — but that doesn’t stop an evil-doer from trying. Polygon will celebrate sci-fi villainy every week this week.

The going Hollywood wisdom is that the classic, morally infallible, effortlessly do-gooding Superman doesn’t sell blockbusters, even though it’s been roughly three decades since anyone actually put that version of the character on the big (live-action) screen. But Superman the Hero of Heroes isn’t the only thing we’re losing here. It is also confusing for his villains that we have made the Man of Steel an Antihero.

And it’s really too bad that Hollywood hasn’t figured out how to do a standard Superman story, because the world could use a lesson in how to spot a Lex Luthor. The celebrity billionaire Lex Luthor. Lex Luthor is the founder of a company that builds rockets for space. Lex Luthor is the ex-president of the United States. All my other major complaints. Batman v Superman, Snyder wasn’t wrong to look at the guy who played Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network and think, “That’s my Lex.”

The Tao of Luthor

Lex Luthor’s face, superimposed on gunmen taking out a target, from Batman #119 (2022).

Image: Joshua Williamson, Jorge Molina, Adriano Di Benedetto/DC Comics

Today’s Lex Luthor straddles the line between writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster’s mad scientist, who battled Superman with ray guns, earthquake machines, dirigibles, and death traps, and writer-artist John Byrne’s 1986 reinvention of him as a CEO of the “greed is good” era, who pitted his mind, his money, and the freedom it afforded him against the Man of Steel.

Lex is a villain, just like Superman. Like the Joker, his origin story is negligible — its evolving details have never been material in the same way that mobster-thrown acid is material to understanding Two-Face, or the Kryptonian penal system is to understanding General Zod. Everyone knows that Luthor, a villain with wealth and the power to perform bad things, is not a good guy.

We would make a mistake if we thought simplicity was synonymous with non-specificity. There are megalomaniacs all over the comic book villain map: Darkseid, Ra’s al Ghul, Doctors Octopus and Doom, to name a few. The difference between Luthor and these other “power is power” baddies is that they want to be in charge.

To paraphrase occasional Polygon contributor Douglas Wolk, a guy who’s read every Doctor Doom comic ever, Doom wants to become not just a godGod, not him. It would be better for him to have all the power in existence. Darkseid, already a god is still searching for the magic key to replace all the wills of the universe.

“We are beyond,” says the chorus of Beyonders, formless in a blur of space starry space. “Dreamers. Destroyers. All of reality our whim. Who dares stand before us?” Quoth Doctor Doom: “I. Doom.” in Secret Wars (2015).

Image by Jonathan Hickman/Esad Ribic/Marvel Comics

But the thing about Lex Luthor is that he absolutely believes he’d be a better god than whatever is in charge at present. He just doesn’t want to do it.

People behind Justice League Unlimited cartoon nailed it in “The Return,” an episode in which an omnipotent being demands that Lex state a convincing reason why it should not destroy itself and the universe together to escape its own existential hell. “If you do that you won’t see the end of it,” Lex responds. “That’s why I stay in the game. My purpose, if you will, is to see where it’s all going.”

Lex desires to live forever. Lex wants to be a curious person about any topic that interests him. He is free to pursue his own goals without being restricted by time, morality or death. He certainly doesn’t want to spend his life controlling the lives of others or overseeing the universe. He just wants to have the power to accomplish whatever his heart desires.

But if that was the only thing he wanted, we wouldn’t still be talking about him. He’d be a concentration of immense power, but unshaped, unweaponized, maybe even neutral. What makes him such a vital tool for understanding modern life — from the rich men who shape our world with their whims to the people who lionize them for doing so — is that even the power to do anything isn’t enough for him.

Everyone will love Lex, and all shall despair

Lex Luthor and Adrian Veidt in Doomsday Clock #2, DC Comics, 2018.

Luthor and Ozymandias meet, a character named after the trunkless stone legs.
Image by Geoff Johns/DC Comics

“In just a few short generations,” he tells the godlike being in Justice League Unlimited, his voice dripping with frustration, “my name will be forgotten. Even the greatest of us can’t compete with time and death.”

Lex won’t rest until everyone who knows anything holds him in the same superlative regard he holds himself. He wants people to see Lex Luthor as a winner when they think about him. A man smarter than anyone else. A man who can surpass all others in any pursuit if he chooses to use his intelligence and resources (which he says he gained using his intellect). While he believes everyone needs what he has and is willing to sacrifice his intelligence for it, he doesn’t know how or where to find the courage. If he is disliked it’s because he is jealous. He is not respected if he does not get attention.

He is a free spirit who wants to achieve whatever goals he sets and, most importantly, he loves being loved. To be the guy that can do anything he wishes.

This, although it’s immaterial to my larger point, is exactly why Lex will never rest until Superman’s memory is cursed.

Superman has all the power Lex craves, and uses it to serve the common good. Lex assumes all people act from self-interest like him, and sees the Man of Steel as the world’s most powerful virtue signaler. Lex believes that Superman has had power handed to him and doesn’t deserve adoration, while he, who worked his whole life to get where he is, does. The reader, of course, can see over and over again that even though Lex is one of the world’s most capable minds, he still built his empire on exploitation, idea theft, and never owning up to a mistake when he could let someone else take the fall for him. And after all, Lex doesn’t seethe over the philanthropy of Bruce Wayne’s generational wealth, nor does he dedicate his criminal career to destroying him.

This is what has allowed dozens of creators since the 1980s to turn Lex into a depressingly prophetic playbook for the social-media-enabled, attention-seeking billionaire. Lex’s big, DCU-shaking moves since taking on the Evil CEO archetype include buying a newspaper to quietly silence it; publicly cultivating the message that aliens are less than human; turning a disaster capitalist’s eye to a ruined Gotham City; and running for president, winning, turning the apparatus of the state against his enemies, and then making deals with devils to grab for more.

Over the last few months, as story after story of Twitter’s internal meltdown hit the news, DC’s current Superman architect, Phillip Kennedy Johnson, introduced a plot in which Lex Luthor murders a psychic in order to wipe the world’s memory that Superman and Clark Kent are the same person. Why? Lex has turned over a new leaf and admitted that the world needs a Superman — so he’s going to bend his superior intellect and resources to the pursuit of a better Superman. How hard can it possibly be? He’s already an expert on the Man of Steel.

“If anyone knows your secret identity now, it could kill them,” Lex Luthor tells Superman from inside his giant mech suit. “If you agree to work with me, maybe I’ll lift the punishment for the truth. You’re lucky I let you keep your marriage, y’know?” in Action Comics #1050 (2023).

Image: Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Nick Dragotta/DC Comics

“The world needs to believe you are a god,” he tells Superman afterward, hands in the pockets of his thousand-dollar suit, feet on the tiled floor of his penthouse office suite, in words that echo every Hollywood attempt to re-create Superman for a presumed-cynical audience. “That you are above them, not one of them.”

I used to think it was comic-book-patented unrealism that Luthor could commit so many crimes in front of two of the world’s greatest investigative reporters and keep walking away without seeing the inside of a courtroom. For example, Lex Luthor was elected president of the United States. Actually had to put his businesses in the charge of a neutral trustee, so maybe DC wasn’t thinking big Enough.

Fast and decisive action is key to breaking things

One of my college classics professors shared his philosophy that united heroes. It was the belief that they have the power to overcome rules. A story with a happy ending, such as the OdysseyHeroines are the ones who show why we should break the rules. A tragedy can end in a tragic story, such as the. IliadThe hero of the story demonstrates what and why it is important to follow these rules NeverBroken

Not all superheroes are selfless do-gooders, but the genre’s sheer variety is itself a result of its simplicity. Superheroes are characters who do superhero things. Every superhero gives us the opportunity to see what heroicism means. There is a lot to be proud of when you have great power. Each Spider-Man story or Superman’s or X-Men stories or Green Lantern stories are a chance to show how power can be used responsibly. It’s also possible to see the flip side. There are many supervillains out there, and each one offers an opportunity to identify irresponsible power use.

When our cultural conversations cluster around a reduced variety of those definitions — say, if the most mainstream superhero projects are about antiheroes — our broad understanding of heroism can become considerably muddled. Here’s a fun joke about monocultures.

Superman is more than just another character like Homelander or Black Adam. Not just to be “the light to show the way,” as Marlon Brando’s Jor-El stentoriously put it in 1978’s Superman. As a way for creators and artists to speak with one voice, Lex Luthor is essential. Wouldn’t it be terrifying if a billionaire acted like this? Not because the billionaires will listen, because they won’t — but so that we can see them coming.

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