Analysis of Lex Luthor

Uh, Lex had managed to have a lot of fights with Clark that have pushed the guy to his limits, he had managed to injure him regularly. That armor is not only to show, it actually work

1) Keep in mind that Lex being a industrial genius businessman is a part of him from decades,it works for a reason, it manages to give Lex something to hide his evil deeds and show a facade of philantrope genius

2) How Lex being evil affect the other high-tech heroes?

I mean, you are saying that the comicbook industry is bad because it demonizes the poor, poor multi-billionaires, you have a point that making Luthor a Self-Made Man in a industry full of inheritors is bad, but hey, that is not the only backstory of Lex.

edited 12th Feb '18 5:21:10 AM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

I was referring to how every tech-based hero like Reed Richards is useless when it comes to large-scale improvements, yet Luthor is the only one for whom this is considered an intentional moral flaw.

And it's not so much self-made men that I'm focusing on, but virtually every aspiring hero with neither superpowers nor wealth to their name; or even every person who has to live in a world of gods and monsters without any of the considerable conveniences that the designated heroes possess. The industry tends to disparage both civil institutions and independent heroic endeavors, the general impression being that ordinary people should have no choice but to keep Holding Out for a Hero. And per the stories I mentioned, Luthor is someone who doesn't exactly agree with that sentiment.

The guy can dig for gold with but a glance, owns a fortress with half a galaxy's worth of scientific knowledge, runs an N.G.O. Superpower with both worldwide effective jurisdiction and the membership of the heads-of-state of two rather advanced civilizations, and regularly makes speeches before the UN as to how he believes the world should be run. Somehow, I think he's got enough political influence to scrape by.

Sarcasm aside, you can see how this sort of inflation tends to break the scales regarding his villains. It likely affects most of the Justice League to begin with, except for Batman, whose Gotham-focused iteration might as well be a whole different character. Respectively, early Byrne Luthor was all but grotesque, a corpulent caricature of a man, to make you wonder how he could run a pop-stand let alone a billion dollar company. It's that sort of attitude that belies writers' desire to merely bash their own demons in effigy, rather than produce a conflict befit what's supposed to be Earth's mightiest hero.

edited 12th Feb '18 5:31:57 AM by indiana404

How is Lex considered a normal person when he is described as being smarter than the entire human race combined?

"Lex Luthor is a normal person" is fucking delusional.

As I already explained regarding the story, he considered his own endeavors as useful distractions, keeping Superman occupied so that other people will learn to make do without him. A bit of a sink-or-swim approach, but rather interesting in light of real life developments, such as charities having the tendency to ruin local economies. And given Superman's own forays into playing globocop - including, in one notable case, getting indignant at Wonder Woman for allowing war widows to execute their abusers - I'd say he could use being taken down a peg in that department.

edited 12th Feb '18 5:57:51 AM by indiana404

So, are you going to answer?

I just did. Notwithstanding the inconsistency of whether Luthor's intelligence is considered a superpower in its own right, his efforts - and more to the point, his own lifetime experience - do get the idea through that relying on external help isn't exactly a safe bet, and even less so considering the stakes typically involved. Far too many modern stories have tried to milk drama out of superheroes arriving late to the party, when the casualties have already mounted up, meaning their standard methodology mostly results in them taking the respective villain into the worst prison system this side of the Equator, and trying to sell it as some sort of moral victory for the survivors.

Some time ago, I made the case that perhaps this is precisely what makes Luthor dangerous to Superman as a concept. Luthor is the end result of a world without a Superman, an embodiment of self-reliance to even its darkest implications. And considering Superman very often has trouble accepting the fact that he can't save everyone, let alone dealing with competing heroes with conflicting methods, the notion that those he couldn't reach might ultimately turn against him themselves is even more haunting.

You know that Lex is a cause of a lot of the problems that Superman had faced, right?

I mean, complaining about how people is Holding For A Hero so much that you decide that the answer is Kill that hero is dumb at best awfully egocentrical at worst

And, you know, if you believe that Lex Luthor, poster boy of narcissism is what happens without Superman, You really have a negative view of mankind

edited 12th Feb '18 6:24:13 AM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

Aren't every villain, through enough egocentrism and logical loops, not saved by Superman?

Now you're getting warmer... The real question to ask is, were they villains before that?

edited 12th Feb '18 6:31:02 AM by indiana404

I don't get the point of that question. Unless you're literally born evil, like Nekron or the Anti-monitor, you are in a neutral state. How is Superman the cause for their turn to villainy?

Just what the fuck are you on about? What point are you trying to make?

Going to analyze the Superman' Rogues Gallery and see if he truly meet The Superhero Paradox

Lex was already a narcissist jerk with shady deals with other groups, he controlled Metropolis and the misery and progress of it, Superman existing just make him get angry because Lex can't be The Hero anymore. Is the fault of Superman? Only if you're as narcissist as Lex.

Metallo, Bizarro and Parasyte. Varies from version, but they tend to be related to Lex trying to find a way to beat Superman.

Brainiac : existed before him

Zod : old enought to be his father, he was either a criminal or a Borderline fascist strongman militar leader.

Watch me destroying my country

This is starting to remind me of that episode of Batman: The Animated Series where the inmates of Arkham Asylum claim that Batman is the cause of all of their woes.

Let's go down the list of classic Superman enemies I can recall:

1. Lex Luthor
2. Brainiac
3. Bizarro
4. Darkseid
5. Zod

Of these, we have one spacefaring genocidal scientist who was like that long before he met Superman, one attempted dictator who was like that long before he met Superman, one God of Evil who was like that long before he met Superman, one failed Superman clone who Superman always tries to deal with peacefully whenever possible, and Luthor, who has a lot of different possible versions of his backstory (I know there was one who blamed Superboy for his hair loss, for one).

EDIT: whew, ninja'd in style.

Yeah, I'm going to say that claiming Superman creates his villains is not an argument that holds up. At all. Heck, in virtually every incarnation Lex was immoral long before he met Superman - and the one that has his start of darkness be Superman burning off his hair, well, if baldness is what makes you evil then all Superman did is jumpstart his schemes by 50 years.

edited 12th Feb '18 6:48:47 AM by Sigilbreaker26

"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"

Doomsday was born on ancient Krypton. Superboy Prime was from another universe. Ultraman too. Mr Mxyptlk is a higher dimensional being. Mongul is another alien conqueror. Lobo was in business before Superman.

As I noted, the guy does tend to miss out on important appointments, all while being disdainful whenever other heroes pitch in with methods he dislikes. The case could be made he prioritizes his personal brand of heroism regardless of whether it's actually effective or not. In light of this, it's his absence that breeds cynicism, as in the aforementioned case with the war widows - per his usual standards, they're now murderers. Pretty much only Garth Ennis ever writes him as someone who knows he can't protect everyone, and so doesn't judge how people protect themselves.

His absence are either being busy with a bigger threat or the limits of his (admittedly arbitrary) super-hearing.

Edit: I think I figured out your point. You don't like it when Superman judge people.

edited 12th Feb '18 6:52:05 AM by Ikedatakeshi

You are cherrypicking one example of Superman not wanting people to fire, and extrapolating that to an insane degree across all of his stuff.

edited 12th Feb '18 6:52:40 AM by Sigilbreaker26

"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"

Wait, what?

Clark don't judge people for not being able to to protect themselves.

And saying that his absence cause people to being evil is stupid, Clark wasn't even born when a big number of his Rogues Gallery started their actions.

A small complain, but Darkseid is The Big Bad of the DCU, not a Superman-only villain hey tend to meet because Clark is the Big Good but still

edited 12th Feb '18 6:53:54 AM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

True, I was just scratching my head for Rogue's Gallery guys where I didn't have to reach for Atomic Skull or the Ultra-Humanite (not that they wouldn't also be examples of people who would become evil independent of Superman).

Mr. Myzpytlk is just the sort of guy who I don't really count as a villain. He's a nuisance.

"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"

Technically Darkseid first appeared in a Jimmy Olsen story, and was pretty self-contained in the new gods mythos.

That may be, but the point still stands people would do better to not rely on him, even if the way they go about it doesn't meet his (similarly arbitrary) moral standards. That's what Luthor embodies - he's got every reason to believe it's a dog-eat-dog world, so it's understandable he'd be suspicious of a self-styled savior who's still inconsistent as to whom he decides to help. Superman being judgmental against competing heroes only lends credence to the point he's just as concerned about his own social status as Luthor is invariably deconstructed to be.

On a tangent though, yeah, I'm not a big fan of how just about every means for baseline humans to be heroic in comic settings - be it by joining civil authorities or pursuing independent careers - is met with suspicion and physically imposed scrutiny, no less by those who refuse it for themselves. The industry could use a couple more S.H.I.E.L.D. and Checkmate titles, preferably ones not descending into random internal witch-hunts rather than proper heroics.

Well Superman is challenged by Lex Luthor because he is the guy who can create the Superman-klilling weapons. When they got rid of all of the Kryptonite on Earth, a writer just said that Lex Luthor developed his own in a laboratory. While he's never managed to kill Superman outside of Elseworlds (where he's killed him several times) he's come the closest out of anyone other than Darkseid.

Generally, though, Superman is challenged by Lex Luthor in the context that Superman might not be able to protect the people which Lex Luthor threatens.

• puts on Superman writer hat*

Story 1#:

Superman finds out a young woman is fleeing from her employers who are trying to murder her and are using her family to trheaten her into compliance. Superman struggles to keep everyone alive (and perhaps fails) because he can't be in multiple places at once. Eventually, he finds out the woman has committed suicide with pills (Superman saves her) because the bad guys threatened her mother. Superman also finds out the goons trying to kill her and kidnap her family are armed with strange weapons.

After the story is over, she's revealed to be a whistle blower about how the products at her company are highly toxic and have killed hundreds of people. Of course the company is owned by Lex Corp. Lex Luthor taunts Superman at the back that the company paying restitution is only slightly more expensive than it cost to try to take her out.

Story 2#

Superman is trying to stop a brutal gang war in Metropolis which is killing multiple kids and the innocent. The sides have been armed with alien weapons and devices, which Lex Luthor says is a reason they need to demolish a street of Suicide Slum and rebuild it as skyscrapers. Superman suspects Lex Luthor is the party responsible and does his best to bring an end to the violence as well as appeal to the people involved's humanity.

Lex ends up "winning" because he bribes the Mayor to approve it happening anyway.

Story 3#

A bunch of alien refugees arrive from a nearby solar system before they start dying of a horrible plague that makes them violent against humans. Lex Luthor, of course, is responsible and characterises aliens as carriers of disease as well as invaders. The last of the survivors realizes they've been poisoned and tries to kill Lex as well as his stock broker. Superman saves them but they're all deported and wish they'd never come to Earth.

edited 12th Feb '18 7:16:04 AM by CharlesPhipps

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

Superman's moral standards changes depending on who's writing him. For some reason you're linking them together in a coherent matter. Also, not rely on Superman? I'm curious how an average human is supposed to stop a meteor without being born with superintelligence. It's like arguing against charity work. Self-reliance is nice and all, but people are dying right now.

@Second Post From The Top: Early Byrne!Luthor was a "grotesque caricature" who "made you wonder how he could run a pop stand"? Excellent question, why don't we ask this fella?

Seriously, I don't even like the corporate mogul Lex (I kinda agree he makes Superman look like an impotent chump) but his being a gigantic Straw Loser who nevertheless wields gigantic amounts of power is pretty darn realistic.

edited 12th Feb '18 7:37:38 AM by Rubber_Lotus