When it comes to Superman’s list of enemies, you’ve got the classics like General Zod,
Darkseid, Doomsday, Brainiac, Bizzaro, and uh…
Metallo?
Yet few are as iconic as Lex Luthor.
The bald head, the billions of dollars, the intense freakouts.
“Superman will never.”
“WRONG!”
Actually, Lex Luthor started out as a red headed evil genius that’s as generic as
they come, but when DC decided to relegate all of those old school Golden Age comics
to a separate universe, he got a new incarnation.
This version of Lex grew up in Smallville alongside Clark Kent who at the time was going
by Superboy.
Luthor was a scientific genius and actually worked WITH Superboy… until a lab fire destroyed
his research and his fabulous head of hair.
Lex thought that Superboy destroyed his laboratory out of jealousy and from that point on, he
was Clark’s arch-nemesis.
See, it wasn’t until after the big DC reboot called Crisis on Infinite Earths, that Lex
was reimagined as an evil businessman and it’s THIS iteration that we all know and
love.
Lex Luthor was born in the slums of Metropolis to an abusive family.
When he was thirteen years old, Lex forged his father’s signature and took out life
insurance policy on his parents.
Then he tampered with their car and killed them for the insurance money.
This was mildly retconned in Superman: Secret Origins, but instead of being from Metropolis,
he was now raised in Smallville.
Still, this kid was pure evil.
In fact one time, he stole forty cakes when no one was looking.
He took FORTY CAKES.
That’s as many as four tens and that’s terrible!
Moving on, Lex wasn’t old enough to live on his own so he was assigned to a foster
family, the Griggs, who ended up being even worse than his biological family and were
only interested in Lex’s fortune.
At the Griggs’ house, Lex fell in love with another child they had taken in, Lena, whom
the Griggs attempted to force into manipulating Lex into signing over his money to them, but
when she refused, the Griggs pushed Lena down the stairs and killed her.
This was a major turning point in Lex’s life and only made him work harder to use
his money to create and grow LexCorp into a multi BILLION dollar conglomerate that more
or less controlled the entire city of Metropolis.
Enter Superman.
In his original modern age origin, Lex tried to hire the Man of Steel as a bodyguard, but
got rejected.
In other tellings, he thinks that Superman makes humanity not try to solve their own
problems.
All that you really need to know is that Lex hates the big blue boyscout.
That’s what’s important.
As for why Lex is bald, there are many different explanations such as a retelling of his Silver
Age origin story.
However, because of the constant reboots and rehashes of early Superman canon, the absolute
latest version of Lex’s hair loss is unknown.
Lex’s main method of attacking Superman is Kryptonite.
In fact, this is such a huge part of his character that Luthor even has a Kryptonite ring that
he wore so much that it gave him cancer.
When amputating his hand wasn’t enough, Luthor faked his death, cloned himself a younger
body, put his brain inside of it, and started claiming that he was his own son, Lex Luthor
Jr.
Also, the clone body looked like this, spoke with an Australian accent, and seduced the
Supergirl of that era.
It’s also around this time that he helped create Superboy by providing his DNA as a
model to build upon.
Yet, this wouldn't be brought to light until over a decade later.
The whole “being his own son” ruse came to a screeching halt when his clone body started
to rapidly deteriorate, but it’s okay because he sold his soul and hair to the demon, Neron,
in exchange for youth and good health.
When held accountable for his crimes, the newly restored Luthor brought in his original
body and claimed that everything he was accused of was actually committed by an evil cone
and the judge bought it so now Lex is free once again.
That doesn’t stop Luthor from trying to kill Superman and being an evil douche though.
No, not by a long shot.
He even went so far as to destroy the Justice League’s watchtower!
Yet despite his track record, Luthor still managed to become the president of the United
States.
Jeez, this guy can blow up cities, literally create super villains, sell his soul to a
demon, and STILL get elected president?!
Why on Earth anybody would elect an obviously evil businessman with outspoken hatred for
aliens and awful hair is beyond me.
President Luthor ended up working with the villain Darkseid who crafted him a war suit
with the sole purpose of destroying Superman.
If that wasn’t enough, Lex also injected himself with a chemical cocktail of liquid
synthetic Kryptonite and Venom.
Yeah, the same stuff that Bane doses himself with.
Superman and Batman teamed up to take Luthor down and even exposed his lies to the entire
world which ended his presidency and leads us to the events of Infinite Crisis.
It’s here when Luthor was kidnapped and replaced by the son of an alternate universe
version of himself who tried to essentially turn the mainstream DC universe into a copy
of his own dimension.
Trust me, the story is a LOT cooler than I just made it sound.
Regardless, the day was saved and the mainstream Lex claimed that all of the crimes he committed
were actually done by his now deceased doppelganger and even supplied the body for proof.
Deja vu.
Suddenly, the public loves Lex again and he uses that to his advantage because LexCorp
discovered how to activate the latent human metagene and was letting ANYBODY become a
superhero, for the right price of course.
Naturally, Luthor REALLY doesn’t want EVERYBODY to have super powers so he shut them all off
with the push of a button leaving only Lex who made himself as strong as Superman…
Until Steel deactivated his powers and kicked his ass.
Despite all of this, Luthor managed to get off scot free… again, but was now penniless
and disgraced.
Naturally, the only course of action is try to destroy all of Metropolis…
Yep...
See, it’s this period of time, Lex went right on back to his old ways of committing
over the top, one note crimes which can be pretty boring.
He even helped form an Injustice Gang that got defeated and banished to a prison planet
that Lex broke out of.
Then Final Crisis happened where all the supervillains took over the world under the leadership of
the mysterious Libra who was working for Darkseid, but Luthor betrayed them all at the last second
because he didn’t want to bow down and disappeared until Blackest Night.
Luthor holled himself up in a secret lab and declares an “every man for himself” philosophy
to the other super-villains.
Because of his greed, he was deputized as an Orange Lantern where he used his avarice
as a weapon against the zombie Black Lantern invasion.
Guess what.
None of that matters because of the Flashpoint reboot.
The New 52 Lex works with the government to investigate and take down Superman, but his
main influential story is Forever Evil where he creates Bizzaro and helps defeat an evil
alternate universe Justice League that invaded Earth and took it over.
Having decided that he liked the favor and attention that the public gave him for being
a hero, Luthor joined the Justice League and now he’s obtained the power of a god and
is the lord of Apokolips.
As of this recording, that is all you need to know about Lex Luthor and more, but since
he’s a popular comic book character, this is going to be outdated the day it goes up,
but for now though, if you want to read about Luthor for yourself, I’d recommend the books
52, Luthor, and Forever Evil.
But as always, now it’s time for a vote.
Which Superman baddie would you like me to talk about in the future?
Brainiac or Doomsday?
Click to cast your vote or tweet me @TrailerDrake.
If you want some more Superman goodness though, then just click that annotation right there
for the history of Batman’s anti-Superman armor!
It’s pretty cool and that’s what the suit in Batman vs. Superman is based on.