SCOTT: If there's one thing we can all identify about Lex Luthor, it's that he's bald. But
he wasn't always. In fact, he used to have a full head of hair. So, what happened? Where
did his hair go? And where did mine go?
Welcome to Comic Misconceptions. I'm Scott, and Lex
Luthor has always been a comic character that I've just been fascinated with. I love the
dynamic he adds to Superman comics, and even the recent Justice League comics as well.
But here's a question: why is Lex Luthor bald? I know that probably sounds a bit strange
to ask, but there are actually some fun reasons behind why this happened. Lex Luthor made
his first comic book appearance in Action Comics #23, where he is shown as a powerful
man with an incredible gift of hypnotic influence. He's doing a classic villain plot to pit the
world against each other in a global war so that he can rise up as the leader once the
dust settles. But you might notice here that he looks a lot different than how we know
him today, especially in his cranial region. Yes, Lex Luthor had a full head of hair when
normally we know him as a completely bald guy. So, what happened to Lex Luthor's luscious
locks? Well, certain stories like The Man of Steel, show Lex looking like he just has
a plain old receding hairline, leading us to believe that Lex is a simple victim of
male pattern baldness. But that's boring! I can't make a video about that. Thankfully,
there has been a more exciting reason in comics about Lex's hair loss, and it's actually probably
one that you guys are probably at least a little familiar with. His hair was singed
off. The first telling of this story dates back to the '60s with Adventure Comics #271
with a feature called "How Luthor Met Superboy" that was also adapted into an episode of the
Super Friends cartoon. In case you are unfamiliar, Superboy in this scenario is simply just a
young Clark Kent, not the Superboy that you might instinctively think of, just a young
Superman. In the story, Lex is a newcomer to the town of Smallville. Superboy decides
to go say hi to the new kid when suddenly a kryptonite meteorite crash lands next to
him out of nowhere. Lex uses a tractor to get rid of the meteorite, and a friendship
is forged. As it turns out, Lex happens to be a huge Superboy fanboy. He actually has
a shrine to him of all kinds of pictures and trophies from past adventures that are all
neatly displayed and labeled: things like a rock that Superboy punched or a girder that
he bent once. It's all just pretty creepy, if I'm being honest. Superboy notices that
there is some scientific lab equipment there as well, and he asks Lex about it, and Lex
explains that he might be a farm boy now living in Smallville, but his dream is to be the
greatest scientist in the world. Out of gratitude for Lex saving his life, Superboy starts tearing
down the building and remodeling it into a state-of-the-art experimental laboratory.
Supes even goes above and beyond equipping the lab with rare, and even some unknown chemicals,
so Lex can get started sciencing, though he does give Lex a word of warning about messing
with those unknown chemicals. But Lex isn't worried. He already has done a lot of his
research on a secret project that he hopes will make him famous. Basically, he's trying
to create life quote, "out of chemicals," which is kind of vague, but it looks like
it works. Lex is so excited about his discovery, and he knows that it wouldn't have been possible
if it weren't for Superboy. So, he sets out on his next project: to create a kryptonite
antidote for Superboy. He chips off some pieces of the meteorite he recovered, ground them
into a fine powder, mixed them into a formula, and the antidote was successfully created.
But in his celebration, Lex accidentally knocks over a flask of dangerous chemicals that starts
a raging fire, filling the room with toxic fumes. Lex cries out for Superboy's help to
extinguish the flames, and when he arrives, Superboy uses his super-breath to put out
the conflagration with Lex still inside. Alas, the puff blew a bottle of acid against the
container for the kryptonite antidote, destroying it. Lex had experimented on it a thousand
different ways, trying to get the antidote just right but with it destroyed, he'll never
be able to recreate it because the fire also destroyed his life formula, along with all
of his notes and research. But the most noticeable effect of the fire was that the fumes made
Lex's hair fall out instantaneously, and he seems just as mad about that as he is about
losing all of his research and experiments. He blames Superboy's carelessness for the
destruction of all of his work and the loss of his hair. Superboy apologizes and offers
to help Lex recreate the life formula but Lex just thinks Superboy is jealous of his
genius and intentionally ruined everything. Lex smashes Superboy's shrine and exclaims
that he will one day be more famous than Superboy and destroy him, and that basically sets Luthor
and Superman's rivalry in motion. A very similar sequence of events can be seen in one of my
favorite Superman comics, Birthright, specifically issue #8 where we see Lex Luthor as the outcast
of Smallville. People were scared of him for his intellect, and he could see it in their
faces. But Clark was different. He was Lex's only friend, the only person that didn't look
at him with an expression full of fear. Now, Lex was fascinated by extraterrestrial life,
and was trying to find a way to detect it and communicate with aliens that may exist
or have existed. He even built himself a rudimentary laboratory so he could work on his greatest
invention, a device that would take a piece of kryptonite and use it to send a beacon
across space and time to make contact with Krypton. But the kryptonite made Clark sick
and he got that look of fear in his eyes, and Lex saw this and believed that Clark was
just like everyone else in town who was scared of how smart he was, and was afraid of what
they couldn't understand. Now, out of anger, Lex preemptively turns on his machine and
briefly makes contact with Krypton before the whole thing overloads and explodes in
a massive blast. He miraculously survives but he's badly burned and all of his hair
is singed off. So, those are a few reasons to why Lex Luthor is bald in the comics, but
we can't stop there! This is Comic Misconceptions! We have to look outside the comics and into
the real world to find why the writers and artists did what they did, and Lex Luthor's
baldness has a fun story behind it. As I stated earlier, Lex Luthor debuted in Action Comics
#23 from early 1940, and the first time he appeared bald in a comic book was a little
over a year later in Superman #10. So, what happened during that year that made the creative
team just decide to take his hair from him? Well, first I think it's important to understand
what was happening with Superman comics at the time. The creators of Superman, Jerry
Siegel and Joe Shuster, were incredibly busy with the success of Superman. Shuster was
drawing just about everything Superman-related from Action Comics to Superman's own comic,
and even the newspaper strips. The workload was a bit too much for him to handle so he
hired ghost artists to draw for him. Ghost artists were pretty common in the golden age
of comics. These are basically artists or even writers sometimes who worked on issues
of comics but didn't get their name printed in the final product. Their work could range
anywhere from merely assisting the main artists and writers to doing 100% of the work while
the main players get all the credit. This is just the way the industry was back in the
day. People weren't necessarily trying to take all the credit for someone else's work
because they were evil or manipulative or anything. It's simply how the system worked
sometimes. So during this time, Shuster had a few artists ghost-draw Superman comics for
him, and one of those artists was a man names Leo Nowak. Nowak was working on the Superman
newspaper strips in a story that featured Luthor. It is reportedly in this comic strip
that Nowak makes the mistake for the first time of Luthor being bald. I say reportedly
because I couldn't actually find the comic strip, but that's what the source I found
says. It was a short time after that that Nowak would work on the Superman comic book
with his first issue being issue #10 featuring another story with Luthor. This would mark
the first comic book appearance of a bald Lex. You might be wondering how Nowak could
have made this mistake. Well, we have to use a little educated guessing on this part. If
you're a ghost artist and someone tells you to draw Lex Luthor, you're just kind of expected
to know who that is. They likely aren't going to describe his physical appearance in the
script since he's shown up several times in the comics already. If you're in that position,
your best bet might be to just go back through old comics and try to find the character you're
supposed to be drawing, and use that as a reference. But comic book blogger Brian Cronin
looked into this, and believes that most likely, Nowak went back to Superman #4 to find images
of Lex, and ended up confusing him with one of Lex's henchmen who was bald and beat up
Clark in the beginning of the issue, whereas Luthor himself in that first issue, looked
like his appearance with the red hair. You can kind of see the resemblance in how the
henchman looks and how Luthor was drawn in Superman #10. For whatever reason, that change
stuck and Lex Luthor has been bald ever since. I found that pretty interesting, and I hope
you guys did, too. Let me know in my comments which reason for Lex being bald you like the
most: the real life version with the artist's mistake or any of the comic versions. Perhaps
I even missed a comic book version of the events leading to his baldness, and if I did,
let me know in the place where you let me know things below. Before we close out, though,
I want to have you all vote on a topic for a future episode. So, Superman has a rich
history that lends itself to having a lot of topics that I could talk about on this
show, and I'm thinking about doing another real origins episode that's Superman-themed.
So, would you guys like to know the real origins of kryptonite or the real origins of Superman,
Part II? We talked before about the short story that inspired the Man of Steel but now
I have found some even more cool stuff. Both episodes will be based on unpublished comics
regarding their respective topics plus some other interesting stuff thrown in there as
well. Vote wisely because I will be tackling the winner in a few weeks, so click on the
pictures at the end of the video to cast your vote. But first, if this is your first time
hanging out with us here at NerdSync, we'd love you to hit that big, sexy subscribe button.
We do weekly comic book videos just like this one every Wednesday, and we don't want you
to miss out on any of it. Once again, I'm Scott. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram.
We'll see you right here next week for more things that you thought you knew about comics.
Now, go vote!