Who is Lex Luthor?

[stargazer01]

Is he supposed to be hated? Personally, I love to hate him.

I think he's a great character when written well, and he has had a very interesting backstory and has been reinvented in different ways to appeal to new generations.

Lex has been called the greatest criminal mind of our time lol, but it's true, and he is supposed to be the smartest person on the planet. Or so I read. He needs to be highly intelligent to be able to sometimes fool the Man of Steel and most people.

Like I said, I love Lex for his intelligence, but his arrogance and selfishness is his downfall. But I NEVER want to feel sorry for Lex. I don't think We are supposed to ever feel pitty for him or for the writers to make him relatable or sweet or cute. He's evil and he is cunning, but he's a fun villain to watch and to love to hate. He is enigmatic.


Thoughts? Do you ever feel pitty for Lex?

[Carabas]

To me he's DC's second most overrated, second most overused, second most boring main villain. Second after the Joker.

[Kuwagaton]

Part of what makes Superman work is that he's so consistent. When you want a story about a good man facing challenges, you know the deal. Lex though, gets greater as the years roll on because he changes so much. Sometimes he can be pitied, sometimes he's pitiful, sometimes he's completely far from both.

My favorite Lex doesn't necessarily want people dead, but will not blink if you get in his way. Otherwise, he's just an incorrigible, self absorbed rich guy who can back up his ego but mostly chooses to amuse himself.

I definitely think Lex like the Joker is overused, but because he's not evil incarnate, it doesn't bug me that they have him around as much.

[stargazer01]

I'm not discussing if he should be used more or less, but how are we supposed to feel towards him.

I feel he is very evil but also so smart and arrogant, and I find that fun. So I love to hate him, and I don't particularly like stories that tell me I'm supposed to pity him. I don't think he needs to be very relatable but a badass villain that isn't easily intimadated by anyone. I don't want to say, "oh poor Lexy baby."


For instance, in BvS, when he confronts Superman and shows him photos of a tortured Martha.. he breaks Superman with an evil smile. I thought that was very well done. I hated him so much but at the same time loved him for being so smart and cunning.

[adrikito]

I liked Lex Luthor in my childhood and even now in films(batman vs Superman is one exception) and the comics..

I saw FOREVER EVIL many years ago because he was the main character. IS A GOOD CHARACTER IN MY OPINION.

Nobody can replace him as Superman worst enemy.

[theoneandonly]

lex luthor is the thief of 40 cakes and that's terrible.

[Zero Hunter]

To me Lex is the ultimate Alpha male. He doesn't just think he is better than most people he actually is. He worked his way up from nothing using his brains and ruthlesness to climb over anyone that got in his way until he was the top of the heap. He was the man men wanted to be and women wanted to be with. Then Superman showed up and suddenly Lex was not the top dog anymore and ever since he tries over and over to show he is better than the alien.

[Jon Clark]

I kind of prefer a Lex that is both sympathetic and despicable. One minute he is torturing Jimmy Olsen to discover some secret about Superman, the next he is dropping off a microscope anonymously for some kid he saw being bullied on the playground.

[Adekis]

Luthor is probably the most inconsistent character in the Superman mythos, excepting, I don't know, maybe Metallo. I get kind of pissed, because none of him are bad characters, but lots of him are totally inconsistent with other depictions. Despite what I've sometimes said, I do kind of like Byrne's lecherous and utterly depraved "Kingpin Lex," but I have no interest in seeing him as "the" Lex Luthor ever again.

Personally, my ideal Luthor is a mixture of the calculating arch-humanist from Young Justice who plays go with Earth on a galactic scale with the classic Bronze Age Luthor (specifically, Maggin's and Hamilton's Luthor, since other writers like Bates, Thomas, or Wolfman treated him really differently) who basically becomes a criminal out of an inferiority complex, and without Superman around, he'd have been a hero. Kal-El still maintains that Luthor could surpass him as a hero if he'd only try to do it instead of dedicating himself to being Earth's Greatest Criminal instead - but the reason that Kal has faith in Luthor is that Lex goes out of his way not to kill innocent civilians. Eventually after besting Ultraman in a story equivalent to Forever Evil, Luthor realizes Superman may have a point, bullies his way into the Justice League as the token anti-hero, and dedicates himself to beating Superman at his own game of making the world a better place, much as he does in Rebirth. He does so out of largely selfish motives, but not without a certain quantum of legitimate altruism that runs through him at the core, even if his sense of humanism is still very much rooted in his own egotistical view of himself as the Greatest Man That Ever Lived.

There's a lot of details to my ideal version of Luthor, but I find him more compelling than any of the Luthors you simply "love to hate". That said, I'm not against seeing those versions of Luthor around, I like the idea of re-introducing multiple versions of certain characters, but re-introducing them so they can co-exist. The problem is that everyone has a different favorite take on these characters that they would want to be the "real" one, especially with a character as popular as Luthor, so it's hard to zero in on which permutation gets to be which. There are those who'd want "Kingpin Lex" to be the "real" Luthor, but that concept only annoys me as I find his character fairly flat. I'm going to propose "substitute Luthors" with the assumption that my ideal Luthor, who I described earlier, gets to be "Lex Luthor" himself, basically using various iterations of Luthor as characterization springboards for bringing back underused or creating new characters.

For example, take the utterly immoral and evil mad scientist Luthor and call him Ultra-Humanite, for schemes involving world domination, elaborate undersea bases or flying zeppelin fleets stocked with tons of henchmen. Or another option, there's a dimension hopping villain in DC Special Series # 26 called "Dominus" who turns out to be Luthor in disguise, but his M.O. is so different from Luthor (he wants to literally destroy the world just to make Superman miserable) that Superman had previously dismissed the possibility that it could be Luthor. What if Dominus is a Luthor from another universe or something? I speculated that possibility even as a kid. Dominus could easily stand in for the absurdly cruel Luthor who doesn't care about hurting those uninvolved in his crimes, but without tarnishing the "real" Luthor's admittedly ruthless good intentions.

For "Kingpin Lex", the version who's more brutish and savage, I propose the long forgotten Golden Age character "Big Bill Bowers" could be refurbished into a stand-in for "Kingpin Lex", lecherous, strong-willed, cruel and utterly without sympathy for his victims. Alternately, for a more subtle, manipulative Luthor more akin to John Shea's take from Lois & Clark, I'd suggest something like "Lionel Laird" to put readers in mind of Smallville's most famous "other Luthor", Laird being a Scottish surname meaning, er, "lord". Either one could employ mad scientists rather than strictly being one, as the Luthor of that late '80s and early '90s era often did.

For what it's worth, I prefer that "my" Luthor's father should be the small-town and intolerant minded Jules Luthor, someone to be outgrown and discarded rather than someone to overcome or surpass like the later Lionel Luthor or Lex Luthor, Sr. Ultimately though, Luthor's backstory isn't that important to me, and anyway, I digress from my main point about using the Luthor springboard for other characters.

[llozymandias]

I prefer Jerry Siegel's version. He knows he is smarter than Superman. He hates Kal because Kal keeps getting in his way. His grand ambition is to be king of the world. Or to be GOD.

[stargazer01]

To me Lex is the ultimate Alpha male. He doesn't just think he is better than most people he actually is. He worked his way up from nothing using his brains and ruthlesness to climb over anyone that got in his way until he was the top of the heap. He was the man men wanted to be and women wanted to be with. Then Superman showed up and suddenly Lex was not the top dog anymore and ever since he tries over and over to show he is better than the alien.

I like this a lot. Superman overshadows Lex and he can't stand it. It shows that deep down Lex is not a really good person because he likes to be adored, while Superman really doesn't but people still adore him for his love and compassion and humility.

[Vordan]

It depends on the writer. Waid's Birthright Lex definitely has a pitiable element to him. He was abused at home and an outcast at school. His only friend was Clark and he thought Clark betrayed him like all the other "hicks". Johns and Morrison Lex isn't meant to be pitied on the other hand. He was always a selfish jerk who cared only for himself and killed his parents to free himself from their rule. His one sympathetic point was his relationship with his sister, but Lex never cared for anyone else besides that.

My favorite Lex is Azz's Lex from Luthor. He deludes both the reader and himself into thinking he's the hero, and utterly loses it when Supes rips the illusion away from him. Lex is ultimately selfish, he only cares about himself. I think it's pitiable that all his intelligence is wasted on him, but otherwise I don't really feel sorry for him. He wants absolute control over everything.

[DrNewGod]

As others have said, there have been many Lex Luthors. The first was little more than an especially clever, well-equipped, gun-running gangster.

I do deeply like Byrne's revision (which I've often heard was an adaptation of someone else's [Wolfman?] proposal). IMO, a key merit of that depiction was that Superman simply could not decisively defeat him. Frustrate his schemes? Yes. Defeat him? He always turned out to have left himself just enough wiggle room. I found that a more satisfying answer to Luthor's recurring appearances than the Silver- and Bronze-age versions who were constantly managing to manufacture tunneling vehicles or teleportation gizmos out of spare parts from the prison machine shop.

I am critical of those versions whose animosity toward Superman was petty. That includes Byrne's (although, in all fairness, that's also an homage to the nature of their rivalry's origins in the pages of Superboy).

I think a better adaptation was the Clancy Brown-voiced version presented in Timm's Superman TV series. He flatly doesn't like the existence of someone that others might consider his superior, but his determination to destroy Superman is as much a function of believing that Superman represents an intolerable obstacle, as it is ego.

There is one thing about many of the (IMO, best) Luthor interpretations that I do pity. It is Luthor, not Superman, that prevents Luthor from being what he wishes to believe himself to be.

Luthor has everything it should require to achieve the status of Nietzsche's Übermensch, but his own ego prevents him from true transcendence. It's not even a case that Superman represents a challenge to his ego, or not merely that. It is his ever-present desire to be unquestionably the best in the eyes of others that limits him. Superman happens to represent the most vivid challenge to his desired self-image, but were there no Superman, it likely would have been someone else; anyone or anything that escaped or frustrated his domination would undermine his desired self-image. In some ways, I think that makes Luthor a commentary on the nature of human ambition.

[Master Planner]

While having many inconsistances during his long existance, Luthor works as the antithesis of Superman. Superman was born super, Luthor earned his power(intellectual and financial) and their conflict seems natural, especially is you add that Clark,while an alien and blessed with power is an altruist who helps humanity while Luthor,for all his achievements,he can be very pitty and spiteful.

[daBronzeBomma]

To me, Lex Luthor is my most favorite super-villain. Yes, he is even more inconsistent than Kal in terms of his incarnations over the years, and yes, he is the most often-used of the Super Rogues by such a large margin that it hurts sometimes, and yes, it feels like he's not nearly as formidable as he should be a lot of the times.

But, despite all that, Lex is my main do-badder. He is the most primal antagonist in the Superverse, like the Joker is in the Batverse (except Joker def works better with a "less is more" approach due to the severity of his crimes).

Lex is, depending on the writer, weirdly relatable, especially in the origins where his story starts in Suicide Slum with no emotional support and nothing in terms of comfort (I still want to tie in Lionel & Lillian to his story, but the harsh and poor upbringing is a must for me).

Who is Lex Luthor now?

He is the man who, directly or indirectly, provides for most of the citizens in Metropolis, in terms of jobs and paychecks and benefits. He is, among others, Henry Ford I and Alexander the Great and Adolf Hitler (at least in terms of both oration and a hatred of aliens, extraterrestrials only) rolled into one.

Lex should be blindly loved by a certain percentage of the population, because unless you cross or back- talk to him, Lex is viewed as the world's best boss by most civilian Lexcorp employees. And if Lex gets arrested, he never spends more than a day in jail before being released by his lawyers. He is never truly held accountable by society, because he IS society in the worst sense.

Lex is the dark aspect of civilization, the kind Supes can't ever solve with his powers ... but whom someone like Clark and/ or Lois could possibly eventually help take down for good through their journalism.