.........don't see any point to Mad Scientist Lex.....

[llozymandias]

This thread is kind of funny, in a way. People who are against the very idea of Lex as a scientist, seem to be mostly fans of the byrne/wolfman version. Never mind that Byrne & Wolfman (moreso Wolfman) wrote Lex as a brilliant scientist who owned & controlled the largest, most powerful financial/corporate empire known to exist in his universe. It was later writers who wrote Lex as DC's Kingpin.

[Master Planner]

Businessman or scientist,i just love melodramatic Lex Luthor.

[llozymandias]

Really tired of these strawman arguments, from people who hate everything other than the byrne/wolfman versions of the Superman characters. In the 40s (the golden age) Luthor was an evil scientist/inventor, whose goal was universal conquest. I know that byrne claimed to have taken the Superman characters back to their basics. The actual comics he produced, show that he did no such thing.

[Jon Clark]

Really tired of these strawman arguments, from people who hate everything other than the byrne/wolfman versions of the Superman characters. In the 40s (the golden age) Luthor was an evil scientist/inventor, whose goal was universal conquest. I know that byrne claimed to have taken the Superman characters back to their basics. The actual comics he produced, show that he did no such thing.

It's debatable. The original Luthor was more of an arms dealer fomenting wars between two sides with the intent that whichever side won would still be weakened by the war and ripe for Luthor to conquer it in turn. So I can see Businessman Lex being a twist on that. The major change Wolfman & Byrne made was making Lex a non-criminal. Prior to 1986, Luthor had always been someone recognized as a criminal never someone who had public support (except from other criminals and the dictators he was selling weapons to when we first saw him).