Thoughts On The "President Luthor" Storyline Years Back

[Agent Z]

How did people feel about the "President Luthor" storyline back in 2001? How do you feel about it now?

[Rod G]

It was an insult to the collective intelligence of the DC Comics readership and it's an insult now.

I'm glad it was erased in the wake of Flashpoint.

[Agent Z]

It was an insult to the collective intelligence of the DC Comics readership and it's an insult now.

I'm glad it was erased in the wake of Flashpoint.

What did you find insulting about it?

[Jon Clark]

Personally I thought it was a waste.

On the one hand it was the capstone to Lex making Superman look totally useless. Now not only was Superman unable to pin 99.9% of Lex's crimes on him, now he can't even come up with enough to torpedo Lex in a political campaign. And Batman who had just gone head-to-head with Lex in the restoration of Gotham was just as ineffective in stopping this.

On the other there was almost no real difference between President Lex and random evil politician. It was as if someone thought making Lex POTUS was a grand idea and one it happened no one had any idea what to do with it (aside from the melodrama of Superman being forced to treat Lex with respect). As a few people pointed out at the time Lex as President seemed less of a threat than Lex as CEO.

[Kuwagaton]

Joe Kelly is on my comic writing Rushmore. Him on Superman should have been one of my favorite runs ever, but I am pretty sure I sold off all my president Lex stories for pennies. It was one of those ideas you muse about with your friends for a moment then quickly drop. It took business Lex to an inconceivable extreme and exhausted disbelief just so slightly. And there simply was not a story that made it up for me.

[Auguste Dupin]

On the other there was almost no real difference between President Lex and random evil politician. It was as if someone thought making Lex POTUS was a grand idea and one it happened no one had any idea what to do with it (aside from the melodrama of Superman being forced to treat Lex with respect). As a few people pointed out at the time Lex as President seemed less of a threat than Lex as CEO.

This. Luthor being president should have been the first step to a gigantic evil plan involving framing another country for attacking the US to declare martial law,becoming dictator of the US, and try to conquer the world or something.
As is, he felt like a run of the mill selfish incompetent politician, not the ultimate threat the idea said out loud implies.

[Patrick Gerard]

Personally I thought it was a waste.

On the one hand it was the capstone to Lex making Superman look totally useless. Now not only was Superman unable to pin 99.9% of Lex's crimes on him, now he can't even come up with enough to torpedo Lex in a political campaign. And Batman who had just gone head-to-head with Lex in the restoration of Gotham was just as ineffective in stopping this.

On the other there was almost no real difference between President Lex and random evil politician. It was as if someone thought making Lex POTUS was a grand idea and one it happened no one had any idea what to do with it (aside from the melodrama of Superman being forced to treat Lex with respect). As a few people pointed out at the time Lex as President seemed less of a threat than Lex as CEO.

There were plans.

Superman #178 was the last issue to be written (mostly) pre-9/11. Jeph was actually finishing the script when the towers fell.

After that, a hold was placed on any stories which might be perceived as critical of the U.S. The net result was that Luthor had to be a mostly okay president from that point going forward.

Then from the other flank, a mandate came down saying that Luthor couldn't know Superman's identity. When part of the reason they made him president to begin with was to have him find out. It wasn't something Lex could be looking for because it was established that Lex didn't believe Superman had a secret identity. Part of the reasoning behind the President Lex story was to put him in a position where he'd find out.

The satellite researcher he killed that issue was always meant to be a real researcher. It was never supposed to be a ploy by Manchester Black. The storyline was approved for Lex to become president and learn Superman's secret.

Except a hold was placed on anything critical of the U.S. (like I said) AND pretty much a month after the launch of the "Luthor knows" story, there was a regime change and an approved story got unapproved. My understanding is, Eddie Berganza approved the story and had to rescind his approval a month after the scene appears where Lex found out. Because his bosses changed. I believe Jenette Kahn was backing a lot of stuff up until that point. She personally signed off on bringing back Krypto, changing the origin, presumably the Lex stuff, and she was also behind making OWAW into a crossover. Once that was decided, editorial from other departments handed Eddie Berganza, Jeph Loeb, and Joe Kelly a hit list of characters they had to kill.

That is typically how crossovers and big events work, by the way. A writer pitches a story about a character solving a mystery or fighting a big bad guy. Editorial comes in and says, "Great. We want to elevate this to a bigger event. Here's 12 people who have to die and here's 3 people who will get new costumes and powers and what those are." Character deaths are almost always tacked onto stories with few or no definite deaths in the pitch and don't seem to come from the writers, generally. Costume changes and power changes and supporting character deaths might happen at summits where writers and artists chime in.

But when you see a JSAer or a Batman character or a Green Lantern die in a Superman book, that's ALMOST NEVER from any of the writers on the Superman books. Somebody said, "We want to do something with this character but we need them 'cleaned up' with a death/reboot and we'd prefer it happen in somebody else's book so we don't take the heat for that and get credit for bringing them back."

Sometimes a writer can fight a hit list. Loeb fought to keep J'Onn off the list in OWAW. Johns fought to keep Nightwing off of it in Infinite Crisis. There was a veto in Identity Crisis as I recall. But the way it works is, you get twelve names of characters you don't write that other editors want dead/rebooted/altered. And you MIGHT be able to resist one or two of those but you're not going to have a job if you resist too many of those.

It's my opinion that it's difficult for people to judge the President Luthor storyline because readers never got to actually see what the plans were for it.

Our Worlds at War was supposed to be two bookends and two months of Superman books like Emperor Joker. DC didn't have a crossover planned after something else fell through and a bunch of tie ins and a hitlist got tacked on what was supposed to just be a Superman story where Superman leads a team of his most dangerous enemies into space to fight Imperiex and Brainiac.

The only issues we really got to see of the Luthor arc where things went according to writers' plan were the Batman K-ring issues, the cabinet announcement, and the one where Lex kills the satellite researcher. Maybe that JLA issue Kelly did? Everything else was kind of blinkered.

[dancj]

There were plans.

That explains a lot. I thought it was a great idea that never went anywhere. But TBH I don't much like that whole era of Superman so it likely never would have to my satisfaction

[Triniking1234]

How did "President Luthor" end though? I think it was before the Teen Titans/Outsiders cross-over.

[manofsteel1979]

There were plans.

Superman #178 was the last issue to be written (mostly) pre-9/11. Jeph was actually finishing the script when the towers fell.

After that, a hold was placed on any stories which might be perceived as critical of the U.S. The net result was that Luthor had to be a mostly okay president from that point going forward.

Then from the other flank, a mandate came down saying that Luthor couldn't know Superman's identity. When part of the reason they made him president to begin with was to have him find out. It wasn't something Lex could be looking for because it was established that Lex didn't believe Superman had a secret identity. Part of the reasoning behind the President Lex story was to put him in a position where he'd find out.

The satellite researcher he killed that issue was always meant to be a real researcher. It was never supposed to be a ploy by Manchester Black. The storyline was approved for Lex to become president and learn Superman's secret.

Except a hold was placed on anything critical of the U.S. (like I said) AND pretty much a month after the launch of the "Luthor knows" story, there was a regime change and an approved story got unapproved. My understanding is, Eddie Berganza approved the story and had to rescind his approval a month after the scene appears where Lex found out. Because his bosses changed. I believe Jenette Kahn was backing a lot of stuff up until that point. She personally signed off on bringing back Krypto, changing the origin, presumably the Lex stuff, and she was also behind making OWAW into a crossover. Once that was decided, editorial from other departments handed Eddie Berganza, Jeph Loeb, and Joe Kelly a hit list of characters they had to kill.

That is typically how crossovers and big events work, by the way. A writer pitches a story about a character solving a mystery or fighting a big bad guy. Editorial comes in and says, "Great. We want to elevate this to a bigger event. Here's 12 people who have to die and here's 3 people who will get new costumes and powers and what those are." Character deaths are almost always tacked onto stories with few or no definite deaths in the pitch and don't seem to come from the writers, generally. Costume changes and power changes and supporting character deaths might happen at summits where writers and artists chime in.

But when you see a JSAer or a Batman character or a Green Lantern die in a Superman book, that's ALMOST NEVER from any of the writers on the Superman books. Somebody said, "We want to do something with this character but we need them 'cleaned up' with a death/reboot and we'd prefer it happen in somebody else's book so we don't take the heat for that and get credit for bringing them back."

Sometimes a writer can fight a hit list. Loeb fought to keep J'Onn off the list in OWAW. Johns fought to keep Nightwing off of it in Infinite Crisis. There was a veto in Identity Crisis as I recall. But the way it works is, you get twelve names of characters you don't write that other editors want dead/rebooted/altered. And you MIGHT be able to resist one or two of those but you're not going to have a job if you resist too many of those.

It's my opinion that it's difficult for people to judge the President Luthor storyline because readers never got to actually see what the plans were for it.

Our Worlds at War was supposed to be two bookends and two months of Superman books like Emperor Joker. DC didn't have a crossover planned after something else fell through and a bunch of tie ins and a hitlist got tacked on what was supposed to just be a Superman story where Superman leads a team of his most dangerous enemies into space to fight Imperiex and Brainiac.

The only issues we really got to see of the Luthor arc where things went according to writers' plan were the Batman K-ring issues, the cabinet announcement, and the one where Lex kills the satellite researcher. Maybe that JLA issue Kelly did? Everything else was kind of blinkered.

Wow...a lot of more insight into that era of Superman. It explains why everything seemed to be going in one direction leading up to and during OWAW,..and then after, it all seemed to all quickly get swept under the rug. I suspicioned 9/11 had something to do with it, particularly with Lex. I started to realize that things were going pear shaped when it seemed SMALLVILLE's destruction, which looked so encompassing and complete in OWAW seemed to be nearly retconned immediately as just nothing worse than the Kent house being destroyed and a few windows in downtown Smallville blown out.


I'm going to PM you some off topic questions related to this run, Patrick, as I don't want to derail this thread from the OT. I hope you don't mind satisfying my curiosity.

[manofsteel1979]

How did "President Luthor" end though? I think it was before the Teen Titans/Outsiders cross-over.

It ended in the PUBLIC ENEMIES arc that opened the SUPERMAN/BATMAN book.

[Triniking1234]

It ended in the PUBLIC ENEMIES arc that opened the SUPERMAN/BATMAN book.

Oh that makes sense.

Also I didn't know Our Worlds At War was to be a Superman only arc. Thanks for that.

[superduperman]

To quote Luthor in the JL cartoon: "Do you know how much power I would have to give up to become president?" The idea of Luthor as president always seemed odd to me because presidents are accountable to the public. Luthor doesn't like the idea of being accountable to anyone. Politicians are easier to buy off than be. Lex may think the public is stupid but even the president has restrictions on what he can and can't do. Unless his becoming president was part of some larger plan to destroy Superman, I don't see it as something he would pursue. People also tend to overestimate how much power a president actually has. Outside of sending in the military to certain places and issuing executive orders, they have restraints on their power (even for those uses). Now, keep in mind, I wasn't following the Superman books at that time so I don't know what the dynamic was but it seems to me that the only reason Luthor would have for wanting the presidency is if there is some sort of provision that says Superman has to do whatever the president orders him to. In other words, he took the job to make Superman his personal army.

I also think part of the problem is that reality got in the way. Between 9/11 and the Iraq war, the real world wasn't a very nice place to be during that time making it harder to do stories that make Luthor look worse than the real world actually was. What was Luthor going to do? Send Superman in to overthrow an enemy country unprovoked? Real world did it first. This kind of limited story potential. It also doesn't surprise me that whatever initial plans DC had got scrapped after 9/11.

[Radix]

Personally I would be interested in limited series, say 12 issues, of Lex becoming president with a real plan and reason for doing it. The climate has died down since 9/11, and if not yet, then maybe someday.

[kingaliencracker]

I have decidedly mixed feelings on it.

As someone else pointed out, the story changed due to 9/11 so we never got the full extent of what Loeb & Kelly had planned. Had we, the payoff might have been worth it all.

As it stands, the biggest issue I had and still have is that I don't believe Superman would just sit back and allow someone like Lex to be voted President of the United States. He would say and do something about it. Also, I thought Lex's motives were pretty weak and silly.