Would Luthor care if someone else offed Superman?

[DrNewGod]

Exactly. The true übermensch is someone who accomplishes himself and follows his own moral code with no regard towards what others think of him. But Luthor is someone who, because of his ego, needs the validation of the rest of the world. He needs them to recognise him as the best mankind can offer. It's ultimately what motivates most of his actions, good or bad.
Arguably, it's his desire to become an übermensch that prevents him from becoming one.

You know, in that, Luthor is more like one of Rand's Objectivists than Nietzsche's übermensch. If you have to try to be one - especially one that someone else had to define for you - you ain't qualified.

[Auguste Dupin]

I feel like that dichotomy, to fire on all cylinders, need some measure of ambiguity to it. Because while i agree with you about Luthor the misguided racist as a limited character interpretation, I think the same is true for Luthor the egomaniac. Ideally, I think that the reader and maybe even Luthor himself should be at least somewhat in the dark about his true intentions for acting like he does concerning Superman.

Not sure what ambiguity there could be to it. There's 3 possibilities, here, really: he genuinely believes it, it's an excuse he gives to others, or he's fooling himself. I find the first two possibilities to be boring. If he believes it, as I said, he's a misguided racist. If it's a lie to others, then he's just a one note egomaniac. However, I personally find the idea of Luthor as someone who's so blinded by his own ego that he refuses to admit that his actions are motivated by selfish desires and needs to lie to himself by pretending to serve a greater purpose to justify himself to be quite facinating. That makes Luthor someone who's possibly the smartest man on Earth, and yet has no understanding of himself, brillant, and yet completely blind. You said the reader and Luthor should be kept in the dark concerning his motivations. I say that Luthor should be kept in the dark about his own motivations, but the reader shouldn't.
I think a good example of the dichotomy between how Luthor sees himself and how he actually is is perfectly summed up by how he thinks Superman influenced him versus how he actually did. If you listen to Luthor, Superman has been a distraction, something that prevented him from finding a cure to cancer because he was busy taking care of the most urgent "issue". Without Superman, he would be recognised the way he deserves to. But if you look at where Luthor was before Superman, well....Pre Flashpoint, he was the leader of some corporation and wasn't even bothering with the actual science of it, and in the New 52, he was some fat and cowardly scientific consultant working for the military. Either way, he had no drive to do anything close to finding a cure to cancer. If anything, Superman channeled his energy and made him a "better" (in the sense of "more capable") man. Luthor is the man he is today because of Superman. And he will never accept it.

[DochaDocha]

At the very least, if someone else offed Superman, and Luthor had already spent a lot of effort to do so himself, he'd probably be annoyed that someone succeeded where he failed.

[Auguste Dupin]

You know, in that, Luthor is more like one of Rand's Objectivists than Nietzsche's übermensch. If you have to try to be one - especially one that someone else had to define for you - you ain't qualified.

Again, exactly. You don't become the übermensch. You just are.

[The Overlord]

IMO, it gets complicated.

Luthor does think of himself as the true "übermensch", and as part of that regards himself as beyond good, evil, and even ego. However, his fatal flaw is that he is in fact enslaved by his own ego, eternally undermining his ability to achieve Nietzsche's ideal. Further his ego is constantly bruised by the view others hold of Superman as a superior being in comparison to how others view Luthor himself, no matter how firmly he protests that the views of "inferiors" are meaningless. Unable to confront those concepts - or even to perceive them- and further goaded by the interference of Superman with his own goals, Luthor fixes on Superman as the sole obstacle to his own ascension to the status of a fully realized, superior being.

The sad irony is, even in a world devoid of Superman, Luthor would not truly be self-realized. His internal flaws would constantly cause him to see even minor challenges to his self-image as obstacles to his rightful place in the world. It's just that, as things are, he ignores those minor challenges as meaningless in the face of a larger threat to his ego.

I think it would be bit interesting if Lex developed a bit beyond that, I find Lex too often falls into cliched villain behavior too often, it would nice if he adjusted his tactics a bit so he realized his own fatal flaw and tried to counter it.

Here is the big difference between Xanatos and Luthor. When Xanatos was sparing with his assistant, the assistant defeats him and asks if he should let him win next time and Xaantos says he would fire him. Luthor is training with an assistant and the assistant gives him a slight facial injury, Lex freaks out and has the assistant beaten then fired. If Lex is so unwilling to learn from his mistakes, is so unwilling to be chanellenged in any way, then he become stagnant, any sort of battle of wits between him and is Supes is meaningless, he will not allow himself to learn from his mistakes, so he will continue to repeat them and at that point, Superman should gave his number, all day, every day.

Its why I never bought any version of Lex as sympathetic, he is was always comes off as driven by pettiness (which is not sympathetic) and often seems childish.

It takes more to make a smart character then having them make plot devices all the time, give Luthor a chance to gain a little emotional maturity and try to learn from his mistakes. Superman can find less obvious ways to use Lex's personality flaws against him, but make it a real battle wits by having Lex realize his past errors and work to correct them, that would make Superman's job way harder.

Surely an übermensch would be wise enough to realize a past mistake and correct it? übermensch not supposed to be completely perfect, they can make mistakes, its how they deal with. At this point, Lex's lack of emotional maturity prevents him from being an übermensch, more then anything else, it is the thing that defeats him all the time, he would more dangerous with a little emotional maturity.

A really dangerous villain ups his game and adjusts his tactics, a far less dangerous villain sticks with the same methods that didn't work the last 400 times he tried them.

[DrNewGod]

I think it would be bit interesting if Lex developed a bit beyond that, I find Lex too often falls into cliched villain behavior too often, it would nice if he adjusted his tactics a bit so he realized his own fatal flaw and tried to counter it.

If Lex did that, in less than a decade he'd probably be running the planet from a desk that featured Superman's skull as a paperweight.

Surely an übermensch would be wise enough to realize a past mistake and correct it? übermensch not supposed to be completely perfect, they can make mistakes, its how they deal with. At this point, Lex's lack of emotional maturity prevents him from being an übermensch, more then anything else, it is the thing that defeats him all the time, he would more dangerous with a little emotional maturity.

That's the whole point, and the whole tragedy of Luthor. He's almost an übermensch, but falls short because of the very thing that allows him dare things with his genius that others would not: his ego.

[TheNewFiftyForum]

Not sure what ambiguity there could be to it. There's 3 possibilities, here, really: he genuinely believes it, it's an excuse he gives to others, or he's fooling himself. I find the first two possibilities to be boring. If he believes it, as I said, he's a misguided racist. If it's a lie to others, then he's just a one note egomaniac. However, I personally find the idea of Luthor as someone who's so blinded by his own ego that he refuses to admit that his actions are motivated by selfish desires and needs to lie to himself by pretending to serve a greater purpose to justify himself to be quite facinating. That makes Luthor someone who's possibly the smartest man on Earth, and yet has no understanding of himself, brillant, and yet completely blind. You said the reader and Luthor should be kept in the dark concerning his motivations. I say that Luthor should be kept in the dark about his own motivations, but the reader shouldn't.
I think a good example of the dichotomy between how Luthor sees himself and how he actually is is perfectly summed up by how he thinks Superman influenced him versus how he actually did. If you listen to Luthor, Superman has been a distraction, something that prevented him from finding a cure to cancer because he was busy taking care of the most urgent "issue". Without Superman, he would be recognised the way he deserves to. But if you look at where Luthor was before Superman, well....Pre Flashpoint, he was the leader of some corporation and wasn't even bothering with the actual science of it, and in the New 52, he was some fat and cowardly scientific consultant working for the military. Either way, he had no drive to do anything close to finding a cure to cancer. If anything, Superman channeled his energy and made him a "better" (in the sense of "more capable") man. Luthor is the man he is today because of Superman. And he will never accept it.

The bolded part is probably the only thing that we disagree on in this matter. I'd rather see it kept ambiguous, with some stories leaning towards Luthor being wholly pragmatic, and some towards him being motivated (and at the same time ultimately held back) by his ego. The latter interpretation makes for the more interesting character, but I feel it works even better with a bit of doubt regarding if that's actually the way his mind works thrown in. Simply makes for a richer tapestry.