With the latest reboot, where does he stand? In the Superman-Batman thread, people were remarking how Batman is smarter than Luthor.
Well, smarter than “Post-Crisis Wolf of Wall Street Luthor” for sure. Smarter than Silver Age Luthor? I don’t think so.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a comic where Luthor demonstrates he could curb-stomp Batman mentally and physically*…just to show that Luthor is the archenemy of the most powerful man on the planet. He didn’t attain that by losing to men who dress up like flying rats.
*I know Morrison loved Batman and had Batman handily defeat Luthor by showing that even Bruce Wayne is Luthors equal, nevermind the Goddamn Batman. But they’ve rebooted the universe since then.
So just have Luthor demonstrate, without even meeting Batman, that he could figure out Batman’s secret identity if he had two shits to spare. “Batman, you fight women dressed up as clowns for fucks sake.”
Remember how Luthor demonstrated how to bring down Swamp Thing for a million dollars in a one hour meeting? THAT’S the Lex Luthor I want to see.
The issue that just hit the stands yesterday has Lex deducing Batman’s secret identity via the classic Tim Drake method: realizing the truth about orphaned circus acrobat Dick Grayson, and then reaching an insanely obvious conclusion about Bruce Wayne.
I agree with the OP. The conflict between Superman and Lex Luthor only works if you feel they have parity. Otherwise, the only conflict is between Superman and his self-imposed code of ethics that limit the means he’ll use to win - and while that might be an interesting narrative angle, it reduces Luthor to a mere prop.
The traditional equalizer is kryptonite. But that doesn’t give Luthor any special status as an archnemesis - anyone with kryptonite would be an equal threat. To serve as a credible enemy, Luthor has to have something inherent that makes him a threat to Superman.
And with Superman having overwhelming physical superiority, the only thing left to give Luthor parity is mental superiority.
It’s the same dynamic between Superman and Batman. Batman has to have a clear mental superiority to balance Superman’s physical superiority. It’s what makes Batman Superman’s partner rather than his sidekick. Unlike the OP, I can accept the idea of Batman being smarter than Luthor, as long as you’ve also established that both of them are smarter than Superman.
Currently…he’s a hero. A legit one. Still an egomaniac, still doesn’t trust Superman, but he helped saved the world, realized Supes wasn’t the threat he thought, and wants to save the world again.
In the course of saving the world, he punked Batman multiple times (stole his Kryptonite ring, figured out his secret identity), singlehandedly defeated his Earth-3 counterpart, who also had the power of the local version of Shazam (Mazahs), and dealt the final, humiliating blow to Ultraman, the Earth-3 Superman. All without suffering the Bat’s Mary-Sue-ism - he’s got a small handful of skills and personality traits that logically led to him being able to do that - he’s a great manipulator of people (used against Batman and Ultraman), he’s scientifically-minded (used against Mazahs - as well as the fact he had the same voice), and he’s a low-grade sadist (used against Ultraman). He’s also got lucky in that Ultraman lost his powers just in time for Luthor to humiliate him, instead of being pounded into paste.
There’s…some stuff that still happened more or less as shown before - mostly within the Bat and Lantern corners of the universe - but none of that stuff.
Luthor-specific stuff we know is the same now as before:
He had an abusive childhood, and made a failed attempt to cure his sister (one of a very small handful of people he genuinely cares about) of a chronic disease.
As a young adult, he founded LexCorp.
He really, really does not like Superman.
He created Bizarro. (Unlike before, he came to think of (the second) Bizarro as a beloved pet, or even a son.)
He has never been president - he is, in fact, probably not enough older than Superman (who is explicitly 28 years old) to have run before ending up in prison, which is where he was for the first dozen or so issues of the relaunched books.
He has never lost his hand to cancer, which, if not explicitly retconned, was pretty much ignored in the old continuity since shortly after he came back from the dead with Underworld Unleashed (in the 90s). He’s never even worn a Kryptonite ring, which is how he got the cancer.
He’s also behind the creation of Metallo…he likes giving his projects <Whatever>-0 designations that keep getting corrupted into <whatever>o names - B-0 became Bizarro, Metal-0 became Metallo… With different timing, I’d suspect that Titano was his Titan-0, but, like I said, he’s currently a legit hero, and Titano doesn’t show up until next month’s Superman…
I think the OP wants Luthor to be even smarter because he’s not got the superhuman-by-real-world-standards athleticism of Batman. He wants him to be equal to Superman and Batman. If Batman is both smarter and stronger, then why doesn’t he take down Luthor?
(Ignoring where Luthor is in current continuity, of course.)
Wait, wasn’t Silver Age Luthor fooled by Clark Kent’s glasses? The 6-4, 250-pound Clark Kent who always seemed to know how to reach Superman, but was never in the same room with him?
It’s worse. SA Lex Luthor grew up with Clark Kent. Superboy and he were best friends. Clark/Superboy is sorta completely responsible for Lex Luthor being evil.*
It just occurred to me, with the new universe, it would have been an interesting twist to have the “Superboy accident” leave Lex blind instead of bald. It would make Lex less petty and make him more human and scary all at the same time.
The ‘turned over a new leaf’ part is in Justice League, starting this month, though it got a quick reference in Action Comics this month, and I suspect it’ll get some play in the Super titles and Superman/Wonder Woman going forward (though since the latter barely referenced her new godhood, probably not much). At least until his inevitable return to type, but I’d give that at least a year before it happens.
The actual events listed in that post happen in the Forever Evil mini (specifically the last issue, though the rest of the series led up to that point), with a follow-up in JL.
I’m reading the second issue in the Forever Evil event (Luthor gets out of prison, Action comics appearance)…looks like DC already pretty much did what I wanted with Luthor. Well done DC…even though all your shit is still decompressed to hell.
It’s a hell of a world we live in where the heroes stories have been done to death (IMHO) but the villains have a crapton of fertile fields to plow.
Someday I want to see a “Flashpoint” where the world is rebooted to the Silver Age for awhile. I know several years ago they did a “Silver Age” series. But I’m talking about literally rebooting the universe smack into 1965. Right up to printing new Jerry Lewis or Bob Hope comics. Let Grant Morrison write those two.
Why? It’s just a reflection of the fact that people have been telling a lot more stories about the heroes over the decades. Batman, for example, has been the lead character in Batman, Batman and Robin, The Batman Chronicles, The Brave and the Bold, Detective Comics, Gotham Adventures, Legends of the Dark Knight, Shadow of the Bat, World’s Finest Comics plus his appearances in Batgirl, Catwoman, Justice League, Nightwing, The Outsiders, Robin, Superman/Batman and all of his limited series and crossovers. Is it any surprise his writers run low on ideas?
Also, you can do anything with villains. Heroes have to return to the status quo.
By the way, if anyone cares, my first thought when seeing Oracle/Batgirl in the New 52…
“Oh, yeah, they got her out of the wheelchair, why does she have her ass in the air like that? And nevermind her 5 inch waist, her torso is a foot longer than any human’s should be. Does she have elastic powers? Fucking male artists.”
