Lex Luthor
Alexander Joseph "Lex" Luthor is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, the character first appeared in Action Comics #23. He has since endured as the archenemy of Superman. While Superman embodies hope and selflessness, Luthor symbolizes unrestrained ambition and humanity’s belief in the superiority of intellect over superhuman power.
Unlike many supervillains, Luthor is an ordinary human with no superpowers or secret identity. His true strength lies in his unparalleled intelligence, vast wealth, and influence over politics, science, and technology. A genius with an extraordinary aptitude for business and manipulation, he is also proud, calculating, pragmatic, and vengeful—driven by an insatiable thirst for control and devoid of ethical principles. Luthor does not envy superheroes for their abilities but rather for the adoration they receive. He believes that the admiration society bestows upon them is recognition that rightfully belongs to him. Convinced that he alone possesses the intellect and capability to lead humanity, he justifies his ambition with the belief that only he is fit to guide the world. Luthor sees Superman as a threat, seeking to eliminate him not only out of personal rivalry but also because he believes the existence of an all-powerful being fosters dependence, preventing humanity from achieving its full potential.
Though his main obsession is Superman, given his high-profile status as a supervillain, Luthor has also come into conflict with Batman and other heroes in the DC Universe. He frequently leads teams of villains, such as the Legion of Doom. While he prefers intelligence and strategy as his primary weapons, he occasionally dons his mechanized "warsuit", an advanced armored exoskeleton that grants him enhanced strength, flight capabilities, high-tech weaponry, and other tactical advantages in direct combat.
Throughout different comic eras, Luthor has embodied various forms of villainy. In his early appearances, he was depicted as a narcissistic and selfish mad scientist. Since the mid-1980s, however, he has more commonly been portrayed as a ruthless corporate tycoon, obsessed with power and controlling LexCorp.
In 2009, IGN ranked him #4 on its list of the 100 Greatest Comic Book Villains of All Time, surpassed only by the Joker, Magneto, and Doctor Doom. Wizard magazine also placed him at #8 in its ranking of the 100 Greatest Villains of All Time. The character has been adapted into various other forms of media, including television, film, animation, and video games. In film, Luthor has been played by Lyle Talbot in Atom Man vs. Superman, Gene Hackman in the 1978–1987 Superman film series, Kevin Spacey in Superman Returns, Jesse Eisenberg in the DC Extended Universe, and Nicholas Hoult in the DC Universe.
Publication history
Creation and development
For the first two decades of his existence, starting with his first story appearance in Action Comics #23, Luthor is depicted as a diabolical genius and referred to only as "Luthor", with no clear indications to whether this is his given name, his surname, or a codename. He resides in a flying city suspended by a dirigible and plots to provoke a war between two European nations. Lois Lane and Clark Kent investigate, which results in Lois being kidnapped. Luthor battles Superman with a green ray but he is ultimately defeated, and Lois is rescued. Superman destroys Luthor's dirigible with him still on it, and concludes that Luthor is dead. Stories ending with Luthor's apparent death become common in his earliest appearances, with him turning up alive later on. This contrasted with Superman's previous arch-nemesis, the Ultra-Humanite, who makes a clean getaway at the end of most of his stories.Luthor returns in Superman #4 and steals a weapon from the U.S. Army capable of causing earthquakes. Superman battles and defeats Luthor, then destroys the earthquake device. The scientist who made the device commits suicide to prevent its reinvention. In a story in the same issue, Luthor creates a city on the sunken lost continent of Pacifo and populates it with recreated prehistoric monsters he plans to unleash upon the world. Superman thwarts his plans and Luthor is seemingly killed by the dinosaurs he created. Luthor returns in Superman #5 to place hypnotic incense in the offices of leading financiers so he can profit from a nationwide economic depression. The story ends with Superman smashing Luthor's plane in mid-flight, killing him.
In these early stories, Luthor's schemes are centered around financial gain or megalomaniacal ambitions; unlike most later incarnations, he demonstrates no strong animosity toward Superman beyond inevitable resentment of the hero's constant interference with his plans. Luthor's obsessive hatred of Superman came later in the character's development.
In Luthor's earliest appearances, he is a middle-aged man with a full head of red hair. Less than a year later, however, an artist's mistake resulted in Luthor being depicted as completely bald, first in a newspaper strip, then in Superman #10, which depicts him as significantly heavier with visible jowls. The original error is attributed to Leo Nowak, a studio artist who illustrated for the Superman dailies during this period. Comics historians, noticing that this altered rendition of Luthor closely resembles a stockier, bald henchman in Superman #4, hypothesized that Nowak mistook Luthor for this henchman, a fact confirmed by DC Comics editor Bob Rozakis. The character's abrupt hair loss has been made reference to several times over the course of his history. In 1962, writer Jerry Siegel altered Luthor's backstory to both allow adventures in which he and Superman battled each other when they were teenagers and incorporate his hair loss into his origin.
During World War II, the War Department asked for dailies of the Superman comic strip to be pulled. The strips in question were created in April 1945 and depicted Luthor bombarding Superman with radiation from a cyclotron. This violated wartime voluntary censorship guidelines meant to help conceal the Manhattan Project.
Silver Age Lex Luthor
In 1956, DC Comics reimagined the Flash with a new secret identity, costume and origin. This led to the new Silver Age of Comics and the first DC Comics reboot, with characters across the board being reimagined or having their histories and nature redefined. The earlier Golden Age stories of Superman and Batman were later said to have taken place on Earth-Two, a parallel universe that was part of the larger DC Multiverse.The Silver Age version of Luthor was introduced in Adventure Comics #271, now given the first name "Lex" and an origin story. Originally hero-worshiping Superboy, teenage Lex Luthor of Smallville is determined to prove he is Earth's greatest scientist by creating artificial life. His recklessness and inexperience causes a fire in his lab and he calls on Superboy to save him. The Boy of Steel puts out the fire but, in the process, accidentally destroys the artificial life form and the years of research notes that led to its creation, while fumes from the chemical fire cause Luthor's hair to fall out. Unwilling to hold himself responsible for the lab fire and the destruction of his own life's work, Luthor decides that Superboy was jealous of his intellect and caused the fire himself. Believing he was betrayed by his hero and friend, Lex swears revenge. His first attempts at that are grandiose scientific and engineering projects around Smallville to steal Superboy's thunder. When these attempts, for which, unknown to Luthor, Superboy is supportive as consolation that Lex is at least being constructive in his vendetta, each go disastrously awry and force Superboy to intervene while earning the citizenry's scorn, Lex's hate for Superboy only grows in rationalization of his failures.
This revised origin makes Luthor's fight with Superman a personal one and suggests that if events had unfolded differently, Luthor might have grown to be a more noble person. Luthor's ego preventing him from personal growth and the tragedy that he and Clark could have been a force for good together are played up in various stories throughout the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in Elliot S. Maggin's novels Last Son of Krypton and Miracle Monday.
The Golden Age version of Luthor appears again as a villain still alive and well on Earth-Two. To distinguish him from the modern-day Lex Luthor, the original incarnation is shown as having kept his red hair and is retroactively given the first name Alexei. In DC Comics Presents Annual #1, Alexei Luthor of Earth-Two and Lex Luthor of Earth-One team up. It is shown that Alexei is arguably colder and more villainous, perfectly willing to destroy all of Earth in order to prove his superiority, whereas Lex hesitates to do so because he had no desire to rule a lifeless world and does not want his sister to die.
Years later, Lex Luthor and the villain Brainiac recruit an army of super-villains during Crisis on Infinite Earths, including Alexei Luthor from Earth-Two. When Alexei argues that the army does not need two Luthors, Brainiac agrees and executes him.
Post-''Crisis'' reboot
Following Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC rebooted its universe yet again, creating the "Post-Crisis" reality. For the 1986 limited series The Man of Steel, Marv Wolfman and John Byrne redesigned Lex Luthor from scratch, intending to make him a villain that the 1980s would recognize: an evil corporate executive. Wolfman, a writer on Action Comics, came up with the idea of Luthor being a wealthy businessman rather than a brilliant scientist. He recalled:Byrne based this new depiction of Luthor on the businessmen Donald Trump, Ted Turner, and Howard Hughes. Initially brutish and overweight, the character later evolved into a sleeker, more athletic version of his old self. Luthor is no longer recounted as having lost his hair in a chemical fire; rather, his hairline is receding naturally over time.
As originally presented in the post-Crisis version of the DC Comics Universe, Lex Luthor is a product of child abuse and early poverty. Born in the Suicide Slum district of Metropolis, he is instilled with a desire to become a self-made man of great power and influence. As a teenager, he takes out a large life insurance policy on his parents without their knowledge, then sabotages their car's brakes, causing their deaths. Upon graduating from MIT, Luthor founds his own business, LexCorp, which grows to dominate much of Metropolis.
Luthor does not fully appear in The Man of Steel mini-series until the fourth issue, which takes place over a year after Superman's arrival in Metropolis. Terrorists seize Luthor's yacht, forcing Superman to intervene. Satisfied at the hero's performance, Luthor attempts to hire him, admitting he knew about the incoming attack and allowed it to occur so he could see how Superman responded. Enraged, the Mayor deputizes Superman to arrest Luthor for reckless endangerment. Although Luthor is released from jail quickly and has the charges dropped, the humiliation of being publicly arrested and processed, coupled with indignation that Superman refused to work for him, results in the villain pledging to destroy Superman simply to prove his power.
Despite general acceptance of Byrne's characterization, which led to its influence in media adaptations, DC Comics writers began bringing back his quality of being a scientific genius in the 1990s in stories such as The Final Night. By 2000, it was said that Luthor's genuine accomplishments in several scientific fields is what helped create LexCorp and make it so successful so quickly. Regarding the character being a corrupt billionaire rather than a mad scientist, author Neil Gaiman commented: "It's a pity Lex Luthor has become a multinationalist; I liked him better as a bald scientist. He was in prison, but they couldn't put his mind in prison. Now he's just a skinny Kingpin."
Luthor's romantic aspirations toward Lois Lane, established early on in the series, become a focal point of the stories immediately following it. He makes repeated attempts to court her during The Man of Steel, though Lois plainly does not return his feelings.
In the Superman Adventures comic line based on the TV series of the same name, Luthor's backstory is identical to that of the post-Crisis origin with slight changes. Luthor originates in Suicide Slum, his intelligence outshining other children, fueling his ambition to have all of Metropolis look up to him one day. Luthor's baldness is never explained, save for a brief depiction of him with blond hair in childhood; it is assumed the hair loss was natural. Luthor's parents die during his teenage years. However, their deaths are accidental. Lex uses the insurance to pay for his tuition to MIT and then founds LexCorp. His hatred of Superman is explained as the citizens of Metropolis have admired Superman more than him.