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I read this topic thread and thought "Hmm, I won't have to answer it cause someone will write the three+ paragraphs I'm thinking of right now", but I guess not so far, so here goes:
I'll talk post-Crisis since that's the one that matters. John Byrne and Marv Wolfman came up with a Luthor who was like the evil Donald Trump - a billionaire with a huge business empire but who was corrupt and evil, but he had so much money and so many lawyers that no one could ever quite trace anything illegal back to him. He's also a genius, of course, in both pre- and post-Crisis.
Anyway, he's arrogant and fuck and a total egomaniac. In post-Crisis version he grew up a poor abused kid (there was one issue of SUPERMAN that told his life story, one of the last good issues Dan Jurgens wrote) in the ghettos, I think he even had foster parents. Slowly he learned how to maniuplate people and learned how great it is to have power.
When he became the most famous, most wealthy, most powerful man in Metropolis, he loved it. He was unrivaled and had total control over practically everything in the city, and people had no idea how corrupt his business and personal dealings were. In fact, he had cultivated an image of himself as a wonderful, kind philanthropist who'd been so kind as to share all his great ideas and technology with humanity.
Superman shows up on the scene. Luthor can't stand the notion of 1) someone more powerful than him and getting more adulation and attention from the people than him, and 2) a non-human, disgusting alien (once Lois gives her big interview and everyone finds out he's from Krypton) having so much power over human destiny - how can we trust him?? See Byrne's quality, about to be reprinted in trade paperback redefining Superman revamp miniseries MAN OF STEEL for more on this. Supes finds out Luthor is connected to a horrible kidnapping/criminal scheme and basically insults Lex by accusing him in public. Lex is aghast. Someone who a) finds out Lex's criminal dealings, which he's managed to hide from the public for so long, much like Dick Cheney? and b) someone with the balls to accuse him in public? This new threat has gotta go. Plus, how can we trust this alien super-powered dude, as well as these other costumed powered heroes, when they're accountable to no one and we don't even know who they are?!?!?
In the started-out-great-but-soon-got-shitty TV show LOIS & CLARK, the pilot had a great scene about this Supes threaten's Lex's superiority in Metropolis bit. In both this show and Byrne's revamp, Lex's building (which is a stylized L modeled after the NYC Citicorp buildling with the slanted top) is the tallest building in the city, symbolizing his dominion. In the TV show, Supes shows up at Lex's penthouse in the bldg. and says "I know you're crooked, someday I'll find a way to prove it" and Lex says "Yeah, whatever, I rule this city, I look down on everyone from here in my citadel, the people love me, you're a scummy alien anyway, who'll believe you?"
And Clark/Supes says something devastating and finishes his "I'm a hero, I'll kick your ass" monologue with "Oh, and anytime you want to talk to me...just look up." Like Supes is the one person who Lex can't talk down to, metaphorically and literally, since he can fly over Lex's tallest-tower-in-the-city. Luthor was incensed at this final great line....Lex will never look up to anyone. He likes his people down on their metaphorical knees looking up to him.
Luthor likes power. Luthor is an American self-made man who brought himself out of the powerless ghetto to being an incredibly powerful billionaire. Luthor is arrogant. Luthor likes to do what he wants. Luthor is selfish. Luthor doesn't like it when anyone can threaten that power. Much like John Ashcroft and George Bush or the head of the CIA. And he hates and distrusts all superheros, ESPECIALLY non-human ones. Nice xenophobia anti-alien racist bit there, too, fueled by the noble dictum that humanity should always write its own destiny.
There's also a nice one-shot called THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF LEX LUTHOR that deals with the post-crisis Luthor's past.
And, in post-Crisis Superman comics, around ACTION 700 or 800, Supes & Lois and co. also proved that Luthor was crooked. Luthor then went a bit more nuts than usual and set off bombs all across Metropolis. The public was shocked. He went to jail. Then faked his own death, came back to the public as his illegitimate son (they literally saved Luthor's brain and put it into a clone, how awesome is that) with flaming long curly red hair. He said he regretted his father's evil deeds and set out to clear the family name.
Then all the clones in the DCU started getting sick (Superboy too, since the post-Crisis Superboy is a clone), which included the cloned "son of" Luthor. Then this thing called UNDERWORLD UNLEASED happened where lots of DCU supervillains made a deal with the DCU "devil," whose name I forget. Luthor's deal was that he agreed to sell his soul (yipes! but that's what the story said) for a new, healthy body. So he got it (but no restored hair - the devil's little joke on him, although they did often draw Lex in this period with red eyebrows, which looked sinister and cool), and soon came out and had his "son" die and revealed that he was alive and his faked death wasn't all it was cracked up to be. This brought us back to the Luthor status quo.
I think his having run for President - and won - made for a great story. The public, just like the real life American public, forgave him his bout of insantiy and bombing Metropolis - he said it was a bout of mental illness and he wasn't normally like that. In time everyone forgot about it. |
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