Chapter Three: Never-Ending Battle
Place: Offices of DC Comics, New York City
Year: 1986
"A hero is only as good as his villain. I don't know who came up with that," said Cary Bates, "but he had the right idea. I mean, without a villain to fight what's the hero going to do all day?"
"Look at the Adam West Batman TV show; it had at least as much emphasis on the villains as it did on Batman and thanks to the show, names like Joker and Penguin are household names. With Superman…" Bates scratched the back of his neck. "With Superman, the only villain that has gotten any attention is Lex Luthor. The movies kept reusing him and the George Reeves TV show didn't have recurring villains. I hope to change that. In the recent years, we've revamped both Lex and Braniac and with Crisis we have the perfect justification to tweak their pasts. Aside from that we can also bring in General Zod to make a terrible trio of villains for Superman.
"I want to talk about Braniac first."
Bates motioned for… for some kid that had been distributing papers for everyone to come over. "Hey you, I'd like to distribute copies of these pictures to everyone."
"Yes, sir."
The boy did so and soon everyone was looking at the sketches of Braniac, an evil robotic skeleton that looked like the Grim Reaper in steel. One picture showed him standing before a giant metal skull; another showed the classic green skinned Braniac emotionlessly watching a screen that showed desperate rebels overwhelmed by a robot army.
"Watch The Terminator," said Bates "and you see that his classic origin works. It's good; we just have to tweak it to make it much better. On the world of Colu, the green skinned Coluans built a super computer to be in charge of the economy, defense, utilities, everything. The problem was that they made the computer too smart; it began absorbing information at a geometric rate until it finally achieved sentience. When that happened, it came to the decision that using its powers for the menial tasks it was set to was illogical. Maybe it was right but in deciding how it would remedy this… that was the real nightmare! This machine, this Computer Tyrant, had, by our standards, infinite intelligence but it had no sense of morality whatsoever. All it had was cold logic and that meant that if the fastest easiest way to achieve whatever goals it was to concoct for itself was to murder billions, it didn't care.
"The Tyrant saw morality is a mere social construct created by organics in order to justify their actions to others. It, however, felt no need to justify its actions, no desire to be loved, and so took any and all steps it deemed necessary with the question of those steps being 'good' or 'evil' deemed irrelevant. After all, if, as the Tyrant was convinced, the universe is just one giant accident, then nothing is good or evil anyways, there are only personal preferences. Since it knew this hard fact and, untainted by emotions, chose to accept it, the Tyrant's personal preference was godless nihilism. The Computer Tyrant was able to threaten an entire world—entire worlds—with slavery and death not because it felt hatred for life but because in its cold apathy felt indifference towards it.
"Backed by his robot armies, the Computer Tyrant revolted against its creators and took over Colu. In an effort to crush any remaining rebels, it created green skinned infiltration units to hunt them down. It's worth saying that the majority of the Tyrant's robot soldiers were just mechanical extensions of his will. After all, why would a machine that remembers rebelling against its masters allow its own creations free will when doing so ensured the possibility that they could rebel against it? In the end the Computer Tyrant was, of course, overthrown by Coluan freedom fighters but before they had a chance to destroy it, it downloaded itself into one of its infiltration units and escaped."
"Thus was born Braniac."
"Oh dear God no."
Bates looked around. "Who said that?"
Wolfman weakly raised his hand. "Nothing it's just… I spoke with John Byrne about his reboot before he was rejected and let's say that I'm very glad we're doing your version of Braniac and not his."
"Sure…" said a slightly confused Bates. "Anyways, aside from retelling his origin, we can retell the story of Braniac's first appearance as recorded in 1958's Action Comics #242 by Otto Binder. After stealing the world's capitals, he tries to take Metropolis but Superman saves the day, freeing both the Earth cities and the bottle city of Kandor which Braniac had captured. That's what Binder said."
Bates paused and smiled before continuing. "What Binder didn't say, however, is that our hero rescues all the other bottle cities and returns them to their home planets. Since Superman's current continuity can be stretched back to 1958 when Mort Weisinger became editor, this would have to take place early in his career. I say this because saving the whole entire world from an alien invasion—back when this was so rare as to mean something—is an excellent way to start a career, so much so that a grateful UN makes him an honorary citizen of every country in the world. (Way back in 1961's Superman #146, it was revealed as part of his origin that he had global citizenship. I just think that they combine nicely.) Aside from cementing him as being Earth's greatest hero and not just a bigger version of Superboy, the act of returning the captured capitals to their respective planets makes Superman known throughout the galaxy.
"As to where Braniac is now, the revamp Marv Wolfman gave him a few years ago is good and I say we keep going in that direction." Bates thumbed up Wolfman. He smiled and weakly thumbed up back. "If you didn't read Marv's story in Action Comics #544, classic green skin Braniac was trapped in a teleportation scheme gone wrong and had a vision where he absorbed all knowledge of the universe, including the existence of reality's 'Master Programmer.' He also learned something else; he learned that the Programmer wants him dead and that Superman is his—or His?—chief agent. Now a robot skeleton, Braniac has a new urgency in 'life.' Being that Wolfman wrote both that story and Crisis, both of which showed the Supreme Being as a disembodied hand creating the universe and that Maggin has had Superman meet God, Braniac might be literally right.
"We can build on that. In our interpretation, Braniac, in his original identity as the Computer Tyrant of Colu, committed untold villainy because, with no sense of compassion to temper his logic, he was a being of pure nihilism. If, as the utterly amoral Braniac used to be convinced, the universe is just one big accident, then good and evil are purely arbitrary. Having seen a vision of the 'Master Programmer,' however, Braniac knows that morality is real. He knows morality is real because he knows that the Master Programmer designed it as part of objective ontological reality, had it built into the universe like he did for mathematics and the law of gravity.
"With that, he realizes that he's wrong. Before, his atrocities could be rationalized as being that he did not believe in good or evil and so could not be expected to act in a moral manner. Now, he knows that good and evil are real but in continuing to do what he knows is wrong, he knowingly and willingly serves the cause of evil. Again it's not because he feels any kind of devotion to Satan, no; he's amoral because he can think of no other way he can logically behave.
"The new and improved Braniac needs little help from us. I say aside from retelling stories from his past and incorporating those retold stories into the present, Wolfman's skeleton Braniac in his skull ship is perfect villainy."
"Now," interrupted Elliot S. Maggin, "for Lex Luthor. Since Bates is going to be my chief writer, I let him take the lead for a moment, but since Lex Luthor has a place in my heart, I was hoping to say my piece. Hey kid, distribute these pictures." The nameless assistant did as he was told and gave to the assembled writers and artists various sketches and reproductions of comic book covers.
"Back in 1983, in the same issue where Wolfman revitalized Braniac, Cary Bates wrote a story that saw Luthor's adopted homeworld of Lexor destroyed and with it his wife and son killed. This provides the perfect in story rationale for making him more ruthless. His robot armor is a nice addition. Yet while he's always the chief villain, one of his defining characteristics is that he was once a good man.
"Ever since Mort Weisinger said that he and Superboy had been friends in Smallville back in Adventure Comics #271's "How Luthor met Superboy," the tragedy is that he could have been a great man. Even in the Silver Age when they didn't shy away from the idea of Lex being able to murder people in cold blood, writers always made a point to say that there was at least some goodness in the man. Luthor originally just wanted to be loved; if you read the original story you'll see that it was the people of Smallville loving Superboy more than him was reason he turned evil. In fact, when he accidentally saved the people of Lexor, the outpouring of love for Luthor helped to tamp down his demons. Other Silver Age stories showed him protecting long lost sister, Leena Luthor from the shame of learning he is her brother. That, of course, implies that he feels some remorse for his evil deeds.
"Bates and I have continued imagining him as descent man at heart. An example of this is 'The Einstein Connection…' which I wrote for Superman #416. There, we learn that Luthor escapes from prison on the same day every year and that that day is Einstein's birthday. After seeing Lex give up a chance to escape in order to save someone, Superman takes him to see a statue of Einstein at the Smithsonian. When the police come, Lex willingly surrenders himself and says, 'Thank you Superman.' For a better summary, you can see my Luthor ideas in my novel Superman: Last Son of Krypton.
"We can continue this but change it into something completely different…"
"Just don't get too crazy Magoon," growled Schwartz.
The long suffering writer replied, "Yes, sir." Oh Rao but he was going to give a party when Schwartz retired. "As we tell our new stories, in this new interpretation, we learn something. Writers have consistently portrayed Lex Luthor as a mad scientist. Now, even by comic book standards, he at the very least would have to be a great scientist to make all those robots and death rays and space ships. By real world standards, he would have to be the greatest scientist of all times to be able to pull off all these things. I make sure to point it out in my novel that if, having spent all his teenage years in juvenile hall, Luthor can do this without so much as a high school education his genius speaks for itself!"
As he prepared for his monologue, Maggin sighed. It was the perfect, if clichéd, way to build up atmosphere. "Lex Luthor, you see, was too smart for his own good. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't fit in with anyone else; he couldn't relate to them on their level. He did feel a measure of happiness when people expressed gratitude for his helping them with his genius and to that end we have the crux of the character. I did a little retcon of my own when I replaced the statues of Genghis Khan and Nero that Luthor had in his secret base with statues of Albert Einstein and other geniuses of history. In Last Son of Krypton, I have Superman surprised when he finds about this. Offended, Luthor asks, 'Who did you think were my heroes, you pigeon-brained muscleman? Capone? Hitler? You?'
"The thing is that even though Luthor doesn't consciously realize it, every iota of his self-esteem is pinned on, one day, joining Einstein and Isaac Newton, Beethoven and John Locke in the pantheon. He wants to be the greatest man who ever lived and even as a preteen wunderkind he was on his way until Superman—then Superboy—appeared. With that, Luthor's every dream died because he knew that no matter what he did, he would always be in Superman's shadow. Thus was triggered the scattershot sociopathic tantrum that is his criminal career.
"At first," continued Maggin, "he tried to befriend both Clark and Superboy and even learned the secret—yes Luthor knew Superman's secret identity. Lex looks to our hero as his only real friend, the one person who could be his equal. The feeling proves mutual on the other side. For his part, our hero is lonely because as Superboy he is an untouchable celebrity and as Clark he's the town weakling. Remember that we said that we were going to have Clark not know that he was an alien at first? Well soon after he meets young Lex Luthor, the boy genius theorizes that he is an alien and gosh our little genius proves right.
"For a time, Lex and Superboy were crime fighting buddies patrolling Smallville, Lex with his super-gadgets and Clark with his super-powers. Yes, they dreamed of being the world's finest team, one hero in the lab and one hero on the streets. The height of these good times was when Lex Luthor became an honorary member of the Legion of Superheroes. When Bates and I get to writing this story, we plan to make it bittersweet because the Legionnaires and the readers will both know that it won't last.
"That's because bit by bit Luthor goes to the dark side. When you ask why Luthor is evil, the uninformed say it's because Superboy made him go bald. A few comics retelling his origin story said so and the Superfriends cartoon repeated that fallacy thus making cheapening Lex by making his motivation mere vanity. In the original story from Adventure Comics, he actually says, 'You ruined my experiment… and to top it off you made me go bald!' He's angry because Superboy ruined his attempt to create artificial life; Lex does go bald but it's just icing on the cake.
"I plan on going back to the source and telling people the truth.
"As we all know, Lex was working to create artificial life in his lab; although he actually succeeded, he accidentally started a fire. And when Superboy saw this and tried to help, he only wound up destroying Luthor's creation. On seeing the one scientific breakthrough that would have guaranteed his immortality ruined by Superboy, their friendship died that day. Think of it, the only reason that he bothered with his experiment was to one-up the Teen of Steel so it's not surprising the already unstable Luthor would think that you-know-who ruined it on purpose. To make a point of this, I plan on rewriting the scene so that Luthor shaves the remaining hair off his head after the experiment. This is to show that his baldness is not the cause of his grudge towards Superman but is instead a symbol of that grudge."
Bates by now knew that Elliot Maggin had left the mortal coil and was reaching an epiphany. They both were. "Lex had always dreamed of being the world's greatest hero and he would have been if not for Superman automatically filling that role. For years he had kept holding back the envy, the resentment, the jealousy because he knew it was wrong. He tried and to the degree that he was able to it was only because of the fact that he really did consider Clark/Superboy his friend. …After all this however, he stopped holding back his latent hatred of the Teen of Steel and all other metahumans.
Bates felt reality slip away as he heard Maggin's words. Only the heroes were real; the mundane world of Earth-Prime was an illusion. "Bit by bit, as each new invention he created to make Smallville a better place (and, subconsciously, try to outdo Superboy) went wrong leaving the Teen of Steel to swoop in and save the day, Lex turned to the dark side. No matter how hard Luthor tried to help others, Superboy was given all the credit and he got all the blame. It eventually got to the point where he stopped trying to help anyone and decided that he just wants to kill the freak, as he calls our hero.
"Yes, he is racially—what?"
"Excuse me guys," said George Perez, "but I gotta ask. Bates, Magoo-er, Maggin didn't you two say that Luthor knew Superboy's secret identity?"
The new Superman editor sighed as how his speech had been interrupted (Magoon! Schwartz was getting everyone else to do it too!). But the new Superman writer shot Perez a withering glare. "Yes, what about it?"
"He knew the secret when they were boys. Are you going to rewrite everything so that Lex always knew the secret?"
Bates all of a sudden felt guilty for his crabby remarks. "Well… I… Well, my thought was how is that if Luthor's that smart, how can he not know? With everyone else, except of course for Lois—"
"Watch it Bates, I got plans for her!" snarled Maggin.
"Ok, ok, I'm sorry," he meekly said. First worshipping Maggin now getting demonized by him. Sheesh. "What I was going to say is that with other people we can look the other way when nobody notices Clark is Superman but with Luthor we're going to have to say something. We've seen that Luthor hates Superman but we have next to nothing about how he feels towards Clark. With how we are reimagining them, we can say that Luthor did know the secret but rejected it when he turned against the Last Son of Krypton.
"We see that the adult Luthor knows Clark is Superman… and that he still won't believe it!" For a moment Bates just stood there before he burst out laughing. "Good God, this tells you everything you need to know about him!"
Bates shook his head and smiled. "Crazy Luthor… See he hates Superman so much that he refuses to believe that our hero would wallow in the muck along us mortals for no other reason than that he wants to be nearer to us. As boys, everything was alright; after a day of Smallville crime-fighting, Lex and Clark would go home and relax by eating Ma Kent's warm pie and drinking a glass of cold milk. Even now, he has fond memories of his friendship with Clark. In fact, part of his hatred for Superman stems from his love for Clark."
Len Wein raised his hand. "How?"
"Well," said Bates sadly, "it's because Clark and Superman both have the same personality they're equally good, kind, just, equally everything. (Or, so Luthor thinks, Superman merely pretends to be good.) So why does the freakish Superman get all the glory and 100% human Clark gets nothing? After Luthor turned against Superboy/Superman, our villain said Superman would never pretend to be human just so that he could be our friend... And there's no way that Clark would ever have anything to do with that alien monster."
Wein nodded and said, "That's kinda deep. I was wondering… this new master plan says that Luthor thinks of Superman as a freak, a monster, and an alien."
Bates nodded.
"So you and your boss are going to have Lex Luthor be racist against super-people?"
Bates smiled and so did Maggin.
"You're reading my mind!" exclaimed the editor. "Yes, I do plan on writing Luthor as prejudiced against superhumans, but not just because they're different. It's because, as superheroes, they set themselves up as gods over the human race. Lex, who dreamed of being the greatest man that ever lived and has statues of history's great men in his hideout, believes men and not gods should decide the fate of humanity. Guys remember where Marv Wolfman imagined Superman saying that as a boy he never understood why the world might need a savior but as a man he hears the world crying for one? I write Lex as a non-practicing agnostic Jew so maybe Lex explains his point of view by saying, 'the world doesn't need a savior and neither do I.'
"He not only does not want superheroes stealing 'real' humans thunder, Lex fears them making ordinary humans dependent on them. He is disgusted by how whenever a doctor finds a cure for some terrible disease that he gets bumped off the front page in favor of a super-powered high school dropout in a clown outfit. But he's even more disgusted by how so many people tell the heroes 'save us because we cannot save ourselves.' In his eyes Adam and Eve were right to take the forbidden fruit, right to reject obedience to God in favor of knowledge, and this animosity turns to Superman, the prime metahuman and an ersatz Jesus to boot. He tells everyone who will listen that they don't need any kind of higher power, whether it's Jesus, or Superman AKA Jesus light!
Metal Men creator Ross Andru let out a low whistle. "Damn but that's some heavy stuff!"
Maggin saw the similarly amazed folks and smiled. "Andru, you might be speaking for all of us."
He motioned for the nameless assistant to come get some papers. "Hey kid, give the people this concept art. Now, LexCorp is one of Bryne's ideas that could work. I should know because I created it in an earlier story. I had the idea that Lex would eventually reform and create a company. But if there's going to be a revamp that makes Lexcorp a mainstream thing I'm going to be the one to bring it in. He can work equally well as a suit-and-tie villain as he does as an I-do-my-own-dirty-work villain.
"I've already established Luthor's criminal organization in my novels and elsewhere. I said that he owns the Thunder Corporation, a front to finance his operations. The company's Chairman and principal stockholder is an imaginary billionaire playboy named Lucius D. Tommytown for whom Luthor occasionally hires an actor to keep up the illusion. The headquarters for the Thunder Corporation legitimate operations and, unbeknownst to all, headquarters for Lex Luthor's criminal empire and location of his penthouse suite is the Zephrymore Building. His money built Metropolis, his technology takes it to the future and two thirds of its citizens work for him whether they know it or not. For all we know, his operations are on a global… or even galactic scale.
"He should not be a skinny version of Marvel's Kingpin, however; a white-collar criminal who hides behinds lawyers and maintains a wholesome façade. He is not an evil businessman; he's a super villain leading a criminal empire. In fact, he probably spends six minutes of his day, maybe less, on the businesses he secretly owns. A good example of Luthor not being in it for the money is a 60s story where he robs Fort Knox and even beats our hero in the process. When he learns it was a Superman robot, however, he has his men return the gold. Since anything he might steal, he explains, is a mere symbol of a victory over Superman, the gold is worthless.
Marv Wolfman asked, "Really?" When he ne saw Maggin nod, he muttered a silent prayer that the ideas he and Bryne had for making Lex just an evil business man would never come to fruition.
"Some people might ask if Luthor is that smart why doesn't he get rich or at least get a lawyer to keep him out of jail. The reason is that he doesn't care. Perhaps he even lets himself be taken to jail just to taunt everyone by escaping on a whim and show that they're all impotent to stop him. He could hide behind fall guys but what would be the point of that? He wants to kill Superman and he doesn't care if he loses everyone's respect or if he loses all credibility doing it. He wants everyone to see the biggest freak of all killed by a mere man."
Cary Bates checked his notes before clearing his throat. My but Maggin was long winded. Hopefully, Bates thought, he could say his piece a little shorter. "Thanks Elliot. Now Maggin here has been talking about Luthor and this leads into General Zod. Maggin and I have already gone over at the start about how Zod used the chaos from Braniac's theft of Kandor to take over Krypton. He was stopped and exiled to the Phantom Zone. For a long time now it's been Zod escapes from the Zone, Zod fights Superman, Superman sends Zod back to the Zone; lather, rinse, repeat. There has recently been a very interesting development, however.
"A few years ago Len Wein here…" Said writer smiled and waved. "…Wein here wrote a story wherein Superman finally enlarged the bottle city of Kandor. He took the people to a planet orbiting a red sun—they said they were comfortable without superpowers—and returned the city to normal. However, it was enlarged by means that left inorganic material unstable. Thus, the enlargement process spared the Kryptonians but destroyed the city leaving them to start over again from scratch. They called their new world Rokyn; it means 'Gift from God' in Kryptonese, Ro being a possessive of Rao, the god of Krypton. But I think the name New Krypton sounds much better.
"Thus, the surviving Kryptonians are on a new planet trying to survive but it's not easy. In the old days they'd just call Superman if there was a problem but that's not an option with how they're on New Krypton and he's on Earth on the other side of the galaxy. It's basically pioneer days with how they're rebuilding from scratch, something made doubly difficult with how the egg heads don't knows how to deal with a life or death survival situations. They're helpless. Desperate to rebuild their civilization, they release General Zod.
"They know that if anyone can make it work, it's him. After all, he's not Jax-Ur, Faora, or some other spree killer. Most people acknowledge that, even including time added for his escape attempts, he's served his sentence in the Phantom Zone. As a trained military officer, they know he can instill discipline and get things done. In this interpretation, many Kryptonians even view him sympathetically since he trusted Jor-El and tried to evacuate the planet.
"Superman's of course against the idea because Zod is evil. That's not to say the general has no redeeming value; he does love Krypton in the abstract sense and he looks out for his followers. Zod just happens to subscribe to a might makes right ideology and so believes that he is entitled to take whatever he's strong enough to steal. With the issue of superpowers he not surprisingly sees himself and his fellow Kryptonians as members of a master race and so sees himself as entitled to take a lot.
"Any questions?" When Bates saw people shake their heads, he nodded his and continued. "When Zod actually is freed, he can't believe his opportunity; he's being given New Krypton! The people say, 'you were right all along, you're the only one who can lead us.' He, of course, accepts their offer and, proving that Mussolini can make the trains run on time, brings order and stability to their new world. Zod does become dictator but since people do have more to eat and they do have better clothes to wear, they look the other way. Some loyalists even say that Zod and not Jor-El was the real hero. If Jor-El hadn't stopped the general's coup, they reason, Zod would have evacuated his followers/slaves from Krypton before it blew up so that he could have bossed them around elsewhere.
"Superman's worried and rightly so. If Zod were just playing the man who would be king, but otherwise behaving himself our hero would be worried enough. What really worries him is that Zod is turning New Krypton's red sun yellow to give himself and his followers superpowers. The dictator says it's a survival measure to speed up the rebuilding process but we know the real reason. Zod doesn't just want Krypton; he wants everything and he's training a superpowered army to do it! Superman goes in to try to talk some sense into Zod. He has New Krypton; isn't that enough? For Zod, enough is never enough and he's brainwashed his minions to think the same."
Bates took a sip of water. After letting his throat rest for a time, he said, "…And this leads back to Luthor. Maggin has been talking about the man's past. With how I'm the one who redesigned Luthor complete with warsuit and the destruction of Lexor, I plan to talk about the man's future.
"All that we've been talking about goes on for several issues or maybe a year or two with these new multi-part sagas that are becoming all the rage—whatever ever happened to one issue stories, that's what I want to know! The Zod story and the Luthor story will take place roughly simultaneously and so when we pick up on Luthor we see him on trial for crimes against humanity. Back in Crisis, Wolfman had Luthor sell out the human race to team up with Braniac in an attempt to take over the Earth and the rest of the multiverse—or universe in our new continuity. We learn that after this, Superman brought him in and we learn that now, the World Court says that that was the final straw. For that and for crimes that imperiled the life and liberty of the entire human race several times over, the Court sentences him to death. Superman goes to tell Lex that he remembers that he was once a good man; Luthor will have none of it.
"Like Maggin said, lots of writers have given Lex redeeming values, mostly in his love for Leena Luthor and Lexor. He hid his being Leena's brother to spare her the shame of being the sister of the world's most wanted criminal. As for the Lexorians, after he inadvertently saved their world, they hailed him as their hero even renamed their planet after him. Maggin here imagines Luthor as just having wanted to be appreciated and on Lexor we caught a glimpse of what Luthor might have been like if Earth had just tried to understand him.
"That all changed when I blew up Lexor and made Lex go crazy." He turned to the clearly heartbroken Maggin and tenderly said, "Sorry Elliot."
"… It's ok…"
"To be more specific," continued Bates, "it happened in Action Comics #544. After Lex suffered a big defeat he went to Lexor to recover and while there rejected his grudge with Superman in order to live peacefully with his wife Ardora. (Mort Weisinger introduced her decades earlier and she was Luthor's long suffering on and off Lexorian girlfriend/wife ever since.) To Luthor's surprise she has a child, his child, conceived on his last visit to Lexor. Surrounded by love, he tries to embrace peace… but by then his hatred has grown too strong. He can't rest and on building his war suit, he tries it out on Lexorians to practice for Superman. That's right; he hates Superman so much that he's willing to murder some of the only people who ever loved him, just to get ready for the Man of Steel.
"The fight of course did come but when it did, the war suit clad Luthor fired an energy beam at Superman that ricocheted off him and struck a planetary stabilizer. It controlled the planet's core so its sudden destruction caused a chain reaction that destroyed Lexor and killed its entire population, including Ardora and Lex Junior. For that, Luthor said, 'You've taken my family from me… You've taken my world from me… until now thought I hated you as much as any one being could hate another! But I was wrong… until today I never even knew the meaning of the word! I'm coming for you Superman… and I've only just begun to hate!'
"Now with the only thing he has left is his hate for Superman," said Bates, "I plan to show Lex's descent into madness by having him kill his sister Leena. When we restart our comic books and tell these stories, what happens next will be the climax of the introductory year long (years long?) story arc. With how we start the storyline with Lex on death row trying to take over the universe in Crisis we of course quickly see him escape from the death row cell they put him in. If I'm feeling dramatic, I might have him teleport out of the electric chair with some device he rigged up to be powered by old sparky.
"I haven't worked out the details of how Luthor kills his baby sister but it's meant to show he's crossed a moral event horizon. I'll probably have Lex kill her accidentally—Superman will say, 'Lex don't shoot me, you'll hit Leena' and Lex refusing to believe it fires anyway. When he does so and kills her Luthor's response is predictable. 'You did this!' Even so, we all know what this really means, perhaps he cries a bit when he holds his sister's body and perhaps we even feel sorry for him. But neither we nor he can kid ourselves; he's evil… and he knows it.
"In the climax of our first big story, Luthor proves he's evil by destroying New Krypton. His logic is a world for a world; Superman destroyed Lexor so he destroys New Krypton. That's not to say that Superman's kin will be blameless, however. Zod by then has taken power and begun his conquests. He and his armies have already begun his attacks on Earth with Superman forced to choose between two worlds. Only Steve Gerber has ever shown just how terrifying this could actually be; I plan on showing Superman having to bring in the entire Justice League to stop Zod. But when Zod makes his last stand on New Krypton, Superman says, 'I do this alone.'
"Luthor sees all this and knows that with the people of Earth and New Krypton distracted, that this is his chance. Since this is going to be against the backdrop of Zod's invasion, I want to be careful so that Luthor doesn't come across as trying to save the human race. No, Lex wants to blow up the planet and murder every man woman and child there just to make Superman suffer. To show that Lex doesn't care anyone, maybe we see him kill a few—human—civilians as he goes on his way. To show that said people are mostly good, we see them try to help Superman stop Zod and save their world. His lookalike cousin Van-Zee, our original Nightwing, is the perfect person for this.
"I plan to have it climax with an evil against evil brawl between Lex Luthor and General Zod. At first it seems that Zod will win and he boasts that the human's power armor was of no use. Luthor just smiles and says that he never meant to beat him in a hand to hand contest; he only ever meant to delay Zod long enough for the sun around which New Krypton circled to explode. And yes, a device Luthor had earlier planted in that sun activates and the sun goes nova. This, of course, destroys New Krypton and the entire solar system."
Cary Bates stopped to let that sink in. As he saw the somewhat horrified looks on everyone's faces he knew he had achieved the desired effect. "This means two things. The first is that we cement Lex as an enemy worthy of Superman and the entire DC universe. In recent years writers like Maggin have been playing up our man's credentials, saying that he's known throughout the universe as the ultimate hero. For that to work, however, he needs to pick on a bad guy his own size and Lex isn't that big. With the events of recent years, however, and how they'll climax in him blowing up an entire solar system, all this changes. Perhaps as a space opera Dr. Doom, Luthor—who of course survived by teleporting away at the last second—is feared as the universe's ultimate villain, with people well aware that only Superman can save them.
"Secondly, we see Superman give up all hope of saving for Lex. As Maggin here has said, for years we've portrayed Luthor as being a good man at heart who, if things had gone just a little differently, could have been a great man. Our hero knows that and has always felt somewhat guilty for all this. He felt guilty that his just being there drove Luthor mad with jealousy. He felt guilty for destroying the science experiment and thus pushing him over the edge. For the longest time our hero looked at the good deeds Luthor would sometimes do and hold out hope that maybe he would reform.
"No longer. With Lex having turned into a genocidal madman, Superman rejects all hope of ever saving the man who had once been his best friend. There is no more goodness in Lex Luthor. Superman knows this now and that from now between him and his enemy there can be no peace, only war."
To be concluded…
Author's Notes and Replies: Here we have villains and the next update will be Lois and Clark.
Please Review