The revisions of Lex Luthor

Darius Dax has always been the Awesome analog for Lex Luthor, Superman's longtime foe. As hinted at in Supreme: The Return #2, Luthor's character has changed over the years, evolving as Superman has evolved. Here's a look at Luthor's revisions (from Wikipedia):

In his first appearance, Action Comics #23 (April 1940), Luthor is depicted as a diabolical genius and is referred to only by his surname. 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 Luthor is ultimately defeated by him, and Lois is rescued. Superman destroys Luthor's dirigible with him still on it, implying Luthor may have died, although stories ending with Luthor's apparent death are common in his earliest appearances.

Luthor from Superman #4

Luthor returns in Superman #4 and steals a weapon from the U.S. Army that is capable of causing earthquakes. Superman battles and defeats Luthor, and the earthquake device is destroyed by Superman. The scientist who made the device commits suicide to prevent its reinvention. In a story in the same issue, Luthor is also shown to have created a city on the sunken Lost Continent of Pacifo and to have recreated prehistoric monsters, which he plans to unleash upon the world. Superman thwarts his plans, and Luthor appears to have been killed by the dinosaurs he created. Luthor returns in Superman #5 with a plan to place hypnotic gas in the offices of influential people. He intends to throw the nation into a depression with the help of corrupt financier Moseley, but the story ends with Superman defeating 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 Superman'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 shown as a middle-aged man with a full head of red hair. Less than a year later, however, an artistic mistake resulted in Luthor being depicted as completely bald in a newspaper strip. The original error is attributed to Leo Nowak, a studio artist who illustrated for the Superman dailies during this period. One hypothesis is that Nowak mistook Luthor for the Ultra-Humanite, a frequent foe of Superman who, in his Golden Age incarnation, resembled a balding, elderly man. Other evidence suggests Luthor's design was confused with that of a stockier, bald henchman in Superman #4 (Spring 1940); Luthor's next appearance occurs in Superman #10 (May 1941), in which Nowak depicted him as significantly heavier, with visible jowls. The character's abrupt hair loss has been made reference to several times over the course of his history. When the concept of the DC multiverse began to take hold, Luthor's red-haired incarnation was rewritten as Alexei Luthor, Lex's counterpart from the Earth-Two parallel universe. In 1960, writer Jerry Siegel altered Luthor's backstory to incorporate his hair loss into his origin.

In 1944 Lex Luthor was the first character in a comic book (and one of the first in fiction) to use an atomic bomb in Superman #38. The United States Department of War asked this story line be delayed from publication, which it was until 1946, to protect the secrecy of the Manhattan Project. The War Department later asked for dailies of the Superman comic strip to be pulled in April 1945 which depicted Lex Luthor bombarding Superman with the radiation from a cyclotron.

Luthor vanished for a long time, coming back in Superboy #59 (Sept 1957), in a story called "Superboy meets Amazing Man". A flying costumed bald man probably in his forties appears in Smallville and starts helping people using his fantastic inventions. He later moves his operations to the nearby town of Hadley. Superboy finds he is using his inventions to set the town up so he can rob their bank, and stops him. In the last panel, Amazing Man is in jail and he tells Superboy he will regret it as sure as his name is Luthor and Superboy thinks that he will be Superman by the time he gets out and that Luthor's talents might make him an arch enemy.

In the origin story printed in Adventure Comics #271 (April 1960), young Lex Luthor is shown as an aspiring scientist who resides in Smallville, the hometown of Superboy. The teenage Luthor saves Superboy from a chance encounter with kryptonite. In gratitude Superboy builds Luthor a laboratory, where weeks later he manages to create an artificial life-form, which Luthor loved as if it were his own child. Grateful in turn to Superboy, Luthor creates an antidote for kryptonite poisoning. However, an accidental fire breaks out in Luthor's lab. Superboy uses his super-breath to extinguish the flames, inadvertently spilling chemicals which cause Luthor to go bald; in the process, he also destroys Luthor's artificial life form. Believing Superboy intentionally destroyed his discoveries, Luthor attributes his actions to jealousy and vows revenge. Luthor's revenge first came in the form of grandiose engineering projects in Smallville to prove his superiority over the superhero. However, the gesture proves a failure on multiple levels; for one, Superboy does not feel belittled, but instead is gladly supportive of Luthor pursuing his vindictive goal constructively. Furthermore, those projects also each go disastrously out of control and require Superboy's intervention, which Luthor rationalized as being sabotaged by the superhero. These mounting embarrassments further deepen Lex's hate for Superboy for supposedly further humiliating him, and he unsuccessfully attempts to murder the superhero. This revised origin makes Luthor's fight with Superman a personal one, and suggests that if events had unfolded differently, Luthor might have been a more noble person.

These elements were played up in various stories throughout the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in Elliot S. Maggin's novel Last Son of Krypton. This revenge causes Luthor's family to disown him and change their names to Thorul. It also leads to years of Superman, Luthor, and Supergirl concealing the truth from Luthor's sister, Lena Thorul. She was told her brother died in a rock-climbing accident. She has ESP powers due to touching one of Luthor's inventions. Once she found out about Luthor being her brother and briefly lost her memory. However Luthor broke out of prison and gave her flowers he had developed that removed the bad memory from her mind.

In the 1986 limited series The Man of Steel, John Byrne redesigned Lex Luthor from scratch, intending to make him a villain that the 1980s would recognize: an evil corporate executive. 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 shown to be receding naturally over time. Marv Wolfman, a writer on Action Comics who had one conversation with Byrne prior to Luthor's reboot recalled:

"I never believed the original Luthor. Every story would begin with him breaking out of prison, finding some giant robot in an old lab he hid somewhere, and then he'd be defeated. My view was if he could afford all those labs and giant robots he wouldn't need to rob banks. I also thought later that Luthor should not have super powers. Every other villain had super powers. Luthor's power was his mind. He needed to be smarter than Superman. Superman's powers had to be useless against him because they couldn't physically fight each other and Superman was simply not as smart as Luthor."

The Modern Age 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. As a teenager, he takes out a large 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 physically appear in The Man of Steel until the fourth issue, which takes place over a year after Superman's arrival in Metropolis. When Lois Lane and Clark Kent are invited to a society gala aboard Luthor's yacht, terrorists seize the ship without warning, forcing Superman to intervene. Luthor observes Superman in action, and once the gunmen are dispatched, hands the hero a personal cheque in an attempt to hire him. When Luthor admits that he had not only anticipated the attack, but had arranged for it to occur in order to lure Superman out, the Mayor deputizes Superman to arrest Luthor for reckless endangerment. This, coupled with the indignation that Superman is the only person he could not buy off, threaten, or otherwise control, results in Luthor's pledge to destroy Superman at any cost. As such, he is more than willing to help other businessmen destroy other superbeings. He was instrumental in the apparent death of Swamp Thing, which jeopardized many lives as the Parliament of Trees attempted to replace him.

Despite general acceptance of Byrne's characterization, as evidenced by subsequent adaptations in other media, some writers have called for a return to Luthor's original status as a mad scientist. Regarding the character's effectiveness as a corrupt billionaire, 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 is shown making 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 Modern Age origin with slight changes. Luthor is shown originating in Suicide Slum, but at an early age already aware of how his brilliance outshone other children and his plans to have all 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 were indeed accidental and with no foul play by Lex. As in the usual story, Lex uses the insurance payouts to kick-start his future by paying for his tuition to MIT and eventually starting LexCorp. His hatred of Superman is explained as the citizens of Metropolis have had more admiration for the Man of Steel than for Lex.

More recently, DC has even had Lex Luthor win the U.S. presidency in 2000!

Alan Moore, in writing Darius Dax, has touched upon many of these elements, but ultimately decided to just have Dax be motivated by evil. Really, what more does Supreme's ultimate viallain need?