Alexander Luthor (New Earth)




 * "I would rather fail spectacularly than succeed minimally."
 * --Lex Luthor

Real Name: Alexander Joseph "Lex" Luthor Nicknames: Lex Former Aliases: Alexander "Lex" Luthor II (his own son which was actually Lex in a cloned body); Mockingbird Other Current Aliases: No other known current aliases

Status
Occupation: Former President of the United States; former owner and CEO of Lexcorp Legal Status: Alexander Luthor is citizen of the United States of America of the current reality with a criminal record; it should be noted that many of his criminal charges have been either pardoned or been proven legally not guilty of. Identity: Secret Marital Status: Divorced and Widowed several times over Group Affiliation: Injustice Gang, Injustice League, Darkseid Base of Operations: primarily Metropolis of the current reality but has many bases and safehouses through Earth

Origin
The (usually) bald-headed Luthor has been Superman's main foe for most of the superhero's existence and has unveiled countless plots to destroy him and take over the world. Originally Luthor was a mad scientist but has since been rewritten as a Machiavellian industrialist and white-collar criminal. For a brief period in the early 2000s, he was president of the United States.

Luthor is one of several Superman characters with the initials "LL," including Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Letitia Lerner and Lori Lemaris.

Luthor has been featured in most adaptations of Superman outside comic books. In the film series of the late 1970s and 1980s, Gene Hackman took a comical approach to the character. In Smallville, a retelling of Superman's early years, a young adult Lex is played by Michael Rosenbaum. The role of Lex Luthor will be played by Kevin Spacey in the upcoming movie Superman Returns.

Place of Birth: Suicide Slum, Metropolis Known Relatives: Lionel Luthor (father, deceased), Casey Griggs (foster father, deceased), Elaine Griggs (foster mother, deceased), Lena (foster sister, deceased), Elizabeth Perske (first wife, divorced), Contessa Erica Alexandra del Portenza (eighth or ninth wife, presumed deceased), Perry J. "Jerry" White Jr. (illegetimate son, deceased), Lena Luthor (daughter), Kon-El (partial clone) First Appearance: Man of Steel #1 (1986) revised to specific current reality: Superman Birthright #1

Background of Character
The actual specific history of the Luthor character is very different from what many know as when the character first appeared he was portrayed with a full head of red hair and was not even actually given a specific first name. This verison would later become known as ALEXEI Luthor. But the original character with his full head of red hair and foreign accent and vast superscience was brought back, merely renamed as Per Degaton, in 1947.

In 1941, the Luthor character came to be portrayed as completely bald after an artist's mistake in the Superman comic strip. Shuster preferred drawing bald villains anyway, so the more striking appearance was adopted and became a Luthor trademark. The change may also have been an attempt to echo a previous villain, the Ultra-Humanite, with whom Luthor shares many similarities. When the DC multiverse began to take hold in the 1960s, the red-haired Luthor was said to be the bald Luthor's Earth-Two counterpart, Alexei Luthor. Though the original red-haired European scientist character had been used since 1947 in the renamed persona of Per Degaton. According to one source, the character was renamed to prevent confusion on the part of the reader who would not be able to recall which Luthor was which if the original incarnation of the character was maintained as Luthor alongside of the newer one. Strangely enough this idea would be brought back and accepted in the Multiverse in the 1960s when the Justice Society was btought back into the DC storyline.

The original Luthor of the 1940s was one of many pulps-inspired mad scientists who plotted to take over the world, or destroy it, through the use of various diabolical schemes. He donned disguises a few times, but generally he preferred to make himself known to the world as his master plans came to fruition... until he was foiled, time and time again, by Superman. He soon became Superman's greatest foe, the antithesis of everything Superman stood for; and even though his plans for world domination were repeatedly dashed, he always managed to get away (or escape from prison) to threaten the world time and time again.

Luthor's originally stated goals were to kill Superman and to take over Earth as a stepping stone to dominating the universe. Over the years, Luthor came up with every conceivable plan to destroy Superman: he has synthesized kryptonite; traveled back in time; summoned beings from the fourth dimension; created robots, clones, and genetic monstrosities; allied himself with the alien super-computer android Brainiac; animated kryptonite rocks; detonated H-bombs; and has masqueraded and taken on a number of aliases. Although none of his schemes worked permanently (though one classic non-canonical "imaginary story" from the 1960s called The Death of Superman has Luthor finally killing Superman with Kryptonite after lulling him by pretending to go straight), Luthor's persistence has made him Superman's most troublesome foe.

In Adventure Comics #271 in 1960 (written by Jerry Siegel), the Silver Age origin of Luthor is first revealed, along with Luthor finally gaining a first name, "Lex." It was revealed that when Luthor was a teenager, his family moved to Smallville, with Lex becoming a large fan of Superboy. In gratitude and to encourage Lex's scientific pursuits, Superboy built for Lex a fully stocked laboratory. There, Lex began an experiment in creating an artificial new form of life, along with a cure for kryptonite poisoning. However, when a fire caught in his lab, Superboy mistakenly used his super-breath to extinguish the flames. This rescue attempt spilled chemicals that caused Luthor to go prematurely bald and destroyed both his kryptonite cure and his artificial life form. Luthor attributed Superboy's actions to jealousy and vowed revenge. First, he tried to show Superboy up with grandiose technological projects to improve the life of Smallville's residents, which time and again went dangerously out of control and required Superboy's intervention. Unwilling to accept responsibility for these accidents, Lex rationalized that Superboy was out to humiliate him and vowed to spend the rest of his life proving to the world he was Superboy's (and later Superman's) superior by eliminating the hero.

This origin first made Luthor's fight with Superman a personal one, giving him a dimension beyond his previous mad scientist archetype and suggesting that if events had unfolded differently, Luthor might have become a more noble person; these elements were played up in various stories in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in Elliot S. Maggin's text novel Last Son of Krypton.

Though he was a noted villain and an evil mastermind on Earth, Luthor was revered as a hero on the alien world of Lexor, where he used his scientific genius to rediscover the planet's technology and rebuild society for the inhabitants. Luthor used the planet as a base for his operations to strike against Superman using equipment such as the distinctive and flight capable purple and green suit he took to wearing in stories starting in the 1970s. The last such attempt on Lexor destroyed the planet and killed all of its inhabitants, including his wife there. Though aggrieved, Lex refused to accept that he was responsible and blamed Superman.

In Action Comics #544 in 1983, Lex was given a makeover for Superman's 45th anniversary in comics, by gaining a purple-and-green colored battlesuit that gave him the ability to take on Superman singlehandedly.

Superman himself has acknowledged that Luthor is a man of his word who would honor promises he made. Luthor had a younger blond-haired sister, Lena Thorul (shamed by Lex's criminal acts, the Luthors disowned him, moved away and changed their name to the anagram "Thorul"), an empath who grew up unaware of her familial connection with the noted villain. Protective of his sister, Luthor had strived to hide his connection and had been assisted towards this end by both Supergirl and Superman.

Current incarnation's history
In 1986, John Byrne's "reboot" of Superman's mythos in the miniseries The Man of Steel rewrote the character of Lex Luthor from scratch, intending to make him a villain that the 1980s readers would recognize: a corporate white-collar criminal (the idea was originally suggested by Marv Wolfman). Under other writers, he eventually became a behind-the-scenes manipulator.

The current Luthor family has a long history with the city of Metropolis. Some of Lex's ancestors were with the Pilgrims who came to the island, and other ancestors of his were among the Native Americans who met them. As the centuries went on, the Luthor family grew in prominence and wealth. Luthor's great-grandfather, Wallace Luthor, was a millionare steel industrialist at the beginning of the 20th century. An ardant pacifist with dreams of a united society, Wallace was distressed when America was pulled into World War I. He reluctantly agreed to sell his steel for the manufacture of allied ships and weapons. In the stock market crash of '29, Luthor lost his entire fortune. He went to his grave penniless believing that it was divine punishment for his part in the war.

Luthor was born in the Suicide Slum district of Metropolis. In his younger years, Alexander Joseph "Lex" Luthor grew up in a household where his cruel and short-tempered father abused Lex's mother and belittled his son's dreams of leaving the Suicide Slum district for a better life. His father is also responsible for instilling in Lex a hatred of immigrants (aliens) as well as his atheism. Luthor's mother was also emotionally abusive and spent most of her time drinking. His only friend was Perry White, who encouraged Lex's dreams of making something of himself.

Lex's big break would come in his early teens, when Lex's parents were killed in a car accident and left Lex with a rather large insurance policy that left the teen incredibly wealthy. Years later, an unauthorized biography would accuse Lex of not only causing the death of his parents but also of obtaining the insurance policy on his parents without their knowledge.

Lex was put into a foster home while he waited until he became of legal age to collect the insurance money. However, Lex found that his foster parents were even worse than his biological parents. Greedy and manipulative, they schemed to find out the location of Lex's money and steal it from him. Shortly after Lex turned the age in which he could have access to his money, he secretly put the money in a savings account with it explicitly stated that only he could withdraw money from the account. When his foster parents found bank documents Lex had hidden from them, Lex's foster father confronted his daughter Lena and demanded that she seduce Lex (who had fallen in love with Lena) into giving her parents the money under the lie that they would use the money to pay for their daughter's college education, which they had no plans on doing.

Lena, who had feelings for Lex, refused and for her trouble was knocked down the stairs by her foster father and died. Lex was absent from the home at the time, having been talked into going to a football game by his friend Perry. When Lex returned home, he was heartbroken to find Lena murdered by her father. This event would serve as the turning point for Lex Luthor, who vowed to do whatever it took to gain power and to destroy anyone who got in his way.

Perry White was the first target of Lex's turn to evil. Lex blamed Perry for keeping him from being at the house when Lena died and got his revenge by seducing Perry's wife shortly after their marriage and getting her pregnant with Lex's child. The offspring Jerry White, would later learn of his true parentage during his late teens before being killed by a local streetgang that Jerry had associated with. Years later, Lex would on several occasions purchase ownership of the Daily Planet, much to Perry's shock and attempt to kill the newspaper out of complete spite for Perry.

Lex used his money and natural genius to create a multi-national corporation known as "LexCorp" that would ultimately come to dominate the city of Metropolis. One of Lex's earliest projects was an experimental airplane and other similar technology themed enterprises would be the hallmark of LexCorp's output. The LexWing made him a millionaire overnight. Luthor made many criminal connections and industries, anything to help him rise to be the unchallenged master of Metropolis. His legitimate businesses attached to LexCorp stretched from anything from telephone companies to personal gaming devices.

Lex became the most powerful man in Metropolis, both financially and in the world of organized crime. Lex would create havoc on the streets by selling weapons to the gangs of Metropolis and using his primarily female staff of underlings to keep blackmail files on all of the major organized crime groups in the city, so that Lex could use them to further any schemes he had planned. However, this all ended with the arrival of Superman.

Several months after Superman first appeared on the scene, terrorists attacked a society gala aboard Lex Luthor's yacht. Luthor observed Superman in action and then tried to hire him as a bodyguard after Superman defeated the terrorists. But when Luthor admitted that he'd anticipated the attack but allowed it to occur in order to witness Superman first hand, Mayor Berkowitz deputized Superman to arrest Luthor for reckless endangerment. Luthor vowed to destroy Superman for this humiliation, and he has since devoted much time and energy to that goal. Luthor was a man driven to be the best, having fought his way up from lowly beginnings by his own (dubious) efforts, and was resentful of how Superman was given his powers by random fate of birth. Superman survived subsequent attempts Luthor made on his life, but had never been able to prove Luthor's role in the attacks. Luthor soon acquired the only sample of kryptonite on Earth from the Kryptonite-powered cyborg Metallo, whom LexCorp abducted just before Metallo succeeded in killing Superman. Fashioning a ring from the alien ore deadly to Superman, Luthor began wearing it constantly to ward off his enemy. Unfortunately, Luthor suffered from a severe cancer in the 1990s, caused by long-term radiation exposure to his kryptonite ring. (Before Man of Steel, kryptonite exposure had not been thought to be harmful to non-Kryptonian life forms).

Luthor's hand had to be amputated to prevent the cancer's spread, but unfortunately by then it had already metastasized; it was eventually determined that the disease was terminal. Luthor faked his own death shortly afterward by taking his personally designed jet, the Lexwing, on a proposed trip around the world and crashing it in some mountains, using this as cover for the transplant of his brain into a healthy clone of himself which he then passed off as his hitherto unknown, illegitimate Australian son and heir, his deception helped by his new body having a full head of red hair and a beard.

Luthor used his new identity as his own son to seduce Supergirl and continue to torment Superman from the shadows. However everything quickly fell apart, when Luthor's new clone body began to deteriorate and age at a rapid rate. This caused Luthor to begin to slip, as Lois Lane discovered proof that Lex Luthor had years earlier murdered a female LexCorp employee and framed an innocent man for the murder. This led Lois to find out the truth about Lex faking his death and being his own son, which caused Luthor to systematically destroy Lois' life and have her fired from the Daily Planet. Lois fought back and with help from Superman, exposed the truth about Lex Luthor, his faked death, and his evil criminal activities to the public. Luthor, right before his body became so old that he couldn't move or communicate, activated a "Doomsday Plan" to destroy Metropolis. The city was burned to the ground and thousands killed as Luthor became a permanent prisoner in his cloned body. However, aid would come in the form of the demon Neron; Luthor promptly sold his soul in exchange for Neron restoring his body to perfect health. Returning to a rebuilt Metropolis, Luthor turned himself over to the police and was put on trial, where he was acquitted of all crimes when Luthor claimed to have been kidnapped by renegade scientists who replaced him with a clone, who was responsible for all the crimes he was charged with.

Lex Luthor had cultivated a popular image as a great philanthropist. He had been instrumental in reverse-engineering alien technology for use in general consumer goods, upgrading Metropolis into a true "city of tomorrow." When Gotham City was destroyed by an earthquake and then abandoned by the American government in the late 1990s, it was LexCorp that took up the massive task of rebuilding the city. Later, Luthor also played an instrumental role in assisting the Justice League in recharging the sun during the Final Night storyline.

Despite his hatred for Lois Lane for temporarily bringing down his evil criminal empire down, Lex Luthor has a unspoken love for Lois Lane. On several occasions Luthor has commented that had Superman not arrived in Metropolis, Lex would have used his time and energy instead to romantically pursue Lois and marry her. The Post-Crisis Lex Luthor has been married eight times, though the first seven marriages occurred off-panel in Luthor's past. While his previous seven marriages were hinted to have based on love (or as close to the concept of love as Lex Luthor understands it) Luthor's eighth marriage to Contessa Erica Alexandra Del Portenza (or "The Contessa" as the characters call her) was a marriage that was based on mutual manipulation and greed. The Contessa had bought controlling interest in LexCorp after Luthor was exposed as evil, forcing Lex into a marriage with her in order to regain control over the company. The marriage was doomed from the beginning as the two fought constantly and never loved each other. The Contessa quickly became pregnant with Lex's child and began using the unborn child to dominate Lex into doing her bidding. Luthor's response to Contessa's actions was to use her desire to be unconscious during child birth to lock her in the basement of his corporate headquarters in a permanantly drugged unconscious state. Luthor took over as a single father to his daughter (named Lena after his childhood sweetheart) and vowed never to marry again, stating that he wanted to never have to share his daughter's love with anyone else. It was later implied that Lex killed the Contessa months afterword, though no body was ever found.

Lex became the 43rd president of the United States in 2000, winning the election on a platform of promoting technological progress (his first action as president was to take a proposed moratorium on fossil-based fuels to U.S. Congress in hopes of putting "a flying car in every garage"). Despite Luthor's more villainous traits, he was assisted by the extreme unpopularity of the previous administration due to its mishandling of the Gotham City earthquake crisis. Ironically, Batman would ultimately learn that Luthor was involved in the mishandling of the entire Gotham City rebuilding process, resulting in Bruce to sever all military contract ties between the U.S. government and his company Wayne Enterprises in protest of Lex Luthor's election as President. Luthor responded in kind by ordering the murder of Batman's lover Vesper Fairchild and framing Bruce Wayne for the murder.

An early triumph of his political career was the Our Worlds At War crisis, in which he coordinated the U.S. Army, Earth's superheroes and a number of untrustworthy alien forces to battle the story's villain, Imperiex. However, as it would later be revealed, Lex knew about the alien invasion in advance and did nothing to alert Earth's heroes to it.

Lex Luthor finally accepted Superman's secret identity as Clark Kent which he had been aware of from almost from their earliest meetings but refused to accept for his own personal belief that people of power always crave and reflect themselves as people of power, never as one of the masses, thus to Luthor a being like Superman would never try to pass himself off as Clark Kent who was no one of extreme note. In a story published in 2002, when a lowly scientist was able to get a meeting with Lex and reveal top secret government documents showing the rocket containing baby Superman crashing near the farm of Martha and Jonathan Kent. Killing the scientist, Lex surprisingly decided to keep the knowledge a secret even as Clark Kent took the fall for Lois publishing proof that Lex Luthor knew of the alien invasion of "Our Worlds At War" but had opted not to make any defensive plans to save the people of Kansas from attack. Clark was fired from the Daily Planet as a result of the flap, when another Superman villain, "Manchester Black", used his telepathic powers on an unknowing Lex to allow him to pass an assortment of lie detector tests (including Wonder Woman's lasso of truth) to prove that Lois and Clark's story was a lie. When Manchester Black tried to kill Superman and his friends and family members, Luthor surprisingly came to Superman's aid when Black tried to kill Lois. In the end, Manchester Black was defeated and as revenge for Lex helping Superman defeat him, Black erased all knowledge that Clark Kent was Superman from Lex's mind before taking his own life.

In 2004, Luthor once again overplayed his hand, as his success at framing Bruce Wayne for the murder of Vesper Fairchild caused him to get arrogant. In an attempt to blame Superman for a kryptonite meteor approaching the Earth, he instead raised questions about himself as Superman and Batman uncovered a plot of Luthor's to further torment Batman that involved tricking Batman into thinking that the Superman villain Metallo was the man who killed Batman's parents. In desperation, he used a variant combination of the "super-steroid" Venom (a steroid mainly used by Batman villain Bane), liquid synthetic green kryptonite, and an Apokaliptian battlesuit to battle Superman directly. Unfortunately, the madness that is a side effect of Venom took hold, and he revealed his true colors during the battle. The final straw was the revelation that Talia Head, the acting CEO of LexCorp, had sold all the company assets to the Wayne Foundation. He has since gone underground, leaving the presidency to his vice president, Pete Ross.

Birthright: - changed again!
A 2004 12-issue miniseries, Birthright, once again altered aspects of Luthor's history, such as Luthor's youth in Metropolis and his first encounter with Superman, in favor of introducing elements from the 2001 television series Smallville. Among the elements of Smallville introduced into the comics' canon include Lex's problematic relationship with his wealthy father, Lionel Luthor. Birthright also reintroduced the notion of Lex spending a portion of his youth in Smallville, as well as befriending Clark Kent.

These retcons were controversial, especially with series writer Mark Waid. According to Waid, the editorial staff at DC forced him to use the Smallville version of Luthor's origin. Waid, a longtime and extremely vocal critic of the 1986 Superman reboot, had originally planned to use Birthright to purge the Byrne version of Lex Luthor's origin from canon. DC, aware of the controversy involving Waid's outspoken criticism, opted instead to dictate to Waid that any changes made to Lex's character should be done to make him more in line with the Smallville version of Lex Luthor. It has been alleged that Waid initially refused to go along with such a compromise, resulting in DC Comics threatening to abort the entire project before Waid gave in into DC's requests. Although the changes in Lex's character and background were slow to appear in other titles, writers Geoff Johns and Mark Verheiden have referred to Lex's time in Smallville, reinforcing Birthright's canonical status.

2005 saw the release of the miniseries Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, which showed the motivation behind Luthor's distrust of Superman. (Events in this series that contradict current comics, particularly Lex Luthor's position as a legitimate businessman, make it difficult to place in context of recent continuity.)

Infinite Crisis
Lex Luthor had retreated into recluse before the events of Infinite Crisis, as he prepared to try and activate mind control programming inside the brain of then current Superboy (Conner Kent) (created using Lex's DNA) to help him gain revenge against Earth's mightiest heroes. He also was revealed to have orchestrated, with help from the newly created robotic Brainiac, the murder of Teen Titan member Donna Troy, who is destined to play a critical role in "Infinite Crisis". He's also been carefully surveilling the new Supergirl, and has plans for her involving his newly-acquired black kryptonite.

With LEX Luthor acting in secret, Alexander Luthor, Jr. returned to the current DC reality and began his own plot that was interfering with LEX's own plans. Assuming the Post-Crisis Lex Luthor's identity, Alexander began an elaborate scheme with help from the erased Earth-Prime Superboy-Prime and Kal-L, the Earth-Two Superman that he wanted to restore the original multiverse (the various worlds of DC Comics), but his intentions was not just to recreate them as they once were but only as the basis of his ultimate goal, as he told Superboy-Prime Kal-L would help them "whether [he] likes it or not".

As one of the premier reformers of the "Secret Society of Super-Villains", Alexander Luthor, Jr. recruited Black Adam, Doctor Psycho, Calculator, Talia Head, and Deathstroke as his inner circle. The new Society exploited the villain community's fear of mind-wipes at the hands of the Justice League to recruit a literal army of villains under the guise of creating their own "mind-wipe" device designed to erase the memories of Earth's heroes as payback. However, this was just another cover for his even darker scheme involving the kidnapping heroes, each representing alternate earths, to power the giant tower being used to perform a major act of alteration to reality. Alexander Luthor, Jr. formerly of Earth-Three had decided to restore the previously existing multiverse as a base selection to create a so-called "perfect" universe from as the current reality seeemed to be failing and in Alexander Luthor, Jr.'s own words "was a world of villians". Abandoned by his allies Kal-L, the Superman from the Classic Earth-Two and Superboy-Prime who both went along with Alex Luthor, Jr. in order to get back their original Earths (parallel to the ideas of many fans who wanted THEIR favorite Earths restored) for their own reasons -- Kal-L to save his wife Lois Lane-Kent's life and Superboy-Prime who wanted his own life and family and friends restored -- as Luthor, Jr's powers could NOT restrore the actual multiverse but only copies of Earths based on his own understanding of those Earths, Alex Jr. was depowered in part due to the villians that LEX assembled under his alias of Mockingbord. LEX tracked down the supposedly depowered Alex Jr and allowed the Joker in a fit of revenge kill Alex.

It has been assumed that LEX and the Joker only killed a COPY of Alexander Luthor, Jr. who was shown to have been able to create copies of himself that operated for him on the current Earth while he was still in the "Paradise Dimension" with Kal-L and the others. This has NOT been confirmed in story at this time.

Lex used Alex's corpse as the source of all his recent illegal activities and was cleared of many of the criminal actions he was accused of.

52
Currently Lex has adapted a more scientific background similar to the Earth One incarnation as he has been shown more or less giving up his open businessman exploits and ventures after being disgraced from the Presidency and unable to mount an effective legal defense to take back complete control of Lex Corp. though he still has enough influence and shares to be an open force in it and leaving his young daughter in the care of nannies and security providers. Through his still impressive financial resources, Lex has engaged in a public promotion campaign to regain his popularity through the Everyman Project, a scientific process that could grant superhuman powers to non-metahumans. The first several subjects of his process became the latest incarnation of Infinity, Inc. Luthor's own body, however, was not compatible with the process, a fact which pained him greatly.

No doubt the current Luthor will continue his personal vendetta against Superman and the world at large in his never ending desire to rule it as conqueror as his effective ruling it as administrator during his tenture as United States President was unfulfilling.

Only time will tell his ultimate fate and success in that end goal....

Characteristics
Height: 6'2" Weight: 210 lbs (xxx kg) Eyes: Green Hair: Bald (formerly red) Unusual Features: Lex is far younger than his actual chronological age due to replacing his entire body with a far younger cloned body, which he used in his plot to be his own son. Lex Luthor's original body had a cybernetic prosthetic hand to replace the limb that he had lost due to Kryptonite poisoning from a ring he wore to keep Superman at bay from directly assaulting him.

Powers
Known Powers: No known superpowers. Known Abilities: enhanced physical and cognitive abilities due to his cloned body's specific genetic design construction but is NOT at the obvious superhuman levels of the Earth-One, Earth-Two and Earth-Three Luthors who were able to create artifical lifeforms from scratch, interdimensional travel and functoinal time travel. Strength Level: Lex possesses the strength level slightly above that of a normal human male who engages in intense regular exercise, despite usually not actually engaging in such exercise on any regular basis

Miscellaneous
Equipment: Luthor has created and used many different advanced technological devices including his battle suit but NOT at the obvious superhuman levels of the Earth-One and Earth-Three Luthors whose battlesuits were directly able to fight with their respective Supermen in direct hand to hand conflict nor has the current Luthor been able to create artifical lifeforms form scratch nor develop interdimensional or time travel as the Earths 1, 2 and 3 incarnations did. The current Luthor formerly possessed a Kryptonian artifact known as a Sunstone. With it, he was able to locate and take command of an ancient Kryptonian warship once used by General Zod. Transportation: No known personal exotic transportation devices. Weapons: Various devices such as his battlesuit.

Trivia

 * Originally the Luthor character had no first name. Later on Luthor's full first name has been changed over the years ranging from Alexis, Alexei, and Alexander (currently his official first name) which have been used to designate different incarnations of the character, but originally "Lex" was not intended to be short for anything.
 * At one point the original version of Luthor was considered to be brought back at the same time with the bald version of the character in the late 1940s. Management decided against that, deciding it would be too confusing to have two Luthors at the same time and reused the original European red-haired version in the renamed form of Per Degaton, even keeping the original European background but was specified now as former German Nazi.  The original incarnation would later return as ALEXEI Luthor in the late 1970s after deciding to establish Kal-L as a repeating character in the DC Universe.
 * In Smallville, his full name is Alexander, after Alexander the Great, the historical general whom Lionel Luthor most admires and encourages his son to pattern himself after.
 * In the sitcom Seinfeld, a "Luthor" designates a person's rival or nemesis, in one of the many references to the Superman mythos in the series. For instance, Jerry's neighbor Newman was his "Luthor."
 * Actor Brian Dobsen lent his voice to the character of Lex Luthor on the ''Krypto the Superdog animated series.

Animated Series
In the 1990s cartoon Superman: The Animated Series and the subsequent Justice League animated series, Luthor was voiced by actor Clancy Brown of Highlander and Buckaroo Banzai fame. Luthor in this version was again a corrupt businessman, and again his hatred of Superman ultimately brought down his empire. After he was revealed as a criminal and lost his business empire (in the first season of Justice League), his characterization turned more toward the original conception of the character as a criminal genius obsessed with destroying Superman. Later, Luthor's character turned in an opposite way of his comics counterpart; he was pardoned after helping the Justice League defeat their alternate evil counterparts, the Justice Lords with a power disruptor and implied to the press that he was thinking of going into politics. In the second season of Justice League Unlimited, Luthor announced he was running for President of the United States. It was later revealed to be a ruse to enrage Superman. Luthor was later revealed to be financially backing Project Cadmus, a shadow government organization devoted to stopping the League if they ever turned on the earth. Luthor later betrayed them, attempting to hi-jack the League's space-based laser to take out Cadmus. While trying to place his mind in a duplicate of Amazo, he was thwarted by the League. At this point, it was revealed that Brainiac had possessed Luthor, secretly controlling his actions. After the two merged into a more complete being using alien nanotechnology, Luthor and Brainiac attempted to destroy the world, but were stopped by the League, particularly by the Flash. Luthor returned later to join the Legion of Doom, but, ironically, not as the leader (Gorilla Grodd was the leader). Luthor agreed to join in order to obtain the last remaining piece of Brainiac, which Grodd has in his possession. Luthor is obsessed with rebuilding Braniac, as what is left of him is inhabiting Luthor's mind, giving him a sort of dissociative identity disorder. However, after Grodds master plan of turning every man, woman and child into an ape failed, Lex Luthor shot Grodd and assumed control over the group. Although he now has the last Brainiac piece and an entire gang of super-villains, he still could not bring back Brainiac via transmutation, despite his best efforts, which included reading Grodds mind for the knowledge and resulted in switching bodies with The Flash.

Finally, Lex Luthor's "lover", a sorceress named Tala was sick of putting up with Lex spending all his time trying to bring back Brainiac and showed him that the piece was nothing more then a worthless rock. However, in the process, she unlocked Brainiacs memories with Darkseid and showed them to Luthor was able to turn the base into a space ship and rocketed to Brainiacs former HQ. Unfortunately, Tala turned to plan B. Releasing Grodd and stage a mutiny among the Legion of Dooms (now called the Secret Society) members. Lex launched Grodd out the air-lock and beat back the mutiny with the help of the members loyal to him. No longer using science to bring Brainiac back, Luthor used Tala has a magical conductor to bring Brainiac back. Once again, Luthor encountered another road-block. Instead of Brainiacs return, he brought Darkseid back and destroyed the Societys headquarters. Luthor, along with various members, escaped the destruction and returned to Earth, using Lightrays motherbox. Enlisting the help of the Justice League, much to the dismay of Superman no doubt. While battling Darkseids forces, Metron came to Luthor and took him to the Source Wall. Somehow Luthor survived going beyond the wall and returned to Earth even appearing in his normal black suit to give Darkseid a "gift" - the Anti-Life equation. Some suggest that this was merely a projection of Luthor from beyond the grave and not the physical Luthor. In the end, both Darkseid and Luthor vanished from the spot they were standing on. Although Superman believed both to be gone, other League members suspect that Luthor and Darkseid survived this latest destruction and might be back someday.

It should be noted that even in the animated reality Luthor and Superman had ALTERNATE reality versions as noted in the final (as of 2007) animated version of Superman entitled "Superman: Brainiac Attacks" where the animated Brainiac and Luthor incarnations meet again for the first time and team up directly against Superman. Luthor unlike the orignal animated series was played as a far less serious persona and was NOT voiced by Clancy Brown who was the voice of Luthor in all the 1990s and 2000 animated stories. Story writer and director Duane Capizzi confirmed that this story was NOT part of the formal DC animated universe.

Smallville


The television series Smallville, which began in 2001, features a Lex Luthor, played by Michael Rosenbaum, whose history echoes many previous versions of the character, though this version of Lex did not start out as a bona fide villain.

In Smallville, Lex is heir to his father's fortune, once again invoking the corrupt businessman version of the character. This incarnation of Lex states his full name to be "Alexander Luthor", named after Alexander the Great; Lionel believes himself to be the business world version of Philip II of Macedon. Smallville's Lex is shown to have been mutated during the meteor shower that brought Kal-El to Earth. The explosion from the impact of a nearby meteor causes Lex's red hair to fall out. Kal-El's indirect involvement in Lex's hair loss can be seen in the Silver Age comic mythos. Years later, Lex would lose control of his Porsche and slam into Clark and off a bridge. It's when Clark saves his life that the two bond and become best friends. Smallville emphasizes Lex's journey to the evil, criminal mastermind that he'll become later. It plays on his relationship with Clark and how that deteriorates into the hatred that they will have for one another later in life.

Smallville portrays Lex's father, Lionel, with many of the same characteristics that Lex's comic book counterpart has. It's through this dysfunctional relationship that Smallville attempts to characterize how Lex eventually surcumbs to his more evil side. Though most of the first 3 seasons of Smallville show Lex as having noble efforts, especially with regard to how he is accepted by the townsfolk, it's during season 4 that Lex begins to head down the "dark" path of his comic book self. Lex tries to rectify his failing relationship with Clark, who he sees as his inspiration, even going so far as to tell Clark to "not give up on me". It's during season 5 that Lex's relationship with Clark finally ends, and his true machinations become apparent, when he has Clark, his parents, and Lana taken hostage in an effort to prove that Clark is hiding some secret abilities. Through deception and lies, Lex manages to alienate Clark and his own father, steal Lana away from Clark, and become possessed by the consciousness of General Zod. The progression of the character, in Smallville, has been an ever growing process that continues into its current season.

Recommended Readings

 * Action Comics
 * Adventures of Superman
 * Superman (Volume 1)
 * Superman (Volume 2)
 * Villains United

Related Articles

 * Lex Luthor image gallery
 * Lex Luthor appearances list
 * Lex Luthor quotes page