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History
Early Life
Alexis "Lex" Luthor grew up in the suburbs of Smallville with his parents and his sister Lena. With his father, a traveling salesman, rarely being home, Lex was forced to live the life of a farmboy and tend to his family's fields, but his dreams were far larger than the simple agricultural community of Smallville could ever contain. It was apparent that Luthor was possessed of a genius well beyond the intelligence of most, and Luthor's penchant and appreciation for science made his early ambition in life to become the world's greatest and most well-renowned scientist.
As a teenager, Luthor learned about the existence of Smallville's own hometown hero – Superboy. He followed Superboy's adventures with great zeal and soon became the young Kryptonian's greatest fan. Through excessive compulsion and pleading, Lex was able to convince his parents to move to Smallville in order to be closer to the figure of his admiration.
Descent into Villainy
One day, Luthor was plowing a field with his tractor when he noticed that Superboy had collapsed nearby due to the debilitating effects of a Green Kryptonite meteorite. Reacting quickly to save the Teen of Steel's life, Luthor used his tractor to remove the Kryptonite from the area.
Afterwards, Luthor invited Superboy back to his workshop. Superboy found a veritable shrine erected in his honor, with walls and benches decorated with various souvenirs from Superboy's many exploits. To show his gratitude, Superboy constructed a brand new state-of-the art laboratory for the eager would-be scientist and used his abilities to mine the Earth for rare minerals and substances with which to stock Luthor's lab.
With the new lab equipment at his disposal, Luthor set about experimenting with the many substances in his possession. He even created a non-sentient protoplasmic entity out of some of the rarer chemicals that Superboy provided him. Using the protoplasm as a template, Luthor sought to create an antidote to Kryptonite poisoning as a token of appreciation for his hero. He succeeded in creating the antidote, but in his excitement, he knocked over a beaker, and its contents set the laboratory ablaze.
Superboy flew past the lab and noticed smoke pouring out of the windows. Noticing that Luthor had exposed Kryptonite in the lab, Superboy remained outside and quickly decided to extinguish the fire in the lab with a gust of his super-breath, which would put out the fire and remove the Kryptonite from his general vicinity. Superboy successfully extinguished the fire, but his super-breath accidentally spilled various chemicals over, reducing Luthor's protoplasmic creation to ash. Fumes from the spilled chemicals also caused Luthor's hair to spontaneously fall out. Unhinged by his sudden baldness and the destruction of his greatest creation, Luthor convinced himself that Superboy deliberately planned for this to transpire and secretly wanted to crush his aspirations out of envy. Initially, Luthor sought to outdo Superboy as Smallville's hero through philanthropic acts making use of his scientific expertise. However, every endeavor by Luthor to improve the town's prosperity ended in calamity, and it was none other than Superboy whom the townspeople relied on to restore peace and order. Luthor inadvertently not only helped Superboy's already excellent reputation with the people of Smallville but also made himself the most reviled man in town, denounced as a good-for-nothing crackpot at best and a public menace at worse.
It was only then that Luthor's psyche began to crack from frustration and hatred, and he soon began acting on his own more antisocial impulses to attack Superboy. When Superboy approached Luthor again, seeking to offer his condolences for his former friend's misfortunes, Luthor tried to kill Superboy with a Kryptonite trap, even as he dangled the only existing sample of his Kryptonite poisoning antidote just out of Superboy's reach sadistically. However, Superboy used his super-suction breath to smash the beaker containing the antidote against his face and ingested droplets of the liquid, saving himself from certain death. When offered the opportunity to arrest Luthor after regaining his strength, the Kryptonian hero nobly refused to do so, recalling how Luthor saved his life once in the past and proclaiming them now to be even.
Still thirsting for the bittersweet nectar of revenge, Luthor used a telekinetic helmet to animate and control an army of Kryptonite humanoids and dispatched them to assault Superboy and Krypto the Superdog in outer space. In all likelihood, Luthor would have killed the Boy of Steel then and there if it were not for the timely intervention of the 30th Century's Legion of Super-Heroes, whose premier member Lightning Lad fried Luthor's machine.
Lex Luthor would continue to plot nefariously against Superboy, in the process generating an aura of suspicion and mistrust that alerted the townspeople and alienated his own family. Fearing that their son was turning into a corrupt degenerate before their very eyes, Lex's parents disowned him, moved away from Smallville, and changed their family name to "Thorul," an anagram of "Luthor," in the hopes that their daughter Lena might be able to live a normal, happy life free from Lex's contempt for Superboy and all-consuming envy of his recognition. Despite this name change, Lex would later find his sister and find some sort of reconciliation with her and her children despite his evil nature. In time, Luthor's criminal actions would catch up with him, and he would be remanded to the Smallville Juvenile Detention Center.
In Superboy's last conflict with Lex Luthor before moving to Metropolis and attending university as Clark Kent, Luthor escaped from juvenile hall and sneaked onto a military testing grounds, stealing a helicopter and a 20-megaton bomb. Using his incredible powers, Superboy managed to snatch Luthor from the helicopter at the very second he detonated the bomb and negated most of the bomb's effects before they could cause any real damage. Some time later, Luthor was apparently relocated to the Soames Reform School, from where he soon escaped by using battery-powered, spring-loaded shoes.
Learning that the Metro Bank in Metropolis was switching over to using a computerized banking system connected to the city's phone lines, Luthor manipulated it by sending electric singals through the phone lines into transferring $48,000 dollars in cash into his bank account. Before long, a disguised Luthor made his withdrawal of the $48,000, which appeared to be legal in the system. When that money was inexplicably detected as physically missing, however, the bank president and Inspector Bill Henderson summoned Superboy, who summarily arrested Luthor after he made a second illicit withdrawal. Things were different this time in one respect: Both Superboy and Lex Luthor were 21 at the time of this occurrence, meaning that Luthor was tried in a court of law and imprisoned in the state penitentiary instead of merely being sent to a reform school like before.
After his next escape, Luthor contrived to launch a total of 36 satellites into Earth's orbit, each designed to be capable of potentially desolating a part of the Earth's surface and to channel him strength, speed, and invulnerability equivalent to a Kryptonian's. Luthor then hijacked every TV and radio broadcasting frequency worldwide using his satellite network and presented an ultimatum to Superboy. Either he would track Luthor down to his base and fight him in one-on-one combat, or Luthor would activate his satellites and rain fiery doom down on the Earth. Accepting, Superboy engaged Luthor in battle but found himself unable to match his opponent's hate-fueled ferocity even with comparable strength levels. Instead, Superboy feigned being killed by Lex in the fight and waited for his enemy to give the self-destruct command to his satellite network before revealing his ruse and capturing him. Having matured greatly over the course of the months prior on account of other developments, Superboy concluded the adventure by renaming himself "Superman," indicating the completion of his passage from adolescence to manhood and his transformation into a true hero of legend. As it turned out though, Luthor, unlike Superman, would never change, consumed my his own irrational, monomaniacal fury.
Early Criminal Career
Abandoned by his family and growing ever more exasperated with his many failed attempts to prove his superiority over Superman, Lex conceived of increasingly more ambitious schemes to destroy him, going on to prove himself as Superman's most imaginative and tenacious foe. His criminal career would also bring him into a state of alliance with such dreaded malefactors as the Joker and Brainiac.
In Luthor's first encounter with the latter, Luthor used a mental probe to telepathically learn of Brainiac's true origins as a Coluan "living computer" and conspired with him to shrink, paralyze, and de-power Superman and entrap him in a birdcage in their observatory base of operations. Luthor also managed to get Brainiac to agree to a procedure whereby he would enhance the android's intellect to a 12-level intelligence, though it was merely an excuse to implant a device in Brainiac that would cause him to deactivate should he move to betray him. In the end, Brainiac retaliated by mesmerizing Luthor into removing the device and forgetting about his secret origin, and the Superman Emergency Squad defeated the both of them in the nick of time. Luthor was to be returned to prison in Metropolis, but he agreed to serve as Brainiac's defense attorney during his trial in Kandor first. Despite his best efforts and most well-reasoned arguments, Luthor proved unable to successfully argue Brainiac's case, but he blackmailed the Kandorians into letting them go by pointing out that they would still be necessary to restore Superman. Luthor and Brainiac were then allowed to escape without a fight on the condition that they return Superman to normal; unusually, the villains held up their part of the bargain.
On another occasion, Lex Luthor embarked on a journey to a faraway world orbiting a red sun and forced Superman to challenge him there, as Superman's powers would be negated under such conditions. After an initial battle, the two archfoes wandered through the desert for days until Luthor discovered the remnants and people of a great civilization, which had been annihilated in a massive war long ago. Luthor helped these benighted aliens regain knowledge of how to utilize the gadgetry of their ancestors, but Superman ultimately found and captured him. Before returning to Earth, however, Luthor convinced Superman to recreate the now-barren world's natural bodies of water, as he had promised the planet's natives that he would do this for them before his departure. Luthor was credited with this magnanimous deed by the aliens, who would rename their planet Lexor out of gratitude. Over the years, Luthor made frequent visits to Lexor, where he was regarded as a hero and a savior while Superman was thought of as a villain for opposing him. [2].
The World's Greatest Criminal Mastermind
In his quest to be rid of the Man of Steel forever, Luthor created such malevolent monstrosities as the imperfect duplicate known as Bizarro and the terrible Galactic Golem, though his constructs had an unfortunate tendency to rebel against him. He also made a constant effort to upgrade his hi-tech arsenal, eventually taking to wearing a purple-and-green outfit equipped with the finest offensive weaponry at his disposal. In addition, Lex Luthor was responsible for the construction of a fleet of UFO-like armed hovercraft, which was to be employed in the execution of a future plan. Instead, it was commandeered prematurely by the Parasite, who had managed to replicate Luthor's physical appearance after brushing up against him in the Superman Museum, for his own nefarious purposes, and Luthor wound up in an alliance with Superman against the fiend.
Lex Luthor has also bedeviled other formidable costumed adversaries than just Superman. In one of his schemes, Luthor used a age-reduction device to transform both Batman and the Flash into young adolescents both physically and mentally as a prelude to his usage of the machine on Superman. Luthor reasoned that his grudge was first made against Superboy, not Superman, and that a teenage Man of Tomorrow would be less experienced and tactically-minded, making the task of eliminating him with Power-Gloves he created to absorb and redirect Superman's strength all the easier. Yet, Superman and his allies still defeated Luthor in the end. In another separate incident, Lex Luthor pleaded guilty to evidently killing the Batman in an underground "court of law" headed by Ra's al Ghul and comprised of several of the Dark Knight's enemies. He claimed that he launched a satellite into Earth's orbit intended to simultaneously fire two rays: one to erase Batman's mind, and another to transfer Superman's mind into Batman's wholly vulnerable body. Claiming that he had then gone on to execute Superman in Batman's body, Luthor announced to Ra's and the jury of villains that his next move would be to transfer his mind into Superman's body and conquer the universe, but at that moment, Superman crashed into the scene to apprehend Luthor, assuring him that Batman learned of his plan before it could be enacted and arranged to trick Luthor into believing he had succeeded. Tipped off by Batman, Superman masqueraded as his cowled friend when the satellite activated, evaded its ray's effects, and pretended to be killed by Luthor when he arrived to carry out the deed. In actuality, the real Batman was secretly disguised as Two-Face in the very jury hearing Luthor's case and explained to Luthor, without giving away his true identity, exactly how he had been duped by the World's Finest team. On still yet another occasion, a experimental mishap caused Lex Luthor and the Joker to swap their dispositions, with the Joker being granted Luthor's mental clarity and genius-level intelligence and Luthor being cursed with Joker's crippling detachment from reality and uncontrollable, psychopathic personality disorder. Of course, things were back to normal for both Luthor and the Clown Prince of Crime before long.
Lex Luthor also entered into a brief partnership with the Luthor of Earth-Two and Earth-Three's evil counterpart to Superman, Ultraman, with the goal of using their combined power and resources to challenge and destroy Superman of Earth-One and Superman of Earth-Two. However, things got out of hand when the considerably more bloodthirsty, psychopathic, and ruthless Earth-Two Luthor conspired with Ultraman to assemble a doomsday weapon capable of annihilating both Earth-One and Earth-Two, in order so that the three of them could reign over a world of evil unopposed in the universe of Earth-Three. In spite of his obsessive and murderous rage towards Superman and all his associates, even the Earth-One Luthor was not sinister enough to want the absolute eradication of everyone and everything he ever knew for his grudge against his version of the Man of Steel. Fortunately, the Earth-One and Earth-Two Supermen, accompanied by the altruistic and selfless Alexander Luthor of Earth-Three prevented the deaths of two realities.
During this time period, Luthor also took to joining various criminal organizations as a means of furthering his goals. For instance, Lex became a member of the first incarnation of the Secret Society of Super-Villains, albeit with his own ambitions to gain power over the team, and allied himself with several other villains in a conspiracy against Superman led by the enigmatic Mr. Xavier. Later, during a time when Superman believed Lois Lane and Lana Lang were going to die from the same microbe that killed Jonathan and Martha Kent, Superman was forced to consult none other than his greatest enemy for his assistance in finding a cure. Naturally, Luthor refused to comply simply to see Superman suffer. Afterwards, in order to mock Superman for his unfaltering morality, Luthor even threatened to shatter the container for the microbe against the nearest wall and contaminate himself, only to laugh contemptuously in Superman's face when he stopped him from going through with it. The crisis resolved itself in the end, but nothing else could possibly have demonstrated the essential difference between a person like Kal-El and a person like Lex Luthor just as well as this. Luthor no longer lived for anything but hate and revenge, while Superman, on the other hand, did not even hate Luthor at all. As he explained to a inquiring civilian after a battle with Luthor that wrecked an airport, Superman only felt resignation due to Luthor's refusal, or inability, to forsake his ways and reform.
Ever so briefly, there seemed to be a time when Luthor did change for the better. One day, Luthor spotted a terminally ill patient from a Metropolis hospital named Angela Blake, who was being transported by Superman even as Luthor had the Man of Steel in the crosshairs of a weapon powerful enough to kill him. Unable to bring himself to shoot Superman as long as it would endanger Angela, Luthor had his androids kidnap her so that he could devise a cure for her ailment, which had cost her a head of hair, incidentally. Afterwards, Luthor fell in love with Angela and publicly professed that finding true love motivated him to rehabilitate himself. Now ostensibly a force for good, Lex Luthor aided Superman in drawing out and rounding up Metropolis's major mob bosses, and then helped him fend off Terra-Man and his super-strong extraterrestrial partner when they came to Earth to express their disgust in Luthor for giving up crime. Luthor finally elected to marry Angela, both physically and emotionally the woman of his dreams, but Angela and Superman abruptly disappeared in a flash of light at the wedding ceremony when Superman casually kissed her. Luthor himself was taken to his hideout, utterly baffled by recent events, by his androids, who explained that he kidnapped, killed, and cloned the real Angela Blake weeks ago, infected the Angela clone with a deadly disease that he knew how to cure, and wiped his own mind of this knowledge, all as a setup to lure Superman into a trap. The trap evidently did not work, as Superman immediately arrived to arrest Luthor once he was made informed of all this information. Ironically, it was Lex Luthor himself who in the end denied himself redemption.
The New Luthor
Lex Luthor's only remaining link to his own humanity would ironically be his attachment to the alien planet Lexor and its people, for whom Luthor was a divine messenger who rescued them from the darkness that fell over their world. In time, Lex would decide to abandon the Earth entirely and take up permanent residence on Lexor, marrying the Lexorian woman Ardora and siring an infant son of the same name. Luthor would attempt to forget about his long-standing grudge against his Kryptonian nemesis, yet this would prove unsuccessful. Luthor demanded a resolution to his conflict with Superman and was determined to obtain it, even if it meant denying his commitment to his family and the people of Lexor. One day, Luthor stumbled upon an ancient yet sophisticated extraterrestrial laboratory and therein found a technologically advanced battlesuit possessed of enough power to rival even Superman. Knowing that Superman would eventually catch up with him, Luthor furtively tested out his new battlesuit's capabilities on Lexorian shipments of goods, becoming known in his armored alter ego as the "Mystery Marauder." When Superman finally did arrive on Lexor to take Luthor in, motivated by one of his still active machines threatening mass destruction on Earth, Luthor unveiled his suit of armor and attacked Superman in it. The people of Lexor, horrified that their beloved defender and champion was secretly the Mystery Marauder the whole time, lost their faith in their hero in that instant, and mere moments later, an energy blast fired by Luthor in the battle reflected off of Superman's body and hit the Neutrarod preventing Lexor from vibrating apart. The result was the complete destruction of Lexor and all of its native inhabitants, including Luthor's wife and child.
Blaming Superman for this great tragedy in his grief, Luthor now became more implacable in his compulsion to destroy Superman than ever before. Locating a chunk of Lexor's crust adrift in the Atlantic Ocean, Lex Luthor established his new base of operations there, naming the site L-Island. Then, Luthor confronted Lois Lane during her brief stay at her parents' residence with the intention of killing her, hoping to make Superman suffer terrible grief comparable to that which Luthor experienced when Ardora and Lex, Jr., perished. Fortunately, learning that Superman was no longer romantically interested in Lois convinced him to spare her and try something else. Ultimately, Luthor settled on building a fake Neutrarod on Earth and waiting for it to grab Superman's attention, reasoning that the Last Son of Krypton would think he was trying to replicate the cataclysm that destroyed Lexor. The ploy worked, and Luthor fought Superman again, this time being forced to flee from an inferno created by the Action Ace's heat vision. Superman subsequently discovered that the "Neutrarod" Luthor constructed was never real and thus never posed a threat.
In Luthor's next encounter with Superman, the criminal mastermind's goal was to entrap Superman in his own warsuit, which he modified to possess limited artificial intelligence and new illusion-casting features. After encasing the Man of Steel, Luthor's semi-autonomous warsuit proceeded to negate any of Superman's attempts to escape or damage it, simultaneously projecting a holographic depiction of Lex Luthor around its prisoner and modifying his voice to resemble Luthor's. Only when Superman, made to appear as Luthor, fought an alien warrior in Metropolis, singing his own praises all the while, did Luthor force the suit to release Superman and return to home base, as Luthor could not withstand allowing the public to perceive him complimenting Superman and fighting his battles on his behalf. Once Superman was freed, however, the "alien warrior" he was fighting was revealed to have actually been Supergirl in disguise, working with Superman to set Luthor up. In spite of his failure to contain Superman, Luthor nonetheless obtained the vital information about Superman's physiology that he hoped to acquire through that excursion, which he used in his next plot to defeat the hero.
For his ensuing scheme to destroy Superman's self-esteem, and his sanity, Luthor used a ray capable of altering Superman's perceptions and memories to trick Superman into "relaying" a hallucinatory adventure in which he saved a NASA satellite to his "friend," Clark Kent. When this story was published in the Daily Planet after the incident, NASA denied that one of its satellites nearly crashed into the ocean, prompting Morgan Edge to question Superman about whether he gave Clark the story. Forced to save the reputation of one of his alter egos and forsake the respectability of the other, Superman told Edge that he relayed no story to Clark Kent, causing Clark to be fired from WGBS and the Daily Planet. Furthermore, although Lex Luthor remained unaware that Superman and Clark Kent were really the same person, his plan worked perfectly from his own perspective: In Luthor's mind, Superman fraudulently blamed Clark Kent with making up the satellite story and getting it published in order to spare his own reputation with the public, and his intent was to wrack Superman's conscience with guilt for condemning his "friend" Clark.
Fortunately for Clark Kent, he found employment at a sporting goods store owned and run by former WGBS sportscaster Steve Lombard, yet as Superman, he still remained a victim of the condemnation of Lana Lang, who refused to believe Clark was dishonest, and Lex Luthor's mind-games, among them a hallucination that he killed Luthor and accidentally triggered a bomb that destroyed the Earth. Luthor's final attempt to drive Superman insane focused on using his mind-ray to trick him into believing that the entire world was vanishing around him, leaving him locked within a blank limbo of his own perception, where only Lex Luthor's mocking jeers existed. In the meantime, Luthor had successfully retrieved Superman in his helplessness and placed him in a chamber on L-Island that would maintain him in his mentally incapacitated state indefinitely. Despite all this, Superman still managed to escape Luthor's mind-prison by focusing on the super-hearing-amplified sounds of his Daily Planet comrades, who were gathered at a celebration held in Clark Kent's honor many miles away. Superman proceeded to fight Luthor with the purpose of capturing him and revealing his duplicity, but Luthor was unexpectedly whisked away by a mysterious cyclone for a purpose neither Superman nor he could have possibly fathomed.
Crisis on Infinite Earths
Around the time the Crisis began, Lex Luthor was unexpectedly whisked away by Brainiac into his Skull Ship to consider a most intriguing proposition: a position of leadership within an army of villains from across numerous alternate worlds. After the Anti-Monitor destroyed almost the entire Multiverse, except for Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Four, Earth-S, and Earth-X, he was temporarily thwarted by the noble sacrifices of the Flash of Earth-One, Supergirl, and the Monitor, who managed to put a delay in his timetable and place the five surviving worlds in an alternate dimension where they would be safe for a time, although the inevitability that they would destroy each other unless returned to different planes of reality ensured it would be only a temporary solution. It was then that Luthor and Brainiac made their move, unleashing their legions of evil-doers from the five surviving worlds upon them in a bid to become their absolute rulers. The heroes of the five worlds retaliated in force, but the war between good and evil was only halted by the Spectre, who revealed the urgency of the worlds' current situation and convinced heroes and villains to work together to save existence. As the Spectre and the Multiverse's heroes were sent back to the dawn of time to fight the Anti-Monitor before he could prevent all positive-matter realities from ever existing, the Multiverse's villains, including Luthor, were sent back in time to the planet Oa millennia ago to stop Krona from witnessing the Big Bang. Unfortunately, they failed in their task due to their crippling pettiness, and the five remaining worlds were instead reborn at the moment of the Big Bang as a New Earth with a history that was essentially a composite of all its predecessors, though using Earth-One as a template and borrowing most of its elements from it. The Luthor of Earth-One was subsequently left the only version of Lex Luthor in all existence. His Earth-Two counterpart, who was killed by Brainiac for dissent in his army, and his Earth-Three counterpart, who was destroyed by antimatter along with the rest of his reality, were no longer merely deceased but were prevented from ever having been in the first place. Luthor continued to plague Superman during the months immediately following the Crisis's conclusion, even celebrating Albert Einstein's birthday by committing a string of flashy hi-tech crimes. Lex Luthor's last known encounter with Superman was a team-up in which they allied together to stop the Lexorian warsuit's original AI from destroying the Earth.
In the future of Earth-One, Lex Luthor is destined to be rehabilitated and turn his talents towards building up his own corporation, LexCorp, and aiding Superman and Metropolis through works of altruism and philanthropy.
Powers and Abilities
Powers
Abilities
- Genius Level Intellect: Lex Luthor has used various formulas and devices to augment his incredible genius to perform a host of effects, but most were either temporary by nature or proved too dangerous to his physiology to maintain without suffering detrimental long term effects.
- Robotic Engineering: Lex Luthor was an expert engineer and was perpetually creating new robotic inventions with which to foil Superman.
Weaknesses
- Mental Disorder: A sufferer of pathological narcissism and paranoia, Lex Luthor's far-fetched delusions that Superboy caused his hair to fall out and destroyed his protoplasm intentionally, and later that he deliberately sabotaged his genetically modified seeds and weather-control tower when he aimed to out-perform Superboy with philanthropy, provided the start of his monomaniacal, all-consuming obsession with destroying Superman. Luthor's murderous hatred of the Man of Steel and all who associate with him is the product of his warped mind's conviction that Superman has spent his whole life actively humiliating him and ruining his life out of envy. By allowing his paranoid beliefs to make the very drive behind his being into punishing Superman for attempting to stifle his perceived "greatness," Lex Luthor prevented himself from ever actually achieving this greatness. Only on Lexor, where Luthor was admired and revered as Superman and his allies were on Earth, or in his relationship with the clone of Angela Blake, did Luthor ever find the happiness and self-esteem that he so desperately craved to actually accomplish generativity on a grand scale. Even then, Luthor remained unable to fully put his past with Superman behind him and allow himself to find peace in either incident, inadvertently annihilating his chance at redemption in the process. Ultimately, it can be found that Luthor's neurosis is his inability to face the immense guilt that he is always subconsciously tormented by on some level. Instead, he projects his shame and self-loathing onto Superman to give himself something else to despise and constantly work against and escape the reality of his own failings. Unfortunately, when Luthor's endless campaign against Superman proves self-sabotaging, the ensuing humiliation only reinforces the mindset that gives rise to these behaviors. Even the ever-optimistic Superman once confided that while hate is not all Lex Luthor has ever had, it is all he now has left.
Paraphernalia
Equipment
- Jet Boots: Rocket-powered jet boots allow Lex Luthor to soar through the air with great nimbleness and speed. The design for Luthor's jet boots is presumably different from that of Brainiac's, which are likely of Coluan construction.
- Various hi-tech weapons and gadgets
- Various android and robot minions
Transportation
- Lex Luthor's Warsuit: Lex Luthor's Lexorian warsuit was said to have provided him with the level of artificially simulated strength and invulnerability to harm necessary to engage Superman (or another of approximately equal power levels) in physical combat. Not only was the warsuit resilient enough to survive the explosion of Lexor at ground-level and completely protect Lex from the sheer force within it, but it was remarkably well-armed, incorporating an array of high-intensity energy weapons capable of harming Superman. Luthor also programmed it to possess a semi-autonomous artificial intelligence capable of following Luthor's commands and operating independently within that capacity.
- Various forms of hi-tech aircraft and spacecraft
Weapons
- Kryptonite
- Lex Luthor's Warsuit: Lex Luthor's Lexorian warsuit was said to have provided him with the level of artificially simulated strength and invulnerability to harm necessary to engage Superman (or another of approximately equal power levels) in physical combat. Not only was the warsuit resilient enough to survive the explosion of Lexor at ground-level and completely protect Lex from the sheer force within it, but it was remarkably well-armed, incorporating an array of high-intensity energy weapons capable of harming Superman. Luthor also programmed it to possess a semi-autonomous artificial intelligence capable of following Luthor's commands and operating independently within that capacity.
- Power-Gloves: Lex Luthor's Power-Gloves are designed to be capable of draining away a fraction of Superman's incalculable strength upon tactile contact and enabling their wearer to redirect that raw physical power against Superman himself, or alternately another target. The Power-Gloves were also shown to be capable of being remote-controlled by Lex Luthor, enabling Luthor to force Superman to punch himself to death once he is made to wear the gloves.
- Various deadly weapons and gadgets
- Various hi-tech weapons and gadgets
Notes
- This version of Alexis Luthor (Earth-One), including all history and corresponding appearances, was erased from existence following the collapse of the original Multiverse in the 1985–86 Crisis on Infinite Earths event and later restored following the rebirth of the infinite Multiverse during the Dark Crisis of 2022-2023. Even though other versions of the character may have appeared, this information does not apply to those versions.
- There is a noted discrepancy between Lex Luthor's chronological age in relation to that of Superman's. Both men are approximately the same age, as revealed when they first met as teenagers in Adventure Comics #271. However, in Adventure Comics #253, Superboy passed Luthor on the street, and Luthor was significantly older than the Boy of Steel, and still had a head full of hair (even though he had lost it during his first encounter with Superboy). No explanation has ever been provided for the discrepancy, nor has the Earth-One canonicity of the older Luthor ever been repudiated.
- Lex Luthor originally had brown hair unlike his other dimensional counterparts who had naturally red hair. Alexei Luthor of Earth-Two for example had a full head of hair and was clean shaven; Alexander Luthor, Sr. of Earth-Three was bald with a red goatee; and the New Earth incarnation of Luthor was first shown with a receding mane of red hair.
- The Earth-One Luthor's first name in full is actually Alexis, not Alexander. See, for instance, Superman #416.
Trivia
- Alexis Luthor is also known as Defender of Lexor; Cyrus Groat; ; Professor Clyde; Mechano-Master; Cerebron; Kryptonite Conqueror; Dominus; Herr Eisner.
- In 1986, author Alan Moore wrote a two-part imaginary tale which represented the swan song saga of the Pre-Crisis Superman family of characters. Beginning in Superman #423 and concluding in Action Comics #583, the story revealed that Lex Luthor had cybernetically interfaced with his old partner Brainiac. This plot device was later revisited in several of the final season episodes of Justice League Unlimited, in which Luthor was the leader of a cadre of super-villains. Luthor's team was reminiscent of the Legion of Doom from the Challenge of the Super Friends animated series.
- In the WB/CW television series Smallville, a young Lex Luthor (played by Michael Rosenbaum) becomes close friends with Tom Welling's Clark Kent. Their friendship (and subsequent falling out) is similar to the original flashback meeting between the Silver Age Luthor and Superboy. Like the original story, young Clark is indirectly responsible for Luthor's hair loss, although in Smallville, it is actually radiation from the meteor shower (caught in the wake of Clark's rocket ship) that ultimately causes Lex's hair to fall out.
- After a time-traveling adventure with Superman, Lex Luthor inadvertently caused the infamous San Francisco earthquake of 1906.[2]
Recommended Reading
- Action Comics
- Superboy (Volume 1)
- Super Friends
- Superman (Volume 1)
- World's Finest (Volume 1)
- Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #14
Related
- 291 Appearances of Alexis Luthor (Earth-One)
- 29 Images featuring Alexis Luthor (Earth-One)
- 43 Quotations by or about Alexis Luthor (Earth-One)
- Character Gallery: Alexis Luthor (Earth-One)
External Links
- Lex Luthor article at Supermanica
- Lex Luthor article at the Unofficial Guide to the DC Universe
- Lex Luthor article at JLA Database
Footnotes
  This character has been primarily an enemy of Superman in any of his various incarnations, or members of the Superman Family. This template will categorize articles that include it into the "Superman Villains category." |
 Secret Society of Super-Villains member |