Lex Luthor

* Hellfire Club
* Secret Society of Super-Villains
* *Daily Planet*

[Source]

"*Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.*"
―Lex Luthor[src]
**Lex Luthor** was a Human male businessman, scientist and politician who served as the principle shareholder of the multi-million dollar company LexCorp, a one-time U.S. presidential candidate and a member of the Secret Society of Super-Villains.

## Biography

### Early life

Lex Luthor was born on October 11, 1933 in Chicago, Illinois to Jules and Arlene Luthor. The child of abusive parents, Lex was raised in Danville, Illinois alongside his younger sister Lena in poverty and had a fierce desire to better himself. Lex cared little for his parents, though he did love his sister. Later in life Lex would convey a story that his father had once told him as a boy before kicking him out of the room: "Son, stocks may rise and fall, utilities and transportation systems may collapse. People are no damn good, but they will always need land and they'll pay through the nose to get it!"

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 knew James Gordon and was friends with his brother Roger, who encouraged Lex's aspirations of escaping the slums and becoming a success. At around fifteen years of age, Lex got himself involved in criminal activies, in the process generating an aura of suspicion and mistrust that alerted the townspeople and alienated his own family. On one occasion he was jailed for stealing candy & soda pop from a candy store. Fearing that their son was turning into a degenerate before their very eyes, Lex's parents disowned him. At only seventeen years old, Luthor lied about his age to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. He served four and a half years as a field radio operator. He was stationed in South Korea. When the Korean War ended in 1953, Luthor was assigned to Hawaii and Japan.

### Creating LexCorp

"*It's a pity he couldn't see from such humble beginnings how I've created this empire.*"
―Lex Luthor about his father[src]
Following his discharge in 1954, he moved to New York City and went on to found his own company LexCorp. Lex turned the company into a multi-national corporation that would largely come to dominate the city. His legitimate businesses attached to LexCorp covered a variety of enterprises ranging from telephone companies to personal electronic devices. As part of his image, Lex created the illusion of being a caring philanthropist. He became one of the most powerful men in Metropolis, both financially and in the world of organized crime, including dealings with his old friend Morgan Edge, and would often pay newspapers to reinforce his public image as a wealthy benefactor. It was around this time that he was initiated into becoming a Hellfire Club member. Early in his career as a businessman, he married and divorced his first wife, Elizabeth Perske, sometime in the 1960s. Luthor would later meet a beautiful woman, Ardora, who claimed to be from outer space. Greatly intrigued by her claims as well as her beauty, the businessman would marry the extraterrestrial woman in 1974, siring an infant son of the same name later that year. Unfortunately, the marriage wouldn't last long as Ardora one day had seemingly abandoned both her husband and child. Luthor would attempt to locate his wife for some time, but was unable to find any trace of her and kept her existence from their son for years. A few years after giving up his search for Ardora, Luthor moved on with and would marry a woman that he would soon divorce.

A few years later, Lex was living in a palatial underground hideout in New York. While there one day, one of his assistants, a man named Otis, made his way through the subway tunnels toward a wall that opened to a passage leading to the hideout. One of the police detectives following Otis, though, was brutally pushed by Lex via the same panel into an oncoming subway train. His other assistant and mistress, Eve Teschmacher, looked at Lex, thinking he was disgusting, but Lex only smiled. After reading the headlined story that the United States would be doing some nuclear missile launch tests soon in a copy of the *Daily Planet*, Lex decided it could be instrumental for pulling off one of the biggest heists in history as he would soon own valuable real estate.

### Meeting Superman

"*You were great in your day, Superman. But it just stands to reason. When it came time to cash in your chips, this old... diseased maniac would be your banker. Mind over muscle?*"
―Lex Luthor[src]
After a costumed superhero first appeared in the city, Luthor discussed with his assistants whether this man was truly genuine or not. Lex believed if such a thing were a hoax, he would have been the one who pulled it off and that the hero's appearance had some form of cruel justice to it, as if for Lex to to commit the crime of the century, he had to face the challenge of the century. Otis dismissed it as him simply passing through town, but Lex highly doubted it. After Lois Lane's article about the hero now called Superman was published in the *Daily Planet*, Luthor and his assistants went to work finding out about any possible weaknesses he could exploit. He found an article about a man in Addis Ababa discovering a green meteorite that came to Earth about thirty years ago. He surmised that this meteorite generated a specific type of radiation that was capable of killing Kryptonians, and planned to steal this meteorite which he called Kryptonite to get rid of Superman.

Several months after Superman first arrived in Metropolis, terrorists attacked a society gala aboard Luthor's yacht. Lois Lane, whom Luthor had tried to romance as a trophy wife, was present during the attack which was stopped by Superman. Luthor tried unsuccessfully to hire Superman as a bodyguard. But when he admitted that he had known the attack was to occur and had allowed it to proceed in order to see Superman in action first hand, the Mayor deputized Superman on the spot to arrest Luthor for reckless endangerment. He avoided prison thanks to a legal technicality, but still had to endure the humiliation of being publicly led away under arrest.

Superman survived subsequent attempts Luthor made on his life, but he had never been able to prove Luthor's role in the attacks. Aside from Lex's immense wealth and connections, he was able to weasel his way out of trouble due to the fact that Superman, being liable as a witness, would have to reveal his true identity in court to testify against him. He later attempted to divert military missiles to hit the San Andreas fault, causing California to sink into the ocean, turning its neighboring states into beach front property owned by Lex Luthor Incorporated. Although he nearly killed Superman using kryptonite, Superman defeated him and sent him to prison.

### Criminal escapades

"*LEX LUTHOR! Possibly you've heard the name? Billionaire industrialist, scientist and philanthropist. The Greatest Criminal Mind on Earth!*"
―Lex Luthor[src]
He later escaped with Miss Teschmacher's help and allied himself with General Zod and the Kryptonian criminals in his bid to destroy Superman and take over the planet Earth (which they mistakenly referred to as the planet Houston). Luthor even succeeded in sweet-talking General Zod into making him the ruler of Australia. Luthor's dreams of an empirical Outback were quickly shattered however, as Superman managed to rid Earth of the three Kryptonians and arrested Luthor once again. However, Luthor was eventually pardoned for his crimes apparently as a result of his aid in the defeat of the Kryptonian supervillians. Sometime before 1983, Luthor would marry a woman by the name of Alexandra. Once again the marriage would end quickly, but not before conceiving a daughter that was named after both parents, Alexis. Before the ink even dried on his divorce papers, Lex married a woman named Lillian whom his son believed was his natural mother. At this time, Luthor hired Pamela Jenkins to act as a nanny to the household. After Lillian gave birth to their son Lucas Luthor, Lillian smothered Lucas to death when he was an infant; Lex Jr. took the blame, and Lex Sr. resented his surviving son for many years. Luthor later engaged in an affair with Rachel Dunleavy, a nurse hired to care for Lillian as her health declined. The relationship resulted in an illegitimate son.

Way down in one of his many organizations, an incident involving stolen funds by a computer hacker named Gus Gorman was brought to Luthor's attention. Gorman was brought to his office, where Luthor quizzed the hacker about his $85,789.90 paycheck and realized that what he had on his hands was not a criminal, but a genius who could be of great value. Rather than send him to jail, he gave Gorman the option of working for him personally. With Gorman's assistance, Luthor sought to monopolize the entire coffee industry by destroying Colombia's crops. He sent Gorman to one of Luthor's subsidary companies in Smallville, Pennsylvania to create a computer program using the available weather satellite. From this, a massive storm converged over Colombia. But Superman intervened, however, flying into its midst to undo all the damage the storm caused, upsetting Luthor's plans in the process.

Luthor's next idea to get rid of Superman was to re-create, by computer, Kryptonite. He and Gorman managed to re-create a synthetic Red Kryptonite, but instead of it damaging Superman, the end product made him evil, though nonetheless put him out of the way. In the meantime, Luthor executed a new plan to deactivate all of the oil pumps in North America and reroute the oil tankers to the middle of the Atlantic ocean. To do this, he required Gorman's help, yet again. But Gorman refused unless Luthor built the hacker a state-of-the-art supercomputer he'd been secretly designing. Luthor agreed, however, the Man of Steel came back to thwart Luthor's machinations once more. At their Grand Canyon hideout, Luthor, and Lorelei Ambrosia, along with Gus Gorman, set out to further his plans for economic control and to lure Superman into a trap. Superman soon did arrive, and entered a fierce bout with the newly constucted Ultimate Computer's Kryptonite ray and a vicious cyborg. Just when Luthor seemed about to succeed, Gorman turned on him, helping Superman destroy the computer instead.

On another occasion, Lex embarked on a journey to a faraway world orbiting a red sun and challenged Superman to fight him him there in single combat, 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. There, he found his ex-wife Ardora. Out of pity, or perhaps simply seeing the opportunity to play the hero for once, Luthor helped these benighted aliens regain some of the technical standards of their vanished civilization, 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 Luthor 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.

#### Criminal team-ups

"*Remember my motto. The more fear you make, the more loot you take.*"
―Lex Luthor[src]
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.

In Luthor's first encounter with Brainiac, Luthor used a mental probe to determine Brainiac's true origins as a Coluan "living computer" and conspired with him to shrink, paralyze, disempower, and imprison Superman. 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 in the event that Brainiac double-crossed Luthor. Subsequently, Brainiac mesmerized Luthor into removing the device and losing all memory of his secret origin. The villains' brief victory was cut short by arrival of the Superman Emergency Squad, who captured them and brought them to Kandor for Brainiac to be judged under Kryptonian law for the city's abduction. Luthor agreed to serve as Brainiac's defense attorney, but all reasoned arguments to vindicate Brainiac before the Kandorians rang hollow. With Brainiac's as well as his own incarceration seeming inevitable, Luthor blackmailed the Kandorians into allowing them to escape unpunished, pointing out that they still held Superman captive and helpless. Reluctantly agreeing to the villains' terms, Kandor released them after the villains held up their own part of the bargain by restoring Superman. They then fled.

Months later, Lex once again allied himself with other villains, in that instance a cadre of war profiteers and arms dealers who were affiliated with S.Y.S.T.E.M.. The corrupt officials were worried about what Superman's efforts to disarm the world's nuclear arsenals would do to their businesses. By this time he had fashioned a signet ring from Kryptonite which was deadly to Superman, and Luthor began wearing it constantly to ward off his enemy. To defeat Superman this time, Lex, using a strand of Superman's hair stolen from a museum, created an imperfect clone of Superman which he named "Bizarro," who possessed powers similar to Superman's. Although Bizarro came close to killing Superman, Superman's alien DNA made the clone unstable and was able to be beaten and killed. Superman recaptured Lex and returned him to prison, telling him, "See you in twenty."

However, Contessa Erica Alexandra del Portenza, an Italian businesswoman and socialite, used her powerful connections to help Luthor get his sentence reduced to being under house arrest. The Contessa had bought controlling interest in LexCorp after Luthor was once again exposed as a criminal, forcing Lex into a marriage with her in order to regain control over the company. The marriage was based on mutual manipulation and greed and was therefore doomed from the beginning: the two fought constantly and never loved each other. The Contessa became pregnant with Lex's child and began using the unborn child to dominate Lex into doing her bidding. Luthor's response to the Contessa's actions was to use her desire to be unconscious during childbirth to lock her in the basement of his corporate headquarters in a permanently-drugged unconscious state. Luthor took over as a single father to his daughter Lena, whom he named after his sister.

In Luthor's next scheme against Superman, the criminal mastermind's goal was to entrap Superman in his own battlesuit, which he modified to possess limited artificial intelligence and new hologram-projection features. After encasing the Man of Steel, Luthor's semi-autonomous battlesuit proceeded to negate any of Superman's attempts to escape or damage it, simultaneously projecting a hologram of Lex around Superman within and modifying Superman's voice to sound like Lex's. Everyone, including Superman's pal Jimmy Olsen, was deceived into thinking that Superman was Lex Luthor for a day, to the Man of Steel's chagrin. Only a ruse perpetrated by Superman with the collusion of Supergirl tricked Luthor into releasing Superman. In spite of his failure to contain and humiliate Superman, Luthor nonetheless obtained the vital information about Superman's physiology that he hoped to acquire, which he went on to use in his next plot to defeat the hero.

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, NASA issued a statement denying the veracity of the story, prompting Morgan Edge to question Superman about whether he gave Clark the bogus story or not. 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 apparently remained unaware that Superman and Clark Kent were really the same person, his plan worked perfectly from his own perspective: To Luthor, Superman fraudulently blamed Clark Kent with making up the satellite story 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.

#### Death of Superman and Presidential Run

Lex Luthor, who was secretly monitoring Sarge Steel's broadcasts, learned of a child of Kryptonian origin and set about claiming the boy for himself. Having somewhat trained the creature known as Nuclear Man to do his bidding, Luthor sent Nuclear Man into the city to capture Lor-Zod, the son of Luthor's former allies General Zod and Ursa. A fight broke out between Nuclear Man and Superman, and Lor-Zod demonstrated his Kryptonian invulnerability by surviving the impact of a school bus falling directly on top of him. Not long after, a monstrous alien beast called Doomsday, in actuality the transformed Lor-Zod, emerged near a LexCorp Refinery in eastern Ohio and began to march toward New York City. Superman battled the creature across several states, eventually drawing the line in Manhattan itself and causing a shock-wave that was felt in LexCorp Tower while Lex was holding a press conference. After a desperate battle, Superman managed to put down the monster but collapsed as he did so, dying in Lois' arms. Superman was buried with full honors, with hundreds of heads of state and several hundred thousand onlookers present, beneath a large statue in Centennial Park, prompting Luthor to gloat that while he may not have killed Superman, by providing the tomb, he at least "buried him." After the death of Superman, Luthor was given the seemingly dead body of Doomsday, who had been defeated by the Kryptonians, to study as it had “potential”. By the time Doomsday was transported to one of Lex's labs, LexCorp employees and other U.S. officials were shocked to find that not only was the creature missing but a living, albeit injured, young human-looking boy was inside the craft instead. Believing him to be the monster, Lex took the child in. After five days of studying him and gathering information, however, Lex decided that the child wasn't the creature afterall and had the boy thrown out in the streets of Metropolis.

In the aftermath of the fateful battle, it was LexCorp that took up the massive task of rebuilding New York City and in turn 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 the city into a true "city of tomorrow." Unbeknownst to the populace, Luthor also took the opportunity to destroy property records so he could seize any land he wanted. In doing so, Luthor became an even bigger enemy to Bruce Wayne, who publicly denounced him.

During the 2000 Presidential election, Luthor ran for office of the President of the United States on a platform of promoting technological progresses for the common people. Ultimately, Luthor would fail to gain enough momentum in the Democratic party primaries and instead decided to run as an Independent in the general election; an election George W. Bush would go on to win.

### Life after Superman

#### Battle of the Luthors

**Lex Sr.**: "*I'm not here to complain, Lex. On the contrary, your performance lately has been... well... more than adequate.*"
**Lex Jr.**: "*That sounds dangerously like a compliment.*"
―Lex Luthor and Lex Luthor Jr.[src]
Not long after losing the election, Lex sent Lex Jr. to run the LexCorp factory in Smallville so he could keep him out of trouble. While Lex ran the Smallville factory of LexCorp, Lex stayed in Manhattan at LexCorp Tower. Lex later came to Smallville to give Lex Jr. a hard time about his decision to increase his workforce. They couldn't come to an agreement, leading Lex to suggest that they fence for it; Lex Jr. lost the bet.

#### Dying and jail

Later on, Lex and Lex Jr. argued about the project his son wanted to be in charge of, which resulted in Lex hiding the lab. He got Dr. Lia Teng to move the lab, but in the end, she and her lab technicians were killed by an unstable clone inmate that Lex was experimenting on. Lex was not responsible for their deaths, but knew that the FBI suspected him. Instead, he pinned the murders of the lab workers on Lex Jr., framing his own son.

## Personality and traits

"*I hear there's a thin line between genius and insanity...*"
―Lex Luthor[src]
Lex Luthor was extremely rich, powerful, manipulative and intelligent. For most of his life, he was obsessed with obtaining power and control over everything he encountered. With all these traits, Lex's actions could be described as sociopathic, but his attitude was that of a narcissist. Luthor was commonly seen as a power-hungry and sadistic villain of pure evil and was prone to forming numerous Machiavellian schemes.

Luthor was already introverted and bitter during his childhood. Having endured continuous abuse from his father and mother, Luthor murdered them and made their deaths look like an accident. Since then, Luthor became more and more ruthless, seeing people as tools to be manipulated or as enemies to be destroyed. His hatred grew even more when Superman first appeared, as Luthor believed the people of New York City had replaced him for Superman as the city's saviour. Swearing vengeance on Superman, Luthor tried to destroy the Man of Steel. His sole ambition in life was to destroy Superman so that he could become humanity's rightful champion.

For all his attempts to destroy Superman, Luthor saw himself as a hero and Superman as a villain. He believed Superman's heroic acts were an obstacle for human progress. Luthor had stated on many occasions that after he destroyed Superman, he would work towards the betterment of mankind. However, Superman proved that Luthor would not keep this supposed promise, noting that Luthor did nothing after Superman's supposed death during his fight with Doomsday.

Luthor's primary handicap in facing Superman and other heroes was always his arrogance. As he fundamentally defined himself by his opposition to Superman, he believed that the reverse was also true, convinced that most of Superman's actions were simply to prove that he was 'better' than Luthor, incapable of recognising how Superman and other heroes would do good for the sake of it.

If a person dared to back out of their "agreement" with Lex, they were met with swift retaliation, costing them their job, blacklisting their family members and, in extreme cases, having them killed. Despite his crimes, Luthor had established an image as a wealthy philanthropist and managed to maintain a notable political popularity.

Some of the things that Lex enjoyed in his spare time included playing golf, drinking alcohol, smoking cigars, and reading books as evidenced by his large libraries that he maintained.

## Relationships

### Family

#### Lex Luthor Jr.

"*Luthors are not afraid. No, no, no. We don't have that luxury. We're leaders. You have a destiny, Lex. You're never going get anywhere with your eyes closed.*"
―Lex Luthor[src]
Lex and his son had a fraught relationship due to the latter's forceful and cruel parenting to the former. Lex Sr. initially saw himself as the ruler of a great business empire, grooming his son to take over someday. Lex Sr. frequently tested Lex Jr. in order to build his guile and resourcefulness. Not wanting to be simply labeled as "the son of Lex Luthor", Lex Jr. created his own company, due to which Lex Sr. saw Lex Jr. as a rival.

Even when Lex returned to his father's company to work with his Lex Sr., he constantly saw his son as a threat and could never fully let Lex Jr. in. In many ways, Lex Sr. represented the evil criminal mastermind that Lex Jr. was destined to become.

#### Alexei Luthor

"*I heard about last night. Well, you wouldn't be a Luthor if somebody weren't trying to kill you.*"
―Lex Luthor[src]

### Romances

#### Elizabeth Perske

One day you'll thank me, Lex. Smallville isn't in your future; it's just a brief chapter in your biography.

#### Eve Teschmacher

"*Just explain one thing to me Lex. Why do I love you so much?
"Because life with me is never dull.*"
―Eve Teschmacher and Lex Luthor[src]

#### Erica Alexandra del Portenza

"*Do you think l'm talking about breaking the law?"
"No, I'm just trying to figure out how far you want it bent."
"As far as you can without breaking it.*"
―Lex Luthor and Erica[src]

## Powers and abilities

### Abilities

**Genius Level Intellect**: Luthor's intelligence was nearly unrivaled, making him one of the smartest minds on Earth, firmly believing himself to be the smartest. His many plans and plots to attack, maim, and generally bring ill will towards Superman were all subjects to a major plan to find a way to end the idea of Superman as well as the Kryptonian himself. Luthor solved complicated equations in a few minutes and held a myriad of masters and degrees.

**Science**: Lex could solve complicated chemical equations in seconds. He understood the variety of powers associated with the human metagene and manipulated it for his own purposes.

**Business Management**: Lex Luthor was one of the most shrewd businessmen in the world, a trait that earned him an immense fortune second only to entrepreneurs like Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark. Luthor, however, was not above using cutthroat tactics, unethical practices and illegal operations to maintain the success of his business empire.

**Leadership**: Luthor led a large amount of supervillain teams and did so quite effectively.

## Appearances

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