Gender: Male Location: Planning to take over the WORLD!
is luthor the WORST arch-enemy ever?
hey gang,
ya kow, i can't help myself. when i think superman, i think lex luthor. but a case could certainly be made that luthor is nowhere near superman's arch-enemy. darkseid, maybe? doomsday?
so i want to hear some thoughts on luthor as a character. did you like him better when he wore the armor and was an actual physical match for superman? is he lame because he always requires a plot device to win? because all superman needs to do is breathe on him to kill him? does anyone actually LIKE luthor, or view him as a real threat?
Luthor is a GREAT archnemesis. Actually, in a way, he really sets the standard for all arch-rival villains everywhere. Because he is Superman's thematic, character, and power opposite.
Symbollically speaking, Superman is a heavenly being or a sort of archangel. He came to us from above, protects us from on high, and stands for an ideal of righteousness that humans have to fight every day of their life to attain.
Luthor, on the other hand, is symbollically the best and worst of humanity rolled into one person. He's ingenious, ambitious, clever, and bold. He's also proud and vain, greedy and totally amoral. He stands, in a lot of ways, for the modern Übermensche of Nietzche's writings. And he is the ultimate iconoclast--unable to stand the thought that there should be anything in the universe more powerful, or more admired than HIM.
That's why they're the perfect pair of rivals in my opinion.
I understand the opposites idea about Luthor, and as a kid I always accepted it, I suppose. But it's always kind of irksome to see a being with herald-level power having to spend time matching wits with an ordianry human. Darkseid, at his best, is always the character I like to see him against.
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
Gender: Male Location: Planning to take over the WORLD!
though i like lex, i can't help but think that he has not been used to his fullest. how long has it been since anyone's read a great luthor/superman arc where lex posed a clear threat to superman?
Gender: Male Location: Planning to take over the WORLD!
ahhhh . . . that is waiting for me in a box at my local comic shop! i hope you're right. it would be good to see lex in some real action. last time i think i read a good luthor arc was the ww3 arc in jla, but he was basically a monkey for meggadon most of that series. (though early on in that arc he WAS shown to be an ultimate mastermind . . .)
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Dec 18th, 2005 11:45 PM
