Let's be fair. Superman is not exactly the most interesting superhero to read. He's invincible, he can fly, he can lift mountains, he can freeze you with his breath, hear clouds scrape together, watch cells divide, see things thousands of miles away, burn things with his heat ray vision, and see through solid objects.
His only vulnerabilities are to magic, kryptonite and fatigue poisons. That means any time he's fighting a supervillain, the fight is going to end quickly or destructively, and the action sequences in his comics are going to be melodramatic and juvenile. I recently borrowed a collection of the regular Superman titles from the library and never finished. It was awful.
By the same token, Lex Luthor usually isn't a compelling villain. He gets solid treatment from Neil Gaiman in "Black Orchid," and from time to time elsewhere as well, but he's usually little more than Richard III on Machiavellian steroids. He schemes and plots, and he avoids getting caught, because that's what he does. It's his function. Lex Luthor just enjoys power and wants to crush everybody beneath his feet because he can.
The best treatment I've ever seen of the Superman legend technically wasn't even Superman but Hyperion, a pastiche published by Marvel Comics. The second probably would be Mark Waid's treatment in "Kingdom Come." In both cases, what made the Superman character compelling was the writer's exploration of his interactions with the rest of the world, either the superpowered community in "Kingdom Come," or the nonpowered humans of "Supreme Power."
Similarly, John Byrne gave Lex Luthor probably the most compelling characterization during his run on "Man of Steel" in the 1980s. At one point in that run, Luthor's detectives and agents have assured him with almost total certainty that Superman is none other than Clark Kent, a reporter for the Daily Planet. Luthor, rather than using this discovery to crush his adversary, fires everybody from the project because it's so idiotic to assume that a man as powerful as Superman would be content to work as a newspaper reporter.
Azzarello builds on the foundation Byrne laid, by showing us exactly how Luthor views himself and Superman. In this reading, Luthor sees Superman not as a savior, hero or inspiration to the people, but as übermensch -- an alien of incalculable power, who is posing as a hero but who in fact limits human potential and who could at any point decide to rule humanity openly.
This isn't exactly new material. Writers established years ago that Luthor considers Superman a danger, believes himself to be the only person to see the danger clearly, and even imagines that he'll be hailed as a hero after he has bested Superman once and for all. The difference is that every time we see Luthor expostulate on this position, we see him driven by jealousy and fear.
Here Azzarello shows us Luthor as he sees himself: a decent man who offers humanity hope, who treats his janitor as an equal, with respect; a man who takes interest in his employees' children and their welfare; and who is welcome to sacrifice whatever it takes to show the world what a menace Superman really is.
And when he casually ruins lives, threatens a labor representative with death, and manipulates other people into committing atrocities, we see hints that it bothers him.
I enjoyed the nice touches that round out Luthor, who insists on calling his janitor by his first name, the feeling guilt and grief over the consequences of his actions, and the evident respect he has for Alfred Pennyworth and his commitment to Bruce Wayne. And I appreciated that we never got Superman's perspective on the story, but for one sentence.
But at the same time, I couldn't help but feel there were a few unexplained and needless additions to the story. Sure, it's nice to see Lex Luthor matching wits with Bruce Wayne as one businessman to another, but there's what appears to be a fight between Batman and Superman that's never explained, a decision Wayne makes to share Wayne Technologies research with Lexcorp, and an entire fifth of the comic that goes in what I presume is supposed be thematic rather than chronological order, with the result that I've read it five times and still don't quite understand the order of events or its relevance.
Despite its shortcoming, the scope of this sympathetic portrayal of Luthor is unprecedented in my experience. For that reason alone, this comic is worth reading and it deserves to be included in any Luthor bible that D.C. compiles.
Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.
Tweet
No comments:
Post a Comment