Alexander Joseph "Lex" Luthor is a fictional character, a supervillain appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. Luthor is the archenemy of Superman, and as a high-status supervillain, has also come into conflict with Batman and other superheroes in the DC Universe. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the character first appeared in Action Comics #23 (April 1940). Luthor is described as "a power-mad, evil scientist" of high intelligence and incredible technological prowess. Luthor's goals typically center on killing Superman, the foremost obstacle to achieving the villain's megalomaniacal goals. Despite periodically wearing a powered exoskeleton, Luthor has traditionally lacked superpowers or a dual identity.
The character was originally depicted as a mad scientist who, in the vein of pulp novels, wreaks havoc on the world with his futuristic weaponry. In his earliest appearances, Luthor is shown with a full head of red hair. Despite this, the character later became hairless as the result of an artist's mistake. A 1960 story by Jerry Siegel expanded upon Luthor's origin and motivations, revealing him to be a childhood friend of Superman's who lost his hair when a fire destroyed his laboratory; Luthor vowed revenge.Following the 1985 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths, the character was re-imagined as a Machiavellian industrialist and white-collar criminal, even briefly serving as President of the United States. In recent years, various writers have revived Luthor's mad scientist persona from the 1940s. The character was ranked 4th on IGN's list of the Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time and as the 8th Greatest Villain by Wizard on its 100 Greatest Villains of All Time list. He was portrayed by Gene Hackman in the early Superman films between 1978 to 1987, John Shea portrayed Lex Luthor in the 1990s TV series "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman", Michael Rosenbaum portrayed a younger incarnation of Lex Luthor in the TV series "Smallville", and Kevin Spacey portrayed Luthor in Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns". Spacey's Luthor continues the real-estate fixation of the Hackman version, but also appears to have a real personal antipathy toward Superman.
Game Description
“Criminal genius Lex Luthor hates his intellectual inferiors, but loathes Superman most of all. He can’t stand that a muscle bound alien garners more attention and adulation than a man of his stature.”
Powers and Abilities
Lex Luthor has the physical capabilities and limitations of a normal adult with no metahuman abilities. However, he possesses a genius level of intelligence. For virtually his entire publication history, he has been depicted as the most intelligent human in the DC Universe, and as one of the most intelligent beings of any planet or species. He has mastered seemingly every known form of science, including space travel, extra-dimensional travel, biochemistry, robotics, computers, synthetic polymers, communications, mutations, transportation, holography, energy generation, spectral analysis, and more (including time travel in many Pre-Crisis stories). With the exception of the extraterrestrial entity known as Brainiac, he does not view any other being as an intellectual peer.
Over the years, Luthor has made liberal use of Kryptonite weapons capable of injuring Superman and other Kryptonians. Since the Bronze Age, he has also utilized various battlesuits in many stories. Additionally, he often wore a Kryptonite ring on his right hand in Post-Crisis stories, but abandoned this tactic after prolonged exposure to K-radiation resulted in the loss of his hand and poisoned his entire body (requiring him to transplant his brain into a cloned body in order to survive).
