Lex Luthor is Mean to a Bunny Rabbit!

cover art by Curt Swan

Sure, Lex Luthor has committed countless crimes, attempted to kill Superman on countless occasions and is a complete villain by any reasonable standard. But now, by golly, he's sunk to a new low. He's mean to a cute little bunny rabbit!

This happens in Action Comics #333 (February 1966), written by Leo Dorfman and drawn by Al Plastino. The bunny rabbit thing is an initial experiment to test the effectiveness of Lex's plan to psychologically drive Superman to the point where the Man of Steel is unable to make decisions. Hey, if it worked on a bunny rabbit, then it should work on the world's most powerful superhero, right?

It sounds like I'm making mocking the story, but it actually is wonderful Silver Age fun. Lex kick-starts his plan by saving Superman's life on several occasions, including stopping a crook armed with a sword made of Kryptonian metal (which could thus hurt Superman). One would think it would have been simplier to to let Superman get killed, but it actually makes sense that Lex would want to play mind games with his arch enemy first before being the one to personally finish him off. Also, Superman had recently outed Lex as a criminal to Adora, Lex's wife on the planet Lexor.

He then uses an image projector to make people think that Superman has turned into a monster, with Supes being completely unaware of why everyone is panicking.

By the way, though Curt Swan is without question THE Superman artist, I think that Plastino was the correct artist for this story. He had a way of making panels such as the one below look particularly fun.

Superman begins to worry about his mental health and takes a few days off resting on a cloud planet. He returns just in time to stop a Luthor-built robot from robbing a bank.

Except it wasn't robbing the bank. While Superman was off-planet, Lex had begun to return money he had previously stolen to banks, using robots as messengers. Now Superman has messed that up. The Citizens of Metropolis begin to sign petitions asking the Man of Steel to leave town.

Well, at least Lex is now apparently a good guy. He even warns Superman that a train full of radioactive waste is now a runaway. Superman immediately transports the train to Venus, only to later find out that the train was actually full of police commissioners from all over the world who were heading for a convention. The lead-lined cars were protection against attacks by criminals.

Superman retrieves the castaway cops, but he's now pretty frazzled. So when Lex uses a weather control machine to bring a new ice age to Metropolis, Superman considers and rejects plan after plan to deal with the situation. What if he chooses the wrong plan? What if he makes things worse yet again? Soon, just like that poor bunny rabbit, he's flying in circles unable to make a decision.

The story breaks here at this bizarre cliffhanger. The original readers in 1966 would have to wait two issues for the story's resolution, as Action Comics #334 would be a reprint issue (though both that issue and #335 would be cover-dated March 1966). But we'll only have to wait one week before we take a look at how it all ends.