Cover Cavalcade

 JULY IS BRAINIAC AND LUTHOR MONTH!!!

A cover by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez from 1977.

Cover Cavalcade

 JULY IS BRAINIAC AND LUTHOR MONTH!!!!

The Man of Steel needs to file an appeal right away! This 1962 cover is by Curt Swan.

Cover Cavalcade

 JULY IS BRAINIAC AND LUTHOR MONTH!!!

This 1983 cover introduced us to the new look for both villains. New or old look? Which is better?

Cover Cavalcade

 JULY IS BRAINIAC AND LUTHOR MONTH!!!!

Here's another 1964 Curt Swan cover.

Cover Cavalcade

 JULY IS BRAINIAC AND LUTHOR MONTH!!!

This Curt Swan cover is from 1964.

A Quick Trip to Mars

 

cover art by Curt Swan

The next story from Superman Family #182 (March-April 1977) features Supergirl, whom we first see clearing the way for the Viking probe to land on Mars. (Which happened in real life in July 1976).

I wonder, in the DC Universe, how it might affect the morale of NASA when they spend years (including a year in flight from Earth) to get a probe on Mars, while superheroes and mad scientists can get there in seconds.

In this story, written by Jack C. Harris and drawn by Mike Vosburg, we see Supergirl helping out NASA and they are perfectly happy to have the help. Larger issues about this (raised by Eliot S. Maggin in "Must There be a Superman" a few years earlier) aren't discussed this time. Nor do they need to be--it's not the point of this particular story. I bring it up simply because it occured to me while I was reading the tale and... well, it's my blog. 

Supergirl returns to Earth and a line of dialogue tells us that someone has been stealing rocket components. Soon after, a Viking photograph shows a piece of kryptonite is on Mars.

At this time in DC's continuity, all the kryptonite on Earth had been transformed into iron. This was done because it was felt that kryptonite was used too often as a plot devise. But the stuff still existed out in space, so it had not completely disappeared.

One of the staff at NASA is really a spy for Lex Luthor--and is also the guy who has been stealing rocket components. With these, he's built a rocket ship discussed as a redwood. When he tells Lex about the kryptonite, the arch-criminal summons the rocket via remote control and uses this to escape prison. The rocket, equipped with a space warp devise, then reaches Mars within minutes.

So once again, we see the importance of keeping Lex Luthor away from the darn machine shop while he's in prison.

Soon, the Viking camera is picking up Lex walking on the surface of Mars. (Let's be generous and assume that Mars was at it's closest point to Earth, so it only took five minutes for this image to reach NASA. That's not too much of a time gap for the story to still work--though I suspect that Harris simply didn't think of this or choose to ignore it for the sake of moving the story along.)

Luthor's spy wrecks the monitor, but Supergirl quickly catches him, then flies to Mars. Luthor has found the kryptonite and put this into a sort of kryptonite bazooka. When Supergirl arrives, he shoots and "kills" her.

But it's a trap. In fact, it's all a trap. The kryptonite was fake, planted there by Supergirl to smoke out the spy in NASA and recover the stolen rocket parts. 

It's a nice touch, by the way, that Supergirl wears a head set to explain how she can talk with Luthor so easily.

It's a fun, well-constructed story, showing off Supergirl's intelligence as well as her powers. That's a key part of what makes the best Superman family stories work. Whether it's Superman, his younger cousin, or one of the Super Pets, when a writer creates a situation in which the hero must use his or her brains as well has their godlike powers, then we have a truly well-told tale. 

In two weeks, we'll return to Superman Family to see how Krypto is doing. Next week, we'll watch a turtle joust with an alligator.

A Comic Book Character Visits a Comic Book Universe

Lex's plan is actually a pretty logical one. He knows Superman is vulnerable to magic. So he invents a magic accumulator that will store up enough magical energy to destroy the Man of Steel.

But then he gets careless. Disdainfully tossing aside a copy of Shazam (because that fake superhero stuff is so silly--not at all like the completely logical DC Universe!), he zaps it with the accumulator and accidentally transports himself to Earth-S. He's now in Captain Marvel's universe.

He's a tad confused at first, especially after he encounters a helpful talking tiger. But then he sees Captain Marvel in action and realizes where he is.

This is the set-up for "Captain Marvel meets... Lex Luthor!?!" from Shazam #15 (November-December 1974). Remember that DC had by this time acquired the rights to the Big Red Cheese and other Fawcett characters, but until the 1986 reboot, these characters were kept in their own universe.

This, I think, was a wise decision. It allowed Earth-S to maintain its own individual feel. It remained a Universe where the veneer of "realism" gave way to Comic Book Logic taken to its farthest extreme without ever quite breaking it. It's a world in which Captain Marvel and his supporting cast worked best. When these characters were made a part of the regular DC Universe, that individuality and the fun that went with it were lost. When this happened, the chances of a Shazam story that would be as entertaining as the original Monster Society of Evil was lost, as were any further chances of Captain Marvel fighting giant robot bunny rabbits. The world is a poorer place because of this.



Anyway, Lex meets and teams up with Mr. Mind. The deal is that they will use the magic accumulator to destroy Captain Marvel, then Mr. Mind will assist in destroying Superman. Of course, the two villains plan on back-stabbing each other at the first opportunity, but that's to be expected.

They lure Captain Marvel to an aquarium, where Lex zaps him with the accumulator. This drains the hero of his magic and turns him back into Billy Batson. Poor Billy is underwater, unable to say Shazam--and there's a hammerhead shark in the tank with him!

Fortunately, hammerhead sharks react the same way to waving something red in front of them as do bulls. (Because of course they do.) This gives Billy a chance to use the shark to break the glass and escape. He turns back into Captain Marvel and Lex decides its time to double-cross his partner.

Lex uses the accumulator to zap himself back to Earth-1, where a bad day is capped off by his immediate capture when he discovers Superman is waiting for him.

This story was written by Denny O'Neil, who was best known for writing Batman tales but knew how to play well with more powerful characters when he had to. The pencils are by Bob Oksner, whose style is indeed reminiscent of C.C. Beck. "Captain Marvel Meets.. Lex Luthor!?!" drips with the same sort of fun that Beck and writer Otto Binder brought to the Golden Age stories.

Baldness = Evil

Lex Luthor's first appearance was in Action Comics #23 (April 1940). He actually had hair in that initial appearance.  But whether his head was full of hair or whether he was bald as a cue ball, he soon established himself as Superman's most persistent enemy.

He was, of course, a mad scientist, able to invent all sorts of bizarre super weapons in his attempts to destroy Superman and/or conquer the world. It was his intelligence--he may very well be the smartest man in the world--and the imaginative albeit evil inventions he uses that made him a villain who could believably take on the Man of Steel.

[Later attempts to retcon him into an evil businessman were never completely satisfying--though Clancy Brown's superb voice work on the 1990s Superman animated series still made him an extremely effective villain.]


Before long, Lex was being drawn as a bald guy--probably to give him a little more visual distinctiveness. But it was a full two decades after his first appearance that we finally find out why he's bald.

Jerry Siegel, who created both Superman and Lex, was back with DC Comics in 1960 and he--appropriately enough--finally explained Lex's lack of hair AND his hatred of Superman.

"How Luthor Met Superboy" was published in Adventure Comics #271. It's here we find out that a teenaged Lex, with a full head of red hair and dreams of becoming a scientist, lived in Smallville at the same time Clark Kent did.

This is a pretty cool situation for Lex, because he has a serious case of hero-worship for Superboy. When he gets a chance to save Superboy from some kryptonite, the two become friends. Superboy builds Lex a modern lab.

Lex quickly shows his scientific smarts by creating artificial life.  But a lab accident causes a fire and, when Superboy blows the fire out, some toxic chemical fumes cause Lex's hair to fall out.

That sends Lex off on a quick trip to Crazy Town. He vows eternal hatred of Superboy. The situation is exacerbated when Lex tries several experiments to improve crop production around Smallville. These go awry, forcing Superboy's intervention. Lex, in his current frame-of-mind, assumes the Boy of Steel is actually sabotaging his efforts.

By the end of the story, Lex has made his first attempt to kill his former hero. This becomes his life goal. In Superboy #86 (January 1961), for instance, he uses a mind-helmet to animate a small army of rock-men made from kryptonite.


So by the time Lex and Clark are adults, the now-mad scientist is one of the world's most nefarious super-villains. He was pretty much an out-and-out villain, but there were occasional (and relatively successful) attempts to humanize him.

For instance, in Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane  #23 (February 1961), we discover that Lex had a sister who was still a baby when he turned evil. Her parents changed their name and Lena Thorul never knew who her brother was. But Lex knows about her and even set aside his vendetta to team up with Superman when Lena needed to be rescued from the Bottle City of Kandor. (That happens in Action Comics 297 and 298-two issues I'd love to review, but I sadly do not own them or reprints of them.)

In another instance, he shows regret when he inadvertently stops Superboy from preventing Abraham Lincoln's assassination. 

But it's in Superman #164 (October 1963) that Lex receives his most effective bit of character development. I've actually written about this story before in an old post about Edmond Hamilton, but it's worth revisiting.

After escaping from prison again (because some doofus of a warden let him use the machine shop!), Lex challenges Superman to a one-on-one fight on a planet with a red sun, where the Kryptonian will have no powers. Figuring that the world will lose confidence in him if he refuses, Superman accepts.

The duel starts with a bare-fisted boxing match, but soon Lex is using some of the scientific gadgets he smuggled to the planet to cheat. But the situation changes when Lex discovers there are people living on the planet--a race that has forgotten how to use the technology designed by their ancestors and is now suffering from a massive water shortage.

Lex helps them drive off some large birds that were about to ravage their crops and becomes a hero. He finds he likes being a hero and, when his duel with Superman resumes, he throws the fight and willingly goes back to jail in order to get Superman's help in saving the people.

It's a great story. On top of Hamilton's usual skill in using comic book logic to built an imaginative but internally consistent story, this view of Lex really does give him some depth and generates a bit of honestly-earned sympathy for him. Heck, Lex is such a hero to these people that they rename the plant Lexor. He even marries one of the inhabitants--a pretty lady named Adora. They later have a son.

It gives Lex an aura of tragedy, making him that much more interesting a character. Here's a planet where he's admired and respected. He has a wife and son who love him. He is able to live a constructive life of service to others whenever he visits and take satisfaction from that service. But he can never bring himself to completely give up his vendetta against Superman. His unwillingness to give up his hatred means he stays a villain forever. In a 1983 issue of Action Comics, this has some rather tragic consequences for the entire planet of Lexor.

We have a couple more villains to cover, but eventually, we'll visit one of the "imaginary" (out of continuity) tales from the era. That one involves Lex at his most villainous and it my personal favorite of those imaginary yarns.

Who let Luthor into the prison workshop AGAIN?

Superman #167 (February 1964)

A look at Superman's Rogue's Gallery should start with Lex Luthor. And Luthor plays an important part in this story. But Brainiac's origin story overlapped with our look at Kandor, so we'll finish up with him before moving on to the big bad baldie.


In his initial appearance, Brainiac was presumable a living alien being. Now, we discover, he's actual a computer. (Actually, he's presumably a robot with a computer brain, but we won't nitpick.)

Luthor discovers this after his latest jail break. A jail break he manages because he was able to smuggle stuff out of the prison workshop. Who let Lex Luthor into the prison workshop? Never let Lex Luthor into the prison workshop. It's just not a good idea. It's something that really ought to be spelled out very clearly in any prison warden's How-To guide.

Anyway, after he fails in another attempt to kill the Man of Steel, he realizes he needs an ally. So he uses a space-time mental scanner to look for a likely candidate.

This is the Macguffin that writer Edmond Hamilton uses to recount Brainiac's true origin.(The DC Wiki, by the way, lists Cary Bates as a co-writer.)  He was created by the computer tyrants that once ruled an alien world--made to look humanoid so he could spy out other worlds to conquer. Eventually, the computer tyrants were overthrown and destroyed, leaving Brainiac the only surviving member of his mechanical race.

It's a great origin, though it directly contradicts several aspects of the original story. It also comes up with a weak reason for justifying Brainiac 5's existence--that member of the Legion of Super Heroes was supposedly a descendant of the original Brainiac. This no longer makes sense, so it turns out that a young man (renamed Brainiac II) was forced to join up with Brainiac to "enchance his human disguise." The kid escapes, keeps the name Brainiac for no good reason at all, and becomes the true ancestor of Brainiac 5.

That aspect of the retcon is about as contrived as you can get, but I'm okay with it. The retcon as a whole--making Brainiac a computer rather than a living being--gave him a uniqueness that enhances his already nifty visual design.  The contradiction of past details is justified by the retcon's overall coolness.

That brings up the subject of how important a coherent continuity should be in a fictional universe. I'm a firm believer that continuity is important. A fictional universe has to have a definable history and a consistent internal logic. Otherwise, the suspension of disbelief snaps and the foundation for good storytelling is lost.

But we can't be completely dogmatic in this point-of-view. Sometimes, you have to ignore something simply because it was a just-plain bad idea. It becomes dis-continuity later on because that is simply preferable to acknowledging its existence.

In this case, though, there was no need to ignore a bad idea. Brainiac was, rather, a strong edition to Superman's Rogue's Gallery. His visual design and his shrink ray combined to make him memorable.

Which is why he started to make return appearances, even though his first adventure was constructed so that it looked as if Brainiac was meant to be a one-shot villain.  That meant he eventually needed a strong origin story. Hamilton gives us that--so it's easy to forgive a few continuity glitches.

So continuity is important, but violating continuity can be excused if the story is good enough. Of course, whether or not the story is good enough is a matter of personal opinion. But since my opinion is clearly more important than everyone else's, we'll just go with it.

Which finally brings us back to the story, which progresses with Hamilton's usual flair for wonderfully bizarre story construction. Brainiac is currently a prisoner on an alien world. Luthor has to think his way past the various traps and safeguards Superman installed to keep anyone from springing Brainiac. The two team up, but plot to double-cross each other almost as much as they plot to kill Superman.

They do manage to keep from killing each other long enough to trap their arch-enemy, strip him of his powers and shrink him down. But Superman without his powers can still think--he's soon free long enough to signal Kandor that he needs help. The Superman Emergency Squad pulls off a last-minute rescue, though they are forced to allow the villains to go free in exchange for bringing Superman out of a coma and returning him to full size and power.

The story not only gives Brainiac more "personality"--making him more than just another evil alien--it's also a darn good story. Like the other Superman stories we've looked at in our tour of the Weisinger Era, it flows along from one plot twist to another without ever violating the bizarre but consistent internal logic of Superman's universe. Artist Curt Swan gives the whole thing a proper backbone with his strong and imaginative art.

You can, by the way, read this story online HERE.

Next time, we'll take a closer look at Lex, examining how his feud with Superman began and taking a look at what I believe to be the single best Lex Luthor story ever written.