Superman: Lex Luthor Special #1 review

Lex Luthor is dead. Well, the man he was is gone, anyway. The criminal scientist recently had an encounter with Brainiac, and his criminal inclinations look to have vanished along with many of his memories. Daughter Lena wants to help her Dad get back to where he was, a genius with the potential for good or evil who had lately been striving to be better.

Lena isn’t the only person keen to see the whole Lex back. Justice League scientist Mr Terrific, in what may be an actual moment of humility, concedes that Lex is better at something than he is.

Surely encouraging Lex to look into the Abyss isn’t a good idea, especially when it may contain that powerful perfume, Essence of Darkseid? Still, Superman catches up with Lex in Centennial Park, along with onetime aide Mercy Graves, who is rather taken with his still bald, but newly bearded, former foe. Has Lex made any progress on retrieving his lost memories, the key to his genius?

Lex did hurt many people, which is why he currently has someone’s goopy drink all over him.

As it turns out, though, parts of his past thought lost are returning, sparked by being back at that piano. Specifically, memories of childhood in Smallville with his cold father Lionel.

So, is the cover of this one-off telling the truth? Does the real Lex Luthor stand up, Superman’s childhood friend turned greatest foe? Find out – well, maybe – by buying this excellently crafted day in the life of Metropolis book. Superman is here, as you’ve seen, Superwoman too, but the one action scene in the issue is just a backdrop. The flashbacks interspersed throughout give us a look at what young Lex had to deal with as a boy, while the present day sequences tie into the ongoing DC All In storyline involving the disappearance and/or death of Darkseid.

The incident with Lex facing the anger of everyday Metropolis folk is something I didn’t realise I needed to see, but of course most people wouldn’t take well to a career criminal being able to freely walk the streets. So well done writer Joshua Williamson.

Less well done for Superman’s panicked reaction when it seems Lex is tapping into his old self – it’s what Superman wanted, even if mainly on behalf of Mr Terrific, so why so appalled?

Back on the positives, the flashbacks connect Lex to Clark even earlier than their previously seen boyhood encounters, and it works wonderfully from a dramatic point of view.

Lex says he doesn’t want to go back to the old version of himself but, thanks to the strong, nuanced artwork of Eddy Barrows and Eber Ferreira, you can see he’s haunted by a feeling of loss. The visuals are excellent throughout, with a favourite page being a look at Luthor down the ages, with reference even to the Golden Age Powerstone story. Superman is as classically handsome as he’s ever been, which makes the truly terrible face of the Man of Steel on the otherwise effective cover a real headscratcher.

Adriano Lucas’s carefully toned backgrounds are a real asset to the book, while the foreground figures are coloured to catch the eye. The greytones for the flashbacks work well, too (remember what we learned from Calvin and Hobbes, in the old days the world was black and white). Dave Sharpe letters with his usual style and thoughtfulness, giving us the likes of Lionel Luthor’s perfect Drunkfont.

I liked this comic a lot, and I hope DC gives us more of these Fifth Week treats – it’s something that happened regularly for awhile in the Nineties, before the gap in the weekly Superman schedule was plugged with the quarterly Superman: Man of Tomorrow book.