Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice – Who Is Lex Luthor, Jr.?
By Steve Lam
Lex Luthor, Jr.
Created by Murphy Anderson, Cary Bates, and Curt Swan, the character of Lex Luthor, Jr. made his first appearance in Action Comics #544 (June 1983). To explain the appearance of Lex Luthor’s son in this pre-Crisis storyline, we’ll need a bit of backstory.
Lex Luthor challenges Superman to a boxing match (yeah, it sounds quite silly, but bear with me) and as we all know, this probably wouldn’t be a fair fight. Well, Luthor finds a desert planet which revolves around a red sun, meaning it would strip Superman of his powers. The two agreed that if Superman wins the fight, Luthor would be brought back to Earth and imprisoned. If Luthor wins, Superman would be left on the planet and Luthor would return to Earth.
On the desert world, Superman ends up winning the match. However, a sandstorm strikes and Luthor assumes Superman to have died. Luthor soon finds a primitive city that use to be extremely advanced, but due to eons of war, all scientific knowledge and progress was lost. Luthor, being a genius himself, brought science and technology back to the planet by rediscovering their lost knowledge. However, even though the people were now enlightened again, they still had a water shortage problem. Luthor even went as far as constructing robots to look for water with no success.
Superman soon arrives and re-challenges Luthor to another duel. Towards the end of the fight, an exhausted Luthor forfeits, giving himself up to Superman. After encountering a yellow sun on their way back to Earth, Luthor convinces the repowered Superman to hurl giant ice chunks from a frozen planet back to the desert planet. With his x-ray vision, Superman activates Luthor’s robots to build canals all over the planet, bringing water to all its denizens. The grateful race ends up naming the planet Lexor.
Lexor would appear in various issues where Luthor made it his base of operations. He would also marry Ardora — a woman from the planet. The two produced a son named Lex Luthor, Jr. After being defeated in another battle with Superman, Luthor makes a permanent move to Lexor and retires. He soon discovers that Lexor would meet the same demise as Krypton. To counter this, Luthor created a neutrarod to counter the reactions in the planet’s core.
A chance discovery of an armored battlesuit from Lexor’s past would once again reignite Luthor’s urge to commit crimes. Superman then goes to Lexor to stop him. In their fight, Luthor’s battlesuit overloads, destroying the neutrarod spire that had been keeping the planet stable. Lexor and its people are annihilated, along with Adora and Lex Luthor, Jr. Unable to accept responsibility in the death of his own wife and child, Luthor put the blame on Superman.
The battlesuit would later become a staple weapon of Luthor which allowed for stories that dealt with hand-to-hand combat with Superman. However, after the Crisis on Infinite Earths story arc, this continuity and everything associated with it ceased to exist.
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