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Luthor as Capitalist Bogeyman

Different minds interpret the economic adventurers of capitalist societies differently. Some view them as the creators of wealth, others as hoarders of wealth in some fixed-sum game where every dollar one man has must come from another's pocket. Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor has, since his reinvention in the eighties, become much like the bogeyman-monopolist-plutocrat much derided and feared by socialists and their intellectual heirs. Though beginning as another variant on the rich theme of the Mad Scientist, Luthor has come to incorporate in his person the standard litany of objections to capitalism itself.

Luthor has become the Big Bad Corporation, the Acolyte of the Dollar, the Filth of Lucre. He has become the embodiment of concerns about the ownership, accumulation, and control of capital. As avatar of the various weak points of capitalism (which some see as its only important features), he stands as a political statement about economic systems, and does so regardless of the intent of the talents who handle the character, since the criticisms attach to his definition even more than to the varied, but unified, interpretations the character has enjoyed since his retrofitting.

Luthor, Old-Style

Until 1983, Luthor existed in a mostly consistent form. The wardrobe, and little else that really mattered, tended to vary. Thus we might see a Wayne Boring-era Luthor who seldom appeared without a jacket and tie; a Curt Swan-era Luthor who seldom appeared in anything but the institutional grays of a prison uniform; or, in the seventies, a Luthor wearing a rather obnoxious purple and green outfit with a jet pack and an enormous disco collar.

Throughout a three-decade period - what we could truly call a generation between 1954 and 1983 - Luthor remained a fairly consistent property. He lived in a world centered around Superman, which gave Luthor himself a rather shallow character, bent on revenge and the occasional laugh that might go with it. Sometimes he would plan better than other times. Sometimes he ended up in clownish roles. His hatred for Superman, however, moved him throughout this period.

During this period, Luthor made his living precisely as one would expect a gangster endowed with scientific genius to do: He invented devices for holding people for ransom, he invented devices for stealing things (including money to fund the development of more devices), and he invented devices to do bad things to Superman.

By the sixties, Luthor had more or less earned about a million life sentences in prison, and from that point forward frequently appeared in comics mainly as a kind of self-administered furlough program from his cell. In terms of a comic book character, this lifestyle may have seemed adequate. Ultimately, however, a hard-nosed realism would incline writers to examine the Luthor prison lifestyle. Would a man with Luthor's natural gifts really live that way?

Luthor, New-Style

Byrne and Wolfman asked a few questions about Luthor that seemed to have eluded previous Superman writers. "Why doesn't Luthor patent something and get rich?" "Why doesn't a genius like Luthor figure out ways to beat the rap in court?" and "Why doesn't Luthor care about anything besides cutting Superman down to size?" might neatly cover the bases on where Luthor failed to act as a more realistic character with his talents almost certainly would choose to do.

A Luthor who bothered to think about more than two things (Superman and gadgets) could, and did, expand into whatever territories a brilliant intellect could conquer. The new Luthor had one finger in local politics, another in electronic communications, another in organized crime, and divided those that remained among his technological research and finding ways to buttress his own influence by undermining that of Superman.

Indeed, Luthor so diversified his portfolio that he barely has time to slap on a jet pack lately; and hardly anyone sees him at the controls of some improvement of the same old anti-Superman ray cannon, a device he spent many tales in the sixties failing to perfect.

The Luthor Portfolio

Today's Luthor combines many of the best (and, for that matter, the worst) features of Thomas Edison, Sam Walton, Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, and John Gotti rolled up into one man. We could add fictional characters like Professor Moriarty into the mix and still not stretch the description beyond the capabilities of the modern Luthor. He does not content himself with a dispersed array of worthless machines - Kryptonite rays that ultimately didn't work and Jimmy Olsen robots that failed to do the job - hidden away in secret caves in places no real person would ever find on a map.

Luthor, in the comics, owns television stations. Luthor owns technology concerns. Luthor even owns the absurd "Lex-Mart," the source of more than a few snickers during the "Death of Superman" story arc of the early nineties.

Indeed, one could make a good case for considering Luthor a benefactor of Metropolis, and, indeed, sometimes Luthor himself seems to believe this; in such a context, his current resentment of Superman makes more sense. He sees, in Superman, a rival for the affections of his child, Metropolis; and, while Luthor had to build what he holds, Superman evidently enjoys his own remarkable traits as a benefit of an other-planetary heritage. Thus, like the old rivalry between new money and old money, we see Luthor's created power versus Superman's received power.

Back to the point, though: Luthor has, through entrepreneurial vision (and no small lack of ethics) created, amassed (and often defrauded and stolen) to get to his current place as a prominent figure in Metropolis and as a world-class rascal.

The Case against Capitalism

Let us consider some of the recurrent criticisms against capitalism and see how they apply to the refurbished Lex Luthor.

In capitalism, some individuals become so wealthy that they believe they can do or buy anything. Here we've struck gold; this trait neatly describes a great deal of what underlies the current Luthor character. While the old Luthor might behave like a sociopath because his great purpose (undermining or destroying Superman) took priority over quaint notions like morality, or, alternately, because his perceived superiority justified anything he wanted to do, the current Luthor frequently considers Metropolis his personal plaything, a bauble he bought and cut himself. Similarly, the new Luthor has, at times, fancied that he owns the people who work for him, as evidenced by episodes of extorting sex from employees (at least once early in the Byrne run) and of killing insubordinate employees (at least once, as Luthor, Jr., during the "Death of Superman" stories). The new Luthor can create a more plausible rationale for his vendetta against Superman: He sees Superman as trying to steal what Luthor has built and earned, the role of patron and defender of Metropolis. As well, this Luthor sees everything as something he owns, including the wife and child he somehow managed late in the 1990s.

In capitalism, single individuals can accumulate great amounts of personal wealth while others might have nothing. This particular criticism doesn't necessarily impugn Luthor. While he has become obscenely rich in his current incarnation, and guards what he has accumulated with considerable impunity, stories where he plays a role do not seem to suggest that he has any designs on the monopoly of wealth.

In capitalism, money translates to political power, with such power thereby left in the hands of individuals with stunted moral sensibilities. We definitely have a hit here. The new Luthor could replace the old Thomas Nast monopolist-plutocrat caricature - the huge fat man in a top hat - as symbol of Toxic Capitalism. As he did when one more rightly described Luthor as a "gangster" than as a "technoindustrialist," this Superman nemesis has little real morality, though sometimes he might rationalize his self-interested deeds as the result of some principle.

In capitalism, individuals become powerful enough, through wealth, to sway powerful political figures, and thereby transform governance from something for people to something that exploits them for the capitalist's ends.. I have yet to read a Luthor story that deals with these themes, but it seems almost impossible that DC has failed to explore how a man like Luthor could manipulate weak-willed politicians who like money better than their own integrity. If Luthor hasn't yet bought particular municipal candidates in Metropolis, expect him to do so in the future.

In capitalism, extreme wealth allows some individuals to rise above the law, via bribes and economic blackmail. Here we have both one of the key definitions of the Luthor character and an important element of the struggle between Superman and Luthor; for Superman frequently tries (and often fails) to impose upon Luthor the same laws and moral standards that apply, with much less resistance, to the average citizen in the streets of Metropolis. We could call this struggle Principle versus Privilege ("private law") and recognize Superman as Principle's defender with Luthor as Privilege's water boy.

But What Does It All Mean?

I do not believe that Byrne or Wolfman had any particular polemical intent with this refitting of Lex Luthor in a version more fitting of the 1980s than the 1960s. Their design resulted from a logical analysis of the character, extrapolation of how he might more realistically act in his own interests in the presence of intellectual (and particularly scientific) brilliance but also in the absence of real compassion for his fellow man. Furthermore, the previously-mentioned criticisms of capitalism do not derive from the vitriolic slogans of extremists; I doubt that too many dedicated capitalists would truly disagree that these drawbacks exist. Across the political spectrum (or, these days, political spectra), such ideas have become fairly commonplace.

Nonetheless, the end product, a fusion of the classical mad scientist, the Marvel-style gangster overlord, and the technospeculator of the eighties combines to form a package with considerable polemical potential. If some writer of the future decided that he needed to use the Superman franchise to demonstrate the failings of capitalist economics, he would not need to build a character for it. He need merely call upon the fully-formed person of Lex Luthor and point.