Villains Month continues this week from DC Comics. This week, Lex Luthor walks right out of
prison to begin his scheming ways.
Is Lex Luthor the smartest man on Earth? If he isn’t, he’s at least the most
self-obsessed. The story opens with Lex
casually exchanging his orange prison jumpsuit for a charcoal business one. Here we get a glimpse into the man, where he
can seemingly do anything he wants with just a ten minute phone call. Once into his suit he proclaims, “It’s time
to stop being selfish. The world needs
Lex Luthor.”
The story revolves almost entirely around Luthor’s two great
obsessions, himself, and Superman. After
strolling out of prison and not being greeted by the big blue boy scout, Luthor
took it opon himself to find Superman.
After searching media outlets worldwide for hours, Lex comes to the only
logical solution a billionaire psycho would.
He spends $80 million to put people in danger in order to draw Superman
out. He sends four privately funded
astronauts into space from his private company and orders them to shut off
their engines and alter their orbit in such a way that they will fall out of
orbit and plummet to their doom. Of
course, they are just under the impression that this is a marketing ploy for
LexCorp to come in and save the day.
What follows can only be described as genius in a way, but I won’t spoil
it for you.
Charles Soule’s (27,
Swamp Thing) writing shines
throughout this book. A relative
newcomer to the industry (his first professional credit coming in 2009), Soule
demonstrates a tremendous understanding of Luthor’s character and has him
coming across oh-so-deliciously evil. If a Lex Luthor series were ever to come back
into play (Lord knows we could probably do away with one of Batman’s 11
thousand ongoing titles), I would definitely read it if Soule were to have
writing duties.
The pencil work provided by Raymund Bermund is very clean,
showcasing Luthor’s own opinion of himself.
There’s very little use of shadow within the book, which seems
fitting. My favorite panel however is
actually the panel where the engines to the starship are shut off. The ship is in orbit over the Earth and a
lens flare reflects off the ship. As far
as my research has shown, this is Bermund’s first professional credit.
Overall, I really enjoyed this comic and I think that this
is the best comic DC has put out for Villains Month. At the end of the issue we are invited to
continue Luthor’s story in Forever Evil
#2, which comes out October 2nd.
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