FRIDAY FRENEMIES : IF LEX LUTHOR WERE SUPERMAN'S FATHER

"...and that I'll soon get blown up with this whole planet."

I'm going to let this feature take a break from the continuing mutual homicide pact between romantic rivals Lois Lane and Lana Lang, for just this one entry. This is because I'd like to share with you possibly the most gruesome and messed-up plot Lex Luthor ever hatched against his nemesis, Superman, which is, namely, to fuck his mom.

One of the inventions of Superman's Silver Age was a robust backstory and series of empathetic asides for Luthor, a character who had been around in the assorted Superman comics for twenty years before he was even awarded a first name (Which was "Oliver." Anything you've ever heard to the contrary is a total falsehood).

In the span of a few, short years, it was revealed that Superboy and Luthor had once been boyhood chums, that Luthor had a sister from whom his entire family had kept hidden the shame of an arch-criminal relative and that he'd frequently ally himself with Superman, Supergirl or other forces of good for that sister. He received a love interest on an alien world which worshiped him as a hero, and imaginary stories frequently popped up wherein Luthor would genuinely turn over a new leaf (this is as opposed to the most famous Imaginary Luthor story in which he turned straight just so he could totally murder the Man of Steel later on that week).

Damn, that's a burn.

BUT! In Superman vol.1 No.170 (July 1964), Luthor hatches his most bizarre scheme ever, and it only begins with him turning himself into a giant so as to break out of prison. That was his prelude. Shit got real after he turned himself into a giant and smashed a maximum-security penitentiary into beach sand. After.

Luthor's larger machinations require him to dress up like a space Roman, travel to the past and pass himself off as a galactic hero on the pre-destroyed world of Krypton (because it would be pointless to try this on the post-destroyed world of Krypton. Hard on the feet, anyway, hopping between debris in a newly-formed asteroid belt and all). There, he is feted by the Science Council and other Kryptonian luminaries as Luthor the Noble, whose heroism is proved by a bunch of videos that Luthor keeps patting himself on the back for faking. Dude built a time machine and he's, like, "Damn I'm good at After Effects."

"Predicting" the abduction of Kandor, Luthor gains a lot of cred -- particularly with Jor-El's lab assistant and unrequited love, Lara, Superman's future mother. It's from this point that Luthor launches his insidious plan, apparently utterly ignorant of how genetics work: He's going to become Superman's dad!

Personally, I would've just been Lara's second husband, because being Superman's step-dad is probably just as good and, also, that's actually how genetics work.

Luthor goes on to rig an undersea accident wherein Jor-El is trapped at the bottom of one of Krypton's oceans, surviving with only enough food and water for a week. Since Luthor is a master of all technologies and sciences, including mastery of all the forms of PUA  -- Mantis-style, Tiger-style, Fury of the Fedora, Double Reverse Negging, all the classics -- he uses this week to set up his master plan and get it rolling. It looks, believe it or not, like this:

"What shall we name him?" -- "Whatever it is, I want to give him my ex-boyfriend's surname..."

So, the short version of the conclusion is that Jor-El manages to escape his watery tomb, pops up in time to find Luthor and Lara getting married by way of some sort of giant Kryptonian Jumbotron, and then totally The Graduates the wedding while it's in full swing. Luthor's special devices which keep him from dying in Krypton's intense gravity break down at the crucial moment, revealing his duplicity, so he escapes back to Earth in the modern day. If you think about it, though, everyone on the planet was killed in a cataclysm so Luthor really won after all. Check and mate.

He could probably still eke out a small victory just by describing to Superman just how Lara smelled. "I was THIS CLOSE, Superman, damn near fucked your mom. I eat ass, too, you know. I eat it like cinnamon toast. I was gonna eat your mom's ass." I've gone too far, but I still don't think I went as far as they did.

I hate to imagine what other tapes he faked during this trip.