Is Lex Luthor a good character in your opinion? I mean he survived for this long so he has to be good, right?

He is, as long as he never gets into a power suit or gets powers and fights Superman. Then the point of their relationship is lost.

>>149560064 (OP)
>s Lex Luthor a good character in your opinion?
No he's a villain. Stupid.

>>149560078
fpbp

>>149560083
>Is Lex Luthor a bad character in your opinion?
>Is Lex Luthor a good villain/antagonist in your opinion?
Which one you would prefer sir?
>>149560078
I would say that against superman he's better as a petty bitch who schemes and manipulate instead of getting his hands dirty, he should be seen as a good citizen for the people of metropolis.
His battle suit and stuff could be used for the justice league and just say that he knows how to hide his battles with them.

>>149560064 (OP)
Yes but Ultra Humanite is better

Yes. And I wish more Superman stories focus on his and Lex's lost friendship. The two basically being outcasts but Clark coming out the Hero and Lex doing everything to make everyone hate him. I love that shit. And its why The final days of Lex Luthor is my favourite story right now.

>>149560064 (OP)
I don't remember exactly if it was a golden age thing or just an internet joke but hin hating superman because he caused his hair lost has always been the funniest thing to me.
He's a pretty cool character and can be used in different ways, last thing I've read about him was the death metal saga and the whole thing with the year of villain few years ago, he was alright.
And while we're at it, does anyone remember the cw version of him from the supergirl show? The dude was hilariously awful I bursted out laughing everytime he was on the screen.

>>149560489
This guy was played by the cousin from Superman 4. He was bad for sure but the one from Titans was so much worse.

>>149560064 (OP)
I like him more as DC Kingpin. The rich guy at the top who is in charge of the costumed supervillains and is always too clean to arrest or for any hero to punch.

As a plain old supervillain he is shit.
>Brainiac is smarter and has the smart guy that builds robots and lasers thing over him.
>Even Superman has better technology than him, makes better robots, and has a better computer and secret laboratory than him.
>Most other evil geniuses do a better job than him at being evil geniuses.
>He also has no main theme, he is just Lex, no main costume no main title, no main gimmick.

>>149560932
I stopped watching the Titans at the red hood reveal and I barely remember anything about that show, but I remember lex being hinted because of superboy but I don't think he appeared so I assume he was a part of the show in the following seasons, guess it's a good thing that I stopped before that.

>>149560999
Well I watched it. He appears season 3 premiere. And is killed off immediatley.

>>149560064 (OP)
one of the best

>>149560489
>I don't remember exactly if it was a golden age thing or just an internet joke but hin hating superman because he caused his hair lost has always been the funniest thing to me.
It wasn't just the hair, it is like doctor doom.

>>149560064 (OP)
No. Him and Joker should had been rapes decades ago.

>>149560064 (OP)
No good characters, only good writers.
Luthor's an easy character to make boring. You can't just follow a flow chart, you have to make up something new for him to do.

I do think CEO Lex is sort of overvalued compared to criminal mastermind/government contractor/mad scientist Lex. Which is extraordinary given that he's not a CEO in All-Star Superman.

>>149560064 (OP)
>Is Lex Luthor a good character in your opinion?
To be honest, I haven't seen any takes on him that made me care for the him. For the most part his stories feel like if you've seen one, you've seen them all.

>>149560078
Can you elaborate further

>>149561362
god, I miss SupLex. The Superman family needed a gray asshole who challenges Clark and he fit so well

>>149560489
>I don't remember exactly if it was a golden age thing or just an internet joke but hin hating superman because he caused his hair lost has always been the funniest thing to me.
It's sounds stupid but it's got some depth in how much it makes his path a fault of his narcissism and inability to take responsibility.
Superboy didn't cause the accident, he built him a lab, and Luthor happened to mess up an experiment to prevent Kryptonite poisoning that lead to him losing his hair and most of the compound and the formula he used to make it. Because Superman built the lab for him, and his experiment was to help him, Luthor blames it all on Superboy despite Superboy warning him to be careful.
It's all Luthor's fault, but he warps his thinking to make himself blameless.

>>149562524
Dumbest shit is making an enemy into a sidekick. Batman did that with Clayface

>>149563074
WRRRRROOOOOOONG
Superboy tries to superblow the fire out and the fumes cause the hair loss

>>149563154
You did the experiment in the first place, Luthor. You knocked over the chemicals carelessly, you were told there were risks.
Losing some hair was better than dying. Hell if you didn't spaz out and continued to work with Superman you could've probably gotten some Kryptonian baldness cute

>>149560064 (OP)
It's hard to call him a "character" in the sense that he's been reinvented so thoroughly so many times. And unlike say Superman's various reinventions, the various different versions of Lex don't really have much in common with each other. It's more a question of "Which of these 3-4 different superman villains are good or bad characters?". I loved 90's smug businessman Lex for instance (will admit there's childhood nostalgia there), but he has no real relation to 1950's "Career Criminal" Lex in anyway besides being bald (Though I loved Morrisons take on that version of Luthor in All-Star too).

Reminder that Luthor died to Kryptonite poisoning and cloned himself, posed as his long lost brother, fucked a blob monster that could turn into anything (and becomes Supergirl) and proceeded to become co-fathers to Connor with his archnemesis.
In DC only Luthor could do sonething this insane.

>>149561362
On the other hand Marvel does the same shit with Norman Osborn all the time and DC just rips it off. Not just becoming Superman or President. Small shit here and there that would normally have huge consequences. Like Luthor had a sister (who he kills) and a daughter (who was kidnapped by Braniac).

>>149563432
The problem with Norman is that whenever he does anything big, everyone just expects it to fail so he can become the green goblin. He is inseparable from Gobby nowadays. It's always expected that he crashes out and Goblin takes control. He can't properly plot against Spiderman without Goblin coming in and running his judegemt. Lex, on the other hand, has no excuse. His hatred for Superman is 100% genuine with no evil super serums involved. Norman will always be THE Goblin, he will never be THE EVIL BUSINESS MAN like Lex is.

He's a rich and powerful piece of shit with a petty grudge
That's unironically more realistic than most supervillains

>>149563629
Man, now I kinda want an arc where Norman successfully flips the script and manages to keep himself together. Like yeah, obviously he snaps again down the road, but not in THIS storyline. It’d be cool to see some serious psychological layers give a corporate story arc a nice gothic horror villain subplot. It helps keeps things fresh if readers aren't sure when or if he'll crack at any given time.

>>149561362
What happened to the blue motherbox armor anyway?

I remember he had some future vision, met Perpetua and she gave him Martian powers, And I stopped bothering with JLA after that run.
Does he still have the motherbox armor in a closet somewhere?

>>149563119
And that was a good time, Clayface bonding with Cass was great.

>>149560064 (OP)
He's honestly not. He's around because of seniority, but that's it. He's just a petty bitch that hates Superman. He's like a dollar store Doom without the flair or the aesthetics. He's got no cool codename, no specific supervillain look, no real motivation beyond fucking with Superman. He's a smug bald bastard. And it's fine, really, but he's not complex or anything. He's just there. He's just got a very cool name which stuck, but that's it. From Superman's villains I find someone like Henshaw more interesting. And Lex is basically a more watered down Ultra Humanite. So really, he's just... there. There's no stories still left to be told or avenues to be explored, because Lex has so little characters that beyond
>smug bald rich smart bastard in a business suit
he's not recognisable. The moment you deviate from this mold, he stops being Lex because he's not versatile. He's a foil to Superman, but he's not a character who can exist in a vacuum, such as other villains like Doom, Magneto, Vandal Savage, Sinestro, etc. He's defined by being a particular threat to Superman, and that makes him a subpar character on his own.

Personally, I think that you can remove him, or replace him, and Superman remains the same. Which means that he's inherently and objectively hollow and thus "not good". To bring in a contrast, Norman here >>149563432 who turned into a copy of Luthor, could actually function as a character beyond Spider-Man. Luthor can't because he's got nothing beside Superman. No alter ego, no mythos to draw upon, he's just there to be a thorn in Superman's side, maybe "grow" due to Superman's influence, but he's wholly dependant on Superman himself. He can be cool, entertaining, interesting, but there's not much there.

>>149564776
I'm surprised he lasted this long without someone giving him a traditional costume and villain code name.

>>149560064 (OP)
Depends. Apex Lex was a believable offshoot of his character, but it was also really shitty and handled pretty bad.

>>149560064 (OP)
He’s a great character. I wish Michael Rosenbaum didn’t hold out for more money and we lost the best screen Lex ever.

>>149563629
No reason he can't be both.

>>149560064 (OP)
He's evil and insane at times.

>>149564829
The green and purplethanks powersuits are the closest he has to a traditional costume
But he's more memorable in a suit, like Kingpin.

>>149560064 (OP)
He's stupid and his deal is still straight up golden/silver age bullshit cake thievery but with a LOOK MOM DARK AGE twist.

The only reason he and indeed Superman have survived this long is that they remained in the public consciousness following the success of the Donner movies, but that relationship has been retrod half a dozen times since in other adaptations and is tired and played out to the point that you get Piss Jar Lex and Incel Lex to try and spruce him up a little for modern sensibilities. It's not that Idiotic Real Estate Plan Lex has no relevance or wouldn't be understood by modern audiences, it's that he's been done and if you simply do the same thing again then you get crucified on socials and nobody watches your 400 trillion dollar boondoggle.

But outside of the performers portraying him and a kind of baseline dumb evil guy who inexplicably has brains, he's not well-liked or well-characterised. Nobody's out there even making "why doesn't Superman simply rape Lex?" threads. He's a nobody who survives and gains name recognition by association with a brand that only survives because a total outsider to comics remade his childhood reading experience with the perfect casting half a century ago. Without the money that made (most of which WB didn't even see) and the prestige it earned for the IP, I doubt WB would have even thought twice about selling DC in the 80s. Jim Shooter would have been given a much better offer - one he wouldn't have refused.

There's nothing particularly consistent about his portrayals across any adaptation beyond "rich asshole". Even in the convoluted canon of DC, he's just some guy who had everything done for him and robbed, usurped or bought out those who did it, but likes to pose as a Big Man. He's nobody.

It's not that you can't work with that, make it work, it's that it's not being done and then you get this Evil Iron Man shit or Now He's Ginger or whatever to distract from it. Those aren't character development.

>>149565735
>why doesn't Superman simply rape Lex? threads
Are there any out there for other major villains?

>>149564128
Prior to the Perpetua nonsense he had a falling out with Superman over him not trusting Lex w/Apokolips. Lex then tore down the House of El crest from the armor and repainted it green. He was still helpful after that, until opening the Doom Titan Doorknob of Doom and getting the Perpetua koolaid.

>>149565535
Sinless Norman isn't really serving either at the moment.

test

Remember when he caused a slave rebellion in apocalypse? That was fun

>Apokolips*
Autocorrect oopsie

>>149565735
Honestly most characters like lex survive because if they managed to reach the public audience and the normalfag crowd they will survive and stay popular for the coming ages like you said, they are basically packaged together
>Superman is popular and people know about him
>He has to fight someone
>One popular piece of media had him against a certain villain
>Said villain sneaks into popularity by proxy
This isn't just about movies even cartoons, everyone knows that batman has a large rouges gallery, but the ones who are still here are the ones from the animated series, Bruce gets at least 3 new enemies every year but none of them sticks, the closest one to make it was punchline and even that barely reached a wider audience.

>>149565805
True