Action Comics #672 (December 1991)
Action Comics #672 (December 1991)
The TOTALLY REAL origin of Lex Luthor II! Exactly a year after Lex Luthor's untimely death (Action #660), the son of the late philanthropist has arrived in Metropolis to take over his dad's business. The first thing he did was save Metropolis from a blackout while Superman was making out with women in the Caribbean – as a result, everyone in the city loves Lex Jr. (and his armored security force) as much as they suddenly hate Superman.
Even Stupor– er, Superman's pal Professor Hamilton is on #TeamLuthor after the guy sprung Ham out of jail last week.
On top of that, Luthor also singlehandedly ends the Daily Planet strike that's been going on for months by injecting some ad money into the paper. Perry White doesn't trust the kid, though, and sends his top reporters (the guy with the glasses who keeps disappearing and the lady who keeps falling out of windows) to find out all they can about young Luthor. While Clark Kent flies to Australia to visit the house where Lex was raised by foster parents, Lois Lane interviews LL2 himself. The interview turns sorta awkward when Barbara Walters here mentions all the evil shit his dad did, and Lex breaks down and cries.
Lex asks Lois to set up a meeting between him and Superman so he can apologize for all the times his old man tried to murder him. Superman then hands him something he found in Australia: a portrait of him as a kid and his foster parents, who died in a fire years ago. Lex tears up again and hugs Superman (it's been an emotional day for him). After that, Lois and Clark tell Perry that everything checks out: they verified that Lex Jr. was raised in secret in Australia and even Superman thinks he's a good dude. Perry is convinced and says he'll write an editorial in honor of young Luthor. THE END!
Oh, wait, there's one more scene: Luthor listens to the above conversation from his office (he had Perry's phone wired), and then he and his dad's favorite cronie, Dr. Happersen, bring out some cigars to celebrate the fact that their plan worked.
"They bought it!" Lex says. "Hook, line, and sinker!" Wait… wait a minute… LEX LUTHOR IS EVIL?!
Plotline-Watch:
At the beginning of the issue, Superman arrives at the site of a fire only to find that Team Luthor already took care of it. The guy who caused the fire turns out to be Time-Bomb from Action #661, a.k.a. the second deadliest villain called "TB" Superman has fought recently.
The reason Perry automatically distrusts Lex Jr. is that just seeing him with his hand stretched out gave him a flashback of World of Metropolis #1 – specifically the scene when Lex Sr., then Perry's friend, welcomed him back from covering a war overseas when in fact he'd been sleeping with Perry's wife all that time. This is followed by a flashback of Superman #47, when Luthor revealed he was the real father of Perry's son. So it's actually kind of impressive that Perry didn't punch the kid in the nuts.
There's a scene where Lex meets with the LexCorp board of directors (has anyone else missed those rascals as much as me?) and one of them in particular, a guy called Markham, is giving him crap about being too inexperienced to run the company. Lex then has a little chat with Markham away from the others and, suddenly, the guy goes quiet. OK, in retrospect, that's actually the first clue that Lex Jr. is evil. We'll find out what actually happened there next issue.
When Lois is recapping Lex Sr.'s evilness to Lex Jr., we see a flashback of the randomest of Luthor goons: Klaash from Superman #10, the stock villain only Superman could see. So, as usual, I was wrong when I said that guy never showed up again. Please accept my apologies for this important oversight.