Action Comics #678 (June 1992)
Action Comics #678 (June 1992)
The ACTUALLY TOTALLY REAL (for real this time) origin of Lex Luthor II! As you might recall, the good, generous and sexy Lex II first showed up about a year after the death of his father, the bad, greedy and overweight Lex I, who apparently committed suicide via exploding airplane (because he was dying of kryptonite-induced cancer anyway). In this issue the dashing and beloved Lex II is coming out of a restaurant when he's attacked by a gunman, who turns out to be Dabney Donovan – Project Cadmus' disgraced, deranged clone-maker. Hmmm. Wonder where this is going…?
Donovan ends up in the hospital after his bullets ricochet off of the invulnerable boobs of Lex II's new girlfriend, hitting him in the face. The temporarily blinded Donovan is interrogated by two cops, and he tells them Luthor Jr.'s whole sordid story: it all started years ago when Luthor Sr. ended up with a highly advanced genetics lab (the one Brainiac upgraded in "The Brainiac Trilogy"). Luthor recruited Donovan to work there alongside Dr. Teng, the scientist who once tried to clone Superman but created Bizarro instead (I can see why Lex would hire that guy again), to come up with a cure for his krypto-cancer.
When Teng and Donovan failed to do that, Lex decided to go for a more radical option: fake his death, get rid of his old body…
…and clone himself a younger one. Naturally, the first thing Lex requested for his new body was that they give him long, thick hair (among other things). Luthor's physician, Dr. Kelley, was then summonned to the lab and told "Hey, uh, by the way, the boss is alive and you're gonna have a son with him" – a fake will was planted at LexCorp, naming a "secret son" of Luthor and Kelley as the heir to his empire. A whole backstory was fabricated for "Lex II", including his Australian upbringing (he actually learned the accent through sleep-teaching tapes).
And then, when Lex's new body was finally ready, he bombed the entire lab with Teng and Donovan inside so there wouldn't be any evidence that Lex I and Lex II are the same person. Donovan survived, and swore revenge on Luthor. Now he's finally done telling the whole story to the cops, but… PLOT TWIST! The cops are actually Lex I/II himself and his assistant, Dr. Happersen.
Luthor is about to kill Donovan, but… DOUBLE PLOT TWIST! This isn't the real Donovan, but a clone he sent to do his dirty work. The clone sets himself on fire, letting Lex know that the real Donovan is still somewhere out there and will get his revenge one day.
TL;DR Lex Luthor Jr. is his own dad! Holy shit!
Plotline-Watch:
The cleverest part of this whole plot is that the long storyline about Metropolis' economy going down the crapper was always a part of it: the problems started right after Luthor's death, as signaled by the rise in taxicab prices. Lex knew those clowns at LexCorp would suck at running his company, dooming Metropolis' economy and allowing him to come back and "save" the city (during "Blackout!"). All of that just so he could finally be more beloved than Superman.
The earliest clue that cloning shenanigans would be involved was over a year ago during that weird little Project Cadmus story, when Donovan says he got some "pyro-granulite implants" from LexCorp in exchange for something – the same implants his clone uses to burst on fire in this issue. See, I told you there was a clue there.
Meanwhile, Superman is also in this comic: Metallo briefly manages to break himself free after being captured last week, but Superman just flies in and snaps his head off. Later, Superman and Maggie Sawyer interrogate Metallo's head about his new boss, Cerberus, who would have killed Metallo through a remote signal if the cops hadn't blocked it. Metallo eventually goes "eh, eff that guy" and gives Cerberus' location to Superman, leading to the final showdown with him/her/them next week.
Ron Troupe is officially hired by the Daily Planet! Yay!
Lana Lang is kidnapped by a singing janitor! Non yay! Don Sparrow says: "Poor Lana. She sees Clark maybe once a year, and gets drugged, gassed and abducted way more often than Lois, who sees him everyday. Granted, this abduction didn’t have anything to do with Clark, but, give the poor girl a break!"
More from Don in his section, after the jump!
Art-Watch (by donsparrow):
This is definitely a biggie, and we begin as always with the cover. I’m not a fan. Thibert’s Lex Luthor junior’s cartoonish grin really takes away from the import of the reveal of this issue. While I appreciate the cover furthering the growing truth that Action Comics is the main place we’ll see Supergirl adventures, this cover isn’t particularly well-drawn to me. The premise is weird–why is Lex beaming when those guns are so close to him? Why do the posters appear to have alien language on them? Why the semi-reference to the famed X-Men cover, also in front of a brick wall covered in posters? Is Supergirl bulletproof, exactly, or is she deflecting the bullets psycho-kinetically? Too many questions. I do, however, like the brain overlay. [Max: I don't mind the cover, but it's interesting that they kinda got a do-over on this one with the cover of the collected edition.]
Once we get inside, we’re greeted with some action, right from the start (and a clever title, “Talking Heads” from the always clever Roger Stern) when Metallo comes back online.
Slight continuity problem from last issue, where Metallo was completely immersed in the green SCU ectoplasm, where as now it just looks like a spill here and there, but that’s pretty minor). The inks this week are a little thicker and less fine than other weeks, as the reliable Jackson Guice is getting inked be Andre Parks. It’ll be a while before we see him settle with a regular inker. The panel where Superman yanks Metallo’s head off, on page 4, is a pretty striking, and frightening image.
But the main story here is Dabney Donovan’s explanation to the night nurse, as well as to us fans, of just how Luthor pulled off his “death”. This whole section is really well drawn, and even though it’s only been a few months, made me realize how much I missed the heftier Luthor. The image of Luthor reduced to only brain and spine is a chilling one on pge 16–though it also begs the question why these organs weren’t affected by the K radiation that caused his cancer. Plus that under-lit panel of Lex Jr threatening Dabney Donovan Clone #3 on page 19 is a great and evil visual. [Max: That reminds me, it's probably a good idea to keep track of how many clones Dabney makes of himself. #2 was the one he used to fake his death, and there are a lot more coming.]
PANEL OF THE WEEK: It’s slim pickings this week, as there’s no panel that really jumps out of the book as head and shoulders above the rest. There aren’t any bad panels either–it’s just a consistently drawn book all around. But a determined Superman, flying off to confront Cerberus on the bottom of page 21 is this week’s winner.
All in all a very exciting and necessary issue, that finally tells us what we were growing to understand–that Lex Junior is no saint. He’s the same old devil we’ve known all along.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
Lex Jr. coming out from “Down Under” with the ersatz Supergirl has a weird ring to it. Then again, Lex Jr. returning from “Outback” with Supergirl doesn’t sound a lot better. What’s with you, Australian-themed restaurants?
This whole scene also gives me the creeps, that Lex has his lover take the forms of other women for his own amusement. Weeeeird. And not a great relationship sign, that he’s bored enough to “mix it up” after about a week of dating.
Oops. The colorist thought Maggie was Lois early into page 8. [Max: He also seemed to think Happersen was old Luthor in the hospital scene.]
Is Lex’s outfit on his spaceplane flight another Fantastic Four wink?
I had wondered how Lex got around the DNA matching with his medical records and his corpse. I thought maybe they cloned enough of him to be found, but of course they did the easier thing and changed the records to match the body found, and not the other way around.
‘Fair dinkum’ in a nude scene? Come on, DC.
I’m glad the issue doubled down on the twist reveal. It honestly felt a bit obvious that Donovan wasn’t talking to the real Inspector Henderson, especially since we never saw him in the light. So the fact that it wasn’t the real Dabney Donovan gave us at least a bit of a surprise.