in recent years, we've seen the green lantern titles thrust one supervillain after another into prominence: sinestro (with his own corps), black hand, and now even the guardians are playing the heavy.

the joker is slated to have a HUGE return in the batman titles.

so why haven't we seen lex luthor truly unleashed on the DCU? seems to me that that's a natural. i also wonder if DC has this in mind for an upcoming story.

apart from paul cornell's great run in ACTION, i'm pressed to remember a really great luthor story since JB's time. (chime in with your nominees, gang.)

if there's any one character who could take on the heroes of the DC universe, wouldn't it be lex luthor?

i should note that i'm pretty darned  tired of lex being in every single superman movie. he does have other villains... so please, give him a rest in the theater, but find a way to make him great in the comics!

Lex Luthor hasn't held any interest to me since he stopped wearing this suit.

Lex Luthor hasn't held any interest to me since he stopped wearing this suit.

Really? I found JB's Lex Luthor WAY more interesting than that version.

so why haven't we seen lex luthor truly unleashed on the DCU? seems to me that that's a natural. i also wonder if DC has this in mind for an upcoming story.

I was going to say "Becoming President of the United States in the DCU wasn't enough for you" but Stephen pretty much beat me to it.

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Oh, look! The authority figures are the bad guys! Nobody's EVER done THAT before!

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Precisely the point at which he ceased to be of any interest to me.

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Many, many, MANY moons ago, there was a story I wanted to do with the Mad Thinker. He was, of course, the ultimate plotter, in the Marvel Universe. The guy who worked out intricate plans that set seemingly unrelated dominos toppling until everything came together with his desired result.

I had planned to do this in a Spider-Man story, over the span of about a year. A bad guy hired the Thinker to knock off Jameson. We'd then get a page on which the upper left corner panel, 1/9 of the page, had some guy in Boise slipping on a banana peel.

Over the next eight months, we'd go back to that page, each time adding a single panel, until, in the last month, the entire 9 panel page of "unrelated" events was shown as a cascade that led to a fatal incident for Jonah.

Except, of course, there was one small detail the Thinker could not calculate into his plan: Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

This is very much the way I see Luthor operating. Putting on a super suit and going out and tussling directly with Superman is just not his wheelhouse.