Superman is the greatest and most powerful superhero in the DC Universe. You all know the drill, faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. And yet, his greatest enemy, the one man he can never truly defeat, is a megalomaniacal bald bloke with a penchant for nice suits.

Lex Luthor is the archetypal supervillain, the polar opposite of his nemesis. Where Superman is physically powerful, Luthor’s greatest asset is his mind. Superman is decent, upstanding and completely selfless, Luthor is shallow, nasty and thinks of nobody but himself. But what sets Luthor apart from other supervillains are his goals. While he’s never going to stop seeking more money and power, his ultimate goal is simple. He wants to kill Superman. Luthor can’t stand that there’s someone in Metropolis who is more powerful, and more loved, than he is. That’s it. Pure, simple, jealousy. Everything Luthor does is ultimately about destroying the Man of Steel, and he takes everything Superman does personally. There’s a short speech from Luthor in JLA #11, written by Grant Morrison, which sums up his relationship with Superman perfectly:-

“There have been ‘Justice Leagues’ before, of course. I’ve indulged their existence. Let them conduct their colourful public brawls, like drunken sailors with a Hollywood budget. Let them play their games. I could have destroyed any of those organizations at any time. I chose not to. Until now. Until Superman. I would have overlooked this latest media-friendly pantomime by creatures whose very existence makes a mockery of human achievement. I would even have been prepared to indulge the astonishing arrogance of their lunar clubhouse. But for Superman. I take his leadership of this preposterous team of alpha males as a direct challenge, a throwing down of the gauntlet, a clear escalation of hostilities between us. I intend to utterly destroy Superman’s private army, and to do so I have assembled the perfect weapons…”

Superman takes up leadership of the League, never even giving Luthor a second thought, and Luthor genuinely believes that it’s all about him. This is why he’s such a good adversary for the Last Son of Krypton. He doesn’t know how to be anything else.

Luthor on screen has been tackled by a lot of different actors, many of whom have gotten it shockingly wrong. There seems to be a propensity to portray Luthor as a cackling, pantomime villain, ignoring any of the quieter moments which make the character so menacing and launching into full on over the top histrionics *cough* Kevin Spacey *cough*. But, there have also been a few actors who just get Luthor.

I was quite surprised at the results of your votes for the best Luthor of all time, which was won by Smallville’s Michael Rosenbaum. I was genuinely expecting Gene Hackman to clinch the top spot. But who features on my list of great Luthors? Let’s find out...

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Maybe no one remembers this, as it was a few years ago now, and some comics geeks can have very short memories, and require references and pictures and concrete statements from creators. But for a while, there was discussion in the X-Men comics about Beast’s sexuality.

As it turned out, he wasn’t really gay. It was a malicious lie he told the human girlfriend who dumped him by telephone because he now looked like a big cat; one that got away from him and returned to bite him on the ass. This all happened, of course, in Grant Morrison’s epic and unbeaten New X-Men run.

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The first half of this book is a stylish and entertaining history of comics.. I was already familiar with the history of comics but Grant Morrison brings an intelligent and insightful perspective to it. At around the half way mark the history of comics catches up with his own life story which then proceeds to engulf the narrative.

I would never have bought an autobiography of Grant Morrison but that is essentially what the book is. It's filled with self-indulgent details about his life. At one point he tells us about what he used to have for breakfast in 1986. He has a tendency to write himself in to his fictional works and he could not help but put himself at centre stage again.

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So you know all those DC relaunch titles? All the number one issues are going to be collected into one hardback volume acting like a bible for the New 52 and the DC Universe in general.

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Link: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=DC+comics+52&aq=f

Fair play to Bleeding Cool, this is pretty cool exclusive; Dan DiDio, Jim Lee, Grant Morrison, Bob Harras and Eddie Berganza all talking about the DC Relaunch. Mostly fluff and filler but very nicely presented and it's good to see the head honchos are giving the fans some respect by addressing their concerns over the relaunch. Keep it unreal, yo.

As I gave my opinion on the DC reboot and day and date digital debate yesterday, and we also heard from some of the industries biggest names via Twitter I thought it'd be a good idea to try to capture the mood of the rest of the comic book community. What we have here is a megablog post collating as many opinions of comic book fans, writers, artists and of course Sidekicks as I could muster up:

Mike Harding AKA @mikeybumchin, Sidekickcast guest-host and contributor to the Sidekick Blog.

Well following a read of the initial article i think that as Rob Williams said, not bothered too much, as long as the stories are good. If they decided to reboot the characters then that would be a different thing entirely. I just hope that they aren't doing an "ulitmate" version which brings all the heroes origins into the now as that would ruin certain titles like Batman, Superman and Justice Society as these are legacy characters that have influenced other heroes. If they do erase all that has gone before then I think they may run the risk of losing a lot of readers, who, have heavily invested both time, and money in some of their larger projects (52, the numerous company wide crossovers). I have always been critical for the excessive amount of continuity driven stories (not just in DC but also in Marvel) and DC's lack of referencing to the past; but this is not the way to deal with that.

The initial title launch of Justice League by Johns and lee should be good as both writer and artist are among some of my favorite individuals in the comic industry.

Regarding the idea of cutting down piracy, I don't think this will be the case as people will still illegally download stuff, due to various factors.

Will be interesting to see how this develops, and I'm not surprised that they are doing this again, as it seems to be something they feel that they can do every so often.

*UPDATED*
Michael Legge AKA Lil Fat Mikey, Comic Book fan and sometimes Sidekickcast guest-host

As someone who now only buys trades and when he does it isn't either of the two big boys, I couldn't give a shit ...

Only joking, now for the serious bit - I think it's great for the industry, if it gets people buying comics it can only be good particularly if this $2.99 for a year rumour is true. It won't be a complete reboot either i.e. not right, right back to origins but go back to the characters younger days with different customers to take them in a different direction - I for one will watch with intrigue and hope the writing grabs you by the b***s

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Link: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2010/10/06/dc-announces-batman-europa-six-years-ago/

With the launch of Batman Inc, it has reminded me of one of my all time biggest comic book gripes. One of the things that has always bugged me about ongoing superhero comic books (especially the big two) is their need to shake things up every now and then with some kind of world/european tour. You can look it in two ways:

1) It's an interesting way to take a character out of their usual environment, mix things up and show some lip service to fans around the world.

or the way I usually look at it:

2) When you run out of ideas for a character, send them on holiday so they can meet generic stereotypical foreigners and return after a year having achieved nothing and with the status quo resumed.

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Link: http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2010/11/03/this-just-happened-a-startling-revelation-concludes-grant-morrison%e2%80%99s-run-on-batman-and-robin/

According to DC's The Source this is big news, not sure whether I agree but here goes: Batman & Robin #16 is released in the U.S. today and not only is this Grant Morrison's last book on the run but it's also the launch of the next big thing; Batman Inc.

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Link: http://www.comicbookresources.com/

I could go into long winded explanation of what's been going on at DC but the long and short of it is this; Wildstorm is no more and DC Comics is staying in New York whilst DC Entertainment moves to Burbank, California.

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Link: http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2010/07/15/batman-and-robin-met-peter-and-patrick/

So from November Grant Morrison will no longer be writing Batman and Robin, that honour will belong to Peter Tomasi with art by Pat Gleason. I don’t really know how I feel about this to be honest with you, Morrison is such an acquired taste that any book he writes, he very much makes his own and somebody else writing B&R just won’t be the same book.

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