The World of Metropolis #2... LEX DID WHAT?

[brerrabbit]

Oh... That's disturbing Lois, you should not be smiling right now. :(

Comments

Mod Note: Page Count

[icon_uk]

Scans_Daily's 1/3 rule allows only one third of a comic book story to be posted here.

This is 10 pages from a 22 page story, and so is well beyond that limit.

Please trim the post to conform to board rules immediately, or it will be deleted.

Re: Mod Note: Page Count

[brerrabbit]

Ok it's been reduced.

Re: Mod Note: Page Count

[super_fly]

The less of this the better imo

[blueprintstyles]

If I'm understanding this... Lois was stripped, her clothes destroyed (given worse clothes), all of which were secretly recorded and then caned? I feel like this should be one of those infamous moments in comics history we all try to avoid writing again. Like Superman and Barda being forced to make a sex tape.

[icon_uk]

I'd like to be able to say you were incorrect, but nope, that''s pretty much it.

[superfangirl1]

Geez. Lex. Could you be even more of a creepy mc.creepy pervert with young Lois. I am glad she outsmarted him.

Is this the same series. Which we found out that Perry white wife Alice. Was in the past seduce by Lex. When Perry was a POW in the Vietnam war? Perry white found out later that his son had the a dna match to Lex. Family drama ensures. But then Perry Jr dies and Superman went to hell to saved his soul?

I alway found it weird that this version of Lex was the same age as Perry White.

[thanekos]

John Byrne, revamping Superman by writing stories for slightly older children.

[knight_moves]

Wonder if this struck readers at the time as overly edgy--I know Elliot S! Maggin, at least, wrote pre-Crisis Lex as something of an antihero. Big shift to the post-Crisis Lex, who will kill people just because he can and destroy people emotionally just for the fun of it.

[knight_moves]

Also, isn't this in the same mini-continuity as Lois dating Lex for a time? Like, with John Byrne writing both?

[icon_uk]

No, they never dated in post-Crisis continuity, Lex pursued her with his ever present lack of decorum and she repeatedly told him to jump off a skyscraper.

[knight_moves]

I might be thinking of Birthright. Coulda sworn it was a thing that Lex and Lois dated briefly, then broke up,

[superfangirl1]

When John Byrne was creating “The Man of Steel” twelve-issue limited series.

One unused idea John has was for Lex and Lois to be dating. Before Clark came to Metropolis.


“As a result of Byrne's new continuity, the Legion eventually had their backstory changed such that these adventures never happened. Another unused idea was to show Lois Lane and Lex Luthor being romantically involved and living together in Luthor's estate in the mountains until Superman came to Metropolis.“

“Lois would then leave Luthor to go after Superman, another reason for Luthor to hate Superman. This idea was scrapped because Byrne did not want Lois as someone who was drawn to power (and he didn't want any mountains shown alongside the city). However, Man of Steel depicts Lois and Luthor as having only casually dated.”


https://superman.fandom.com/wiki/The_Man_of_Steel_(1986_mini-series)#:~:text=As%20a%20result%20of%20Byrne's,until%20Superman%20came%20to%20Metropolis.

[icon_uk]

As someone there at the time, it didn't seem "edgy" so much as "sleazy", which I get was the intent, but this did seem to enjoying itself a bit too much in depicting Lex's levels of depravity.

[remial]

he really WAS inspired by Trump!

[metadronos]

There was a story, from Rick Veitch's Swamp Thing run (and thus roughly in the same era Byrne was writing Superman stories), in which Luthor makes his head of security, in her first day on the job, strip down to her lingerie while giving a report to him one-on-one.

He allows her to dress once she's done, but then makes her strip again when she, in her nervousness, makes a couple of unintentionally offensive word choices ("stumped," when he at the time had a metal prosthetic hand; and "bald-faced lie").

Luthor finally pushes her past the brink when he reveals that her job is redundant because his building defences are entirely automated. Understanding what this implies about her hiring, she smashes the security control panel, thereby freeing the intruding presence she'd reported to Luthor. (That presence being Swampy, who'd just learned of Luthor's role in trying to kill him in Gotham.)

[mastermahan]

Say, remember when John Byrne decided Sue Storm should have been a child when she first met college student Reed?

Or in John Byrne's New Men, where the kid character has sex with his adult babysitter?

Weird pattern, John.

[super_fly]

Or in John Byrne's Alpha Flight where a 17 year old Vindicator tells Guardian she is in love and wants to marry him?
Or in John Byrne's Superman & Batman: Generations when a middle-aged Superman kissed a 14-year-old Lana Lang?
Or in John Byrne's Doom Patrol when Robotman and Elastigirl do a quantum leap and passionately kiss with him in his old human body and her as a 13 year old?

Who can say what's going on there, a mystery for the ages I guess

[tcampbell1000]

And who can forget the time Mattie Franklin volunteered to replace MJ for Peter?

Individual cases? Sometimes justifiable...I've got no real problem with a teenager crushing on an adult, for instance. That happens. But add it all up and, uh, yeah...

[mastermahan]

I've never read any of those, and those are good examples of why I've read so little John Byrne.

[tcampbell1000]

I don't mind Lex being a perverse monster here, and I really don't mind Lois laughing off his attempts to degrade her. He's the pathetic one, she knows it, and as long as she holds onto that, he will never have her in the way he wants. But the issue is that this Luthor is pulling similar acts of abuse with any other women in his sphere of influence, and not all of those women can be expected to have Lois' resilience, centeredness, and courage in the face of his billionaire power.

And there's no way this idea works at all with some other 1980s stories where it's implied that Lex had a chance...not MUCH of a chance, but a chance...of making Lois his bride before Superman showed up. DC backed off of both "Lex the sex fiend" and "Lois maybe slightly just a smidge vulnerable to his charms" by 1992 or so, and hasn't really touched either idea since.

I've said this before, but Byrne's work seems to have a sort of "graphinarrative dissonance." He writes lots of tough-minded, independent women who make decisions that seem rooted in character but often end up playing to the fetishes of horny 1980s-1990s fanboys. Adult Lois Lane strips out of a dress when she finds out it's tainted by Luthor and exits wearing nothing but Clark Kent's blazer, that kind of thing.

There's a bit in the comic Sluggy Freelance that I always thought made an interesting point. In it, brainwashing villain Dr. Steve commands his creation Oasis three times to (1) feel a certain way and (2) perform a seemingly unrelated action. In each example, Oasis responds so that feeling x seems to lead to action y.

I think about that scene a lot, how it relates to the craft of writing in general, and how it maybe especially relates to men-writing-women.

And sometimes, as here, Byrne plays to a few fetishes that are more, um, specific...his catering to those is more restrained, more left to the imagination, but that may just be a reflection of what he could get away with.

I will say one thing in Byrne's defense about this, though. He made no bones about how terrifying Luthor's perversions are when directed at those other women. Superman #2 has a memorable subplot where Lex uses and disposes of a promising young scientist, and in #9, he scars a waitress's psyche just for giggles, which is apparently a hobby of his. There's nothing in Byrne's presentation of those cruelties that feels excusable or boys-will-be-boys; they are just as repulsive as they should be. Those stories came out before this one, so Lex's perversity was well established by the time it was released. In Byrne's vision, Lex is as evil as they come. Too bad that "inappropriate interest in underage girls" wasn't limited to Byrne's evil characters.

[super_fly]

Nothing makes my bones crumble to dust like knowing Sluggy Freelance is over 25 years old and *still running*