Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor #1 // Review
There are massive waves off the coast of Bangladesh. There’s a giant mecha approaching. A vast green and purple monstrosity is crawling towards the coast and threatening so many lives. There is one man at the controls. And he’s there because he doesn’t have Superman‘s phone number. He’s dying in Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor #1. Writer Mark Waid, penciler Bryan Hitch, and inker Kevin Nowlan are joined by colorist David Baron in a clever little exploration into one of the oldest relationships in comic books. There might be some genuine insight into both of the characters in question. But it’s very, very difficult to come up with anything new between these two guys.
Lex is some kind of genius. Theoretically, he could work out a way to contact Superman. He knows he wouldn’t pick up. So, to get the guy’s attention, he has to threaten the lives of a whole bunch of people. And he knows that Superman’s going to save them. This gives him an opportunity to give the pitch. He’s dying. He was working that night, and it got out of hand, and now it looks like he’s going to be dead. Really dead. And there’s no turning back. So he’s asking the Man of Tomorrow for his help.
Waid DOES put together kind of a clever concept. And it is interesting to peer into the lives of two people who have been drawn against each other for a very long time. In many ways, it does actually work. However, the plot feels a bit weak in contrast to everything that’s happened to both of them over the decades. It is a compelling little parable. But it lacks the kind of depth needed to really say anything that hasn’t already been said about these two guys.
The art team is asked to do quite a lot by analyzing the interior of Lex Luthor’s body, which is actually delivered to the page in a way that feels dynamic and visually impressive. It’s difficult to get across the idea of someone dying of something that feels a little bit like cancer or something like that. To bring that to the page in a way that is dramatically compelling is kind of difficult. But the art team does a good job of making that seem significant.
Clearly, Waid is going somewhere with this. And it probably is a lot more interesting than it seems by the end of the issue. The problem is that with technology being what it is in the DC Universe, it feels kind of unlikely that things would go off the way they do at the end of this issue. It just doesn’t feel all that believable. That being said, so much of the basic dynamics of the dramatics that are being delivered to the page actually work quite well. It’s just really hard to look at it with fresh eyes without knowing all the history that’s gone down with these two people.
