Lex Luthor - Man of Steel - Brian Azzarello/Lee Bermejo

 

This is another random grab from the Founder's Club Book Fair (did you bring the graphic novels, Dave Parker?) and, again, it's something that I knew nothing about other than the traditional characters but I thought I'd see what DC was doing in 2005 (19 years ago! Sheesh!)

Here, Lex Luthor is a billionaire businessman who is respected and above the law, due to his wealth, not necessarily his practices - although he tends to have others do the dirty work. We get to know more about his hatred for Superman and while it sounds like maybe there's a bit of jealousy there, his obsession mainly is due to his concern that Supes has the power to literally take over the world if he so desired and no one could stop him - not unlike Batman's reasoning in the Batman v. Superman storylines. In fact, Bats and Bruce Wayne make appearances here and help Luthor.

Luther also creates his own superhero with the intent of making the Man of Steel look bad, and there are lots of other intertwined plots that are not always completely explained, along with an appearance by an old DC Batman villain, the Toyman, who is considerably creepier here than his previous incarnation.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this tale and Bermejo's artwork is quite nice, as well. Good job DC!