{"id":4923,"date":"2025-02-26T08:18:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T16:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/?p=4923"},"modified":"2025-01-07T13:18:55","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T21:18:55","slug":"858-luthor-anti-hero-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/858-luthor-anti-hero-in-space\/","title":{"rendered":"858 – Luthor, Anti-Hero in Space"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Luthor<\/a>
Luthor tricks a prison guard in Action Comics #292, July 1962<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

In Action Comics #292 (July 1962), Luthor is given center stage in a Superman story. He pretends he’s gone insane, and then tricks a guard to escape from prison. He then blasts off from Earth using a rocket with “radium powered motors” to escape into space. When did he figure all this out?<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Luthor<\/a>
Luthor escapes to roam space in Action Comics #292, July 1962<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

His star chart (?) tells him that the planet he lands on is called Roxar. He promptely decides to kill the first robot that talks to him.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Luthor<\/a>
Luthor murders a robot in Action Comics #292, July 1962<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Woops – this is a planetary offense! No one has killed an “Autom” before and Luthor is charged with murder. It turns out that the planet’s rulers are a race of sentient robots. How did that come to be? We get a few flashback panels of an ancient biological aliens building artificially intelligent robots as their servants… reminds me of Earth circa 2025 actually… Eventually those aliens died out and the Automs decided they are done being servants.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Luthor<\/a>
Luthor on trial for murder in Action Comics #292, July 1962<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Superman has been working to track Luthor down. He finally arrives on Roxar and agrees to defend Luthor. Why? The only real answer is that it was to fulfill the promise of that comic book cover. The Automs tell him he has to prove aliens are worthy of a trial by succeeding in three challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course Superman is able to ace all the challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trial is a pretty quick one. There is video evidence of Luthor destroying the sentient being with hardly any thought and disposing of his remains in a boiling lake… His sentence is to be frozen in suspended animation until the robots can figure out how they can “adjust” the criminals (oh, did I mention they also keep a race of slave androids?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For unknown reasons, Superman decides Luthor doesn’t deserve this fate, and that he should meddle in another planet’s laws and customs. He dismantles one of his Superman robots and orders him to masquerade as the murder victim for the rest of eternity<\/em><\/strong>. I continue to wonder why Superman goes to such lengths to help Luthor, including lying to an entire planet of sentient robots and essentially absolving Luthor of all his previous crimes on Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Superman<\/a>
Superman covers up Luthor’s murder in Action Comics #292, July 1962<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

After Superman gets Luthor off, Luthor proceeds to his space ship, only to discover that he has no more radium to leave Roxam.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Luthor<\/a>
Luthor realizes he’s trapped in Action Comics #292, July 1962<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

With shit-eating grin, Superman jogs (?) away from a fist-shaking Luthor who vows to get Superman yet. Oh Superman you could have let those robots finally do what you could never do: keep Earth safe from Luthor forever.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Superman<\/a>
Superman being a bit of a shit in Action Comics #292, July 1962<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

To me the most interesting aspect of this story has been that it’s actually a story about Luthor’s anti-hero adventure in space with Superman acting as a supporting cast member. I believe it’s supposed to be comical (for its time) as it shows an obvious “bad guy” being down on his luck (and Superman taking delight in his nemesis’ predicaments). But to me, it really brings Superman down into a really grey moral area that I haven’t seen since his early early Golden Age days<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, bad character stewardship aside, I wonder if future stories will go in this direction and explore villain-centric plotlines. The “stay tuned” blurb also suggests that we are entering a phase of more dedicated tracking of character arcs from issue to issue going forward?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Action Comics #292 (July 1962), Luthor is given center stage in a Superman story. He pretends he’s gone insane, and then tricks a guard to escape from prison. He then blasts off from Earth using a rocket with “radium powered motors” to escape into space. When did he figure all this out? His star […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[754,93,621,271,14,769,139,768,43],"class_list":["post-4923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-754","tag-antihero","tag-artificial-life","tag-continuity","tag-dc","tag-grey-superman","tag-luthor","tag-murder","tag-superman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4923"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4990,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923\/revisions\/4990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}