Yes, I’m back, with a brand-new DC ALL IN book. I’ve skipped the past few weeks because DC hasn’t released any new new ALL IN books, just continuing titles, so that’s outside my purview (not that I have a purview, or I should say my purview is only dictated by me, so I could change it easily, but I don’t want to). I thought about being done with this experiment, but here we are, and here we are with a new ALL IN book. I guess I’m not quite done yet!
Superman: Lex Luthor Special (“The Sound of Super”) by Joshua Williamson, Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira, Adriano Lucas, and Dave Sharpe. 22 pgs, $3.99.
Williamson gives an interview in the back of this issue. There’s a question about this particular book (rather than just Superman in general), and Williamson’s answer is worth quoting in toto:
I love Lex Luthor. And we’ve had this subplot for the last year about his memory being erased and how he seems happier without it. That his past is dark, and because of more than just his time in Metropolis and his hatred of Superman. At his heart Lex is a tragic figure in the DC Universe. He’s his own worst enemy.
This could have continued as a subplot, but I wanted the issue and story to breathe, as it’s an emotional one. We wanted to give it the room to really get into Lex’s head as we explore whether the world needs the old Lex Luthor back.
Wow. There are so many things wrong with that answer that it almost overwhelms my senses. There are 108 words in that answer, and it’s impressive that it takes that few words to be so, so wrong about everything. Good job, Mr. Williamson!
I’ll get back to that statement. First, what’s going on in this issue? Williamson doesn’t do terribly much here, just shows us Nu-Luth trying to regain his memory yet agonizing over whether he should or not. His daughter tries to get him to play the piano because he played in his youth, but that doesn’t work … just yet. Then, Lex is strolling around in the park when a bunch of surly people get pissed off at him because he’s not, you know, in a prison somewhere. Supes puts a stop to that and asks him if he’ll work on a problem they’re having on the Justice League Big-Ass Satellite (I’ll get back to that, too). We get flashbacks to his sad childhood, and then, at the end, Lex starts playing the piano. You know what this is? It’s my favorite word: PORTENTOUS!!!!!!
Ok, so that’s one dumb subplot. Meanwhile, Mr. Terrific asks Superman to contact Lex because he, Mr. T., wants to monitor the Absolute Worlds that were created when Darkseid did his thing (“in the now-classic DC ALL IN Special,” a footnote tells us, which seems a bit premature), and he, Mr. T., gets all icky looking at them. I mean, that’s basically it. Williamson dresses it up in stupid psychological speak, but basically, Mr. Terrific says he’s too much of a groovy dude to check out scary places that might harsh his mellow, but Lex is already evil, so fuck ‘im, right? So Supes asks him, and Lex basically says, Wait, you want me to be evil? Really? and Supes says, Oh shit, yeah, probably not the best idea. But! Lex starts with the piano-playing, because if anything in this world is evil, it’s playing the piano alone in your apartment at night!
Ok, so that’s another dumb subplot. Finally, we get the flashbacks. Lex is practicing the piano, but of course his scumbag dad wants him to stop because A) he, his dad, has “important work to do,” and B) piano playing makes you gay or something. I mean, of course we have the stereotypical drunken father, because in superhero comics, fathers are either paragons of virtue (in which case you end up a hero) or drunken scumbags (in which case you become a supervillain). Lex then invents something that “can send music into space as special signals that only some people can hear,” which freaks his dad right out because Lex is so young and shouldn’t be able to invent shit like that. Lex runs into the fields (because of course he lives on a farm) and plays his device, which just happens to calm down … Baby Clark Kent! Oh, the coincidences!!!! What tune do you think Lex plays on the piano, which Superman hears? YOU GET NOTHING FOR A CORRECT GUESS!!!!
Ok, so that’s the third dumb subplot. So many of them! First of all, Mr. Terrific thinks looping in the most evil human in DC’s history is a good idea? It’s not like Lex is the Joker, who’s basically insane. Lex is every horrible plutocrat you can think of, and Mr. Terrific wants to exploit him just because the Absolute Universes make him uncomfortable? Superman should have told him to nut the fuck up. Second, why the hell isn’t Lex in prison? I’m sure it’s been explained, but it’s still stupid. I absolutely loathe that Lex grew up on a farm, because it just feels wrong and dumb, but whatever. And I know Superman is all “Let’s give everyone a second, third, fourth, fifth, and infinitieth chance” around here, but when Lex Luthor is the one saying that maybe Lex Luthor shouldn’t get his memory back, Superman should stop poking the fucking bear (to be fair, he backs off, but not before giving Lex some pokes). And why does Mr. T. care about the Absolute Universes anyway? He claims that they’re supposed to monitor them, but why? If DC gives us a footnote about the ALL IN Special, why not a footnote telling us where their “mission statement” came from? Is it a self-proclaimed mission statement? Doesn’t Mr. Terrific (and Superman, for that matter) know that poking around in places that you know nothing about is a Bad Idea™? I mean, come on. Yes, let’s wake up the evillest dude on the planet just because some other dimension might upset my delicate sensibilities. Just fucking ignore it, man!
Getting back to Williamson’s statement … you “love” Lex Luthor? That’s like loving Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. Do you really? And he’s a “tragic figure”? Never, in 80 years, has Lex Luthor ever been a tragic figure. He’s an omnivorous capitalist vacuum, sucking in all that he can just to feed his own ego. Does Williamson love our current president, because the only real difference between them is that Lex is really intelligent and our current president couldn’t spell “cat” if you spotted him the “c” and the “a” or “dictator” if you spotted him the “dic.” He’s not tragic in any way, and you know what? That’s ok! He doesn’t have to be a tragic figure! He can just be a scumbag! Then, Williamson said he wanted to let the story “breathe,” but there’s not much of a story here. Lex has no memory, Lex is sad because he was a huge douchebag and no one likes him, Lex begins to remember his past and that ain’t good. Williamson says he wanted to not have it as a subplot, but, honestly, it probably would work better that way. If he just checked in with Lex every once in a while in the pages of Superman, it feels like it would both make the dumb parts of the story (Lex’s clichéd childhood) not as egregious and also provide a slow, tension-filled build to when Lex becomes evil again (because, come on, of course he’s going to become evil again). Concentrating it like this makes the dumb parts stand out more and make it feel rushed. Nice Lex, we hardly knew ye! (Of course, to be fair, he’s not evil at the end, but he’s obviously not Oblivious Lex anymore, either.) It’s ok to let things move slowly!
But that’s just me. Maybe I’m dumb. I love subplots, and I love when writers commit to one and plot it out over months, so when you read all the issues together, you think, “Well, shit, I see now where he was going with this.” I might not always get it in the month-to-month grind, but viewed in whole, it’s pretty cool. Instead, Williamson shot his wad in this, and it’s just kind of blah. Oh well.
(I do like how Lex was still the president in this DCU, which makes the fact that there’s a King of the United States in Wonder Woman even dumber. I mentioned this when I wrote about that – does anyone think Lex Fucking Luthor is kissing the ring of some decrepit old monarch? No? No.)
Eddy Barrows does really nice work on the art, though. Much like his studio mate Mike Deodato, Barrows reinvented himself some years ago and went from eye-gougingly bad to really good, using softer lines and tight, controlled hatching to give his art a lot more nuance than he used to have. His black-and-white flashbacks are superb, looking almost like woodcuts because of the precision in the line work. Barrows, Ferreira, and Lucas are by far the best thing about this book.
This feels like a bit of a useless comic, one that, Williamson’s interview answer notwithstanding, could have easily been blended into whatever story Williamson is telling over in Superman. But maybe you’re a weird Luthor stan, so you’re willing to go ALL IN with this Special!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
That’s it for this week! What else is coming down the pike? We shall see!
Due to the sliding timescale, I am going to guess Lex did a classical piano version of Harold Faltermeyer’s Axel F.
I didn’t realize the DC characters knew the Absolute universe existed and could watch it like TV. That seems silly.
I’m behind on Williamson’s Superman, because the first trade paperback only just came out (whereas the second trade paperback came out a while ago, and the third one came out the same month as the first, but the Brainiac storyline which is between 2 and 3 came out before that). I haven’t followed much of Williamson’s work before, but I thought the first couple volumes of Superman were pretty good.