Page "Lex Luthor" Paragraph 7

In the origin story printed in Adventure Comics # 271 ( April 1960 ), young Lex Luthor is shown as an aspiring scientist who resides in Smallville, the hometown of Superboy.

The teenage Luthor saves Superboy from a chance encounter with Kryptonite.

In gratitude Superboy builds Luthor a laboratory, where weeks later he manages to create an artificial life-form, which Luthor loved as if his own child.

Grateful in turn to Superboy, Luthor creates an antidote for Kryptonite poisoning.

However, an accidental fire breaks out in Luthor's lab.

Superboy uses his super-breath to extinguish the flames, inadvertently spilling chemicals which cause Luthor to go bald ; in the process, he also destroys Luthor's artificial life form.

Believing Superboy intentionally destroyed his discoveries, Luthor attributes his actions to jealousy and vows revenge.

Luthor's revenge first came in the form of grandiose engineering projects in Smallville to prove his superiority over the superhero, only to have each go disastrously out of control and require Superboy's intervention.

The mounting embarrassments further deepen Lex's hate for Superboy for supposedly further humiliating him and he unsuccessfully attempted to murder the superhero.

This revised origin makes Luthor's fight with Superman a personal one, and suggests that if events had unfolded differently, Luthor might have been a more noble person.

These elements were played up in various stories throughout the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in Elliot S. Maggin's novel Last Son of Krypton.

This revenge causes Luthor's family to disown him and change their names to Thorul.

It also leads to years of Superman, Luthor, and Supergirl concealing the truth from Luthor's sister, Lena Thorul.

She was told her brother died in a rock-climbing accident.

She has ESP powers due to touching one of Luthor's inventions.

Once she found out about Luthor being her brother and briefly lost her memory.

However Luthor broke out of prison and gave her flowers he had developed that removed the bad memory from her mind.