At the end of the story, Luthor was apparently killed when Superman caused the dirigible to crash.

Despite Superman destroying his base, Luthor apparently escapes, with Superman destroying the machine and the scientist who made it committing suicide to prevent its reinvention.

Luthor even attempted to send a team of heroes after them under the leadership of Captain Atom-the team consisting of Major Force, Black Lightning, Power Girl, Starfire, Katana and Green Lantern, but this plan failed when Katana and Power Girl quickly sided with Superman and Batman and Major Force was apparently killed, Power Girl noting that Luthor had assumed in his arrogance that the heroes would obey him simply because he was President.

During the Blackest Night event, when word got out that apparently everyone around the world who have died are rising as undead Black Lanterns, Luthor isolates himself in his safehouse in fear that all the people he had murdered over the years would also reanimate and seek revenge on him.

This is ultimately revealed to be a ruse set up by Luthor and Deathstroke to draw out the real assassin, a shape-shifter named " Facade ", who had apparently killed and impersonated a woman on Luthor's security detail.

Though the Calculator took this to be a joke, Luthor was apparently serious, and Savage has not shown much regard for human life.

General Lane puts Lex Luthor to work on apparently " improving " Doomsday who, by the end of New Krypton has still not awoken from his most recent death.

Superman discovers that this was all part of a plot by Lex Luthor, which has now become obsolete ; after locating the satellite, Superman attempts to free his allies, only for them all to discover the apparently still-inert body of Doomsday, as well as three separate clones or copies-each with a different powerset.

In 1939 he transplanted his brain into the body of his assistant Lex Luthor ( then known as " Ell ") after his rocket crashed while fleeing the 1939 World's Fair, his body and Luthor's brain apparently too badly damaged to survive unless the switch occurred.

When that happened, the villain's machines broadcast images of Superman apparently murdering " Luthor " in cold blood over worldwide television to frame him.

According to then-current Post-Crisis continuity ( 1986 – 2004 ), Lex Luthor grew up in Southside ( Suicide Slum ) alongside Perry White ; he was able to escape the slum and set up his first company with the insurance payout following his parents ' apparently accidental deaths, which he had orchestrated.

A new plan formed when he realized how close Superman actually was to Lois ; the Parasite decided to take her place and tear him down emotionally by pretending to be a scorned Lois Lane, apparently even having an affair with Luthor in the process.

During the mutiny within the Secret Society, he sided against Luthor, and like the other mutineers, was subsequently both frozen solid by Killer Frost and apparently blown up by Darkseid.

Birthrights version of Luthor is a combination of both versions of the character, and though his knowledge as a general scientist is apparently unmatched ( he is referred to as the smartest man in the world ), astrobiology is his particular forte.

Mercy has agreed to take over LexCorp while Luthor is in prison ( which was apparently a promotion from bodyguard to executive ), and is hesitant to return it to him because she feels their former relationship was not an equal one.

Rosenbaum reprised his role of Lex in the two-hour series finale, which aired on May 13, 2011, in which the memory of his immoral life is erased by his half sister Lustessa Lena Luthor before she dies in order to ensure that he cannot use his knowledge of Clark's secret against him.

The widow dies shortly after Superman's return to Earth, and Luthor immediately sets out to avenge himself, first by ransacking the Fortress of Solitude, and later through the abduction of Lois Lane and her son Jason.

However that reunion becomes bittersweet, as Reactron kills her father, and her mother dies when New Krypton is destroyed by a trap in Reactron left by Lex Luthor.

Joel's powers are the result of a serum created by Luthor but, as Luthor knows, the serum is unstable and Joel dies a few minutes after killing his sister, living just long enough for Luthor to mockingly inform him that he lied.

In the tie-in comic book " DC Universe Online Legends ", which begins in a possible future, Captain Cold dies attempting to defend the Kryptonite-poisoned Superman from Lex Luthor.

: Luthor redirects here.

* In Justice League Unlimited, Dr. Polaris ( wearing his original costume and played by voice actor Michael Rosenbaum, who also plays the Flash ) is seen as a member of the new Secret Society of Super Villains ( Legion of Doom ) led by Gorilla Grodd ; here, he is portrayed as one of the Legion's most powerful members. Polaris and the Key rescue Lex Luthor from the pursuing cops and brought him to Grodd.

In the final season, Clark Kent marries Lois Lane ( a few years after her almost-marriage to his arch-enemy Lex Luthor, whom she refused at the altar ), finding love, happiness, and completeness in this relationship which does not jeopardize his Superman persona.

Clark Kent starts out best friends with Lex Luthor, whom he meets after saving the latter's life.

Metallo was soon kidnapped and his power source forcibly removed by Lex Luthor who, after discovering its debilitating effects on Kryptonians, created a ring with a kryptonite gem to keep Superman at bay.

Although Luthor would not appear until two years after Superman's debut, a central theme to his character — a dichotomy of science versus superpowers — was in place.

Luthor attempts to kill Superman after threatening to kill Lois, but despite being weakened by his destruction ray, Superman is able to destroy it.

Luthor does not physically appear in The Man of Steel until the fourth issue, which takes place over a year after Superman's arrival in Metropolis.

Even when Superman was depowered after the Battle of Metropolis and remained out of sight for a year, the only thing Luthor accomplished in that time was the self-sabotaged ' Everyman ' project, where " found a big destructive machine so could break things ", claiming that Superman drove him to it.

This idea was further reinforced when Luthor was briefly merged with a near-omnipotent entity that sought peace after its difficult ' childhood '.

" Although none of his attempts to kill Superman work permanently ( though a classic non-canonical story from 1961 entitled " The Death of Superman " has Luthor finally killing Superman after lulling him by pretending to go straight, although Supergirl then arrests him and he is exiled to the Phantom Zone ), Luthor routinely manages to escape from prison and threaten the world again.

He and Superman had originally gone to the world to have a proper fight as Superman did not want to appear cowardly after Luthor over a radio challenged him to a fight, as this planet had a red sun meaning Superman lost his powers there.

When the Justice Society's forced attempt to stop them by sending Hawkman and Captain Marvel against them met with failure and resulted in Superman and Batman briefly infiltrating the White House, Luthor, in an enraged and desperate gambit after Superman's rapid defeats of his plans, used a variant combination of the " super-steroid " Venom ( a chemical associated with the Batman villain Bane ), liquid synthetic Kryptonite, and an Apokoliptian battlesuit to fight Superman directly.

Returning to the LexCorp building to regroup after Superman damaged his battlesuit, Luthor finds that the acting CEO, Talia Head, has sold the entire company to the Wayne Foundation, forcing Luthor to escape and go into hiding.

One year after the events of Infinite Crisis, Luthor has been cleared of over 120 criminal counts ranging from malfeasance to first-degree murder relating to the New Year's Eve massacre from 52.

As Lex Luthor attempts to ambush Libra after learning that he is a prophet of Darkseid, Lex Luthor soon ends up surrounded by Justifiers.

Luthor successfully accessed Brainiac ’ s brain and after Metallo and Reactron were taken to Kandor as prisoners of the Kryptonians who had now settled on Earth he used Brainiac to reactivate the Coluan ’ s ship that was also being held in Kandor.

However, Luthor escapes after receiving a power ring fueled by the orange light of avarice and becomes a deputy of the Orange Lanterns.

While searching for the energy of the Black Lantern simultaneously dispatching various Doomsday ' clones ' created from the original to distract Earth's heroes by sending them after the other members of the Superman family with the aid of a robotic duplicate of Lois Lane created to give him an honest opinion on his actions, Luthor encountered Brainiac in space while attempting to alter the last of the Black Lantern energy, acting upon an unspoken theory of his.

His eighth marriage to Contessa Erica Alexandra Del Portenza ( aka the " Contessa ") is based on mutual greed ; the Contessa buys controlling interest in LexCorp after Luthor is indicted, compelling him to marry her in order to regain control of his company.

Less than a year later, however, an artistic goof resulted in Luthor being depicted as completely bald in a newspaper strip.

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

Waid's original intention was to jettison the notion of Lex Luthor being an evil businessman, restoring his status as a mad scientist.

During a press conference, the genuine Luthor publicly states that the body is that of an impostor from another Earth, and the true culprit of the crimes with which Luthor is being charged.

Luthor, in league with Doctor Sivana, seemingly destroys Libra and overturns the Anti-Life Equation being broadcast into the Justifiers ' helmets.

After being infused with the Orange Light of Avarice, Luthor begins a universal quest to locate the energy of the Black Lantern Corps.

As Luthor becomes one with the creature, Superman and Mr. Mind who has been aiding Luthor's search realise that the creature allows Luthor to create a feeling of peace and bliss throughout the entire universe, at the cost of never allowing him to cause any harm to another being at the same time.

The Contessa later escapes to an island mansion, but upon being elected President, Luthor targets her home with a barrage of missiles and destroys it.

Alice becomes pregnant shortly afterward, though the timing of the conception means an equal possibility of either Luthor or White being the father.

He still displays some scientific expertise that the traditional Luthor exhibited, being able to trace Zod and his cohorts by monitoring their radioactive signatures, and masterminding the creation of the Nuclear Man.

Kryptonian civilization's level of technological advancement has ranged from being only a few centuries ahead of Earth ( such as in Kevin J. Anderson's Last Days of Krypton novel ), to being millennia ahead and referred to by Lex Luthor as " one of the most advanced civilizations in the Universe " ( in the Superman film series ).

In the game, Lex Luthor has done an experiment where he has experimented on its citizens using Exobytes and Doomsday's DNA with Doomsday being trapped in a containment building near the Kent Family Farm.

He also provided the scream of Zod ( being exorcised from the body of Lex Luthor ) in the sixth season premiere episode " Zod ".

Luger adopted the ring name " Lex Luger ", being a fan of the comic book villain Lex Luthor, and made his in-ring debut in September 1985.

In recent years, stories have increasingly described events which bring the DC Universe farther away from reality, such as World War III occurring, Lex Luthor being elected as President of the United States in 2000, and entire cities and countries being destroyed.

Following the one-shot, the team's inaugural storyline involved them being hired to assassinate Lex Luthor following the events of War of the Supermen.

** On the Smallville TV series, a young Lex Luthor clone called Alexander Luthor turns out to have 50 % Kryptonian DNA ( from Clark ); his hair changes from red to Clark's hair color and he ends up being given the name " Conner Kent ".