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ow pgs
Joe Shuster cvr/art; 1st/2nd Luthor?? (Spring 1940); This book appeared on newsstands BEFORE Action 23; COMIC BOOK IMPACT rating of 8 (CBI)
As Holmes had Moriarty and Flash Gordon had Ming the Merciless, so did Superman have Lex Luthor, the tortured, evil genius hellbent on world domination and the subjugation of the Kryptonian hero. In only his second appearance, Luthor is established as a money-mad, power-crazed menace, employing a convoluted scheme involving oil wells and real estate to conquer the business world and the American landscape, and capturing the attention of a certain reporter-come-superhero in the process. Early Man of Steel tales were almost mundane in scale, with Supes taking on such depression-era scapegoats as robber barons, gangsters, greedy tycoons, and corrupt pols, making Luthor's operatic badness stand out from the pack. Though even in this instance, Siegel and Shuster still trafficked in the street-level nefariousness that came to define their early plotting. Also of note is the bald baddie on the cover. He can't possibly be Luthor, who still sports his original shock of red hair in the interior tale, but could this follically challenged cover cameo have spurred Siegel's later alteration of the ginger-tressed villain within? Hmm?