Lex Luthor #1

Here is the last of the small batch of comics I picked up this past week at Newbury Comics. I recently reviewed Forever Evil #1 and wasn't that impressed, certainly not impressed enough to buy the zillion crossover comics needed to get the whole story.

However, hype is hype, and the holographic covers for this "Villains Month" event certainly got plenty of hype. So I figured I'd at least check out one.

Title: Lex Luthor
Issue: 1
Date: November 2013
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Charles Soule
Penciler: Raymond Bermudez
Inker: Dan Green
Colorist: Ulises Arreola
Letterer: Dezi Sienty
Editor: Anthony Marques, Eddie Berganza

Apparently, this is actually Action Comics #23.3. No, really. We've gone to fractions.

I picked this issue up, somewhat at random, from among the 3-d holographic cover versions of the Villains Month comics that were in stock at the store I visited last week. These have been selling quite well, so a lot of titles were sold out, and I just went with a character that I knew reasonably well.

The cover itself is the most impressive 3-d effect I've seen on a comic, one of the best I've ever seen in print. It is also headache-inducing to look at.

The story is pretty straightforward. Luthor gets out of jail and immediately manipulates a bunch of evil schemes, all of which fall into place perfectly because we are supposed to believe that he is an evil genius. Some of the details were fairly clever, and the pacing of the writing was good, but there really was never any doubt as to the outcome of anything. And like most stories of this type, the more you think about it the less impressive it is, because really, Luthor needs to have ridiculous amounts of luck on his side for his plans to actually work. This is always my gripe with stories like this one, and given that, this particular issue did a better job than most with the evil scheming.

This issue also turns out to be a very direct prequel to Forever Evil #1, which made it a good choice if I was only going to read one crossover comic. The story here is actually pretty nicely self-contained, which I also took as an added bonus, considering what I could have been getting into.

Not terrible if you want to see Lex Luthor behaving badly, but nothing especially insightful either.

Rating: 5.5/10