Superman: President Luthor

by Jeph Loeb, Peter David, J.M. DeMatteis

Lex Luthor is the most powerful man in Metropolis, the companies in his conglomerate dominating travel, media and technology. His fame soared after he helped rebuild the earthquake-damaged Gotham City. Where does he go from there? Why, the White House, naturally! It was only a matter of time before billionaire Lex Luthor ran for the highest office in the land. And of course, besides bringing him victory, Luthor’s campaign for the presidency is calculated to bring maximum grief to the Man of Steel. But who ever said politics wasn’t a dirty business?

 Follow the campaign, election night and inauguration in SUPERMAN: PRESIDENT LUTHOR, as Lex Luthor becomes the world’s most powerful political figure!

 As a special bonus feature, this collection includes LEX LUTHOR: THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY, a look at his humble beginnings and rise to power. Collects THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #108-110, SECRET FILES & ORIGINS: PRESIDENT LUTHOR #1, SUPERMAN #108-110, #162-165 and SUPERMAN: LEX 2000 #1

Genres: Comics, Superman, Dc Comics, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Comic Book

255 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 27, 2018

About the author

Joseph "Jeph" Loeb III is an Emmy and WGA nominated American film and television writer, producer and award-winning comic book writer. Loeb was a Co-Executive Producer on the NBC hit show Heroes, and formerly a producer/writer on the TV series Smallville and Lost.

A four-time Eisner Award winner and five-time Wizard Fan Awards winner (see below), Loeb's comic book career includes work on many major characters, including Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, Hulk, Captain America, Cable, Iron Man, Daredevil, Supergirl, the Avengers, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, much of which he has produced in collaboration with artist Tim Sale, who provides the comic art seen on Heroes.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book seems very timely now given our current president and the similarities between the two. That cover even is a spoof on The Art of the Deal. Most of the book feels very disjointed. The President Luthor storyline ran through the Superman comics for a few years. Most of the stories here are cherry-picked snippets out of an issue just reprinting the pages having to do with Lex Luthor. The shining star is the Unauthorized Biography of Lex Luthor at the end. Even though it was written 10 years earlier than the rest of the material, it still fits.

[Subham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting storyline.

We basically follow the steps leading to Lex becoming the president and well the challenges and drama and what not faced just by him but Superman and others and I love this compilation. We see Pete Ross and all and how its affecting Clark personally and the various threats he faces like Earthquake and how Superman and JLA have to deal with it too. There is this great moment between Lex and Batman also and that was fun. The inclusion of Talia too. Plus what happens when Lex is taken hostage and how is he fooling everyone? But my fav was the end storyline talking about his biography and how Clark is trapped in the suspect of murdering someone and so much drama plus the story is so well written. One of the better Superman stories I have read in quite a while and it takes everything about these two arch-enemies and shows how dangerous Lex is and puts him in such a wild and interesting status quo. The art is all over the place but the ones with McGuiness are amazing.

[Diz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to read this thinking it would be a hard-hitting commentary about the nature of celebrity in politics and how it can be used to manipulate the voting public. Instead, this is a collection of randomly organized Luthor stories that take place during his election and presidency. The stories generally focus on how Luthor manipulates situations to make Superman look bad, or to make it look like Superman is supporting him. It's just OK. There's nothing here that anyone needs to go out of their way to read.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boy, what a Frankenstein's monster. This collection isn't composed of entire issues of the Superman comics in question - it's a collection of short subplot segments, frequently only a few pages each (with a few full-length issues that focused on the Luthor-for-President plot included), stitched together to pretend at being a cohesive whole. But because they weren't intended to read this way, the pacing and story flow are entirely off, choppy and disjointed. The handful of longer stories are respites of decent storytelling (the Jeph Loeb-written Aquaman-floods-Metropolis issues seemed to jump to the drastic step of a superhero flooding a major American city way too quickly, but I'll allow that perhaps some requisite backstory wasn't included in this volume), particularly in Mark Schultz's chapters around the inauguration. The art is a mixed bag - some good, some mediocre, sometimes just struggling to juxtapose two styles that are both fine on their own but make for an awkward transition in this jigsaw-puzzled-together story.

The book does have one very clear redeeming value - James Hudnall and Eduardo Barreto's Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Autobiography, which predates the other comics collected here by a full decade. It's a seedy noir thriller of a tour through young Lex Luthor's ascent to billionaire golden boy. As Unauthorized is clearly modeled (mockingly?) after Trump's Art of the Deal (at least the cover is), I see why DC put the book into this "President" assemblage from ten years later, but it deserves better.

[Will Robinson Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do you when the world's most veil criminal runs for President of the United States? What happens when that criminal becomes President? Superman must come to grips with this very horror when his arch nemesis, Lex Luthor runs for highest political office in the U.S.A. As a fan of the 2001 Justice League animated series I was exposed to the idea of Lex Luthor being president. What makes the idea so intriguing is all the questions it raises. What is true patriotism? When should we not trust our government? And can the American people trust themselves concerning who we place in political power? This book collects the comic story arc of Lex Luthor's rise to the office of president. This story is much a Lex story more than a Superman story. I can't judge the book on just one author alone as many writers and artists contributed to the tale. I will say I enjoyed the artwork by Ed McGuinness the most. He really just knows how to draw superheroes and dynamic action. What's surprising is how much of this story was stretched along several different Superman books being published at the time. The books included Adventures of Superman, The Man of Steel, Superman, and a few one shot issues that expand the story into the larger DC universe. I really enjoyed reading this book and more than anything Superman reminds us that the presidency is not about a man but it represents the U.S. understanding of what government should be: "For the People by the People". Hopefully we will not forget that ideal.

[Eldon Farrell · Rating 2 out of 5]

In a word, disappointing. This was such a huge storyline back in the day I would've thought the collected edition would, I don't know, tell the story? This is no more than a collection of snippets that barely work together.

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 4 out of 5]

É impossível ler esse encadernado do Presidente Lex e não comparar com a ascensão de outro presidente dos Estados Unidos que é inescrupuloso, vilanesco, egocêntrico, vaidoso e, obviamente, supervilanesco. Tem momentos que Lex Luthor age neste encadernado que são como o atual presidente estadunidense cuspido e escarrado. Mas também Luthor parece mais esperto que o tal presidente real, porque ele não mexe com políticas identitária, Luthor sabe que pode usar essas políticas para benefício próprio, diferente do bilionário dono da sua própria Torre (ops, o Lex Luthor também tem as sua própria torre com seu nome). As histórias aqui são apenas um vislumbre da fase em que Luthor se tornou o presidente dos Estados Unidos, e são feitas por bons desenhistas e escritores, antes que você pense que é só Jeph Loeb. O que me pareceu não ter a ver com o encadernado foi incluir a biografia não autorizada de Luthor, por mais que tenha sido inspirada na do apresentador de O Aprendiz. Aquele é um Lex Luthor de outra fase e o de Presidente Lex tem outra caracterização. Enfim, editorial choices...

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories were interesting and had some strong art, but the collection itself was a little disjointed.

[MannyLikesPie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 This was really good I just thought the ending would be different lmao

[Matthew Kresal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oscar Wilde once observed that “life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” A quarter of a century ago, comics featuring DC Comic’s Superman imagined a billionaire announcing an unlikely run for President of the United States. An action that, despite initial insistence they he could never win and an utter lack of political experience, saw them nonetheless attain the highest position in American politics. That billionaire being longtime arch-nemesis to Superman Lex Luthor, of course. In 2018, a number of the stories featuring Luthor’s run for the White House and its impact upon the Man of Steel, the staff of the Daily Planet, and the wider DC universe were collected into a single volume. It’s title? What else but President Luthor.

In reading the issues and stories that make up the first two-thirds or so of this collection, there were moments when it was hard to remember that it was published so long ago. The unfolding drama from a decision to run seemingly made out of spite, disbelief that anyone could vote for such a figure turning into realization that they will, past issues that resurface during the campaign only to be ignored, and the shock of those so certain that Luthor could never win when he does all feel fresh and relevant. The scenes involving Clark and Superman each speaking to Peter Ross and Lana Lang after the former decides to become Luthor’s running mate and Lana’s trying to justify it to the man she’s known all her life (and after facing the billionaire’s wrath previously), not to mention an assassination attempt, would feel on the nose and unsubtle if it wasn’t for the fact that there it comes from a story written and published so long ago. All of which makes reading this akin to seeing our world through a fun house mirror.

Which makes it a shame that so much of what’s here feels otherwise underwhelming. Part of that seems to be the way that various issues and other pieces have been collected here, with a range of writers and artists pulling at different storylines within the Lex 2000 arc. The result is a hodgepodge, to put it mildly, with some parts feeling down to Earth while others (including an arc involving Aquaman putting Luthor under arrest for crimes against the ocean!) sit uneasily alongside as over the top and less than stellar comic book fare. That’s something that’s also felt in the the artwork, with some artists going for a more grounded style while others go for something more stereotypical comic book or animation in style, not to mention the sometimes hypersexualized presentations of female characters (particularly Lois and Talia al Ghul in one segment). How much of the issue is down to how things are collected or that the issue by issue way these were published means that this is a serial that wasn’t read especially well in collected form, it’s hard to say. Whatever the case, it doesn’t make reading this an especially rewarding experience.

What makes this worth a read isn’t necessarily the actual President Luthor storyline but the one-shot collected in the closing third. Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography not only lends it cover art to this edition (itself based on the cover of The Art of the Deal in keeping with post-Crisis Lex being modeled on the billionaire turned future president) but is the best thing here. Writer James D. Hudnall presents a take on Luthor’s origin story via a neo-noir as desperate for money tabloid journalist Peter Sands tries to write an unauthorized biography of Luthor, framed by Clark Kent being interrogated by police. Published a decade before the Lex 2000 arc, it stands in contrast with the later storyline (even more so for being presented after it), especially in terms of the writing that presents a genuinely plausible and sinister tale of how Luthor rose to fame and fortune, a sense that even as a child there was little good about him. The artwork from Eduardo Barreto (inked by Adam Kubert) is just as grounded in neo-noir, making fantastic use of shadows and washed out colors to bring Hundall’s story to life. It’s worth reading the book just to get to this first-rate story, one that stands head and shoulders over the storyline that it clearly influenced more than a decade later.

And for a reminder of how true Wilde was about life imitating art, even if the art in this case doesn’t live up to the ideas behind it.

[Atheist Bale · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as a compilation of the President Luthor storyline beginning, it does a good job showing the campaign, election, and inauguration. Those comics are very hit and miss with some parts (Aquaman being friend/foe, oversexualized Wonder Woman), but they are consistent with Luthor and surprisingly prophetic for what was to come. The Unauthorized Biography graphic novel tacked on at the end is the best part, phenomenal short detective story. Sad world where a supervillain like Lex Luthor would be a better leader than half the guys running the show right now.

[C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clean-up of 'President Luthor', a few issues have been rearranged, a few scenes from 'President Lex' that had been deleted have been restored, and a few new things have been added. The overall effect is an improvement.

[Mikhail Farhath-Kupriyanov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall a very unevenly written book, probably because it had so many different writers on it, working on just one issue per person. The ‘unauthorised biography of Lex Luther’ though was a real highlight due to this pulpy, investigative atmosphere

[Ali Safwan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked it up because of the cover, and the contents did not disappoint. However since we are literally living in a similar reality just without Superman, it is a pretty hilariously depressing read 😭

[Arsalan Chishty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read it for obvious reasons. But it’s kind of rambling and has no good conclusion. The final story in the collection is great. Overall solid two star.

[Esdras Lopez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weirdly prophetic

[Sam Schnurbusch · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories throughout this collection are engaging, but the artwork is hit or miss. Sometimes it is too bubbly and cartoony for me, other times it is magnificent and texture and detailed.

[Renee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely disjointed with some very ugly art. The Luthor unauthorized biography was decent.

[alejandro galvez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid book.

The ending was the best part. A good collection of short stories that focus on Luthor. Very good. Check it out.

[Nate · Rating 2 out of 5]

First off, yes, that cover is a spoof of The Art of the Deal. And secondly, yes, this has lots of parallels to our current (thankfully one-term) president, namely that a rich businessman runs for office on an ego trip. The difference being, of course, that Luthor is actually smart.

I’ve read comics that take place when Luthor is president but hadn’t read the lead-up to his inauguration. Turns out it’s actually a decent read. It’s impossible to not think of the 2016 election when reading this - DC accurately predicted several things here. What’s most interesting is the reaction people have to his candidacy, especially the Daily Planet staff. And there are some good moments for Luthor throughout. Unfortunately, the second half of this collection feels disjointed with lots of short stories. The first half leading up to the election is more streamlined and compelling than the the second half.

[B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Does the Luthor storyline prefigure Trump? A little bit. That Ross Perot run really seemed to amplify the "crazy billionaires can be president" theme in pop culture. To me, it feels that way, anyway. I'd be interested in a study.

But this story version is kind of stupid. It happened little by little and then all at once.

More interesting the unauthorized biography used to fill out the book. 80's Luthor was a real sleezy creep. That makes it more of an unpleasant read. But it's a good story.

It's interesting how much more appealing the Timm version is, which, in turn, greatly influenced more recent depictions.

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superman: President Luthor

When Lex Luthor announces his intention to run for the Presidency, Superman is filled with misgivings and begins to lose himself in depression. As the election draws near, the Man of Steel is shown what will happen if he allows his depression to cause him to leave Earth.

The decision to make Luthor the President was ingenious, as it immediately created conflict in that readers knew that he wasn't fit for office. A patchwork novel shows how the Justice League reacts to the news in a gripping storyline.

[Chalupa Batman · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest, I would take a President Luther over Trump any day. With that being stated, it was an awkward read with little snippets. Interesting concept, especially with what drove him to run. There’s a story I wasn’t too crazy about and that is what happens if Superman leaves and there is no Superman to keep Luther in check. This collection does have the Luther biography, which is a good read.

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is mostly connected but kind of falls apart at the end. It felt like they put this out just to chase an audience in the Trump Era, especially with the art they chose for the cover. Either way, I think it's a solid Superman story and we need to know about more of those. I wouldn't read this for continuity and I'd look at it more as an anthology and not one cohesive story.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

We'd all be better off in this reality. The final chapter in this graphic novel: Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography by James D. Hudnall, Eduardo Barreto, Adam Kubert and Bill Oakley was phenomenal. I definitely recommend this collection.

[Lukas Holmes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hits a bit too close to home.

[Maxence · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was promising, and that is all. A huge deception. The drawing isn't good, the story is plain. The cover is great though.

[Sebastian · Rating 3 out of 5]

People would never let a billionaire with a known criminal history become president. This is unrealistic.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars