Lex Luthor is Superman's arch nemesis, evil genius and possible no-show in the upcoming Man of Steel. Yes he might have killed a bunch of people and regularly puts the world in danger but I still think the guy deserves a little bit of sympathy. I mean afterall...
He was totally right all along.
After defeating Brainiac Superman had a new problem, 100,000 rescued Kryptonians all living on Earth, all with Superman's powers. Part of Lex's motivation over the years has been the fear that Superman would just be the first of many alien invaders. He believed there was a real danger of thousands of god-like beings turning up, with no regard for our laws. The Kryptonians immediately start rounding up enemies of Superman and locking them away in the Phantom Zone in a move that most lawyers would describe as "not cool". The big swinging dick move was when they killed two officers guarding Parasite who refused to hand him over because "laws and stuff". This New Krypton story line led into Last Stand Of New Krypton and War Of The Supermen. So to recap, Superman brought a bunch of his people to our planet, they used their powers to ignore our laws and kill innocent people and then there was a war. It's just a pity no one ever said that's exactly what would happen. No one except one man.
His life was kind of crappy.
There's been numerous depictions of Lex Luthor's life. In one he grew up in the slums with an alcoholic and abusive father. In Superman Birthright he was a gifted genius who was ostracized and made to feel like an outsider constantly throughout his life, on top of the abusive father thing. Lex Luthor is a nerd fighting against a big strong man who was handed everything and was considered better just by being born and somehow DC managed to market that to teenage nerds as "Lex is the bad guy".
Cancer.
Quick test. What do you get when you expose yourself to high levels of radiation? That's right, cancer. Now what happens if you expose yourself to high levels of radiation but you live in a comic book? An affinity for spandex and superpowers. Unless you're Lex Luthor, then you totally just get the cancer. See at one stage Lex would always wear a kryptonite ring. It symbolised that he was untouchable even for Superman. Unfortunately krytptonite is radioactive and while Superman may not like that cancer is mad for that kind of thing.. Admittedly this is indicative of DC's attitude in general. With Marvel you've got any number of ordinary men becoming heroes, Spidey, Daredevil, Captain America. In DC you must be highborn or some kind of chosen one. And I already know everyone's gonna say "Batman" but he can only do what he does because his parents were rich enough for him to piss off to ninja school and never do an honest days work in his life. A good chunk of the Justice League are from different worlds and realms and are superheroes just because they were born better than us.
In DC one man claws his way to the top. Yeah he's rich but even getting that was tough for him. Lex Luthor did what no other character in DC has done, climbed to the top of the mountain and spat in the faces of gods. And in return he's the one person in comic book history to actually get cancer from radiation... Well except Mary Jane Watson who got cancer from over exposure to Spidey's radioactive super spunk.
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