title: Lex Luthor

text: Following changes to continuity in 2016's DC Rebirth, the history from "Superman: Secret Origin" is still largely intact, though it has also been revealed that for a time Lionel Luthor worked as a scientist for Vandal Savage and that this led to a brief friendship between Lex and J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter, when both were children.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Whether he is a mad scientist, corrupt businessman, or both, Luthor's ego is a defining trait in all his incarnations; he believes he is entitled to both popularity and power. While each incarnation initially wants the adoration of others and control over either Smallville or Metropolis, the goal eventually rises to control over Earth and possibly universal domination. Luthor's other defining trait is his obsession to destroy Superman and humiliate the alien hero, either by displaying his own superiority by achieving victory without the benefit of superpowers or to prove the Man of Steel is motivated by selfish desire rather than altruism. Many times, Luthor has claimed he could create a better way of life for the entire human race if not for Superman's interference with his work; he has even argued that the Man of Tomorrow's presence not only invites danger, it actually "encourages" human society not to strive for greatness because a powerful alien is around to protect them and solve problems. During the "Blackest Night" crossover, Wonder Woman restrains Luthor with her magic lasso and under its spell of truth he confesses he secretly wants to be Superman, revealing that beneath all his blustering, Luthor covets Superman's powers for himself. When Superman was out of sight for a year, Luthor used the time to create the "Everyman" project intending to create new superheroes to replace the Kryptonian, then later attacks Metropolis with a long-buried Kryptonian warship. Returning to action, Superman points out that Luthor had a year to prove his old argument that he could help others and improve Earth if Superman didn't interfere with his life, but instead of curing disease or making technological breakthroughs, all he did was focus on increasing his power and finding "a big destructive machine so [he] could break things." In the storyline "The Black Ring", Luthor is endowed with cosmic powers that could enable him to bring peace and bliss to the entire universe and therefore achieve his dream of being more respected than Superman, but he ultimately chooses to renounce his new powers when he realizes that his greatest enemy would never suffer again if he used them.


title: Lex Luthor

text: At times, Lex has been shown evidence that Clark Kent is Superman and almost always he denies this possibility, unable to imagine a man of such power spending half his time pretending to be average since in his mind, such a possibility would be too humiliating to bear. In stories appearing in "JLA" and "52" by Grant Morrison, Luthor cannot bring himself to believe Superman is truly altruistic and deeply cares about a planet that is not his native world, concluding the hero's good deeds are often actually passive-aggressive ways of flaunting his power and popularity to Lex. When the hero joins forces with others to form a new, powerful version of the Justice League of America, Lex decides this is Superman's direct challenge to his own power, and establishes an "Injustice League" composed of various supervillains to rival them.


title: Lex Luthor

text: While the Golden Age Luthor (later named Alexei Luthor) is simply an amoral and brilliant man driven by a simple desire for power, the Silver Age incarnation was given a more developed personality and backstory. Teenage Lex Luthor is an aspiring scientist who resides in Smallville and greatly admires its local hero Superboy. After Lex saves him from kryptonite, the Boy of Steel builds him a private laboratory in gratitude. After "thousands of experiments," the young scientist creates an artificial life-form of "primitive protoplasm." Overjoyed, he accidentally causes a chemical fire in the lab. Superboy puts out the fire, inadvertently spilling other chemicals, destroying the artificial life-form and the accumulated research notes that led to its creation. The chemical fumes also cause Lex's hair to completely fall out. Enraged he has lost years of research but unwilling to accept responsibility for the fire, Luthor concludes Superboy intentionally sabotaged his work, jealous of the young scientist's achievements, and swears revenge.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Luthor creates grandiose engineering projects to prove his superiority over the superhero, but each one fails and causes problems that Superboy then solves. Luthor then makes his first attempt to murder the Last Son of Krypton and fails. Instead of bringing him to the authorities, Superboy declares they are even now and expresses hope Lex will "straighten out" and use his intelligence to help humanity rather than try to prove his superiority or waste time seeking power and vengeance.


title: Lex Luthor

text: "Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane" #23 (1961) reveals the Silver Age Lex Luthor parents are Jules and Arlene and that he has a younger sister Lena. When Lex becomes a criminal, the family moves away from Smallville and changes its name to Thorul (an anagram) to start a new life free of him. Lena Thorul is a toddler at the time and grows up not remembering her real last name, while her parents say her older brother died in a mountain climbing accident. Lex later watches over the adult Lena, making sure she does not discover her connection to one of Earth's greatest villains.


title: Lex Luthor

text: As an adult, Lex Luthor's driving ambitions are to kill Superman and rule Earth, a stepping stone to dominating the universe, believing a man of his intellect deserves such power. On several occasions he joins forces with Superman's enemy Brainiac (though the two often betray each other as well). Lex is repeatedly imprisoned, but his genius allows him to routinely escape. He also makes it a point to be out of prison on the birthday of Albert Einstein, regarding it as a holiday. A famous non-canonical "imaginary story" from 1961 entitled "The Death of Superman" has Luthor finally succeed in killing Superman after pretending to reform and befriend him.


title: Lex Luthor

text: On a distant arid planet orbiting a red star, Luthor challenges Superman to a fight since Kryptonians lose power when exposed to red sun radiation. Befriending the planet's inhabitants, Luthor aids them in rediscovering lost technology that restores the water supply and helps the society rebuild. As a result, Luthor becomes a hero in the eyes of the planet, whereas his enemy Superman is detested as a villain. The people rename the planet Lexor and it becomes a regular home base and retreat for Luthor in-between his efforts to fight Superman and take over Earth. He later meets a local woman named Ardora (first called "Tharla" but renamed "Ardora" in later stories as well as the reprint of her first appearance). The two eventually fall in love and marry.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Deciding to retire permanently, Luthor returns to Lexor and learns he has fathered a son by Ardora, Lex Luthor Jr. He spends the next several weeks with his new family before discovering Lexor suffers from the same planetary instability that destroyed Krypton. While creating a "Neutrarod" tower to stabilize the planetary core, Luthor's pathological hatred for Superman resurfaces and he reflects on feeling unsatisfied in life without their conflict. The villain then unearths an ancient underground laboratory of great technology, a relic from Lexor's lost age. After one of Luthor's still-active satellites threatens the people of Earth, he concludes Superman will soon come to Lexor to take him back to Earth authorities. With the underground lab's resources, he spends weeks creating a highly destructive, flight-capable "war-suit" (later simply called a "warsuit") to finally match the Kryptonian in physical combat and counter his powers. To test the suit, Luthor performs several acts of destruction on Lexor, feigning ignorance when he hears about the "mystery marauder" and telling Ardora he has no knowledge of the armored man.


title: Lex Luthor

text: When Superman arrives, Luthor dons his warsuit and attacks, now obsessed with the need to best the hero in combat and prove his superiority. The people of Lexor are shocked to realize he is the mystery marauder and does not care about the harm he has caused them. During the battle, Luthor releases an energy salvo that accidentally overloads the Neutrarod, resulting in the complete destruction of the planet Lexor and all its inhabitants, including Ardora and Lex Jr. Similar to how he reacted after the destruction of his lab in Smallville, Lex is unable to process his grief and accept his responsibility for Lexor's destruction. He psychologically blocks part of his own memory to convince himself Superman is at fault, renewing his need for vengeance. In his subsequent stories, he regularly uses the Lexorian warsuit. The warsuit was designed by George Pérez as part of the Super Powers toyline in the early 1980s before being introduced into the comics in 1983. The suit vanished in 1986 after "Crisis on Infinite Earths" rebooted DC Comics continuity, but was reintroduced in 2004, now said to be built with a combination of Earth and alien technology (including tech from the other-dimensional world Apokolips) and armed with different forms of kryptonite in the gauntlet.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Lex Luthor of Earth-One team up with Alexei Luthor of Earth-Two. It is shown that Alexei is arguable colder and more villainous, perfectly willing to destroy all of Earth in order to prove his superiority, whereas Lex hesitates to do so because he had no desire to rule a lifeless world and doesn't want his sister to die. They even extend their alliance to Ultraman when Earth-Three's Lex Luthor is a good guy. All three villains were defeated by Superman of Earth-One, Superman of Earth-Two, and Lex Luthor of Earth-Three.


title: Lex Luthor

text: During the 12-issue limited series "Crisis on Infinite Earths", Luthor allies himself with fellow Superman foe Brainiac to recruit an army of supervillains spanning the DC Multiverse. Alexei Luthor is present and complains this army does not need two Luthors; Brainiac kills Alexei in response. At the conclusion of the series, reality is altered so that each of the different universes converge into one. Luthor is subsequently returned to prison with all his memories of the Crisis forgotten.


title: Lex Luthor

text: This incarnation of Lex Luthor met his end in the non-canonical two-part story "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" that closed out the Pre-"Crisis" Superman continuity of the Silver and Bronze Age. Luthor finds Brainiac's robotic head, hoping to revive the villain for a new team-up. Instead, Brainiac takes control of Luthor's body, forcing him to be a host as he attempts to destroy Superman. Luthor later begs a superpowered Lana Lang to kill him, who does so. Brainiac retains control of the body for a short period of time before rigor mortis sets in, then abandons it, running out of power shortly afterward.


title: Lex Luthor

text: As part of the continuity changes which followed "The Man of Steel" and "Superman: Secret Origin", Alexander "Lex" Joseph Luthor is corrupt businessman profiting from many hidden criminal operations. This Luthor grew up a poor child alongside Perry White, later causing his parents' death via a car accident so he can inherit their life insurance and create a better life for himself, creating LexCorp. He marries and divorces several times and desires a romance with Lois Lane. When Superman appears, Luthor takes advantage of a terrorist attack to see the hero in action and then attempts to make him an employee. But the Man of Steel, acting as a special deputy of Metropolis, arrests him for endangering people by not warning authorities of the impending terrorist attack. Humiliated, Luthor swears revenge, repeatedly letting Superman know about his criminal schemes but never leaving him enough evidence to bring the man to justice again. Luthor becomes obsessed with Superman and gathers all information on him and his associates, leading a computer analysis to conclude Clark Kent and Superman are the same person. Unable to believe someone as powerful as Superman regularly hide that power and pretend to be average, as that is something he would never do himself, Luthor dismisses the computer's findings and concludes both the machine and its programmer are at fault.


title: Lex Luthor

text: As a nod to the previous continuity, Luthor has his lab create high-tech armor that resembles the Lexorian warsuit. Rather than act directly, he has an employee don the armor and attack Superman for him. The man is defeated and cannot testify against Luthor because the armor's neural control unit destroys his mind. Along with this, Luthor participates in the creation of two "Superman" villains, Parasite (indirectly) and Bizarro (a failed attempt by Luthor's scientists to clone Superman).


title: Lex Luthor

text: When Superman fights the cyborg Metallo, Luthor intervenes. In "Superman" (vol. 2) #2, discovering Metallo is powered by a 'heart' of kryptonite that can hurt and potentially kill Superman, Luthor steals it and a creates a kryptonite ring for himself. He wears the radioactive ore around his finger as a symbol that he is untouchable, causing the Man of Tomorrow pain and weakness whenever he approaches. Not realizing humans can be affected by severe or long-term meteoric radiation exposure, Luthor eventually suffers from Kryptonite poisoning. He had his right hand amputated to prevent the cancer's spread, and not long afterwards, said kryptonite ring (which he kept in cold storage prior to the surgery) would be stolen. Eventually coming into the possession of Superman, who in turn entrusts it to Batman, tasking the Dark Knight to use it if the Man of Steel ever becomes corrupt or falls under the control of another. But removing the tainted limb was a mere half measure, as his affliction had already metastasized rendering Lex's condition terminal.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Luthor fakes his death in a plane crash in the Andes and secretly has his brain transferred to a cloned body, one younger, taller, with full hair, and more physically fit. With aid from trusted assistants, the now physically 21-year-old Luthor presents himself to the world as his own hitherto unknown, illegitimate son and heir from Australia, Lex Luthor II, who only wishes to do good and can't be judged by the actions of his father. He quickly manipulates and recruits the new Supergirl (a protoplasmic being), who falls in love with him due to his resemblance to her lost love and creator, the Luthor of a parallel Earth. When Superman is seemingly killed by the living weapon Doomsday, the genetic research facility Project Cadmus creates a seeming clone of the hero called Superboy (Kon-El). As Earth science cannot perfectly replicate Kryptonian DNA, Superboy is created by genetic manipulation, essentially giving him 50% Superman's DNA and 50% DNA of a human being, revealed years later to be Luthor himself.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Luthor's clone body eventually begins to deteriorate, causing him to lose his hair and age at an accelerated rate, a side-effect of a disease affecting all clones. Lois Lane discovers proof of Luthor's clone harvesting and false identity and exposes him with help from Superman. Desperate to evade arrest, Luthor activates technology left on Earth by Brainiac, destroying large sections of Metropolis in the process. In the end, Luthor becomes a prisoner in his own body, unable to move or even blink, internally swearing vengeance on Superman. During the crossover "Underworld Unleashed", the demon lord Neron offers Luthor full health and vitality in exchange for services and his soul. Not believing in the existence of souls, Lex agrees and is restored, regaining the physical fitness of his Lex II body but again lacking head and facial hair, and is physically approximately in his true age. His soul is later restored after Neron is defeated by Captain Marvel and the Trickster. Returning to Metropolis, Luthor submits to a trial. He claims all his crimes were committed by a violent clone created by renegade scientists from Cadmus Labs who secretly held the true Luthor hostage. Luthor is acquitted of all charges. He later arranges to reacquire his old kryptonite ring.


title: Lex Luthor

text: When Superman and others form a new, powerful version of the Justice League of America, Lex decides this is Superman's direct challenge to his own power, so he creates a new Injustice Gang in response. Along with his new teammates, Lex acquires a powerful artifact known as the Worlogog, which can warp space and time. The Injustice Gang kills several people while attacking the League then lures the heroes into a trap, but then is defeated. The Joker gains control of the Worlogog, but is then telepathically attacked, becoming temporarily sane and remorseful. Before the killer's mind reverts, Luthor has Joker use the Worlogog to revise history so that those killed no longer died. With the deaths removed and little physical evidence linking him to any wrongdoing, Luthor is free to go. While Batman concludes Luthor simply used Joker to avoid murder charges, Superman believes it is a sign Luthor does not truly desire the deaths of innocents and still has the potential to be a good man.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Luthor marries Contessa Erica Alexanda Del Portenza, a near-immortal and formidable woman with her own agenda. After the birth of their daughter Lena, Luthor attempts to raise the girl without her interference. After several clashes, Luthor has the Contessa seemingly killed by a missile barrage. Later on, the time-traveling villain Brainiac 13 infuses Metropolis with technology from the future while his ancestor Brainiac, in need of a new physical vessel, mentally inhabits young Lena's body. Brainiac 13 offers Luthor control of the technology if Luthor turns over Brainiac and hands over his daughter. He later tells Superman that he has a "kingdom" now as a result of his deal, adding "As for my princess... I can always make another."


title: Lex Luthor

text: Deciding to turn to politics, Luthor becomes President of the United States, winning the election on a platform of promoting technological progress. His first action as president is to take a proposed moratorium on fossil-based fuels to the U.S. Congress. On the night of the election, Batman threatens that Luthor can keep the kryptonite ring or the White House but not both. Later on, Superman, Batman and Lois Lane seemingly try to steal the ring only to be thwarted. In actuality, they manipulated Luthor into retrieving a fake while Batman keeps the actual ring. Superman, upon learning that Lex Luthor was about to be elected President, flew off in a fit of rage and split one of Saturn's small moons in half with one fly through.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Before he takes office in the White House, Luthor cuts ties with his own company LexCorp, turning over leadership to Talia Head (pronounced "Heed"), daughter of international terrorist cult leader Ra's al Ghul, one of Batman's greatest enemies. Luthor's popularity is assisted by the extreme unpopularity of the previous administration's mishandling of the Gotham City earthquake crisis (as depicted in the "No Man's Land" storyline in the Batman titles), and his own seemingly heroic efforts to rebuild Gotham before it rejoins the United States. Batman learns Luthor attempted to take control of Gotham by forging deeds for its lands in his own name. This results in Bruce Wayne severing all commercial ties between the U.S. government and his company, Wayne Enterprises. In response to Wayne Enterprises severing ties with his government, Luthor arranges the murder of Wayne's lover, Vesper Fairchild, and frames Wayne for the murder (as seen in ""), the plan being more successful than Luthor anticipated when his chosen assassin of David Cain realized Wayne's identity as Batman and set up a complex frame.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Soon after Luthor discovers evidence that leads him to conclude Clark Kent is Superman, the 2001 "Our Worlds at War" saga begins, in which Topeka, Kansas is destroyed in an attack by the alien Imperiex. Luthor is warned of the impending attack beforehand but alerts no one so Earth can enter a great war and he can prove his leadership to the world. Luthor coordinates the U.S. Army, Earth's superheroes, and a number of untrustworthy alien forces to battle the main villain of the story arc. Although Lex Luthor is able to devise a plan to destroy Imperiex's body, the plan is subsequently hijacked by Brainiac 13, requiring Superman to propose a new plan where Darkseid and Luthor coordinate their efforts to defeat Imperiex by sending him back in time. Following the battle, Superman retrieves Lena and returns her to Lex, advising Luthor to stop trying to be a god and just be a man. Soon afterward, Superman's confronts the telepathic Manchester Black. Realizing Superman is a true hero and therefore true heroism is possible, Black decides to make up for his actions against the Man of Steel and Lois Lane by removing Lex Luthor's knowledge that the Man of Steel is Clark Kent.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Following the publication of in 2003-2004, Luthor's history is altered (and the new canon is quickly referenced in both Superman comics and the series "Superman/Batman" that begins in 2004). In the new history, Luthor is only a few years older than Clark Kent and his family moves to Smallville when he is a teenager. Possibly abused by his father Lionel, and alienated from others by his intelligence and his ignorance of certain social cues and behaviors (he does not understand why gifts are given on birthdays without a promise of payment of some kind), Lex only finds friendship with Clark, impressed by the young man's knowledge though also finding him naive. Luthor discovers kryptonite meteors in Smallville and uses the radioactive mineral as a power source for his experiments. When Clark sees the machine and feels ill from proximity to kryptonite, Luthor mistakes his reaction to mean the young man doesn't believe in the experiment, that he also thinks Lex is lying or "crazy" as others do. The machine then explodes and Luthor survives but loses his hair as a result of radiation. Years later, his scientific research, largely based on his ideas about alien life, results in a small fortune that he uses to create LexCorp. When Superman appears in Metropolis, Lex is angered the man won't bow to his control and takes it very personally that a powerful alien, the kind of companion Luthor had often hoped for and believed would see him as a peer, instead looks on him with disapproval and moral judgment. This, along with Superman interfering with his criminal agenda and openly disrespecting Luthor in front of the media, motivates Lex to humiliate and destroy the alien hero.


title: Lex Luthor

text: The initial story arc of the "Superman/Batman" ongoing series depicts the fall of Luthor's reign as U.S. President before he finishes his first term of office. In "The World's Finest" (more commonly referred to as "Public Enemies"), a kryptonite asteroid threatens Earth with its incoming impact and intense radiation. Luthor has been secretly injecting himself with a new version of the "super-steroid" Venom (a chemical associated with the Batman villain Bane) mixed with liquified synthetic kryptonite of his own design. While increasing his physical strength and speed, it starts making him irrational and more prone to aggression. Seeing an opportunity with the appearance of the asteroid, Luthor decides to finally end Superman and tells the media that he has evidence the Man of Steel himself is drawing the deadly radioactive rock towards Earth. He offers a billion-dollar reward for the Last Son of Krypton's capture. As these efforts fail and the meteorite is destroyed, an enraged Luthor decides to fight Superman directly, injecting himself with more of the synthetic kryptonite-laced Venom and donning a high-tech warsuit.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Maddened by the Venom, Luthor admits during the battle that he has no real proof Superman is the cause of the deadly asteroid heading to Earth and reveals he traded the creature Doomsday, a living weapon of mass destruction, to Darkseid in return for weapons during the "Our Worlds at War" crisis and Apokoliptian technology to create a new warsuit, a deal that was done illegally and would be considered immoral by many. After Superman damages his warsuit, Luthor retreats to LexCorp HQ only to discover that Talia Head has sold the entire company to the Wayne Foundation. Without resources and realizing his confession to criminal acts and conspiring with a hostile power was recorded and broadcast, Luthor flees, now a wanted fugitive. Vice President Pete Ross briefly assumes his place as President. While on the run, Luthor takes a renewed interest in his "son" Superboy, hoping to corrupt the young Kon-El into being his soldier.


title: Lex Luthor

text: In 2009, the story of Luthor's rise and fall as U.S. President was adapted as a direct-to-video animated film entitled "".


title: Lex Luthor

text: Alexander Luthor, Jr. (the son of Earth-Three's version of Luthor) returns to the DC Universe along with other survivors from "Crisis on Infinite Earths" as part of a scheme to replace it with a perfect Earth. He masquerades as the mainstream Lex Luthor and creates a new Secret Society of Super Villains. In response, the real Luthor takes on the identity of Mockingbird and forms the third incarnation of the Secret Six to counter the Society. The two have a confrontation during the main "Infinite Crisis" story and the mainstream Lex Luthor helps Earth's heroes locate young Alexander Jr. After Infinite Crisis ends, Luthor oversees Alexander's execution at the hands of the Joker in Crime Alley.


title: Lex Luthor

text: In the 2006 – 2007 series "52", Lex takes advantage of the presence of Alexander Jr.'s body. He convinces the public that it was not him who committed crimes and fled the White House but rather this man, a Luthor from a parallel Earth who masqueraded as him. While some in the public don't believe this, it is enough to provide reasonable doubt and clear Lex of all charges again. With Superman now missing (due to losing his powers at the end of "Infinite Crisis"), Luthor pursues a new agenda. He creates the Luthoran Church and becomes spokesman for the Everyman Project, which offers superpowers to ordinary citizens through artificial metagene treatment. With several Everyman volunteers (including Natasha Irons, niece of John Henry Irons), Luthor forms his own team of superheroes, the new Infinity Inc. When the team battles the villain Blockbuster (whom Luthor empowered as well), Lex demonstrates he can 'shut off' the powers of any of his Everyman agents; this results in the death of his speedster, Trajectory.


title: Lex Luthor

text: At the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, Luthor sets in motion a calculated plot to discredit Supernova, a new hero defending Metropolis in Superman's absence. Luthor triggers a mass-shutdown of the powers of everyone who has undertaken the Everyman program, except for the members of Infinity Inc, causing widespread death, injury, and millions of dollars worth of damage. Luthor's plot ultimately fails when Supernova is able to minimize the disaster with a spectacular rescue.


title: Lex Luthor

text: While investigating Luthor, Natasha Irons discovers he has experimented on himself with artificial metagene treatment. After developing nearly all of Superman's powers himself, Luthor considers conquering Earth and renaming it Lexor. However, Natasha triggers an electromagnetic pulse which shuts down the synthetic metagene and her uncle Steel knocks Lex out. Publicly disgraced, Lex faces indictment for over 120 criminal counts relating to what is now called "the New Year's Eve massacre", ranging from malfeasance to first-degree murder. The full nature of his crimes are brought to public attention through various articles written by Clark Kent.


title: Lex Luthor

text: One year after the events of "Infinite Crisis", weeks after the New Year's Eve Massacre, Luthor is cleared of all criminal charges in the "One Year Later" storyline. Despite this, his public image is ruined and, thanks to the machinations of the villain Doctor Sivana, he has lost most of his wealth and had no control over the newly reformed LexCorp, now being run by Lana Lang. He blames Clark Kent for swaying public opinion and pledges vengeance on Metropolis after an angry mob jeers him. Amassing large quantities of kryptonite and kidnapping the super-villains Metallo and the Kryptonite Man, Lex uses them to power a Kryptonian warship controlled through a "sunstone" crystal. Having recently regained his powers, Superman destroys the kryptonite-powered ship and confronts Lex with the fact that, despite his claims that Superman is what prevents him from helping humanity, the only thing he accomplished during the Man of Steel's absence was to cause pain and acquire a machine that could cause more destruction. Enraged, Lex manages to escape custody yet again.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Lex Luthor continues his open campaigns against Superman and Earth's heroes, working with Bizarro, a new Revenge Squad, and the Kryptonian General Zod. Alongside Joker and Cheetah III, Luthor (once again wearing his warsuit) organizes a new Injustice League to help destroy the reformed Justice League. During this period, he creates the third Shaggy Man and the third Blockbuster.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Luthor plays a large role in the "Countdown to Final Crisis" tie-in series "Salvation Run". Exiled to a distant planet along with many of Earth's villains, Lex quickly assumes command and convinces many to follow him as he finds a way home. He is opposed by those who join forces with Joker and Gorilla Grodd. Eventually, the villains are attacked by Darkseid's shock troopers the Parademons. Luthor manages to get the villains off the planet with a makeshift teleporter, using the villains Neutron, Heatmonger, Plasmus, Warp, and Thunder and Lightning as unwilling power sources. When called a "monster" by Thunder, Luthor claims the ones who exiled them are the real monsters and he is the hero. He sets the teleporter to self-destruct after he uses it, killing the Parademons as well as his living batteries.


title: Lex Luthor

text: In the "Final Crisis" crossover, Luthor joins the Inner Circle of Libra's Secret Society of Super Villains. After learning Libra is a prophet of Darkseid, Lex Luthor opposes him, unwilling to be a mindless slave while Earth is largely destroyed. Working with Doctor Sivana, Luthor seemingly destroys Libra and overrides the will-destroying Anti-Life Equation being broadcast into the helmets of the Justifiers, humans forced to obey Darkseid. Luthor subsequently assists Superman in leading the assault against Darkseid's forces, noting that Superman can consider this a legendary first team-up between "good" and "bad." Luthor joins those assisting Superman and his remaining allies in constructing a new wish-granting Miracle Machine, which is later used to reset the universe without Darkseid's presence.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Luthor is finally found guilty for his crimes. Rather than spend life in prison, he is recruited by General Sam Lane to serve out his sentence by working for the secretive Project 7734, accessing the knowledge stored within the captured Brainiac. Luthor successfully accesses Brainiac's brain, using it to activate the villain's ship and robotic drones. Luthor is then tasked with studying the genetic potential of the seemingly dead body of Doomsday.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Luthor later manages to use Brainiac's ship to kill the soldiers assigned to watch him. Brainiac frees himself from Luthor's control and the two make their escape. Forming an alliance, Brainiac promises Luthor can have Earth when he is done with it. Lex returns to Smallville, where it is revealed his sister Lena is alive, physically and mentally handicapped, and living with her daughter Lori. In an effort to prove his abilities to Superboy, Lex manages to counter Lena's disabilities, allowing her to walk and regain greater mental awareness, then quickly reverses the process, leaving her completely catatonic. Luthor then informs Superboy that so long as Superman is alive, he will never reveal how he helped Lena. Seeing Superboy now as a failed experiment due to having 50% "wrong alien DNA", Luthor and Brainiac create another binary clone with their own genetics.


title: Lex Luthor

text: As part of his participation in Project 7734, Luthor sends a robot double of himself with Brainiac on a mission to attack New Krypton. While there, the Luthor robot tampers with the body chemistry of the previously captured villain Reactron. Reactron then kills himself, initiating a chain reaction which destroys New Krypton and all but a handful of its 100,000 Kryptonian inhabitants. Supergirl's mother Alura is among the casualties. Since Earth is at war with New Krypton at the time, Luthor is praised for this action and receives a presidential pardon for all his past crimes.


title: Lex Luthor

text: During the "Blackest Night" storyline, when the public learned that everyone who has died are rising as undead Black Lanterns, Luthor isolates himself in his safehouse in fear that "all" the people he has murdered over the years will reanimate and seek revenge. Several victims, including his deceased father, arrive but he escapes after receiving a power ring fueled by the orange light of avarice, becoming an Orange Lantern deputy. Luthor arrives at Coast City and joins the battle against the Black Lantern Corps, fighting Black Lantern versions of Superman and Superboy. Luthor is quickly overwhelmed by his greed and sets out to steal the rings of his fellow inducted Lanterns, taking Scarecrow's yellow fear-powered ring before being held back. Wonder Woman restrains Luthor with her magic lasso and under its spell of truth he confesses he secretly wants to be Superman. When Nekron is defeated, Larfleeze the Orange Lantern takes Luthor's ring, as there can only be one avarice-powered ring.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Still craving the power of the orange light, Luthor recovers and operates on the remains of Black Lanterns. He is visited by Larfleeze, who demands to know what is important to the people of Earth. Luthor responds with "power" (which Larfleeze already possesses) and "land" (which intrigues the alien).


title: Lex Luthor

text: The 2009-2010 mini-series alters Lex's history again. He now grows up in Smallville with his younger sister Lena and abusive, alcoholic father. He meets Clark Kent on a few occasions but is defensive and insulted when he realizes Clark desires a friendship. While in high school, Lex arranges for his parents to die in a car accident, after which he uses the money to travel the world. "Action Comics" Annual #13 in 2011 reveals that after leaving Smallville, Lex spent some time studying under Ra's al Ghul and later spent time working as a weapons maker for Darkseid, learning the technology of Apokolips.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Lex's scientific work and other factors lead him to create a fortune and found LexCorp. Luthor's public relations paints him as a savior to Metropolis, which suffers greatly from crime, and he makes a display of regularly granting good fortune to a random citizen. When Superman appears, Luthor's secret criminal operations are threatened and Luthor is no longer considered a great savior or power in the city, particularly after the hero tells the public that they should look to themselves to be heroes and not look to others to be their saviors. Luthor begins a quest for vengeance, aiding (indirectly and directly) in the origins of Parasite and Metallo.


title: Lex Luthor

text: After the conclusion of the "New Krypton" event, Luthor became the lead character in "Action Comics" until issue No. 900. Written by Paul Cornell, the first storyline "The Black Ring" explores Luthor's new desire to locate the energy of the Black Lantern Corps. Aiding him in this quest is a robot duplicate of Lois Lane. To distract Superman and his closest allies from interrupting him, Luthor releases several Doomsday duplicates.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Luthor's quest involves a conversation with Death herself and finally leads him to face a powerful and deadly entity released from the Phantom Zone. Luthor infuses himself with Kryptonian technology and grapples with the creature. The two fuse and Luthor learns it evolved in the Phantom Zone and now seeks to escape, driven mad by sensing the grief and anger of the Zone prisoners. With the creature's power at his command, Luthor draws out Superman to him and attempts to drive the hero mad by forcing him to experience real human emotions, believing the Last Son of Krypton only fakes humanity in order to be trusted. The ploy fails and Luthor's new abilities reveal that Superman is really Clark Kent, a well-meaning man raised by Earth people who loved him and who still mourns the loss of his beloved human father Jonathan Kent. Luthor is enraged by how this upbringing and emotional nature clashes with his own motivations, unhappy childhood and anger towards his own father.


title: Lex Luthor

text: It becomes clear that the Phantom Zone entity has the power 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. Superman appeals to Luthor to make this a reality, thus giving the universe a gift and achieving something beyond the Man of Steel's abilities. Unwilling to create a universe of bliss when it would mean Superman would also be rewarded instead of suffering, Luthor loses his connection to the entity and its power, as well as his memory of everything he learned merged with it. The entity departs for another reality and Lex falls into a Phantom Zone portal. Shortly afterward, the "Flashpoint" timeline is created and afterward the DC Universe is replaced by the New 52 reality.


title: Lex Luthor

text: In 2011, DC Comics implemented "The New 52", a relaunch of its titles and a reboot of its fictional continuity. In the new reality, Lex Luthor has no childhood association with Smallville or Clark Kent. As an adult in Metropolis with the resources of LexCorp, he sets up himself as a scientific troubleshooter for the military, working with government scientist John Henry Irons to create high-tech armor called "Metal-Zero" (which is later used to create the villain Metallo). When Superman appears in Metropolis and clashes with local authorities, Luthor works with the military to bring in the superhuman being, arguing that alien vigilante is an inherent threat since history has shown that introducing new life forms into other environments often causes the local environment to destabilize and suffer. Luthor tortures Superman to test his power, justifying his actions by looking at the hero as an alien rather than a human being whose well being should be considered. Superman laughs at Lex, infuriating the scientist, then escapes. Insulted by Superman's mocking laughter and his failure to contain the alien, and determined to learn more secrets from the Kryptonian's biology and technology, Luthor becomes determined to best the Man of Steel.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Unknown to the U.S. military, Lex Luthor has been in contact with the "Collector of Worlds" (a version of Brainiac) and makes a deal with the alien, who wishes to collect specimens from Earth for his collection of inhabitants and artifacts from different planets. Luthor intends to increases his power in Metropolis and to aid this he also supplies social justice blogger and journalist Clark Kent with information regarding the corrupt activities of powerful media mogul Glen Glennmorgan of Galaxy Inc. Clark is unaware his informant is Luthor, knowing him only as "Icarus."


title: Lex Luthor

text: After the Collector attacks Metropolis and Luthor's deal with the villain is exposed, Luthor is fired as a consultant to the U.S. military by General Sam Lane himself. He is later instrumental in the creation of the "New 52" version of the Kryptonite Man, known in this world primarily as the K-Man. A few years later, Luthor's schemes against Superman and some of his crimes are exposed. He is arrested and imprisoned in a special U.S. government prison.


title: Lex Luthor

text: In the "Forever Evil" storyline, Luthor plays a major role in opposing the Crime Syndicate, an evil version of the Justice League from a parallel Earth. He founds the New 52 incarnation of the Injustice League, helping Batman to free their world from the Syndicate's control and saving Superman's life from a kryptonite attack by Syndicate member Atomica. Public opinion of Lex Luthor becomes favorable. After learning an entity destroyed the Crime Syndicate's Earth, Luthor wants to prepare for the possibility that his Earth could be threatened next. To aid him in this and continue his new role as a hero, he requests Justice League membership. The Justice League are not sure about his altruism but decides his membership would make it easier to monitor him. While a Leaguer, Luthor helps against several threats, wearing a high-tech warsuit created by reverse-engineering Kryptonian technology, and builds a new Watchtower for the team.


title: Lex Luthor

text: When the New God Darkseid is seemingly killed, his "Omega Effect" is contained in Lex Luthor, temporarily turning him into a God of Apokolips.


title: Lex Luthor

text: The "New 52" Superman's identity is revealed to the world and the hero subsequently loses most of his powers. Superman consults Luthor for help, but the villain cannot believe that someone as powerful as Superman would pretend to be someone as ordinary as Clark Kent. He decides that Superman's loss of power is a convenient lie to hide the fact that Clark Kent is not really the Man of Steel, that he is only dressing like him and has found a way to acquire limited powers of his own. Luthor asks Clark to tell him the truth of why he and Superman are lying to the world, but the Man of Steel has no answers for him.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Following the death of the "New 52" Superman, Luthor creates a new warsuit decorated by Superman's S-shield, deciding he is the new protector of Metropolis. He is confronted by the Pre-"Flashpoint" version of Superman, who refuses to believe Luthor's intentions are noble. In DC's 2016 line-wide relaunch "DC Rebirth", large parts of the New 52 canon are removed (later said to have occurred in a different timeline) while large parts of the Post-Crisis canon are restored to the DC Universe. Eventually, this affects the Superman comics as well, in the wake of the 2017 storyline "Superman Reborn" Luthor's backstory from "Superman: Secret Origin" and large parts of his Post-"Crisis" continuity are restored, while the "New 52" events are largely removed. The canon says that Luthor still served in the Justice League for a time.


title: Lex Luthor

text: In the "Watchmen" sequel "Doomsday Clock", Luthor is approached by Adrian Veidt, who attempts to enlist his aid in finding Doctor Manhattan. He is then attacked by a seemingly-revived Comedian. After recovering from surgery, he reveals he has been investigating claims that many heroes and villains did not gain their powers from accidents, but were actually the results of government experiments. He later provides Lois Lane with footage of the Justice Society of America, who in the new canon were not the publicly known superheroes of World War II, but were clandestine heroes whose existence was largely denied. Doomsday Clock ends with Luthor considering utilizing and improving Veidt's methods for his own personal use. It is also revealed the New 52 Luthor and history still exist in a parallel universe.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Lex Luthor's childhood is fleshed our further in the pages of "Justice League". Before he ever met Clark Kent, it is said his father Lionel Luthor was a scientist working with the Legionnaires Club, an organization created by the immortal villain Vandal Savage to unlock the secrets of the universe. At one point, Lionel is able to reach through space and time to bring a Martian child named J'onn J'onzz to Earth. Lex and J'onn form a brief friendship. When the heroic Blackhawks attacks the operations of the Legionnaires' Club, Lex sends J'onn back home to Mars to protect him. Many years later, he will meet J'onn again when the alien operates on Earth as the Martian Manhunter. To protect his secrets, Vandal Savage has Lionel's memories altered. As a result of this psychological trauma, Lionel becomes a "broken man" and an alcoholic. Lex comes to hate his father and only feels family love for his sister Lena, who is increasingly ill and whom he wishes to help.


title: Lex Luthor

text: After the universal barrier known as the Source Wall is broken during the events of "No Justice," Luthor forms a new Legion Of Doom to track down the secrets that were once pursued by the Legionnaires' Club, discovering they are connected to the god-like Perpetua, Mother of Forgers. In the "Year of the Villain" special, Luthor commits suicide to gain favor with Perpetua, who resurrects him as her acolyte/child, becoming a powerful Martian/human hybrid called Apex Lex. He then offers power to many DC Universe villains.


title: Lex Luthor

text: In the Pre-"Crisis" continuity, Luthor is shown as having very few personal attachments. Shamed by his crimes, his parents Jules and Arlene disown him, move away and cut off all ties to Smallville, and change their name to the anagram "Thorul." Jules and Arlene take their younger child Lena with them, who is only a toddler at the time and later does not remember her real last name. Lena Thorul is told her older brother died in a mountain climbing accident. Not long after their departure from Smallville, Jules and Arlene die in a car accident, leaving Lena to grow up alone. Like her brother, she attends Regis High School and then later becomes a librarian. Lena meets Lois Lane, who plans to mention the young woman in a story but is then warned not to by Lex Luthor. Superman and Lois discover the truth but agree to Lex's request that Lena not learn about their connection. Later on, Lena moves to Midvale and befriends Superman's cousin Supergirl, who also winds up helping to make sure Lena doesn't learn the truth about her brother.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Exposure to one of Luthor's inventions later grants Lena ESP, making her an empath. Lena Thorul marries FBI agent Jeff Colby (who had once arrested Lex) and they have a son, Val Colby. Jeff Colby dies some time later. After Lena has brain surgery, the decision is made to reveal the truth about Luthor to her. Luthor then discovers he was an unwitting party to a conspiracy against Lena masterminded by his own cellmate "Sam", who wanted revenge against Colby. Deeply remorseful about this, he apologizes to Lena and the two attempt to make amends with each other.


title: Lex Luthor

text: The Pre-Crisis Luthor also has a niece named Nasthalthia Luthor, the child of an older unnamed sister of Lex's who had run away and eloped in Europe when she was a teenager. "Nasty" Luthor is an occasional thorn in Supergirl's side, at one point forming a gang called Nasty's Nasties. Nasthalthia is removed from canon following the reboot of "Crisis on Infinite Earths", but does appear in the critically acclaimed "All-Star Superman."


title: Lex Luthor

text: Lex Luthor himself later marries Ardora of the planet Lexor and, in "Action Comics" #544 (June 1983), learns he has an infant son by Ardora, Lex Luthor, Jr.. Almost two months later, Luthor accidentally causes the destruction of Lexor, and Ardora and Lex, Jr. die as a direct result.


title: Lex Luthor

text: In the Post-"Crisis" continuity, Lena is the name of Lex's adopted sister when he was living in a foster home. She is accidentally killed by their foster father when she refuses to try to trick Lex out of his inheritance. Lex later names his baby daughter after her.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Following the events of the "Infinite Crisis", Luthor's history was again altered, re-introducing Lena as his blood sister. Unlike the Pre-"Crisis" version, Lena is well aware of her history with Lex, having grown up alongside him, with only an abusive father. Lex and Lena's mother is named Letitia and is presumed deceased. She has no empathic abilities, and is a paraplegic with a teenaged daughter, Lori, both of whom still live in Smallville. Unlike his Pre-"Crisis" version, Lex has little love for his sister, having abandoned her with an unnamed aunt after their father dies of a heart attack. Lex even goes so far as to cure Lena's illness, and then immediately undoes the process, leaving her completely catatonic, solely to make a mocking point to Superboy and Superman. Lena is currently under the care of the best doctors from Wayne Enterprises, hired by Red Robin.


title: Lex Luthor

text: In the post-"The Man of Steel" continuity, Luthor is childhood friends with Perry White and it is revealed Luthor is the biological father of Perry's son Jerry White, conceived during a period when Perry was believed dead. Luthor, Perry and Alice only learned the truth shortly before Jerry was killed by a gang war that Luthor had triggered. Post-Crisis Lex Luthor has been married eight times, though the first seven marriages occurred off-panel in Luthor's past. His eighth marriage to Contessa Erica Alexandra Del Portenza (a.k.a. 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. The Contessa becomes pregnant and starts using the unborn child to dominate Lex into doing her bidding. Luthor's response is to imprison her while she is drugged during childbirth, keeping her in a permanently unconscious state. 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. Luthor's daughter Lena was the avatar of The Tech, the remnant cyberware of Metropolis after Brainiac 13's advancing the city to a futuristic state was undone.


title: Lex Luthor

text: James D. Hudnall's "" further expands on Luthor's origin. The story details how Luthor was sent to live with a foster family following the sabotage of his parents' car. His foster parents, Casey and Emily Griggs, conspire to embezzle his insurance and coerce their daughter, Lena, into seducing Lex to learn the location of the money. Due to her genuine romantic feelings toward Lex, Lena refuses and is beaten to death by her father. Lex is absent from the home at the time of the murder, having been talked into going to a football game by his schoolmate Perry White. Once he has established his preeminence in Metropolis, Luthor takes vengeance on Griggs, secretly hiring him to assassinate Frank Berkowitz, the city's popular four-term mayor, who refuses to knuckle under to Luthor's dominance, then personally killing him once the deed is done.


title: Lex Luthor

text: As an adult, Perry's unwitting 'role' in Lena's death motivates Luthor to have an affair with Perry's wife, Alice, during a period when Perry is missing and assumed dead. Alice becomes pregnant shortly afterward, though the timing of the conception means an equal possibility of either Luthor or White being the father. The child, Jerry White, later learns his true parentage during his late teens, shortly before being killed by a local street gang he is associated with. The loss of a potential heir weighs heavily on Luthor's mind, particularly when he is dying of cancer; while mulling over his fate, Luthor visits Jerry's gravesite.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Luthor has shown an unusual level of compassion for Conner Kent, a hybrid clone created from the DNA of Superman and Luthor himself. After Conner's death at the conclusion of the "Infinite Crisis", Luthor is shown visiting a memorial statue of Conner in Metropolis and placing flowers there. More than once Luthor addresses Conner as his son. Following Conner's resurrection, Luthor is shocked and decides to locate him. When Brainiac accuses him of showing paternal feelings for Conner though, Luthor denies it, saying that he only wants his property back, and has no fatherly feelings towards Superboy. After Superboy and Luthor visit Lena, Luthor makes it clear he now sees Kon-El as an inherently "failed experiment" due to having 50% "wrong alien DNA." Luthor then works with Brainiac to create a binary clone with their own genetics, a possible threat to Superboy.


title: Lex Luthor

text: In the alternate future timeline of "Titans Tomorrow", Conner becomes an uncompromising and dictatorial successor to Superman, while Luthor acts as a caring, father figure to him.


title: Lex Luthor

text: During the "Blackest Night" storyline, Lex Luthor's father Lionel Luthor was featured where it was revealed that he died of an allergic reaction to his medicine during Clark Kent's days as Superboy. He is reanimated as a member of the Black Lantern Corps where he is amongst its members that try to attack Lex Luthor. After the events of "Blackest Night'", Luthor went on to build a gynoid version of Lois Lane using Brainiac technology. His primary purpose for creating her was to have a companion who would voice honest opinions and provide an extra voice of reason to counsel him on his obsessive quest for the Black Lantern energy. Luthor also had a pseudo-romantic relationship with the "Loisbot", and regularly slept with it.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Lex Luthor has the physical capabilities of a normal adult human with no metahuman abilities. However, for virtually his entire publication history, he has been depicted as the most intelligent human in the DC Universe, and one of the most intelligent beings of any planet. He possesses an eidetic memory and has mastered seemingly every known form of science, including space travel, extra-dimensional travel, biochemistry, robotics, computers, synthetic polymers, communications, mutations, transportation, holography, energy generation, spectral analysis, and time travel. With the exception of the extraterrestrial entity known as Brainiac (and occasionally Batman), Luthor does not view any other being as an intellectual peer. His exceptional intellectual gifts act as his "superpowers", allowing him to craft advanced weapons and equipment, outthink opponents much stronger and more powerful than himself, and manipulate others into doing his bidding.


title: Lex Luthor

text: His genius also extends to business (he is one of the world's wealthiest people) and politics (he was elected U.S. President, and he is often the leader of super-villain groups he has belonged to). Luthor has been trained in hand-to-hand combat, specifically Karate. He has also been occasionally trained by the Amazons of Themyscira.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Over the years, Luthor has created (either on his own, using alien technology he acquires, or with the resources of LexCorp and the military) many highly advanced weapons, machines, and robots to carry out his plans or destroy his enemies. He has made liberal use of kryptonite weapons capable of injuring Superman and other Kryptonians, and he has often created synthetic kryptonite (not as lethal as real green kryptonite but still capable of weakening a Kryptonian). Since the Bronze Age, he has also utilized various high-tech "war-suits" in many stories. The first warsuit, introduced in 1983, was a product of lost science from an earlier age in the planet Lexor's history when technology was highly advanced. Its Lexorian materials can withstand several attacks by Superman before sustaining damage and its force field offers further protection still. Wearing it grants Lex great superhuman strength, not equal to Superman but still enough to overpower many of Earth's heroes. The suit can deliver powerful energy blasts and a molecular sheath capable of blocking Superman's body from absorbing energy from solar radiation, meaning his powers will weaken over time. Powered by red solar radiation, the suit can also deliver red solar beams to directly weaken Superman. The suit has other features including advanced sensor systems, a hypnotism weapon, and illusion casting technology.


title: Lex Luthor

text: The warsuit introduced in 2004 is built with technology from Apokolips, granting greater superhuman strength and resistance to injury, a powerful force field, flight, electrical weapons, and a variety of kryptonite-based weaponry such as energy cannons, axes, and a collapsible sword. Its power is great enough that Luthor could fly for several days without interruption. The gauntlets hold different forms of kryptonite stones. After reality is altered by "Flashpoint", Luthor uses a new warsuit similar to the 2004 one but slimmer and built by reverse-engineering Kryptonian technology. When he temporarily attempts to act as a hero and works alongside the Justice League, Luthor uses a similar warsuit with non-lethal weaponry and no kryptonite-based features.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Luthor often wore a kryptonite ring on his right hand in Post-"Crisis" stories, but abandoned this tactic after prolonged exposure to its radiation resulted in cancer, requiring him to transplant his brain into a cloned body to survive. While masquerading as his own son Lex Luthor II, Lex occasionally wore high-tech "LX-20 body armor." During the "Blackest Night" crossover, he wore an orange power ring of avarice created by Ganthet, a former member of the Guardians of the Universe.


title: Lex Luthor

text: DC Comics often depicts its stories as taking place in a wide multiverse, with many parallel realities where familiar characters have slightly or drastically different lives. Likewise, there are some comics published under the "Elseworlds" label, meaning it is a story that is outside of canon and does not necessarily have a specific universe designation (such as "Earth-3" or "Earth-X"). The point of "Elseworlds" stories is to reimagine familiar characters in new settings. While many versions of Luthor are similar to the mainstream one, simply existing in different settings, some significant, famous and/or recurring alternate versions of the character include:


title: Lex Luthor

text: Earth-Three was introduced during the Silver Age of Comics as a mirror version of the DC Comics Earth where Americans colonized Europe and actor Abraham Lincoln shot President John Wilkes Booth. An evil version of the Justice League known as the Crime Syndicate of America terrorizes this world. Eventually, a heroic scientist named Alexander Luthor opposes them, donning a high-tech red, yellow and blue "supersuit." During his initial adventure he is aided by the Supermen of Earth-One and Earth-Two, as well as Earth-Three's noble reporter Lois Lane, as they face off against Ultraman, Lex Luthor of Earth-One, and Alexei Luthor of Earth-Two. Later, Alex and Lois marry and have a child, Alexander Luthor Jr., who aids Earth's heroes during the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and then opposes them in the crossover "Infinite Crisis".


title: Lex Luthor

text: "The New 52" timeline introduced its own version of Earth-3 in the crossover "Forever Evil" (2014). The Alexander Luthor of this Earth-3 is his world's version of Shazam. Called Mazahs, he takes the superpowers of those he kills and is the father of Superwoman's child. He is later killed by the "New 52" version of Lex Luthor.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Following the reboot of the Multiverse at the end of "" as seen during the "Infinite Frontier", Earth-3 is recreated with a new version of Alexander Luthor. This version is a non-superpowered African-American man who wears a suit of high-tech armour. He is the sworn enemy of Ultraman, the self-appointed ruler and "protector" of Metropolis, and one of the few people with the courage to defy him directly. He is depicted as well intentioned and compassionate but largely ineffectual. He is horrified when Earth-3's evil metahumans are hailed as heroes for defeating the invading Starros. Aided by former Emerald Knight Thaal Sinestro and a New God named Lonar, he begins recruiting good metahumans into a Legion of Justice. Most of the group is defeated and Luthor is imprisoned by Ultraman.


title: Lex Luthor

text: The anti-matter universe is a dark, often opposite reflection of the mainstream DC Universe that is similar to Earth-Three. Armed with a green and purple high-tech warsuit, the Alexander Luthor of this reality regularly opposes the Crime Syndicate of Amerika, a group of villains who rule over his Earth through fear and coercion. At one point, this Luthor journeys to the mainstream DC Comics Earth (which he decides to call "Earth 2") in hopes that the Justice League can save his world. The team tries, but realize that they cannot win for long on the anti-matter Earth because evil holds sway in this universe (metaphysically because Lucifer defeated archangel Michael) and thus wins more often, meaning heroes are fated to ultimately fail or die. This idea, presented in the graphic novel "", was a meta-commentary by writer Grant Morrison on the fact that in the main DC Universe, it is accepted by readers that good tends to triumph over evil.


title: Lex Luthor

text: In "", set in a world where heroes have been publicly 'retired' for years, Lex Luthor is depicted as obese with a hunchback. He has teamed up with Brainiac and controls the U. S. government using a hologram known as "President Rickard" as a figurehead. He has also blackmailed Superman, Wonder Woman, and Captain Marvel into doing the government's bidding by holding their loved ones hostage. When Batman and Catgirl emerge from hiding, they take on Luthor and Batman slashes a Z into Luthor's face before leaving. In retaliation, he orders Superman and Wonder Woman to kill an alien, which is really Brainiac hoping Superman would get killed. That plan, however, failed when Superman and Wonder Woman's daughter, Lara, saved him. Then Luthor launched satellites to destroy most of the world's population, but they were destroyed by the Green Lantern. Lex Luthor is eventually killed by the son of Hawkman and Hawkgirl.


title: Lex Luthor

text: In multiple versions of DC Comics canon, Superman's imperfect duplicate Bizarro (sometimes called Bizarro #1) creates an entire Bizarro World ("Htrae") populated by imperfect and backwards thinking duplicates of the people of Earth. One such duplicate is Bizarro Luthor.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Another version of Bizarro Luthor is said to exist on Earth-29, a parallel reality called the "Bizarroverse."


title: Lex Luthor

text: Introduced in "Year of the Villain: Lex Luthor" #1 (2019), this Lex Luthor studies and uses the Black Mercy, an alien plant that feeds off an organism's psychic energy while distracting them with an illusion of the life they want. Through repeated use, Lex experiences multiple scenarios where he acquires the great power and/or superpowers he always wanted, but finds he is never satisfied. Realizing his ambitions are based on ego, while Superman regularly considers how his actions will affect or benefit others, this Luthor spends the rest of his life creating new ways for people to heal and live better lives.


title: Lex Luthor

text: During the crossover "DC vs. Marvel," the realities of DC Comics and Marvel Comics temporarily merged, resulting in the Amalgam Comics universe. In this reality, Lex Luthor's person and history merged with that of the Red Skull, creating the Green Skull. A war profiteer during World War II, this Lex Luthor later injects himself with a chemical agent derived from a radioactive green meteorite, extending his lifespan while giving him green skin and his head a skull-like appearance. In multiple Amalgam Comics stories, he opposes Super-Soldier (a combination of Superman and Captain America).


title: Lex Luthor

text: There is a version of Lex Luthor who is a villainous lemur that inhabits Earth C Minus (or Earth C-), a parallel world populated by anthropomorphic animals and protected by Super-Squirrel.


title: Lex Luthor

text: Inhabiting a "pocket universe" created by the villainous Time Trapper, this young Luthor never loses his hair and admires the exploits of Superboy (a teenage Clark Kent) on his world. After Superboy's death, Luthor explores the hero's lab and accidentally frees three pocket universe Kryptonian villains from the Phantom Zone. To help the situation, Luthor creates an artificial life form out of a "pseudo-plasm matrix", based on the physical traits of Lana Lang. The life form is called Supergirl. After the Kryptonian villains kill Luthor and all other life forms on Earth, the pocket universe Supergirl makes a new home on the mainstream DC Comics Earth, where she becomes a hero.


title: Lex Luthor

text: In the second of the "Superman: Earth One" graphic novels, Dr. Alexandra Luthor and her husband Dr. Alexander Luthor are a pair of brilliant scientists who refer to themselves as Lex Incorporated. While working with the military, Alexandra researches ways of killing Superman as an intellectual exercise, while Alexander is more compassionate and questions the ethics of developing weapons to harm a man who has not given cause to be feared. In the third installment, Alexander sacrifices himself to help Superman battle Zod. Alexandra is consumed by grief, blaming the Man of Steel and vowing to destroy him. Claiming the "old Alexandra" died alongside her husband, she adopts the new name "Lex."


title: David Packouz

text: David Mordechai Packouz ( born February 16, 1982) is an American former arms dealer, musician and inventor. In 2005, Packouz joined Efraim Diveroli in Diveroli's arms company AEY Inc. By the end of 2006, the company had won 149 contracts worth around $10.5 million. In early 2007, AEY secured a nearly $300 million U.S. government contract to supply the Afghan Army with 100 million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, millions of rounds for SVD Dragunov sniper rifles, aviation rockets and other munitions. The ammunition that AEY had secured in Albania to fulfill the contract had originally come from China, violating the terms of AEY's contract with the US Army, which bans Chinese ammunition. Packouz was aware that the products were prohibited and would not be accepted, and was instrumental in the covering up of the origins of the ammunition. As a result of the publicity surrounding the contract and the age of the arms dealers – Packouz was 25 and Diveroli was 21 when AEY landed the ammunition deal – the United States Army began a review of its contracting procedures.


title: David Packouz

text: Packouz was sentenced to seven months of house arrest for conspiracy to defraud the United States. He is the central subject of the 2016 Todd Phillips dramedy film "War Dogs". Packouz himself has a cameo role in the film as a guitarist and singer at an elderly home.


title: David Packouz

text: Packouz went on to invent a guitar pedal drum machine, the BeatBuddy, and is currently the CEO of music technology company Singular Sound.


title: David Packouz

text: Packouz was born in 1982 in St. Louis, Missouri, to a Jewish family. He is one of nine children, and the son of Shoshana and Rabbi Kalman Packouz, of the Orthodox Aish HaTorah, who authored the book "How to Prevent an Intermarriage". Packouz was a Licensed Massage Therapist at the time of his working at AEY.


title: David Packouz

text: Packouz joined Efraim Diveroli's arms company AEY Inc. in 2005; Efraim was only 19 years old at the time, while David was 23. By the end of 2006, they had won 149 contracts worth around $10.5 million. In early 2007, AEY secured a nearly $300 million U.S. government contract to supply the Afghan Army with 100 million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, millions of rounds for SVD Dragunov sniper rifles, and aviation rockets. The ammunition that AEY had secured in Albania to fulfill the contract had originally come from China, violating the terms of AEY's contract with the US Army, banning Chinese ammunition.


title: David Packouz

text: AEY had failed to perform on numerous previous contracts, including sending potentially unsafe helmets and failure to deliver 10,000 Beretta pistols to Iraq. During a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation documents were produced to show that federal agencies terminated, withdrew, or canceled at least seven previous contracts with AEY for poor quality or late deliveries.


title: David Packouz

text: Packouz responded by email to his associates that they had to get rid of the crates with the Chinese markings since Chinese products were prohibited and would not be accepted and AEY repackaged the Chinese ammunition which, according to the United States government, constituted fraud. The issue of the Chinese ammunition became the focal point of a months-long legal and logistical disturbance in the United States Army and the Department of Justice; AEY received much media attention, especially due to the age of the young Miami Beach arms dealers and their penchant for marijuana, earning them the epithet of "the stoner arms dealers" or "the dudes".


title: David Packouz

text: Diveroli and David Packouz pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States under the general conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371, in January 2011. Diveroli was sentenced to four years in federal prison, while Packouz was sentenced to seven months' house arrest.


title: David Packouz

text: The story was published in Canadian journalist Guy Lawson's 2015 book "Arms and the Dudes", and was produced into the 2016 film "War Dogs" by Todd Phillips.


title: David Packouz

text: In 2016 Packouz's company, Singular Sound, started a philanthropic partnership with non-profit organization Guitars Over Guns to provide BeatBuddy equipment to disadvantaged youth.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: The Turn of the Screw is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in "Collier's Weekly" (January 27 – April 16, 1898). In October 1898, it was collected in "The Two Magics", published by Macmillan in New York City and Heinemann in London. The novella follows a governess who, caring for two children at a remote estate, becomes convinced that the grounds are haunted. "The Turn of the Screw" is considered a work of both Gothic and horror fiction.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: In the century following its publication, critical analysis of the novella has undergone several major transformations. Initial reviews regarded it only as a frightening ghost story, but, in the 1930s, some critics suggested that the supernatural elements were figments of the governess' imagination. In the early 1970s, the influence of structuralism resulted in an acknowledgement that the text's ambiguity was its key feature. Later approaches incorporated Marxist and feminist thinking.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: The novella has been adapted numerous times, including a Broadway play (1950), a chamber opera (1954), two films (in 1961 and 2020), and a miniseries (2020).


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: On Christmas Eve, an unnamed narrator and some of their friends are gathered around a fire. One of them, Douglas, reads a manuscript written by his sister's late governess. The manuscript tells the story of her being hired by a man who has become responsible for his young niece and nephew following the deaths of their parents. He lives mainly in London and has a country house in Bly, Essex. The boy, Miles, is attending a boarding school, while his younger sister, Flora, is living in Bly, where she is cared for by Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper. Flora's uncle, the governess's new employer, is uninterested in raising the children and gives her full charge, explicitly stating that she is not to bother him with communications of any sort. The governess travels to Bly and begins her duties.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: Miles returns from school for the summer just after a letter arrives from the headmaster, stating that he has been expelled. Miles never speaks of the matter, and the governess is hesitant to raise the issue. She fears there is some horrible secret behind the expulsion, but is too charmed by the boy to want to press the issue. Soon after, around the grounds of the estate, the governess begins to see the figures of a man and woman whom she does not recognize. The figures come and go at will without being seen or challenged by other members of the household, and they seem to the governess to be supernatural. She learns from Mrs. Grose that the governess's predecessor, Miss Jessel, and another employee, Peter Quint, had had a close relationship. Before their deaths, Jessel and Quint spent much of their time with Flora and Miles, and the governess becomes convinced that the two children are aware of the ghosts' presence.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: Without permission, Flora leaves the house while Miles is playing music for the governess. The governess notices Flora's absence and goes with Mrs. Grose in search of her. They find her on the shore of a nearby lake, and the governess is convinced that Flora has been talking to the ghost of Miss Jessel. When the governess finally confronts Flora, the girl denies seeing Miss Jessel, and asks not to see the new governess again. Mrs. Grose takes Flora away to her uncle, leaving the governess with Miles, who that night at last talks to her about his expulsion. The ghost of Quint appears to the governess at the window. The governess shields Miles, who attempts to see the ghost. The governess tells Miles he is no longer controlled by the ghost, and then finds that Miles has died in her arms.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: As a piece of Gothic fiction, critics highlight the influence of Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" (1847) on the novella. "The Turn of the Screw" borrows both from "Jane Eyre"'s themes of class and gender, and from its mid-nineteenth century setting. The novella alludes to "Jane Eyre" in tandem with an explicit reference to Ann Radcliffe's Gothic novel "The Mysteries of Udolpho" (1794), wherein the governess wonders if there might be a secret relative hidden in the attic at Bly. One critic writes that the only "definite event" in the novel that does not "belong" in Gothic fantasy is Miles' expulsion from school.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: Although the influence of the Gothic on the novella is clear, it cannot only be characterised as one. James' ghosts differ from those of traditional Gothic tales – frightening, often bound in chains – by appearing like their living selves. Similarly, the novella foregoes major devices associated with Gothic novels, such as digressions, as in "Frankenstein" (1818) and "Dracula" (1897), instead relating one whole, continuous narrative.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: For the story's publication in "Collier's Weekly", James was contracted to write a ghost story. As a result, some critics have regarded it in that tradition. L. Andrew Cooper observed that "The Turn of the Screw" might be the best-known example of a ghost story which exploits the ambiguity of a first-person narrative. Citing James' reference to the work as his "designed horror", Donald P. Costello suggested that the effect of a given scene varies depending on who represents the action. In scenes where the governess directly reports on what she sees, the effect is horror, but in those where she merely comments, the effect is "mystification". In his 1983 nonfiction survey of the horror genre, author Stephen King described "The Turn of the Screw" and "The Haunting of Hill House" (1959) as the only two great supernatural works of horror in a century. He argued that both contain "secrets best left untold and things left best unsaid", calling that the basis of the horror genre. Gillian Flynn called the novella one of the most chilling ghost stories ever written.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: Several biographers have indicated that James was familiar with spiritualism, and at the very least regarded it as entertainment. His brother William was an active researcher of supernatural phenomena. Scientific inquiry at the time was curious about the existence of ghosts, and James' description of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel—dressed in black with severe expressions—resemble the ghosts found in scientific literature rather than those of fictional narratives. The character of Douglas describes himself as a student of Trinity College, where James knew research into the supernatural occurred. It is unknown whether James believed in ghosts.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: By the 1890s, James' readership had dwindled since the success of "Daisy Miller" (1878), and he had encountered financial troubles. His health had also worsened, with advancing gout, and several of his close friends had died: his sister and diarist Alice James, and writers Robert Louis Stevenson, and Constance Fenimore Woolson. In a letter from October 1895, James wrote: "I see ghosts everywhere". In an entry in his journal from January 12, 1895, James recounts a ghost story told to him by Edward White Benson, the archbishop of Canterbury, while visiting him for tea at his home two days earlier. The story bears a striking resemblance to what would eventually become "The Turn of the Screw", with depraved servants corrupting young children before and after their deaths.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: Towards the end of 1897, James was contracted to write a twelve-part ghost story for "Collier's Weekly", an illustrated magazine. Having just signed a twenty-one year lease on a house in Rye, East Sussex, James —thankful for the additional income—accepted the offer. "Collier's Weekly" paid James US$900 () for the serial rights. A year earlier, in 1897, "The Chap-Book" paid him US$150 () for serial and book rights to "What Maisie Knew".


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: James found it difficult to write by hand, reserving that for his journals. "The Turn of the Screw" was dictated to his secretary, William MacAlpine, who took shorthand notes and returned with typed notes the following day. Finding such a delay frustrating, James purchased his own Remington typewriter and dictated directly to MacAlphine. In December 1897, James wrote to his sister-in-law: "I "have", at last, finished my little book."


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: "The Turn of the Screw" was first published in the magazine "Collier's Weekly", serialised in 12 installments (27 January – 16 April 1898). The title illustration by John La Farge depicts the governess with her arm around Miles. Episode illustrations were by Eric Pape.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: In October 1898, the novella appeared with the short story "Covering End" in a volume titled "The Two Magics", published by Macmillan in New York City and by Heinemann in London.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: Ten years after publication, James revised "The Turn of the Screw" for the "New York Edition" of the text. James made many changes, but most were minor, such as changing "utter" to "express"; the narrative was unchanged. The "New York Edition"s most important contribution was the retrospective account of the influences and writing of the novella James gave in his preface. James indicated, for example, that he was aware of research into the supernatural. In his preface, James only briefly mentions the story's origin in a magazine. In 2016, Kirsten MacLeod, citing James' private correspondence, indicated that he had a strong dislike for the serial form.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: Early reviews emphasised the novella's power to frighten, and most saw the tale as a brilliant, if simple, ghost story. According to scholar Terry Heller, most early reviewers saw the novel as a formidable piece of Gothic fiction.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: An early review of "The Turn of the Screw" was in "The New York Times Saturday Review of Books and Art", stating it was worthy of being compared to Robert Louis Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" (1886). The reviewer noted it as a successful study of evil, referring to the ghosts' influence over the children and the governess. Scholar Terry Heller notes that the children featured prominently in early criticism because the novella violated a Victorian presumption of childhood innocence.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: Conceptions of the text wherein the ghosts are real entities are often referred to as the "apparitionist interpretation"; consequently, a "non-apparitionist" holds the opposite perspective. In a 1918 essay, Virginia Woolf wrote that Miss Jessel and Peter Quint possessed "neither the substance nor independent existence of ghosts". Woolf did not suggest that the ghosts were hallucinations, but—in a similar fashion to other early critics—said they represented the governess' growing awareness of evil in the world. The power of the story, she argued, was in forcing readers to realise the dark places fiction could take their minds.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: In 1934, literary critic Edmund Wilson posited that the ghosts were hallucinations of the governess, who he suggested was sexually repressed. As evidence, Wilson points to her background as the daughter of a country parson, and suggests that she is infatuated with her employer. Before Wilson's article, another critic—Edna Kenton—had written to similar effect, but Wilson's fame as a literary critic shifted the discourse around the novella completely. Wilson drew heavily from Kenton's writing, but applied explicitly Freudian terminology. For example, he pointed to Quint first being sighted by the governess on a phallic tower. A book-length close reading of the text was produced in 1965 using Wilson's Freudian analysis as a foundation; it characterised the governess as increasingly mad and hysterical. Leon Edel, James' most influential biographer, wrote that it is not the ghosts who haunt the children, but the governess.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: While many supported Wilson's theory, it was by no means authoritative. Robert B. Heilman was a prominent advocate for the apparitionist interpretation; he saw the story as a Hawthornesque allegory about good and evil, and the ghosts as active agents to that effect. Scholars critical of Wilson's essay pointed to Douglas' positive account of the governess's character in the prologue, long after her death. Most crucially, they indicated that the governess's description of the ghost enabled Mrs Grose to identify him as Peter Quint before the governess knew he existed. The second point led Wilson to "retract his thesis (temporarily"); in a later revision of his essay, he argued the governess had been made aware of another male at Bly by Mrs Grose.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: In the 1970s, critics began to apply structuralist Tzvetan Todorov's notion of the fantastic to "The Turn of the Screw". Todorov emphasised the importance of "hesitation" in stories with supernatural elements, and critics found an abundance of them within James' novella. For example, the reader's sympathy may hesitate between the children or the governess, and the text hesitates between supporting the ghosts' existence, and rejecting them. Christine Brooke-Rose argued in a three-part essay that the ambiguity so frequently argued over was a foundational part of the text that had been ignored. From the 1980s onward, critics increasingly refused to ask questions about diegetic elements of the text, instead acknowledging that many elements simply cannot be known definitively.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: Focus shifted away from whether the ghosts were real and onto how James generated and then sustained the text's ambiguity. A study into revisions James made to two paragraphs in the novella concluded that James was not striving for clarity, but to create a text which could not be interpreted definitively in either direction.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: After the debate over the reality of the ghosts quietened in literary criticism, critics began to apply other theoretical frameworks to "The Turn of the Screw". Marxist critics argued that the emphasis placed by academics on James' language distracted from class-based explorations of the text. The children's uncle, who featured largely only in the psychoanalytic interpretations as an obsession of the governess, was regarded by some as symbolising a selfish upper-class. Heath Moon notes how he abandoned his orphaned niece, nephew, and their ancestral home to instead live in London as a bachelor. Mrs Grose's distaste for the relationship between Quint and Miss Jessel was noted to be part of a Victorian dislike for relationships that were between different social classes. The death of Miles and Flora's parents in India became a fixture of postcolonial explorations of the text, given the status of India as a British colony during James' lifetime.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: Explorations of the governess have become a mainstay of feminist writing on the text. Priscilla Walton noted that James' account of the story's origin disparaged the ability of women to tell stories, and framed "The Turn of the Screw" as James thus telling it on their behalf. Others see James in a more positive light. Paula Marantz Cohen positively compares James' treatment of the governess to Sigmund Freud's writing about a young woman named Dora. Cohen likens the way that Freud transforms Dora into merely a summary of her symptoms to how critics such as Edmund Wilson reduced the governess to a case of neurotic sexual repression.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: "The Turn of the Screw" has been the subject of a range of adaptations and reworkings in a variety of media. Many of these have, themselves, been analysed in the academic literature on Henry James and neo-Victorian culture.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: The novella was adapted to an opera by Benjamin Britten, which premiered in 1954, and the opera has been filmed on multiple occasions. The novella was adapted as a ballet score (1980) by Luigi Zaninelli, and separately as a ballet (1999) by Will Tucket for the Royal Ballet. Harold Pinter directed "The Innocents" (1950), a Broadway play which was an adaptation of "The Turn of the Screw". An adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher, using the title "The Turn of the Screw", premiered in Portland, Maine, in 1996 and was produced off-Broadway in 1999. Another adaptation of the same title by Rebecca Lenkiewicz was presented in a co-production with Hammer at the Almeida Theatre, London, in January 2013.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: There have been numerous film adaptations of the novel. The critically acclaimed "The Innocents" (1961), directed by Jack Clayton, and Michael Winner's prequel "The Nightcomers" (1972) are two notable examples. Other feature film adaptations include Rusty Lemorande's 1992 eponymous adaptation (set in the 1960s); 's Spanish language ("The Turn of the Screw", 1985); "Presence of Mind" (1999), directed by Atoni Aloy; and "In a Dark Place" (2006), directed by Donato Rotunno. "The Others" (2001) is not an adaptation but has some themes in common with James's novella. In 2018, director Floria Sigismondi filmed an adaptation of the novella, titled "The Turning", on the Kilruddery Estate in Ireland.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: Television films have included a 1959 American adaptation as part of "Ford Startime" directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Ingrid Bergman; the West German "Die sündigen Engel" ("The Sinful Angel", 1962), a 1974 adaptation directed by Dan Curtis, adapted by William F. Nolan; a French adaptation entitled "Le Tour d'écrou" ("The Turn of the Screw", 1974); a Mexican miniseries entitled "Otra vuelta de tuerca" ("The Turn of the Screw", 1981); a 1982 adaptation directed by Petr Weigl primarily starring Czech actors lip-synching; a 1990 adaptation directed by Graeme Clifford; "The Haunting of Helen Walker" (1995), directed by Tom McLoughlin; a 1999 adaptation directed by Ben Bolt; a low-budget 2003 version written and directed by Nick Millard; the Italian-language "Il mistero del lago" ("The Mystery of the Lake", 2009); and a 2009 BBC film adapted by Sandy Welch, starring Michelle Dockery, Dan Stevens and Sue Johnston. A Brazilian movie named "" ("Through the Shadow", 2015) was released, heavily influenced by the book, only changing the characters' names and location to make it feel like it is set in Brazil. In 2020 it was adapted into a movie called The Turning.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: Literary references to and influences by "The Turn of the Screw" identified by the James scholar Adeline R. Tintner include "The Secret Garden" (1911), by Frances Hodgson Burnett; "Poor Girl" (1951), by Elizabeth Taylor; "The Peacock Spring" (1975), by Rumer Godden; "Ghost Story" (1975) by Peter Straub; "The Accursed Inhabitants of House Bly" (1994) by Joyce Carol Oates; and "Miles and Flora" (1997)—a sequel—by Hilary Bailey. Further literary adaptations identified by other authors include "Affinity" (1999), by Sarah Waters; "A Jealous Ghost" (2005), by A. N. Wilson; and "Florence & Giles" (2010), by John Harding. Young adult novels inspired by "The Turn of the Screw" include "The Turning" (2012) by Francine Prose and "Tighter" (2011) by Adele Griffin. Ruth Ware's 2019 novel "The Turn of the Key" sets the story in the 21st century.


title: The Turn of the Screw

text: "The Turn of the Screw" has also influenced television. In December 1968, the ABC daytime drama "Dark Shadows" featured a storyline based on "The Turn of the Screw". In the story, the ghosts of Quentin Collins and Beth Chavez haunted the west wing of Collinwood, possessing the two children living in the mansion. The story led to a year-long story in the year 1897, as Barnabas Collins travelled back in time to prevent Quentin's death and stop the possession. In early episodes of "" ("", "" and ""), Captain Kathryn Janeway is seen on the holodeck acting out scenes from the holonovel "Janeway Lambda one", which appears to be based on "The Turn of the Screw". In 2020, Netflix adapted the novella as "The Haunting of Bly Manor" for the second season of Mike Flanagan's "The Haunting" anthology series.


title: Hacker

text: A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term "hacker" has become associated in popular culture with a "security hacker"someone who utilizes their technical know-how of bugs or exploits to break into computer systems and access data which would otherwise be inaccessible to them – hacking can also be utilized by legitimate figures in legal situations. For example, law enforcement agencies sometimes use hacking techniques in order to collect evidence on criminals and other malicious actors. This could include using anonymity tools (such as a VPN, or the dark web) to mask their identities online, posing as criminals themselves. Likewise, covert world agencies can employ hacking techniques in the legal conduct of their work. On the other hand, hacking and cyber-attacks are used extra- and illegally by law enforcement and security agencies (conducting warrantless activities), and employed by state actors as a weapon of both legal and illegal warfare.


title: Hacker

text: Today, mainstream usage of "hacker" mostly refers to computer criminals, due to the mass media usage of the word since the 1990s. This includes what hacker slang calls "script kiddies", people breaking into computers using programs written by others, with very little knowledge about the way they work. This usage has become so predominant that the general public is largely unaware that different meanings exist. While the self-designation of hobbyists as hackers is generally acknowledged and accepted by computer security hackers, people from the programming subculture consider the computer intrusion related usage incorrect, and emphasize the difference between the two by calling security breakers "crackers" (analogous to a safecracker).


title: Hacker

text: The controversy is usually based on the assertion that the term originally meant someone messing about with something in a positive sense, that is, using playful cleverness to achieve a goal. But then, it is supposed, the meaning of the term shifted over the decades and came to refer to computer criminals.


title: Hacker

text: As the security-related usage has spread more widely, the original meaning has become less known. In popular usage and in the media, "computer intruders" or "computer criminals" is the exclusive meaning of the word today. (For example, "An Internet 'hacker' broke through state government security systems in March.") In the computer enthusiast (Hacker Culture) community, the primary meaning is a complimentary description for a particularly brilliant programmer or technical expert. (For example, "Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, is considered by some to be a hacker.") A large segment of the technical community insist the latter is the "correct" usage of the word (see the Jargon File definition below).


title: Hacker

text: The mainstream media's current usage of the term may be traced back to the early 1980s. When the term, previously used only among computer enthusiasts, was introduced to wider society by the mainstream media in 1983, even those in the computer community referred to computer intrusion as "hacking", although not as the exclusive definition of the word. In reaction to the increasing media use of the term exclusively with the criminal connotation, the computer community began to differentiate their terminology. Alternative terms such as "cracker" were coined in an effort to maintain the distinction between "hackers" within the legitimate programmer community and those performing computer break-ins. Further terms such as "black hat", "white hat" and "gray hat" developed when laws against breaking into computers came into effect, to distinguish criminal activities from those activities which were legal.


title: Hacker

text: However, network news use of the term consistently pertained primarily to the criminal activities, despite the attempt by the technical community to preserve and distinguish the original meaning, so today the mainstream media and general public continue to describe computer criminals, with all levels of technical sophistication, as "hackers" and do not generally make use of the word in any of its non-criminal connotations. Members of the media sometimes seem unaware of the distinction, grouping legitimate "hackers" such as Linus Torvalds and Steve Wozniak along with criminal "crackers".


title: Hacker

text: As a result, the definition is still the subject of heated controversy. The wider dominance of the pejorative connotation is resented by many who object to the term being taken from their cultural jargon and used negatively, including those who have historically preferred to self-identify as hackers. Many advocate using the more recent and nuanced alternate terms when describing criminals and others who negatively take advantage of security flaws in software and hardware. Others prefer to follow common popular usage, arguing that the positive form is confusing and unlikely to become widespread in the general public. A minority still use the term in both senses despite the controversy, leaving context to clarify (or leave ambiguous) which meaning is intended.


title: Hacker

text: However, because the positive definition of hacker was widely used as the predominant form for many years before the negative definition was popularized, "hacker" can therefore be seen as a shibboleth, identifying those who use the technically-oriented sense (as opposed to the exclusively intrusion-oriented sense) as members of the computing community. On the other hand, due to the variety of industries software designers may find themselves in, many prefer not to be referred to as hackers because the word holds a negative denotation in many of those industries.


title: Hacker

text: A possible middle ground position has been suggested, based on the observation that "hacking" describes a collection of skills and tools which are used by hackers of both descriptions for differing reasons. The analogy is made to locksmithing, specifically picking locks, which is a skill which can be used for good or evil. The primary weakness of this analogy is the inclusion of script kiddies in the popular usage of "hacker," despite their lack of an underlying skill and knowledge base.


title: Hacker

text: Sometimes, "hacker" is simply used synonymously with "geek": "A true hacker is not a group person. He's a person who loves to stay up all night, he and the machine in a love-hate relationship... They're kids who tended to be brilliant but not very interested in conventional goals It's a term of derision and also the ultimate compliment."


title: Hacker

text: Fred Shapiro thinks that "the common theory that 'hacker' originally was a benign term and the malicious connotations of the word were a later perversion is untrue." He found that the malicious connotations were already present at MIT in 1963 (quoting "The Tech", an MIT student newspaper), and at that time referred to unauthorized users of the telephone network, that is, the phreaker movement that developed into the computer security hacker subculture of today.


title: Hacker

text: Hacker culture is an idea derived from a community of enthusiast computer programmers and systems designers in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The concept expanded to the hobbyist home computing community, focusing on hardware in the late 1970s (e.g. the Homebrew Computer Club) and on software (video games, software cracking, the demoscene) in the 1980s/1990s. Later, this would go on to encompass many new definitions such as art, and life hacking.


title: Hacker

text: Security hackers are people involved with circumvention of computer security. Among security hackers, there are several types, including:


title: Hacker

text: White hats are hackers who work to keep data safe from other hackers by finding system vulnerabilities that can be mitigated. White hats are usually employed by the target system's owner and are typically paid (sometimes quite well) for their work. Their work is not illegal because it is done with the system owner's consent.