#luthor

[tomfoolerytotality]

There's no GOD DAMN WAY Ben Shapiro actually said Lex Luthor should be the hero and Superman should be the villain. No but he actually said that in his review of the movie.

These people are so mask off it's actually insane. Like comics need to keep coming up with crazier and more outrageously evil things for their villains to do because people like Ben Shapiro keep supporting them UNIRONICALLY. IN REAL LIFE.

[vintagegeekculture]

The First Superman Villains, 1938-1941

It felt like the entirety of the pop culture of the 1930s was clearing the way for Superman’s arrival in 1938. It's because the adventure heroes of the time were simply not at all up to the challenge of the villains they fought, in an era of crushing poverty and overwhelming anxiety as the default mental state, where it felt like something overwhelmingly horrible and inevitable was just around the corner. If you take a look, the adventure and action heroes of this era were generic police detectives in fedoras, thousands of identical Tarzan ripoffs, boozy rich twits that solve crimes for fun, no name interchangeable beefcake Coast Guard or Marines, and magicians in top hats with pencil moustaches.

And these absolutely bland schmucks had the hard to swallow task of matching wits with villains that ridiculously outmatched them in terms of theatricality, personality, resources, and power, like charismatic gangsters (the press covered gangsters like celebrity couples are covered today), sinister Oriental supercriminals (Fu Manchu and his imitators), immortal jungle sorceress femme fatales in the style of Haggard’s She, and mad scientists with beautiful daughters who make monsters in their lab or reduce people to tiny size.

Most people cannot tell you, off the top of their head, who the hero was who fought Fu Manchu, Dr. Mabuse, or Count Dracula, the "big three" pop culture villains of the era. The Fu Manchu novels, read in the millions, are "Fu Manchu vs. Random Schmuck." In a case of art tragically imitating life, bad guys were far, far more powerful than good guys, and it wasn’t even close. Bad guys have access to so much more power and resources than heroes by virtue of the fact they are villains, have so much more personality and panache (even today, the bad guys get the best lines in any adventure story and are the sexual fixation of women as well) and this was the one earlier generation before ours that saw, as clearly as we do now, how insurmountable and easy to despair it is fighting injustice when it felt like evil ran the entire world. 

To quote Jules Pfeiffer’s the Comic Book Heroes, a work invaluable for understanding the mentality and reactions of the first decade of comic hero fans: "when Superman came out, the response was not 'oh, how creative' but an incredulous '...how is it no one thought of this before?’”

This meant that the emphasis in Superman was never on the villains from the outset, in a way unique among heroes of his stature (people often complain he has the fewest good bad guys of a hero of his level, and this is why). But within a few years, though, he had a few corkers who tell us a lot about the time and pop culture he came from. 

Ultra

Superman's first real archnemesis was a woman, a sexy diabolical femme fatale (kind of, read on), known first as the Ultra-Humanite, which was shortened to UItra.

Why is this? Well, here is what you have to understand: the secret to Superman's success is that he is the product of an individual moment of inspiration by a specific kind of guy, namely, artist Joe Shuster. Reading 30s-40s Superman comics reminds me of watching the movie 300 in that you can just picture the pitiful Canadian nerd drawing all this, jacking off every time his hunk musclebound hero knocks a wife beater into a bookshelf. 

The reason why Superman was an appealing fantasy in the Depression is because most people felt like a loser. Historically speaking, the best people to create memorable heroes are introverted, scrawny losers, because for men, invisibility is worse than dying, and this sort already have experience having daydreams of strength in their heads. A generation before Superman, the previous king of adventure characters was Tarzan, who’s first novel manuscript was written by Edgar Rice Burroughs on the back of letterhead from his failed businesses, who created Tarzan to sell because he didn’t know how else to take care of his wife and kids, and when asked to describe his life before creating Tarzan in his autobiography, he put it this way in one sentence: “I was a failure.” (Unlike Siegel and Shuster, Burroughs would be a huge financial success using the profits of his novels to go into real estate, creating the city of Tarzana, California.) A generation after Superman, In another example, I strongly believe if Robert E. Heinlein had not been kicked out of the Navy for tuberculosis, that thwarted military ambition, that Starship Troopers wouldn’t exist.

With that in mind, because Superman is so much a product of a single kind of person's dreams and wish fulfillment, it is absolutely essential to understand Superman that his creator, Joe Schuster, made a living doing fetish, S&M, femdom and bondage art for decades under assumed names. It was his idea the beautiful Lois Lane would humiliate and insult Clark Kent constantly by calling him a “spineless worm,” and the very idea of Clark Kent and a submissive, meek secret identity was Shuster's, as his partner Siegel's original proposal did not have the “secret identity” (Superman was actually submitted in three different forms and turned down twice before his final publication). Pretending to be Clark Kent had a clear component of sadomasochism. Many people have said this, sure, and it is written off as psychoanalyzing Freudian English major claptrap, seeing something that isn’t there, hypersexualizing something that is non-sexual....until you see what Shuster devoted his life to doing! In terms of sheer volume, Shuster did more Tijuana Bibles and bondage art than Superman comics. Are you telling me S&M wouldn't be the subtext of an S&M artist?

Which brings me to the first Superman enemy of the grandiose and terrible type who returned for repeated battles, the Ultra Humanite, who's name would, in later appearances be shortened to Ultra. When he first debuted in Action Comics #13-14 (1939), he was a handicapped bald diabolical supergenius who was clearly inspired by one of the great archetype sources for villains at the time, German director Fritz Lang's wheelchair bound criminal supermind, M, or Dr. Mabuse (Shuster was a huge fan of Fritz Lang, and his cityscapes resembled no real city, not even his native Toronto, so much as the impressionist art deco landscapes of Fritz Lang's futuristic 1926 film, Metropolis). This is why people liked Superman: taking on even someone based on one of the Top Three villains of the era was just another workweek Tuesday for the Man of Steel. 

Little did we know that this was a mere prelude to the real battle, and this was the one and only time the Ultra Humanite would appear this way. Ultra Humanite would return in a strange new form in Action Comics #20-21 (1939), a rare story that spread over two issues. Fatally injured after his battle with Superman (his own fault, but he would blame Superman for this), he had his evil super brain removed and put into the body of a beautiful and sexy actress through a diabolical medical procedure known only to mad scientists in comics.

The idea of brain switching between bodies like a beautiful woman came from Edgar Rice Burroughs' Master Mind of Mars (1927), where supervillain turned anti-hero Rav Thavas regularly gender switched brains and bodies, and put evil people in new fresh frames. John Carter of Mars, incidentally, along with Philip Wylie's Gladiator, was a top inspiration for Superman and his ability to do feats of strength and jump hundreds of feet due to the Red Planet's lower gravity. 

The Humanite's name and dark look are meant to evoke Dolores del Rio, a beautiful Latin actress popular in a decade when American culture in general had a very positive view of Latin America (see also, Disney's Three Caballeros and the Bob Hope road trip movies where he ogles women who dance while covered in fruit).

In a weird twist, according to her biographer, Dolores del Rio was a comics fan herself and liked romance and western comics and the buff, handsome Superman in particular. The subplot in Michael Chabon's novel Kavalier and Clay about Orson Welles and Dolores del Rio being comics fans is absolutely and totally true. Chabon perfectly captured Dolores del Rio's personality when he wrote her in his novel: "my favorite part of the comics is muscular men getting tied up." 

The Ultra Humanite, a brain of a supergenius criminal in the most beautiful female body imaginable, used his seductiveness to casually and coldly murder men. She also has the distinction of being the first villain with a superadvanced volcano lair, the first to try to destroy Superman with a dubious artillery sized ray gun of some sort, the first to taunt Superman by a hologram as she was somewhere else the whole time, the first to escape in a trapdoor after a burst of smoke, and the first to unleash robot henchmen as muscle to destroy Superman, all old tricks later used by other foes later on. The Ultra Humanite did them for the very first time. 

If he lived today, Joe Shuster would thrive on DeviantArt, where his youth, inexperience, love of fetish fan art, lack of formal polish/ experience was a curtain behind which you occasionally saw flashes of brilliance, potential, and great natural gifts as a visual storyteller, like the almost wordless, intuitive moment of recognition where Superman at a gut level recognizes who he had really been fighting this whole time. 

Ultra, Superman’s first nemesis, was not forgotten. She would be revived in the 70s by ex comics fandom member turned pro Roy "The Boy" Thomas, one of the first generation of comics fans to actually grow up to write comics themselves, and in him you already see the comics fan urge for cataloguing over synthesis. Roy the Boy was.....and keep in mind I am not insulting him but merely describing him....an autistic man who's particular fixation, like many others, was World War II and the 1940s, and who's sex drive was completely negligible.

All creators in all media are either horny (David Lynch) or non-horny (George Lucas). The concept of the first Superman villain being a diabolical ice cold femme fatale did not survive the handover from a horny creator to a non-horny creator. Instead of using brain switching as a way to explain the character, he made it a regular gimmick and put her brain into a gigantic white gorilla. This, incidentally, brings the character back to the original inspiration in the first place, Rav Thavas and Master Mind of Mars, where a major character was a human brain placed inside the bodyof a huge white ape. 

Medini the Hypnotist

Absolutely forgotten after his first appearance in Action Comics #25 (1940), even in a comics world catalogues everything, Medini the Hypnotist has not gotten his due for the distinction of being the first Superman enemy to have super powers, to battle Superman with powers of his own as opposed to just an earthquake machine or death ray. What's more, he was also the first villain to actually get the best of Superman in the comic's history, winning their first battle by paralyzing him with hypnotic power into a statue while he made his escape (though obviously Superman won on the rebound).

In addition to his many other firsts, Mendini the Hypnotist also has the historically interesting distinction of being the first non-white villain Superman ever fought, and while he is certainly an ominous and evil looking eastern mystic, he is not depicted as a racial caricature. He is also the first Superman villain to have something resembling a costume, and it actually looks really snazzy, with a yellow turban, gloves and green suit. For a villain who only appeared once before passing unjustly into oblivion, he has a lot of firsts and should be better remembered.

Visually, he was clearly based on Bela Lugosi's magician villain, Baron Roxor, in Chandu the Magician, and his name and appearance came from Mohallet the Mad Arab from the Doc Savage novel, the Phantom City. 

Magicians exist in every culture, and I wonder what it means that, in ours, they are celebrity entertainers. Pop culture of the 1930s-40s was full of two kinds of villains that simply do not exist in great numbers in our timeline to the best of my knowledge: US homefront Axis saboteurs (how often, historically, did this really happen, compared to how often it happened in fiction from the period?) and the other being stage magicians who smugly use their skill for larceny, who are typically outsmarted by mystery solving detectives.

This of course, survived into our modern day as the eternal battle and rivalry on TV between magicians and detectives. It's so fascinating that this is a lingering effect of this era of pop culture, as the TV shows of the 70s were often written by people who grew up in the 30s, and those who write episodic tv today are trained by people from the 70s. The end result is that every single detective show to this day inevitably has an episode where the sleuth matches wits with an insufferable magician.

"Alakazam, jackass" indeed.

Professor Zee

Hey, if Joe Shuster is Canadian....shouldn't he be named Professor Zedd? Once again showing the influence of Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse, aka "M," Professor Z takes his name from a single letter.

Appearing in Superman #8 (1941), "The Giants of Professor Zee," Professor Zee was the most memorable of the mad scientist foes who flickered in the comic briefly and battled Superman, before Luthor settled into being the go-to for this. There seemed to be an epidemic of evil scientists in the 1940s, a social problem equivalent to juvenile delinquency. Dr. Zee had a boastful panache, volcano headquarters lair, supergadget airplane, and an egotist and braggart's desire to taunt that elevated him above the other foes of this era. He was motivated less by wealth than by the desire to use a race of giants to reshape and create a new world that upends existing power relations in the world. He was a visionary, not just a madman with an earthquake ray.

A ruthless genius who created a serum that could turn anything, including a human, into a giant, he used giant henchmen grown to colossal size, as well as cats. This was a common plot point in science fiction, inspired by no less than H.G. Wells, who wrote "The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth" in 1904, which is one of the most influential scifi novels of all time if the number of times its premise was lifted by a movie badly is any indication. Remember all the giant bug and giant monster movies of the 50s there are?

Obviously the idea that animals, insects, and even humans would turn giant because of science was used in a lot of 1950s b-movies, but the only one that ever dealt with the intellectual and social questions from the original novel, how scientific reorganization upends the power structure in society unpredictably and terrifyingly and leads to social role changes that can't be foreseen, the only movie that "got it," was "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman," a movie about the terror of gender role reversal and the fear of the gender order being upended. H.G. Wells wrote "Food of the Gods" at a time when industrialization was an ongoing process that replaced the landed gentry with industrialists, destroyed social relations that existed for hundreds of years, and replaced agricultural peasants with factory workers, and it's wrong to say it was all for the best. Using this Wells story as an inspiration also shows how the superhero story, a genre they were in the process of creating at this time, was an outgrowth of the artifacts of science fiction's "First Fandom" of the 1930s, one of the scifi genre's bastard sons.

Though borrowing his gimmick from H.G. Wells's best and most under-read book, Professor Zee is an excellent example of how early Superman is often just an exercise in identifying what plot was ripped off from which Doc Savage novel. Along with Philip Wylie's Gladiator, Dr. Clark Savage, Jr., the "Man of Bronze," as he was known, was one of the biggest inspirations for Superman, and that borrowing was extremely specific: Doc Savage, who debuted 6 years before Superman, had a "Fortress of Solitude" in the arctic. Though several stories exist of how Superman got his earth name of Clark Kent, the most convincing to me is that it was a mashup of the names of the two biggest pulp heroes around in 1938, Dr. Clark Savage and the Shadow's name, Kent Allard.

In this case, the plot is obviously derived from "The Monsters," one of the best and most memorable of the early Doc Savage novels, up there with "The Sargasso Ogre." In that one, Doc infiltrate a valley that is home to men that a mad scientist who, experimenting on convicts, stimulated growth that turned them into 14 foot tall beasts with grotesque appearances. "The Monsters" was such a memorable Doc novel full of such horrific imagery that it wasn't even the only time DC would rip it off, as Hugo Strange also created mindless giant monsters out of convicts to do his bidding in Batman (believe it or not) #1, "The Giants of Hugo Strange."

This is not the first, nor even the fifth, time that Superman in the early days would borrow a plot from a Doc Savage novel. Doc Savage's novels, as Philip Jose Farmer put it, are full of apocalyptic imagery out of the Book of Revelation, where events take place like tidal waves that threaten to sink New York, and were clearly the only stories worthy of a character like Superman, where the world is almost destroyed or saved. There was the story with a mysterious meteor that kills once it is seen, which comes from the sinister plot of Mo-Gwei in "Meteor Menace." Superman once had to deal with a case of music played just before someone is murdered mysteriously, the plot of the Doc novel “Murder Melody.” Then there was the story of a platinum blonde haired woman who knows the secret location of a lost city in Arabia, a plot derived from "The Phantom City."

Lester Dent, creator of Doc Savage, was absolutely aware of this semi-plagiarism, and he hated Superman and other superheroes for it. He thought they were a temporarily popular passing fad, who took what he established and pushed it beyond the boundaries of what an audience would accept. He wrote the novel "The Whisker of Hercules," a novel where a potion gives men Superman strength and speed, at the cost of the fact it ages them to death, a metaphor for how he thought superheroes were a fad, one easily bested by the wits of his hero, Doc Savage.

Dent was wrong, though, superheroes outlived his pulp heroes by generations. Even Dr. Zee returned in the late 1970s by (once again) Roy "the Boy" Thomas, who had Dr. Zee invent a time machine, only to have it be stolen by Per Degaton, who was working as his assistant. It's somehow appropriate that Dr. Zee is known as the man who got Per Degaton his start as a time traveling tyrant in the first place.

Luthor the Atom Man

No no, not LEX Luthor. Luthor would not get a first name at all until 1960, almost two decades after his creation. For a generation, Luthor was known by one name, and possibly also his sobriquet, “Atom Man,” used in the 1950 Columbia movie serial, “Atom Man vs. Superman,” the first time on screen that Luthor and Superman ever battled. Luthor did not originate in the Columbia serial, but the fact Luthor appeared in his best remembered serial, one often re aired on local TV stations, cemented the idea that Luthor the Atom Man was Superman’s greatest foe.

Luthor and Superman are so intertwined that it is easy to forget they didn’t appear at the same time, and Luthor only appeared in Action Comics #23 (1940), almost two or three years after Superman’s debut.

In that same way, a lot of Luthor’s traits are chosen like a salad bar from other characters. Luthor initially appeared as a gigantic face that terrifies and commands his underlings, this was inspired by the fifth highest grossing movie of the year before, MGM’s the Wizard of Oz (Gone with the Wind was the highest grossing film of 1939). His plot, to cause nations to go to war while operating behind the scenes using high tech weaponry, was inspired by the Doc Savage novel, “The Kingmakers.” It was clearly an attempt to process something that was otherwise inexplicable, why the Axis nations initiated aggressive war. A common cliché in adventure stories of this era, which often had difficulty processing the reality of human evil and the causality of events like wars and plagues, is to attribute some real large scale horror with complex causes to a single evil person or conspiracy, like how Doc Savage once battled the evil homosexual midget responsible for the Great Depression. This warmongering behind the scenes plot was a way to talk about what was on everyone’s minds, but in an incidental way, as talking about it directly was too terrifying. It’s actually kind of stunning how fiction of this time avoids talking about the obviously coming war on the horizon, it’s a truly stunning blind spot I can only compare to how Jane Austen never ever mentions Napoleon because it was too terrifying for her, as he seemed invincible. People always say this era had tons of Nazi villains. After Pearl Harbor, yes. Before? It was too scary to talk about.

Incidentally, it’s worth noting that nowhere in his first few decades of existence do they explicitly state Luthor has any past with Superman at all or that he is even American at all, and there are actually many occasions they hint the opposite, that he is a foreigner, possibly Russian or Hungarian. Luthor, to the American ear, is a name that has a very Hungarian or Central European sound. Americans love to give villains Hungarian style names like “Zoltan” because they sound malevolent. Early Luthor’s dialogue was written with the same Mr. Spock-like hyper precision and over-perfection that, to the native ear, sounds like someone who learned English as a second language. Long after the 1940s was finished, In the 1980s, Roy “the Boy” Thomas, historian of the 1940s, would establish that this early ‘Golden Age” version of Luthor was actually named Alexei Luthor.

This, obviously, shows direct inspiration from Doc Savage’s supreme nemesis, John Sunlight, the Devil Genghis himself, who’s key trait is that his true name and nationality were never revealed, though on his introduction he escaped from a Soviet Gulag in Siberia. Like Sunlight, a key trait of Luthor is that he had ditzy, bimbo gun molls that he had no interest in romantically but that he keeps around for the exclusive purpose of meeting a dark psychological need for domination. And it also seems that one trait of Luthor is that, in multiple versions over media, while accompanied by his loser henchmen and ditz “girlfriend,” he always discovers or stumbles on Superman’s Fortress of Solitude in the arctic. This, incidentally, is why most Doc historians consider John Sunlight Doc’s supreme enemy, as he looted and stole the technology in Doc’s Fortress of Solitude, something otherwise considered private and untouchable.

John Sunlight however, Lex’s biggest inspiration, was not bald. It's very likely that Luthor’s most memorable physical trait, his complete baldness, may be due to a misunderstanding and confusion. Lex Luthor, when he first appeared, had a shock of bright red hair, but after later appearances, he went bald. Mistakes and confusion after all, happen in comics all the time, especially this era, when comics used work for hire artists off the street who were not necessarily fans and may not have read previous issues. Kryptonite was originally red when it was first introduced in 1949, but due to a misprint two years later in 1951, became green. Luthor’s first and second appearances in Action Comics #23 and Superman #4, were done as he had red hair. When Luthor next appeared, in the newspaper comic strip and then in Superman #10 (note how quickly Superman became a multimedia phenomenon), the art was done by Leo Nowak, who made Luthor bald for the first time. It may be that he confused Luthor with the extremely bald Ultra-Humanite, or for one of Luthor’s henchmen in Superman #4, who was also bald. Either way, the change stuck, and this became Luthor going forward.

This was not even the most dramatic change to Superman lore that Leo Nowak made that issue because he was sloppy with research. Superman #10 is also when the confused Leo Nowak gave Superman his most famous super power by mistake, in that it is the first time that Superman is depicted as flying. Not just leaping under low gravity like John Carter of Mars, but true flight. This is because Leo Nowak interpreted Siegel’s art of Superman leaping as flying through the air, which is an understandable mistake to make in a flat visual medium like comics with no movement. Nowadays, if you can’t at least fly, you barely count as a superguy.

There is one superweapon that Luthor attempted to use to kill Superman. In 1944, Lex used something that had long been suspected but had yet to be invented as a reality: an atomic bomb. When the War Department heard of this Superman story, they ordered it to be censored and not to be published due to wartime restrictions for reasons of national security. Why? Because a very real atom bomb was actually under development at the time by the Manhattan Project. This story would not be published until 1946 in Superman #38 (1946), "The Battle of the Atoms." It's fascinating to imagine the first atomic bomb was actually built by Luthor a year earlier. No wonder he is known by his nickname, "Atom Man."

[garpen]

I can't believe Lex Luthor is president again. Lex Luthor is a narcissistic, egotistical, evil corrupt corporate billionaire, who is only in this for his own agendas. Did we not all see how it went down last time?

He is a power hungry man who sees SUPERMAN of all people as a threat when Superman has done nothing but help the people of Earth and bring us hope and assurance of justice.

He has relentlessly tried to get rid of Superman simply because he is an alien, even though the hero is more human than any of us. Luthor is clearly just jealous of our love and praise of the hero because he hates the idea of praise not being directed at him-he hates that there is someone or something more powerful than him.

Don't even get me started on his association with the Legion of Doom, Ra's Al Ghul, Vandal Savage, and many more horribly power hungry evil people.

[aheartintheshadows]

Why Not Me?

Part one

There you were, standing alone in the Talon, waiting for Clark to meet you. He had asked you to come after an awkward encounter at your brother’s mansion.

Glancing at the clock, you noticed the time—10:00 PM. He was late.

You began turning off the espresso machine. You had kept it running after closing, thinking Clark might want a coffee when he showed up. Just as you did, you heard the front door open.

“Finally! I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show,” you exclaimed as you turned around.

Your breath caught in your chest when you realized it wasn’t Clark.

Standing at the entrance were three masked men. One of them held a gun. Your eyes filled with tears as panic took over. You wished you were anywhere but here.

“Open the register!” the biggest one barked, walking toward you.

You obeyed, trembling, terrified of what might happen if you didn’t.

He walked behind the counter and grabbed the cash inside the till.

“THAT’S IT?!” he shouted, shaking the small wad of bills in your face. “Where’s the rest of it?”

Scared, you flinched and turned your head. “The manager took it… to Lex.”

He grunted in frustration, face inches from yours, then turned and scanned the Talon. When he couldn’t find anything of value, he turned back to you.

“Call Lex Luthor. Tell him to bring me cash, or you die.”

Tears streamed down your face. Your head was spinning, filled with desperate thoughts. If only Clark had shown up on time. If only he would walk through that door—right now.

“I… I can’t,” you choked out, your voice shaking.

You regretted the words instantly.

He backhanded you hard. You hit the floor.

“Call him now,” he growled, “or what I do next will hurt a lot more.”

Clutching your face, pain radiating through your cheek, you gasped, “I can’t… I don’t have his number.”

You didn’t know why you lied again. Maybe fear made the decision for you. But deep down, you were afraid that if you called your brother, both of you would be in danger.

You instantly regretted it.

His boot slammed into your ribs. You cried out and curled into yourself, shielding your stomach. Another kick. Then another. And another.

The pain was unbearable. You could feel yourself slipping.

Just before you blacked out, you heard one of the other thieves shout, “Enough! She’s just a kid! Let’s just go!”

One final kick—this time to your head—and everything went dark.

You woke up slowly, your vision blurry. You looked around, struggling to make sense of where you were.

The hospital, you realized.

How did I get here?

The door opened. You turned your head toward the sound. Tears filled your eyes when you saw your brother’s face. Relief overwhelmed you.

You were safe. You were alive.

“Y/n, you had me worried... What happened?” Lex asked, his voice low, his expression full of concern.

You told him everything—every terrifying moment. The tears wouldn’t stop. As you spoke, you watched his face slowly shift. The concern was still there, but something darker began to grow behind his eyes.

Anger.

He gently wiped a tear from your cheek, then stood and walked out of the room.

From your hospital bed, you watched through the window as Lex bumped into Clark in the hallway. You couldn’t hear what they were saying, but you saw Clark’s expression change as Lex pointed toward your room.

Then Clark looked up—his eyes locking on yours.

He stepped inside. Quietly.

“Hey,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. Sadness filled every word. He closed the door behind him. “Lex told me what happened… Y/n, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”

He reached for your hand.

You pulled away.

“Where were you, Clark?” you asked, your voice full of hurt. “You were supposed to meet me at 9. It was your idea. And you weren’t there.”

“Lana needed m—” he began.

You cut him off. “Lana?! It’s always Lana. I should’ve known.”

“Y/n… I’m sorry. I should’ve called,” he said, guilt in his voice.

You looked at him, pain and anger burning behind your eyes. “No, Clark. You should’ve been there. I needed you… You’re always there to save everyone else. But when I needed saving, you were nowhere to be found.”

You couldn’t look at him anymore. You had never been able to stay mad at Clark—but this?

This hurt more than anything that had happened at the Talon.

“Leave,” you said quietly.

“What?” Clark asked, confused, trying again to reach for your hand.

“Leave,” you repeated, louder this time. You pulled your hand back. “I don’t want you here. Not now… not ever again.”

His face fell. Sadness and disbelief washed over him. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.

You watched as he slowly stood, turned toward the door, and walked out.

You followed his figure through the hospital window as he walked down the hallway—slower than usual.

Once he was out of sight, the tears came again.

You clutched your chest, trying to stop the ache that wouldn’t go away.

You sat there for hours, battling your thoughts.

Did I do the right thing?

You tried to convince yourself: You love him. You would’ve done anything for him. And he couldn’t show up when it mattered most.

Clark Kent isn’t worth loving.

______________________________________________________________

I hope you enjoyed part one, please let me know your thoughts! What do you think will happen next? Will you forgive Clark? What is Lex going to do?

Part Two will be released tomorrow!

[smallcloisville]

The character development I love to see😍😍

[chernobog13]

Brian Bolland's cover for the 2006 trade paperback DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore.

[codiecoda]

ATTENTION SLEX / DEATHCORP FANS! — Fanfic Comment Participation! {Details Below}

Hello Slex / Deathcorp Fans!

Have you ever wanted to participate in a fanfic without having to write it yourself? Well this is your chance.

I'm Codie! As of posting this I have written the majority of the fanfics publicly available for this ship and I have recently decided to experiment with a new type of fanfic that Includes the characters reacting to your comments.

Now.. You may be asking yourself "How does this work?" Well good question.

This will have the characters answering questions that you provide in the comments below. This can be about themselves, their relationship, or anything you really have interest in or want to know.

This fic will also discuss their reaction to their ships names. If you know of any outside of Slex and Deathcorp do not hesitate to comment them below.

Usernames of the commenters will be featured on the fic unless requested not to be included.

I will be posting this fic both on AO3 and Tumblr.

-

Important Notice: This fanfic specifically covers the maws version of the characters and will include some personal headcanons of mine. I do try to incorporate as much as canon as I can but fanfic allows for some creative libraries after all so please be courteous to that fact as this is fanfiction.

-

I do not have a set date for the release of this fanfic as I do need a decent amount of comments to make the fic functional so I do encourage commenters to leave as many questions as their heart desires. I appreciate any and all participation. Thank you.