Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography (July 1989)

The world was a better place when people accepted this person could be Superman's most dangerous enemy.

Once upon a time, Lex Luthor was fat and bald and had lost a hand to Krypto-cancer. He was the epitome of the greedy CEO who was shtupping his secretary, Scrooging his employees, and kicking every dog he could find. Being the worst person in the world wasn't about being athletic or having special powers or being charming or good-looking. Once upon a time, we knew who was the real enemy to truth, justice, and the American Way. Somewhere along the way, people forgot this piece of shit was the antithesis of everything good and they decided to elect him president.

I'm not talking about that time Lex Luthor was elected president of the United States of America in the DC Universe! I'm talking about Trump! But I don't want to talk about him anymore. This isn't going to be a review about that bloated, idiotic turd of a human being who's currently murdering fishermen off the coasts of Venezuela because he's the most unloved person who ever lived but the one who needs love and approval the most (which he gets from sociopaths). It's just that the use of gold for the cover font and the profile picture of an arrogant piece of shit made me think of that old fuck's dumb book from so many decades ago. But that's it! We're done with that now! No more mention of that piece of shit because we're here to have fun!

If I start a conversation with you by saying "Mister" and it's followed by anything other than "Big Dick", it means I don't want to fuck you.

Contrariwise, if I begin a conversation with you by saying, "Miss" or "Missus", it means I'm already about to jizz in my pants.

The police tape (a VHS tape because this was written in 1989, like eight generations and a billion mass shootings ago) contains a police interview with suspected murderer Clark Kent. Sure, we as readers know Clark Kent didn't actually kill anybody. But we as readers also know cops are terrible at their jobs and mostly solve cases using racism, gut instinct, and Magic 8 Balls. You'd think cops would do real investigative work when trying to solve murders because they love overtime pay so much. But they really only love overtime pay when it comes with doing basically nothing. Which is how they solve murders so, um, win-win, I guess? For cops, I mean! It's always lose-lose-lose-lose-die-lose-die-die-lose-lose-lose for the public when dealing with cops. The only way to win with a cop is not to play (I mean don't call their dumb shooting dogs loving asses. They're just going to make any situation worse. If I were being hunted by a Predator, I'd call Domino's delivery before I called a cop. And I hate Domino's pizza!).

"Your Honor, look how quiet this guy is! I rest my case!"

That bit depicted in the previous panels wasn't on the tape that Luthor received! That bit was behind the one-way mirror which the reader gets to be privy to because we're not watching the tape with Luthor; we've gone back to the original moment the tape was made. It's pretty complex story telling; you probably wouldn't understand it. Especially when the cops show Clark Kent a photograph of the guy he's supposed to have murdered and the perspective enters the picture and now we're even further back in time from the opening to when Peter wakes up after sleeping in a prophetic way (the way he'll wind up dying). This is more complicated than Memento, probably. I mean from what I've heard. I saw that in the theaters but it was like, um, hey? I think you got your reels mixed up?

Ha ha! I just lied again! This is from my Nice Alice and Death Rock Memento review from when I used to do movie reviews way back in the '00s when we actually still owned the No Apologies Press URL (thanks for existing, Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, so I could easily find this!):

"Well, I liked how he was basically a blank slate, personality-wise. He was an Everyman. He represented the way we all live our lives: in a desperate search for truth, for something solid to believe in. His life is a list of facts and categorizations. If he writes something down, it becomes the truth. We live our lives with contradictions and shifting perceptions. Black and white rarely exist for us. We have memories that we sometimes doubt. He has a line written on a photograph. Objective proof of the way his life is. At the end of the movie, his truth starts to waver, starts to become uncertain and ungrounded. The center of his life is falling apart. The center that is the fact that his wife was murdered and he is looking to avenge her death. And the end of the movie is actually the beginning of the timeline. So we see him at a weak moment, his facts betraying him, his memories unsure. At the beginning of the movie, he was completely sure of his reality. Everything was neatly stated, filed, categorized on his skin and photographs. But this certainty in his truth only comes, as we observe during the movie, by his own manipulation of facts and his own exploitation of his faulty memory. He plants so-called truths on his photographs and skin that will drive him toward a fulfilling reality: the killing of the man who killed his wife. And as we see, it doesn't really matter who that man is because Leonard has conditioned himself the way they try to condition Sammy to remember which blocks to pick up by electrocuting certain ones. Leonard is conditioned to hunt for his wife's murderer. That's all he knows how to do. He's an automaton at this point. And even when he's presented with proof that he has killed someone before that he thought was his wife's murderer (the picture of him pointing at the space on his chest where he'll tattoo the fact his job is done), he burns it and proceeds to set up Teddy as the guy he's looking for. The final proof that he's not really looking for the murderer is at the end, when he closes his eyes to see if the world goes away. He pictures himself in bed with his wife with the blank space on his chest tattooed with 'I have done it.' He doesn't want revenge. He wants his wife back. That's when he'll finally get the tattoo on his chest that lets him know his quest is over."

The guy in the photo's name is Peter Sands. He's a has-been reporter down on his luck. No job. No money. Divorced wife to whom he owes alimony. Oh, he's also a massive drunk. Exactly the sort of person Clark Kent would murder.

Desperate, Peter calls up every publisher he's ever worked with looking for an advance on any story he can make up in the moment. But nobody wants him because of that massive drunk thing I mentioned. Coincidentally, while getting turned down by every publisher he calls, one publisher who hasn't heard how drunk Peter constantly is, calls him fishing for an interesting book. On the spot, Peter decides he's going to do an unauthorized biography of Lex Luthor, not realizing it's going to get him murdered by Clark Kent later.

Please! I put a moratorium on mentioning that doddering racist, lady!

I don't know why Trump was ever famous but, as you can see, even in 1989, people knew he was the real world equivalent to Lex Luthor. I mean in the greedy and being a dick and a criminal department and not in the super genius inventor department. Definitely in the hating people who are actual heroes department because he's the most delusional narcissist in the world department and thinks all the accolades should go to him department.

Am I using "department" too much?

Back to the terrible police investigation by the usual terrible police who don't know how to do investigations, they've got some really damning evidence based on their bias and some wild speculation based on various works of fiction they've seen (not read. Cops don't read).

Oh come on! He could have written that for plenty of other reasons! Like the guy who shot him asked as Sands was dying, "Which reporter at The Daily Planet would Lois Lane never fuck?"

Back to the past, Peter Sands begins researching Lex Luthor starting with Lex's autobiography, Simply Brilliant. It's probably a good place to start if you read it carefully because no way Lex Luthor can't help bragging about any murders he did if you read between the lines and gather the subtext of things he's saying. Or he simply wrote stuff like, "I murdered X. Of course, I mean that in the metaphorical sense. Of course, I mean THAT in the metaphorical sense. Because I really did murder him. Literally double metaphorically, if you see what I'm saying. Look, I killed him and nobody can arrest me because I used to fuck young girls with them on this rich pedophile's island."

You're at an AC/DC concert?

Meanwhile, back in the present, the cops whine at Clark that he's being rude and making their jobs so fucking difficult.

"Look, you either confess now or you confess after we've held you in this room for 72 hours distorting everything you tell us and promising you that if you sign a confession, you can go home."

Clark knows he didn't kill this guy literally but may have killed him metaphorically (but not metaphorically metaphorically like how Lex killed that guy I made up). You see, Peter Sands invited Clark Kent to his house not for help on his book but for help on finding Superman. Peter explained his life was in danger from Lex Luthor and the killers on his payroll because Peter had found out too many true things about Lex. But Clark is all, "Whoa whoa whoa! Why do you think I, not Superman, would know how to get in touch with Superman, a man who is famously not me? Because if he were me, I could save your life right now but he's not me and my secret identity is super important (not Superman important! Ha ha!) so I can't just save your life right now, being that I'm not him, I mean. Let me leave you alone for a few hours while I pretend to go look for Superman because it's really difficult to get in touch with a guy who you totally aren't." So Clark leaves Peter's apartment and then Peter is murdered and begins writing, "Clark Kent is obviously not Superman or else he could have saved my life", on the floor with his own blood. But he dies after just writing Clark's full name.

After finishing Lex Luthor's autobiography, Peter Sands begins investigating anybody who's still alive who knew Lex when he was younger. That comes out to one person: an elementary school teacher. He doesn't get suspicious that only one person in all of Luthor's life is still alive; he waits until she explains that he probably got kids beaten up by grown men and possibly killed his parents. Then he begins investigating everybody tied to Lex's parents' life insurance policy and, hoo-boy, it sure looks like Lex murdered his parents! That's when he gets a phone call from a mysterious stranger who is all, "Stop investigating or we'll kill you. Unless you already figured out Lex killed his parents. Then we're just going to kill you anyway. Good day!"

Back at police headquarters in the present, the cops continue to act as if the first person they brought in for questioning is the murderer because, man, it's tough having to bring in more people. Also a waste of time when you can just frame whomever you first grab off the street.

Clark knows he's partly responsible for Sands' death so I hope they give him a polygraph!

Peter Sands, before he was killed by Luthor's men, decided he wasn't afraid of being killed by Luthor's men and continued his investigation. He remembered he knew a guy who worked for Luthor in the '60s who was also a Vietnam War Veteran and also a heavy drinker. So he tricks him into telling all of his secrets for a few beers while one of Luthor's men sits nearby listening. After the meeting, Luthor's guy runs down Peter's friend in the street, killing him. The police aren't investigating that murder because, I'm assuming, he was a Black guy? And probably because he was a Vietnam Vet? And, being 1989, maybe he was gay? Any reason so the police could convince themselves they don't have to care about that murder because they believe nobody else does either. Some of you are too young to remember Reagan's America but it sucked. It wasn't as bad as Trump's America, but it was full of vile, despicable people who were only governing for certain people. Yeah, sounds familiar, right? It's the kind of leadership that makes me drop friends and stop talking with family who continue to support it. Just vile people supporting other vile people for the most selfish and irrational reasons.

Only fifteen pages left so it might be time to summarize the rest of the story in the end of review bit, right? I mean, I don't want to spoil the ending where Lex Luthor heaves his horrendous form atop the woman who brought him the Clark Kent snuff film.

Gross.

Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography Rating: B. Okay, fine, Clark Kent wasn't killed on-camera by cops. He was saved at the last minute by one of Lex Luthor's lawyers so that Clark would owe him a favor. I thought for sure Clark Kent would come to his own defense by pointing out that the dying man wrote Clark's name with his non-dominant hand as you can plainly see without even knowing which of Peter Sands' hands was dominant because he's wearing a watch on the hand that scrawled Clark's name. Am I a better detective than the Metropolis police detectives? Yes, of course I am. Cops are terrible detectives. Instead, we learn the murder weapon was found and the prints on the blade were from a convicted felon who had fallen out with Donald Trump. So Trump had him framed for the murder and attempted framing of Clark Kent. Plus Lex Trumpthor probably had all the people Sands interviewed killed. In the end, Lex Luthor has gotten away with everything because he's a genius and Superman's a huge pusshole who was manipulated by a Lexcorps-made earthquake in Tokyo. Luthor controlled the whole thing! See, I had to stop calling him Trump as soon as I began talking about his genius plans to manipulate everyone. Trump only manipulates dimwits and fucknuggets whom he either has serious dirt on (probably Epstein-island related) or they're just so dumb and greedy, and their dad hated them so much, that they'll pretend to believe any piece of dog vomit that drips from Trump's dog butthole of a mouth. Was that a mixed metaphor? I hope not! My credibility as a proper writer could be shattered!

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #31 (Early June 1992)

Batman loves his fuzzy little screechy rabies guys.

Who in DC's art department or editorial, in 1992, decided that after 30 issues, the iconic look of this series should just be tossed out the fucking window like a reverse Batman origin? "What are you talking about, Grunion Guy? The logo looks just like it always did?" I'm not talking about the logo, Internet blockhead I just made up to argue with! Where'd the thin-lined rectangle go?! Look, I'll show you some examples.

This is the first issue. It established "the rectangle". It looks fucking stylish. But it gets better!

This smaller image inside a rectangle of solid cover, with the logo and title in blocks above and below the main image, was used for the entirety of the "Shaman" story arc. At issue #6, they changed this format by covering the entire page with the image.

But they left the original inner rectangle border! How fucking cool does that look?!

You can even see the rectangle use on Mike Mignola's cover for the first Annual which he incorporated into the art by having the lower edge disappear into the murky water that Batman is wading through. It just looks so streamlined and modern and some artists absolutely were working with it as part of the layout, as seen in Wagner's run, "Faces". But for some reason, after thirty issues, they dropped the design on this cover. Why? Who made that decision? Can they retroactively be fired for being lame and not with it? Man, I hope so!

This issue is called "Family" probably to bring to mind "Death in the Family" where the Joker treated Jason Todd's head like a sealed crate full of brains. And since these stories are "legends", maybe Jason Todd will be a main character in this. I'm assuming, by the title, that's how these stories worked at the time. They're not chronological but stories from across Batman's career without being grounded in any specific time.

The issue begins with a very serious Batman running through the jungle, bloodlust pumping through his normally bloodlust-free veins.

Please let him be talking about Batcow!

How often does Batman "want" to kill? Is he like Bruce Banner in that one movie and Batman's secret is that he wants to kill all the fucking time? That can't be true because he definitely loses his temper to degrees no regular mortal ever does without popping a mental gasket but he seems to have the ability not to kill as hardcoded as my ability to not shit myself while I'm sleeping, no matter how huge a shit I'm taking in my dreams. Batman's probably just being metaphorical and slightly hyperbolic when he says to himself that he wants to kill them. Up until the "they've taken you" bit, I thought maybe he was talking about ants in his kitchen.

Unsurprisingly, it's Alfred who has been taken. Batman decides right up front that he's finally willing to kill if that's what it takes to save Alfred. This might be why Jason Todd came back so angry. "Remember that time you were willing to kill to save somebody? And it wasn't fucking me, you piece of shit! *BANG*!" The bang was Red Hood's gun that he loves to shoot into people's faces and kill them dead. But not Batman because even if he's mostly mad at Batman, he just takes that anger out at the rest of the criminal world. Also, he can't hit Batman with a bullet! Nobody can. At least not mortally!

It seems Batman sent Alfred on a vacation to Corto Maltese where Alfred got into some trouble. So Batman is blaming himself instead of Alfred who probably did too much gambling, heroin, and sex.

Like Bruce Wayne cares if Alfred hears his fuck noises. As if Alfred doesn't usually sit in the cuck chair, just in case Bruce needs something during the sex. "A little more lube for your butthole, sir?"

Alfred disappeared two days into his vacation but Batman didn't notice until Alfred missed his flight seven days later. Batman says, "Didn't have time to check up on him." Oh yeah. He was fucking all week, wasn't he? Probably had Selena Kyle, Vicki Vale, and Jaina Hudson in bed with him for five days straight. Bruce probably didn't even bother to pick up Alfred at the airport since that's, you know, Alfred's job.

Realizing he was going to have to make his own tea and wash his own pants for the rest of his life, Batman decides to investigate Alfred's disappearance. He heads to Corto Maltese, stays in the same hotel, and passes around a lot of cash while asking questions to all the locals. He finally discovers one willing to tell him about the white man interested in visiting the Mayan ruins. So Batman headed into the jungle with a murder boner.

Even though I scanned the "New Girlfriend" question panel, I could not figure out this clue until Batman explained it.

Batman smiles at Alfred's naivete to not make girlfriend plural and heads into the jungle after him and his captors.

Batman catches up to the bandits in an abandoned rubber factory. After easily beating up most of them, he questions one and discovers that Alfred supposedly was killed by a snake bite! Batman doesn't immediately break down in tears but it's close. He also manages to not kill the guy who told him because he wants proof. But the guy tells him Alfred's body is in the next room but what's actually in the next room are more bandits for Batman to beat the shit out of. After that, the guy explains that they sold Alfred to a criminal overlord called El Vato. Guy Gardner?

"Okay, fine! Yes, Bruce Wayne wrote a birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein all about the first Robin nobody knows about!"

Man, that caption was too dark even for me. I'm sorry, Baby Jesus. I know you don't approve. On the other hand, I don't care what Baby Jesus approves of or disapproves of. He's just a baby!

I can't pray to adult Jesus because he's always depicted shirtless on the cross and, oh my, my thighs are already sweating. Madre de Dios!

I know, I know. Look at me, having a little fun with Christianity in what they'd deem to be a blasphemous or vitriolic way. No way! I love Jesus! But here's a little helpful hint to all the Christians who think both that America is a Christian nation and that Christians are the most victimized of religious people ever: of course you're going to get parodied and satirized and mocked when your religion is the standout, most vocal religion in the United States! What, we're supposed to go after Quakers when we do a little fun mockery? Pshaw! If we did that, you'd get jealous and upset that you were being ignored! I bet Jesus wouldn't get mad at me saying his athletic build gives me the hots! He'd probably blush and do a "oh you" hand gesture and then say, "But seriously. Get straight with God, sinner."

Batman sneaks into El Vato's encampment in some Mayan ruins and almost immediately falls into an ancient Mayan pit trap. El Vato strolls over with all his gunmen to mock Batman before killing him.

Batman's probably not crying. It's just the pit was full of stagnant water. And he fell in directly onto his eyeballs.

Batman does not get shot to death even though it seems inevitable at this point. Instead, he triggers a sonic device on his belt that causes all the bats in South America to come party down. He escapes under cover of bat and rushes into the ruins to find Alfred whom he finds almost immediately. Batman also finds some trucks loaded with guns, explosives, and drugs. He sets up a detonator to distract the gang members while they flee for a helicopter Batman saw earlier. The rescue and escape all work out after some explosions and fisticuffs and Alfred saving Batman's life.

You know Batman probably set this up to make Alfred feel good. Also those are the final panels of the story. That's how it ends.

It's easy to set up a situation like this to entertain people or make them feel like heroes when you're observant. I was once helping out with the Santa Clara Junior Theater when I was, I don't know, twenty-one, I think? At the end of the show, we were breaking down the Tom Sawyer set when I realized they were pulling the nails out of the house façade and that it was probably just going to fall forward when they were done. So I positioned myself with my back to the façade, lining up in the doorway so that the entire thing would crash down around me. Everybody screamed and then laughed and thought it was hilarious and I don't think anybody realized I set up the entire thing. Like Batman pretending he was about to die so Alfred could save him! I'm just like Batman!

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #31 Rating: C. It was a mediocre story which explained why Alfred doesn't go on vacation. Did we need that story? No but we don't really need any story, right? This could have been one of those great fucking stories that you remember for ever even when it wasn't needed for continuity or lore or to reveal some deep insight into the character. But it wasn't because it was mostly boring. Thanks, James Hudnall, for boring me! That being said, I'm going to immediately give James D. Hudnall another chance to impress me! This was the first comic I've reviewed by him but guess what? I've got another to follow it up immediately: Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography.

Judging by this cover, I might be taking the piss out of Donald Trump quite a bit next review. Or not. Fuck Trump. I don't want to talk about his moronic, spiteful ass.