Year of the Villain: Lex Luthor #1 Review

Writer: Jason Latour / Artist: Bryan Hitch / DC Comics One Lex to Kill Them All Lex Luthor has been a pivotal figure this year in the DC canon. He instigated the “Year of the Villain” that has impacted almost every single on-going title in some way, shape, or form. Apex Lex is quite possibly the biggest bad we’ve had since the last universe altering event, Dark Knight: Metal. This feels appropriate given the contents of this Lex Luthor one-shot. This is a quintessentially weird issue of comics that manages to curate a series of bizarre sequences into a truly chilling look into the psyche of the current face of DC’s villainy. Latour does an incredible job of projecting two fundamental aspects of Lex Luthor:

There is a very tragic element to his existence. There was at some point the possibility for him to be one of the good guys.

Latour takes us through a tour of the multiverse, showing us different manifestations of Lex Luthor. We see a younger version of Lex in an abusive home. We see heroic and villainous iterations of the character, all through the lens of the Prime Apex Lex as he drags his younger alternate self to bear witness to his prowess. It is a fascinating introspective into the character’s motivations, chock full of fanservice and callbacks to some of the greatest moments in Luthor’s (and by association, Superman’s) history. And all of it shows us exactly what makes the Apex Lex… well Apex. Without peer, without equal, the “Only Luthor” as the story’s title pr…