And yet the problem was never that he was a billionaire, and Lexcorp was never portrayed as anything but an industrial powerhouse whose existence was ultimately good.
Employs literally 2/3 of Metropolis’s population lol. Lex even handed it over Superman at one point and made him the CEO because he was on a “Earth needs Superman” arc while obviously CEOs are the real heroes and such, and what are you going to do, Superman? Unemploy a supermajority of Metropolis? It NEEDS Lexcorp, etc etc.
Surprising, since Lex Luthor was often portrayed as a wealthy billionaire.
And yet the problem was never that he was a billionaire, and Lexcorp was never portrayed as anything but an industrial powerhouse whose existence was ultimately good.
The largest international arms dealing firm that did Captain Planet Villain tier pollution, corruption, and financial scams was “ultimately good”?
Didn’t Lexcorp literally clone an army of Doomsdays?
Obviously it’s going to be the “villain” as Lex’s plaything but it’s also on that “job creator” cope.
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/LexCorp
Employs literally 2/3 of Metropolis’s population lol. Lex even handed it over Superman at one point and made him the CEO because he was on a “Earth needs Superman” arc while obviously CEOs are the real heroes and such, and what are you going to do, Superman? Unemploy a supermajority of Metropolis? It NEEDS Lexcorp, etc etc.
“How will we get by without all our financialized monopolies?!”
Idk, bro. Just keep doing what you’re doing, minus the extraordinary rents to your bloated bourgeois landlords, maybe?
I feel like Luthor was a better counterexample for this before the model for his billionaire redesign was elected President of the USA.
Even so, Luthor hasn’t had quite the same volume of appearances as Iron Man, Batman, Captain America and the other rich superhero tropes.