Superman #164 (1963)
by Ed Hamilton & Curt Swan
You would think that even without powers Superman would be able to easily knock out Lex Luthor, but this will be a surprisingly tense fight.
We begin with Lex being given access to the prison’s stamping press.
When will the authorities learn to STOP GIVING LUTHOR ACCESS TO TECHNOLOGY???
At the very least, don’t allow him to do this FOR SEVERAL DAYS.
Luthor then makes his next move: challenge Superman to a fistfight.
Ladies and gentlemen, take a moment to appreciate this historical event.
Silver Age Lois Lane being THE VOICE OF REASON.
Unfortunately, her stupidity has simply been transplanted to Superman who agrees to fight Luthor without powers just to prove he’s manly enough.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand Superman wanting to prove he’s more than his powers, but:
A) this is assuming that Luthor is going to play fair
B) Luthor is a wanted fugitive, but Superman will give him a free pass if he punches him well enough? WHAT!?
Superman takes Luthor to a planet under a red star, plus he specifically selects a planet with high gravity like Krypton. At this point the fact that Superman’s powers all come from the sun was well established, so it’s weird to still include the high pressure world to de-power him.
Still, nice little touch to include the gravity-defying shoes.
Luthor was classically depicted as overweight or at least a bit pudgy, but basically never as muscular as Superman.
So it’s a bit of a surprise to see him in this form!
This is one of the earliest references I’ve seen to Superman having a mental block against using his full strength. It might possibly even be THE earliest one.
Luthor has the upper hand, even giving Superman a black eye, but he’s ultimately defeated.
In addition to Superman overcoming his mental block, I would imagine it’s also because while he rarely fights by using his full strength he still should have far more combat experience than Luthor.
Plus, you just know that the chance to FINALLY punch Lex’s smug face must have felt glorious.
Too bad he didn’t knock him out for long: once Superman goes back to the ship that brought them here to get some water, Luthor escapes and traps him in a cactus forest.
Luthor has already abandoned the idea to defeat Superman with his fists, instead trying to crush him with a boulder.
In a regular Superman story of the time, he would now defeat Luthor and bring him back home.
But once they are separated by a sudden sandstorm…
…Superman stumbles upon an old city in ruins, where he’s hallucinating because of dehydration.
He only survives because evolution on this planet is WEIRD.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, is when the story turns… actually really good?
Turns out that this planet is still inhabited. And Superman chose it for his boxing match because otherwise we wouldn’t have a story.
He then proceeds to save the locals from some giant birds…
…for his own reasons, of course.
Suddenly Luthor is the hero, after rediscovering the ancient technology.
Luthor might have started helping them for selfish reasons, but he’s suddenly fond of them.
Once Superman eventually finds Luthor, he STILL agrees to respect his word!
Helping the locals is still in Luthor’s mind, even when he prepares for Round Two.
This time both will be armed with weapons from this planet’s past.
Luthor chooses an Anti-Gravity Tornado, which is a weird concept that I can’t quite grasp.
This is a perfect snapshot of the Silver Age: both the gun that shoots miniature suns and the ring that blocks them with darkness only merit ONE panel, without any explanation or follow-up.
Luthor’s last weapon is a robot dog.
Superman is the more tired combatant here: first he survived wandering into the sandstorm and then he wrestled the robot dog, not to mention he’s likely not as well-rested as Luthor.
So Lex has a real chance to win.
And in fact Luthor WOULD have won if he hadn’t thrown the fight!
Once Superman brings him off-planet, Lex even goes as far as directing him into helping the people who called him a hero.
Without admitting he threw the fight to help people, because he still has a reputation.
And we close with the revelation that Luthor not only has helped the planet return to a functioning society, he’s also celebrated as their hero.
Historical significance: 9/10
This will be incredibly important in Lex’s development in the rest of the pre-Crisis continuity… which will be the basis for most of the rest of this retrospective. Prevented from a 10/10 exclusively because it doesn’t seem to have resulted into much influence on post-Crisis Lex.
Silver Age-ness: 6/10
Those superweapons being thrown around so casually.
Does it stand the test of time? 10/10
Other than giving Superman SOME guarantee that Luthor will play fair, you can basically do the entire story today without changing much.
This is easily the greatest Lex Luthor story told up to this point, in fact I would call this the first time Lex is an actual character instead of a living archetype.
And it accomplishes something remarkably difficult to achieve for such an iconic villain: introducing positive sides to Luthor’s characterization without negating his criminal nature.
He explicitly starts to help only because it benefits HIM, and only later he develops a genuine fondness for the people he’s helping. Some of it is because he likes the attention, sure, but he’s not planning to exploit them… he REALLY just wants to help.
What else was in Superman #164?
Yet another escaped Phantom Zone prisoner. That place is less secure than Arkham Asylum.
This one is only notable for putting up a ridiculous disguise…
…and for the unforgettable remark that Superman is “not the only one who hurls large objects into space”.
Ain’t that the truth.
Interesting letters: the entire letters page is dedicated to the reactions to Superman #162, something very unusual for the times. Goes to show the impact of that story.
One of the letters brings up that one of the very few problems Superman-Red and Superman-Blue didn’t fix was saving Mon-El from the Phantom Zone.
The answer seems to forget that while he was indeed freed in the Legion stories… that was still after spending ONE THOUSAND YEARS in the Zone!!!
You must be the life of the party, Fred.
