The power struggle between Lex Luthor and Superman has been a prevalent part of their villain/hero dynamic for decades and Luthor’s biggest mistake was actually sexist. Elseworld’s Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl reveals that one of the major problems the two have involves an incredibly sexist assumption on Luthor’s part. He has tried to manipulate Superman before, but his efforts to manipulate Supergirl in this comic are far more successful on a long-term basis.
Elseworld’s Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl is—as the title suggests—an Elseworlds comic from DC. It rearranges the roles of Batgirl, the Joker, Supergirl, Lex Luthor, and Superman. This comic has the creative team of Barbara Kesel, Matt Haley, Tom Simmons, Moose Baumann, and Bill Oakley. Within it, Lex Luthor parades around as a good person who is doing wonderful things for humanity with his scientific advancements. He has made himself look like a friend to the Justice Society—enough to fool everyone about what he’s actually doing.
The comic reveals that Lex Luthor is still doing everything he does for personal gain. He has been manipulating Supergirl and using the corpse of baby Kal-El to make major solar discoveries. Throughout her life since coming to Earth, Supergirl was raised by Wonder Woman as her daughter, while Luthor presented himself as a father figure to her. This makes their final confrontation particularly intriguing and revealing about Lex’s usual plans.
Luthor reveals that he purposely positioned himself as a father figure as a means of manipulating her. It was his way of keeping her under his control. He then reveals that this method of control is not something he thinks he could have achieved with her male counterpart—Kal-El. In this framework, Luthor is making numerous sexist assumptions. For one, he is assuming that Supergirl is just more naturally controllable by emotions due to the fact that she’s a woman. However, he is also assuming that he cannot use the same methodology on a man. This is particularly bizarre since father figures are important to any gender. It is not an exclusive source of influence that is limited to one over another. Nonetheless, Luthor believes that he would have a much harder time exerting any emotional control over Superman, despite the fact that he had access to Kal-El as a baby—and even stunted his growth forever.
Kal-El never grew up to be Superman in this version of the DC universe. He was maintained in a jar as a specimen for Luthor to study. However, it wouldn’t have been too far-fetched for the supervillain to raise the Kryptonian as his own and mold him as a son. In fact, it may have saved him a lot of problems. After all, Supergirl was raised by Wonder Woman, the Goddess of Truth. Even though she’s naïve, she still lives a life with many superheroes, whom Lex has provided resources for. He succeeded at hiding his motives for a long-time, but directly raising either of these heroes completely would put him in an even more influential position of power over them both rather equally. Lex Luthor’s evil plans are ultimately stopped, but there’s no question that his motives were largely fueled by sexism where Superman and Supergirl are concerned. He could have been much more influential if he would treat them both as being equally controllable under the right circumstances.
