Luthor used his influence to try and bury his past in the backwater Kansas town of Smallville in some versions, but DC are probably equally eager for you to forget the show of the same name. For a brief, glittering moment The CW wasn't home to surprisingly faithful comic book adaptations like The Flash and Arrow. It was the place to go if you wanted to see a Dawson's Creek-style teen soap opera about a pre-powers Clark Kent living on a farm. Eventually the show struggled to fit into the prequel structure and, much like Gotham is doing now, introduced most of Superman's supporting cast that wasn't supposed to show up until he started swanning about Metropolis in his undercrackers. That included Lex Luthor, who was played with some admirable moral complexity by Michael Rosenbaum, whose daddy issues put Clark's parental situation to shame. But the Lex Luthor of Smallville is not the Lex Luthor of today. He's too young, too green, too wet behind the ears and too prone to mistakes. He also conjures up images of, well, a Dawson's Creek-style teen soap opera about a pre-powers Clark Kent living on a farm. That's not the sort of image you want when you think of your premiere superhero, or his upcoming superhero sequel. That Lex will be forgotten just as that Smallville: Season 11 comic already has been. And in that case, it might be for the best. Rosenbaum is dead, long live Eisenberg!
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
