DC Future State: Superman vs. Imperious Lex #1 [of 2]
Scheduled to arrive in stores: January 26, 2021
Cover date: March 2021
“Superman vs. Imperious Lex” – Part 1
Writer: Mark Russell
Penciller: Steve Pugh
Inker: Steve Pugh
Cover: Yanick Paquette
Variant Covers: Simone Di Meo
Reviewed by: Adam Dechanel
The United Planets have a new headquarters, Metropolis in the not too distant future. The first order of business is the membership request from a planet that many of the members find troublesome… LEXOR.
Being the planet ruled by Lex Luthor raises many eyebrows. Primarily from Earth representative, Lois Lane. The debate is a heated one until Superman arrives with news of his peace keeping mission in space.
There is an energy shortage sweeping across the universe and while searching for a solution the silver haired Man of Steel comes across robot thieves terrorizing other planets. Reticulants, scavenger bots from the planet Lexor. Of course. Superman takes them out of commission and follows their trail back home.
Lex is growing nervous that unless he can solve the energy crisis he will lose the planet he worked so hard for. If he loses his empire he will have nothing. Superman, meanwhile, destroys the Reticulant factories and tries to reason with Luthor’s loyal subjects.
Lex and Superman fight it out and Superman comes to the realization that he’s been handling this wrong. Lex is in fight or flight mode, Lexor faces ruin and there is only one solution.
Superman convinces Lois and the Council to reconsider Lexor’s membership to the United Planets. The council agrees but has one shocking caveat…
To Be Continued…
Story – 3: An interesting concept propelling Superman and Luthor’s conflict to galactic levels. I really enjoyed it for the storyline and the new direction for Lex. What I didn’t like was the humor, it was so out of place and, well, not funny. The one liners from bystanders detracts from an otherwise brilliant book. I like that it took time to establish the characters and flesh them out a bit. Bin the cringeworthy jokes and it would have been perfect.
Art – 4: I really like the art style here. Not sure if it’s deliberately following the art styling of “Dan Dare” but it definitely has that feeling as you read through the book and look at the layouts. A real pulp feel that perhaps only “Strange Adventures” is similar to.
Cover Art – 5: I really like this propaganda style cover, portraying Lex as a sort of messiah figure. It really works well to accentuate the story inside. The color palette really gives it an ethereal feel.
Variant Cover Art – 5: The exact opposite of the main cover and it works to show the opposite side of the conflict. I like the anime feel and aggressive feel as opposed to Lex Luthor’s more peaceful cover. Bravo to Paquette and Di Meo for these great covers!
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I actually ended up loving “DC Future State: Superman vs. Imperious Lex” #1. It was cool seeing how this possible future eras’ Superman and Lois were at in this particular part of their lives. How far the United Planets had developed by this time. How much more evil still Lex had become (the heck was up with his face itself?), particularly in stealing resources. I couldn’t work out if that was Hawkman proper or a representative of Thanagar we kept seeing at times though lol. What I unfortunately didn’t like was this possible future’s Superman’s Super suit. Too much blue.… Read more »