<P> Luthor vanished for a long time, coming back in Superboy #59 (Sept 1957), in a story called "Superboy meets Amazing Man". A flying costumed bald man probably in his forties appears in Smallville and starts helping people using his fantastic inventions . He later moves his operations to the nearby town of Hadley . Superboy finds he is using his inventions to set the town up so he can rob their bank, and stops him . In the last panel, Amazing Man is in jail and he tells Superboy he will regret it as sure as his name is Luthor and Superboy thinks that he will be Superman by the time he gets out and that Luthor's talents might make him an arch enemy . </P> <P> In the origin story printed in Adventure Comics #271 (April 1960), young Lex Luthor is shown as an aspiring scientist who resides in Smallville, the hometown of Superboy . The teenage Luthor saves Superboy from a chance encounter with kryptonite . In gratitude Superboy builds Luthor a laboratory, where weeks later he manages to create an artificial life - form, which Luthor loved as if it were his own child . Grateful in turn to Superboy, Luthor creates an antidote for kryptonite poisoning . However, an accidental fire breaks out in Luthor's lab . Superboy uses his super-breath to extinguish the flames, inadvertently spilling chemicals which cause Luthor to go bald; in the process, he also destroys Luthor's artificial life form . Believing Superboy intentionally destroyed his discoveries, Luthor attributes his actions to jealousy and vows revenge . Luthor's revenge first came in the form of grandiose engineering projects in Smallville to prove his superiority over the superhero . However, the gesture proves a failure on multiple levels; for one, Superboy does not feel belittled, but instead is gladly supportive of Luthor pursuing his vindictive goal constructively . Furthermore, those projects also each go disastrously out of control and require Superboy's intervention, which Luthor rationalized as being sabotaged by the superhero . These mounting embarrassments further deepen Lex's hate for Superboy for supposedly further humiliating him, and he unsuccessfully attempts to murder the superhero . This revised origin makes Luthor's fight with Superman a personal one, and suggests that if events had unfolded differently, Luthor might have been a more noble person . These elements were played up in various stories throughout the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in Elliot S. Maggin's novel Last Son of Krypton . This revenge causes Luthor's family to disown him and change their names to Thorul . It also leads to years of Superman, Luthor, and Supergirl concealing the truth from Luthor's sister, Lena Thorul . She was told her brother died in a rock - climbing accident . She has ESP powers due to touching one of Luthor's inventions . Once she found out about Luthor being her brother and briefly lost her memory . However Luthor broke out of prison and gave her flowers he had developed that removed the bad memory from her mind . </P> <P> In the 1986 limited series The Man of Steel, John Byrne redesigned Lex Luthor from scratch, intending to make him a villain that the 1980s would recognize: an evil corporate executive . Initially brutish and overweight, the character later evolved into a sleeker, more athletic version of his old self . Luthor is no longer recounted as having lost his hair in a chemical fire; rather, his hairline is shown to be receding naturally over time . Marv Wolfman, a writer on Action Comics who had one conversation with Byrne prior to Luthor's reboot recalled: </P> <P> I never believed the original Luthor . Every story would begin with him breaking out of prison, finding some giant robot in an old lab he hid somewhere, and then he'd be defeated . My view was if he could afford all those labs and giant robots he wouldn't need to rob banks . I also thought later that Luthor should not have super powers . Every other villain had super powers . Luthor's power was his mind . He needed to be smarter than Superman . Superman's powers had to be useless against him because they couldn't physically fight each other and Superman was simply not as smart as Luthor . </P>

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