Episode 45 – Luthor and the Amazing Tri-Colored Power Armor

The road to the end of It All Comes Back to Superman continues with a conversation about…fashion.

Back in 1983, the Powers That Be decided to revamp two of Superman’s bad guys. They had creators pitch their ideas and finally landed on Marv Wolfman’s new take on Brainiac (with a new robotic look by Ed Hannigan) and Cary Bates’ ideas on how to take Lex Luthor to the next level, which involved a new suit of George Perez designed armor.

And it’s the Lex part of this revamp that will serve as the subject for this episode. Joining me to talk about the stories where the armor was introduced is Chris Franklin of The Fire and Water Podcast Network, where he co-hosts shows like Super Mates, Batman: Knightcast and JLU Cast. Chris and I talk about the story from Action Comics #544 that introduced the story as well as the follow-up story in Superman #385 and 386. We also talk about Superman Annual #12, where we learn where Lex’s armor actually came from. During our commentary we cover the Super Powers figure that came from this armor, the version of Lex that existed during this time period, how great the Action Comics story was and where the follow-up story fell a little flat, the art of Curt Swan, the backstory of this version of Lois Lane, and more.

I wanted to thank Chris once again for stopping by. This was a fun episode to record and I appreciated his perspective as someone that was reading the books around the time these stories were published.

Below are the covers and select pages from the comics discussed during this episode.

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The opening and closing theme is titled Journey and was composed by Pontus Rufelt. It is licensed from Shockwave-Sound.

Next time: I go solo to start a series of episodes celebrating the 40th anniversary of Man of Steel.