Being Superman’s archnemesis Lex Luthor comes with a number of drawbacks. You’re constantly playing second-fiddle to a living god. You go to extraordinary lengths to achieve power on a regular basis, only to lose it all at the last second. And then there’s that problem with your receding hairline…
Still, being Lex Luthor comes with its fair share of perks as well. You’re constantly respected (or feared) as one of the most dangerous men on the planet. You get to play with some incredibly cool alien gadgets and doomsday devices. And then there’s that enormous bank , Lexcorp Tower, and that evil genius/playboy lifestyle…
Hold on a minute. Exactly how did Lex Luthor become a multi-billionaire on par with Bruce Wayne? While it’s a sure bet that he didn’t come across those riches ethically, there are actually multiple reasons for how Lex Luthor became one of the richest men in the world.
When Luthor was first introduced in 1940, he clearly had the budget for hiring henchmen and building doomsday weapons, although no explanation for his wealth was given. All evil masterminds were expected to own elaborate lairs and death traps in those days, and Luthor either had to rob a lot of banks or build up a really good credit rating to keep up with appearances.
During the Silver Age, Luthor made the jump from run-of-the-mill criminal mastermind to a super scientist who regularly invented miraculous gadgets. While most of these inventions were weapons like war suits and Kryptonite lasers intended to kill Superman, Lex could also easily whip up cures for incurable diseases, create gateways to different planets or dimensions, and build multiple flying devices (because why should Superman have all the fun?).
Naturally, anyone with that level of genius could command a pretty healthy salary – which Luthor did in one story when he charged one million dollars for a ten-minute consultancy after government officials brought him in to help destroy Swamp Thing. In the novel Last Son of Krypton written by Elliot S! Maggin, Lex is shown to regularly amass incredible amounts of money by posing as different scientists, businessmen, and artists. Rather than this side of himself, however, Lex keeps his legitimate contributions to society a secret, preferring to make the world associate the name Lex Luthor with world conquest.
During the Silver Age, Lex was shown to have several alien allies which explained how he could get his hands on exotic technologies to build war suits and teleporters. One recurring storyline even showed that Lex was revered as a hero of an entire planet and likely had all of that planet’s resources available to him to build his inventions.
By the 1980s, however, DC decided to revamp Lex’s character and turn him into a business tycoon like Donald Trump. As such, Lex became less of an evil scientist and more of a Machiavellian industrialist. Lex was proud of seeing himself as a self-made man, frequently emphasizing that he was born into poverty and grew up in Metropolis’ “Suicide Slum” with an abusive mother and father. Believing he was meant for greater things, Luthor decided to raise some of the initial capital he needed to build an empire by taking an insurance policy out on his parents and then fixing the brakes of their car so they would die in an “accident.”
Lex would take the money from the insurance policy and use it to start his own businesses and company. Naturally, anyone heartless enough to murder his own parents for money would have no problem engaging in ruthless tactics to rise even further in the business world, and Luthor was soon one of the richest men in America and the most influential and powerful man in Metropolis (until Superman showed up). He took great measures to hide his illegal activities – even killing a journalist, Peter Sands, who discovered the truth about his parents’ deaths and the beginning of Luthor’s empire.
Lex flaunted his wealth in flagrant and subtle ways. His building was the tallest one in Metropolis, requiring everyone to take notice of him when they looked up. (Of course, when Superman began soaring across the skies, people had someone else to look up to). One of the more disgusting ways he used his wealth was to offer huge amounts of money to married waitresses to be unfaithful to their husbands - and then leave before they could decide whether or not to take him up on his offer. Lex saw this as a game, causing ordinary citizens to drive themselves crazy not knowing whether or not they would sell their integrity for money.
As he had to deal with more superheroes and world ending scenarios, elements of Lex Luthor’s Silver Age past have caught up with him, and the current Lex Luthor is once again a super scientist as well as an industrialist. Where before he was obsessed with the world seeing him as a criminal mastermind, he now raises capital by selling some of his inventions under his own name (as this will improve his brand image). As he now has access to technologies and resources that go beyond Earth, however, earthly economics don’t concern Lex as much as his need to acquire greater power, often on a universal scale.
Outside of the comics, Luthor has acquired wealth in different ways. The Lex Luthor of the CW’s Smallville television series was born into wealth and inherited his company from his corrupt father. This was also the route taken by Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor II in Batman v Superman (although he managed to expand his father’s company significantly upon taking control). Most other versions, however, like the Lex Luthors from Lois & Clark, The Adventures of Superboy, and the Superman film franchise, however, took a bloodier road to riches – usually by killing their parents, policemen, and anyone else who got in their way. He may like to show himself as a benevolent philanthropist, but Lex Luthor is anything but decent.
