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Lex Luthor (Post-Crisis) revisions (mostly warsuits and something for Steel)

Amelia_Lonelyheart

Luckiest Lady in the Land
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VS Battles
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Hello!
So Lex Luthor's post-crisis page is kind of a mess. Some things are misleading, undercited, or even straight up wrong. I can't fix everything right now, but I did some fairly intense research in attempts to fix at least part of it.
Base stats
Lex Luthor's current justification for being 9-A is "Personally trained by Amazons. Held his own against a depowered Superman". This is not a good justification because 'Depowered Superman' varies wildly, sometimes being 'only' Tier 5, and other times, being too weak to properly fight in general. However, thankfully, there are plenty of feats that I came across that puts Lex on this level anyway.
  1. Beat up Nightwing and one-shot both Huntress and Batgirl (Superman/Batman Vol 1 5)
  2. Manhandled Batman (Justice League of America Vol 2 0) Note this is a flashback sequence and I'm not quite sure what the original story is supposed to be.
  3. Punched out The Joker (Action Comics Vol 1 897)
There's probably more but I haven't checked respect threads or anything. Should be enough to justify Luthor being a street-tier threat by his lonesome.

New Key: "Pseudo-Superman"
In the 52 series, Luthor gets powers from the Everyman Project. We don't see the full extent of them, but he effortlessly stomped unarmored Steel and survived his hammer attacks without any issue (52 Vol 1 40). Unarmored Steel should be 9-A because he kicked depowered Luthor's butt later (done offscreen, sadly) in the story. Since Luthor as "Pseudo-Superman" is so insanely more powerful then Steel, I suggest 'at least 8-C' for his tier.

Luthor in this form also beats up Natasha Irons (52 Vol 1 39), who is considerably stronger then a version of Steel who had superpowers, to further justify 8-C.

Note that while he is said to be "Kryptonian-like", we never see him stacked against a Kryptonian or anyone comparable. Steel is without his armor so I don't think we can scale him to his 4-B rating.

As for powers, he has Heat Vision and Levitation. Scans for both shold be in the above galleries.

Warsuits
Luthor actually goes through four warsuits in his Post-Crisis history, though we composite them all into one. His first one was never actually used as far as I remember, his second one is this weird Power Rangers looking suit from the late 80s. It has feats, but fights characters who don't currently have pages, so I don't feel comfortable giving it stats yet. His third and fourth one are the ones we'll be looking at.

We currently rate his 3rd suit at 4-B for "It is incredibly powerful, capable of going toe to toe with Superman. His warsuit was forged in the pits of Apokolips and not even Black Supergirl, an evil version of Supergirl, can damage it". There's a bunch of things wrong with this. The suit is not very strong at all. It's equipped with Kryptonite which logically is why it can fight Kryptonians (Superman/Batman Vol 1 6, Supergirl Vol 5 3). Next up is the "not even Black Supergirl, an evil version of Supergirl, can damage it" bit. This bit is actually wrong, and we see in the next page that Supergirl can damage it very easily. (Supergirl Vol 5 4). In terms of AP, this suit is borderlin featless and gets manhandled by even Batman. It does hurt him though, so I suppose 'at east 9-A' or even just Unknown. (Superman/Batman Vol 1 6) It does however have a 7-C durability feat.

As for his second armor, the one that I dubbed the 'slim armor' because it's a lot thinner. This ones a bit more complex because it has impressive feats, but is largely featless. Lex used it in his fight with Larfleeze, but he never actually hurts or overpowers him and is largely outclassed. (Action Comics Vol 1 898) and later does injure Brainiac (Action Comics Vol 1 899), so I suggest At most 4-B.

So in conclusion
  1. 9-A Luthor is fine but needs better justifications
  2. At least 8-C for a new key, Pseudo-Superman, upscaling from Steel
  3. At least 9-A or Unknown for Luthor's third armor
  4. At most 4-B for Luthor's 4th armor
 
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Likely/Possibly/At most, whatever signals that the suit is downscaling and may not be 100% at that level.
 
Not as big of a deal, but still wrong. The image used to illustrate the warsuit on the page is actually from Forever Evil, a N52 storyline, which is a different continuity.

I'd suggest replacing it with this instead.

Also hsi 4-B preparation feat is him using Red-Sun and Kryptonite weapons...as shown on the page itself. It should be removed.
 
I was told nobody commented on the thread (though taht was probably more based on the context of where it was said) so I come to say

ok yeah that makes sense
 
I don't think it's stated that she can only do that via her freezing powers, especially since she damages it later without using her ice-power, causing Luthor to run away shitless (Supergirl Vol 5 4). Luthor for all of his faults, is usually depicted as being brave and confidant, so if he had any confidence that his armor could withstand blows from a serious Supergirl after she showed him what she could do, I doubt he'd panic like that.

Likewise, Superman has also tore-up the armor, even damaging it when it had its forcefields up. After Superman knocked him through a building, his armor was completely broken down. (Superman/Batman Vol 1 6). At best you can argue for 4-B forcefields, but I disagree with regular 4-B durability.
 
Amelia also calculated a 5-B feat for Donna Troy. That should be very useful for scaling Starfire, Cyborg, and other mid-tiers.
 
We can do that for later, Amelia has a thread planned for it, currently DC mid tiers are beyond this thread's scope of discussion imo
 
The page right before Luthor explained that he had pumped in nerve gas to incapacite all of them. This isn't a feat for anyone other than Nightwing.
  1. Manhandled Batman (Justice League of America Vol 2 0) Note this is a flashback sequence and I'm not quite sure what the original story is supposed to be.
I feel like this is a reference to Action Comics 544 due to how many Silver Age/Bronze Age references there were in that story. But idk.
  1. Punched out The Joker (Action Comics Vol 1 897)
Joker was undamaged

The other stuff looks fine.
 
What Qawsedf234 and the others here have all accepted can probably be applied now.
 
The page right before Luthor explained that he had pumped in nerve gas to incapacite all of them. This isn't a feat for anyone other than Nightwing.

I feel like this is a reference to Action Comics 544 due to how many Silver Age/Bronze Age references there were in that story. But idk.

Joker was undamaged

The other stuff looks fine.
I thought the Venom stuff was later in the story? I originally had him at 9-A with venom, but when he mentons the venom-buff, he's roided out so I assumed he was just naturally that powerful.
Any ideas what to use for base Lex then? 10-A? Or does he have other feats on this leve?
 
He did use two Amazons as fighting trainers and bodyguards during the late Post-Crisis era. He ironically called them Hope and Mercy I think.
 
The Nightwing stuff was when he was juiced, but it doesn't really matter since as mentioned they were all hit with nerve gas before hand.


He's between 9-C and 9-B usually.
Makes sense. To be honest I don't lie Lex being Batman level.

What feats pt him at 9-B? I want to be able to cite everything when I revise the page.
 
If we can't find feats for base Luthor, then we can just leave him unknown. It's the only thing hanging up this thread thus far.

Edit: Pseudo-Superman being 8-C was based off Luthor being 9-A actually so I'll need to calc Natasha's feat.
 
Okay. That seems fine then, based on his Amazon martial arts training and fighting the Joker.
 
Joker along with most Batman villains should be downgraded but until then I don't see by out current file standards that's not 9-A+
 
Thank you very much for helping out so much Amelia. I appreciate when our members are trying to strive for unbiased accuracy.
 
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