InsaneJournal

Plans, schematics, schemes of all kinds... they're Lex Luthor's forte.
Sometimes, they're cool, like the gun he designed to kill Swamp Thing.

Sometimes, they're terrible, like the kryptonite cage he cleverly disguised to " [capture] Superboy through his sheer dumbness! "

Sometimes, they're just plain WTF, like the jetpack he built out of a fast food place's kitchen.



They're just plain neat.

See, once again, he's made up a plan to kill Superman.

And it's a doozy of a plan, requiring multiple elements to work.

The first part?

The Science Spire, his technological phallus from Man of Steel:



yup, that's Vic Sage's narration. He's got a rather emphasized Speak With Cities thing going on here.

anyhow, Lex continues talking:



and the city speaks back, through snatches of dialogue.

That's pretty cool.



subtlety, Lex. Learn it.



bit purple with the narration there, Vic.



but there's gotta be more to the plan than just a giant building, right?

Well, there's those " planetary harmonics " he mentioned, as Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen discover when tracking down Van Vilet and Six True Words (there was a shady land deal Lex undertook to snatch the land for the spire, and they're gonna press him 'bout it):



Lois dons the chi hat on Van Vilet's urging, and:



hmm. golden.



Heaven and Earth indeed.

Earth comes in the form of Luthor's underground infrastructure for this plan, the guys whom he used as his catspaws to acquire the land for the Science Spire:



(flushed is right- see, petty crooks in Metropolis do their business in bathrooms, since of course Supes is decent enough not to look in on people doing their business. These guys set up a tunneling system in the plumbing to filter goods around- you'll have to see it for yourself.)



yeah, Vic spent the last issue (3 of 6) beating up crooks in bathrooms.

And as for heaven? Back to Lois's interview for that.





hmm. perhaps this chi focus point would gak some non-humans, wouldn't it? well, as chi specialist and consultant Six True Words realizes...



Ignorance, however, is not bliss:



oh, and the capstone to Luthor's plan?

The shaman Psychopomp, who'll bind the re-dead'd Superman's spirit so that he can't come back again...



except after some point, Vic posed as the dead Psychopomp to undermine the plot.

Oh, and he blocked off the chi death ray's focus point using grunts sent after him:





Vic Sage: trained to operate construction equipment!



But that's not the end!



Perhaps the plan will go through after all...



or perhaps not.

and so the plan is foiled, and then Vic is kicked out of Metropolis by Superman for killing people.

and if you pick up the miniseries, you'll get to see more of it, like Vic paying for a child prostitute and Lois and Jimmy laughing at his college poetry. Good times which make more sense in context.

bonus:

Castlevania: The Belmont Legacy exists. I didn't dream it.

And it shows us two very important things about its version of Dracula (here, more Vlad, less Mathias Cronqvist)

First, he enjoys his women:



(and he needs a closer shave)

And second?



He can catch an arrow while trying to make it with a woman.

Neat read, even if the last page is so terribly unintentionally funny.