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Lex Luthor has been dethroned as the DC Universe ’s most powerful villain . Superman ’s bane defeated theJustice League , showed humanity their demonic luck , and fate the multiverse in theYear of the Villainevent . But even when transformed into a superhuman fiend , Lex made the unseasonable enemy and fell apart . In the fresh issueYear of the Villain : Hell Arisen # 4 , the ultimate Lex was revealed to be nothing at all by a perversion of a hero who turned out to be much more malevolent than he is .
Over the past year , Lex Luthor has been terrorizing the DC Universe as " Apex Lex " , a neo - human puppet with Martian superpowers . He offered a host of supervillains power upgrades in exchangefor join his army , then used the new Legion of Doom to wake up an ancient idol named Perpetua to destroy the multiverse and remake it as a human beings where man are completely individualistic predator like him . But inHell Arisen , the new Lex found one last enemy in his path : The Batman Who laugh . Being a Jokerized Batman from the " Dark Multiverse " of timelines too edgy and tragical to even exist , the leather - tog maniac create a team of debased heroes with the intent of fending off Lex ’s multiversal doom so that BWL could ruin it himself .
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InHell Arisen#4 , Apex Lex defeats The Batman Who Laughs and bestow him before Perpetua himself , proudly charging the visored villain as the source of the Dark Multiverse ’s contamination on his Earth . But The Batman Who Laughs would n’t be a Batman unless everything was part of his grand plan . So the cackling Bruce search up at Perpetua and bring out that he manipulated Lex into awaken her and used Lex as a pawn to get to the present moment . He claims that Lex is too myopic to really accept her schemes because everything he does is for his own glory , not to serve Perpetua ’s purpose . He then demonstrates his value to her with concrete intelligence on the whereabouts of the Justice League .
The Batman Who Laughs ’s sales sales pitch works . Lex seek to coerce Perpetua into destroying the obscure Batman , but given the choice of the two as her full general , she depowers Lex and casts him aside . fill up with fury and hubris , Lex says " I do n’t need your powers to kill you ! I do n’t postulate anything from you ! " and charges her . Perpetua pronto puts him in a volcanic crater back on Earth .
Lex Luthor is once again a normal human being . Furthermore , he is out of resources , having betrayed his villainous ally to Perpetua , spent his portion on his disastrous " doom " speculation , and even blown up his own corporate home base to cement that the Lex humans knew was dead . Once again , Lex betrayed the ideal he claim to own for the sake of power , and in doing so destruct himself .
Did he merit to lose the claim to The Batman Who Laughs ? On several levels , yes . Lex ’s hubris was setting him up for fall from the moment he sell his man to a dark god . And while Lex Luthor has a tidy fanbase , the fusion of Batman and Joker isDC ’s most popular baddie of 2019 , a guaranteed ticket to the principal adversary role in just about every occupation - wide result of the foreseeable future . On the bright side , fan of Lex Luthor get to watch him crawl back up from the bottom , something the on - again - off - again billionaire never miscarry to accomplish .
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