Blue Beetle just revealed that Lex Luthor’s latest scheme to destroy Batman is on a much bigger scale than anyone first thought.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Human Target #4, on sale now from DC Comics.
With Superman trying to liberate Warworld, Lex Luthor needs someone else to torture. In the mainline Batman series, he’s decided that he’s going to make life miserable for the other half of the World’s Finest. In Batman #118 (by Joshua Williamson, Jorge Molina, Mikel Janín, Tomeu Morey, and Clayton Cowles), it was revealed that Luthor bought Batman Inc. when Bruce Wayne lost most of his fortune. Although it looked like the Superman villain was just waiting for the right moment to swoop in and steal the Dark Knight’s legacy away from him, another hero revealed the truth is much more intense.
Christopher Chance is still looking for his killer, as seen in The Human Target #4 (by Tom King, Greg Smallwood and Clayton Cowles). He took a poison intended for Lex Luthor in the first issue and now he’s trying to work out who would want the villain dead. That took him to Blue Beetle’s door this issue, another billionaire superhero. As it turns out, targeting wealthy heroes seems to be one of Luthor’s obsessions.
According to Ted Kord, Luthor tries to take over Kord Industries once a month. Legitimately, that is. That’s very surprising considering how much effort that would take, especially since he clearly hasn’t managed to get it yet. Apparently, Beetle spends half of his life fighting off the villain’s lawyers in his civilian identity. As such, he has to be incredibly careful about what he does in his personal life. Any change in behavior could adversely affect his stock and give Luthor the opening he needs to stage a successful takeover.
For someone so precise in what he does, it seems clumsy to do the same thing over and over again in the hopes that this next time his plan will succeed. However, the effect it has on Blue Beetle makes it clear why he keeps doing it. The hero is exhausted. He can’t be an effective hero if he’s tired all the time. Luthor has Kord locked in a battle of attrition and that’s not a bad tactic.
So even though Luthor hasn’t taken over Kord Industries yet, he’s still winning in some way. He’s made sure that one of his enemies is never at his best. It’s a fair assumption to make that this is what he did with Batman too when Bruce still had his fortune. As seen in the mainline Batman series, he’s finally won that battle. Not because he decided to strike when Bruce Wayne was at his weakest, but because he was always striking, ready for the tiniest slip-up.
Batman’s current predicament is Kord’s worst nightmare. He hates to imagine what Kord would do with his tech or his family’s legacy. Luthor arguably got something better with Batman Inc. because he got the Dark Knight himself. He owns the global Batman brand, as well as the tech and the various international Batmen. Owning this one organization has given Lex a lot of control over Batman’s future and it could potentially destroy everything the hero has built up to now.
These attacks on the secret identities of these two billionaire heroes suggest that this is what Lex does to any of the rich tech-based heroes. It’s the perfect strategy. Not only does he remove his competition from the business world but from the superhero world too. He weakens two rivals in one with a single move and obtains all the gadgets they would have used to stop him later. It’s brilliant and horrifying.
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