Bilder aus Batman #520.
Autor: Doug Moench
Zeichnungen: Eduardo Barreto
©1995 DC Comics

Deutsche Ausgabe erschienen beim DINO Verlag im August 1997.
Übersetzung: Frank Neubauer

What’s the price for being happy?
How could I possibly brawl for something?
And where is it going to leave me,
When I finally end up with nothing?

CHORUS:
Everything that I have done… it just all led up to nothing.
After all the debts I’ve paid… I would have hoped for something.

Let me put up with your burden.
In the end, what do you want me to be?
Blood licking and sorrow tonguing?
Goddamn, I’m so afraid to see.

How far to go until I am happy?
When will it stop feeling like nothing?
In the end, where does it all leave me,
when I finally end up with something?

CHORUS:
Everything that I have done… it just all led up to nothing.
After all the debts I’ve paid… I would have hoped for something.

And Rejoicingly I’m starting to pray,
that these excruciations would just die away.
But for long my emotions are gone.
Yet I know that Venlafaxine has finally won.

Everything that I have done… it just all led up to nothing.
(Rejoicingly I’m starting to pray…)
After all the debts I’ve paid… I would have hoped for something.
(That these excruciations would just die away.)
Everything that I have done… it just all led up to nothing.
(But for long my emotions are gone…)
After all the debts I’ve paid… I would have hoped for something.
(Yet I know that Venlafaxine has finally won.)

Finally gone.

Gone…

This day we are talking about the historical context between the Superman-family, the house of El, and the rich and powerful family of Luthor. In his elseworlds story Mark Millar, writer of Red Son, took advantage of the Superman creators’ “L-letter-affinity”. Luthor, Lane, Lang, -El, -L… you know.

Let me quote some lines. Original panels below.

Mankind had evolved to become the most advanced species in the known universe, inspired and led by a billion years of the Luthor lineage.

Lena Luthor; the artist, Lombard Luthor; the imaginer, Lori Luth-145; the mathemagician, Jordan Luth-1938 [editor's note: first link to the El’s]; pioneering necronaut and first man to set foot in the afterlife.

Alex-L, Jordan-L, Lana-L and, of course, Lex Luthor’s great-grandson to the power of fifty; a young man called Jor-L whose iq exceeded that of even his beloved ancestor.

[Album not found]

Isn’t that exciting? Apart from that we’re talking about an elseworlds story I think the idea isn’t that odd. At least we have an explanation for the relationship between Supergirl and Lex Luthor, because as is well known it’s not that love thing. Lex is a part of Kara’s family and she probably knows it unconscious!

Only if the factor “time” comes into play it’s going to be paradox. THE ancestor of the Luthors (at least in the Superman continuity) cannot meet up with the Last Son of Krypton, youngest member out of the house of El.

Definitely I can say that I’ve read one of the brightest Superman comicbooks of our time. I recommend it absolutely!