Spoiler Saturday--Luther Is Kinda Dumb...Or Is It Just The Author

In this week's Forever Evil #6 [no real spoilers, this is from the first page], Lex Luthor lectures Batman with his version of the old "heroes cause the villains" chestnut:

Whoa whoa whoa. Let's go back to that first balloon:

Here's the problem: this statement is pretty untrue. And since the whole point of this terrible, terrible mini-series is to make Lex look smart and badass, to have him say something so stupid kind of blows your whole mission statement.

The "fact" of not "a single occurrence of metahuman violence or extraterrestrial or interdimensional incursion" until the heroes of the nu52 showed up 5 or 6 years ago is, well, not a fact. It's an un-fact, flat out wrong.

How? Well, for one example...YOU'RE FREAKING STANDING NEXT TO BLACK ADAM, LEX. Even in the nu52, he got his powers centuries ago.

How about Demon Knights, which established plenty of metahuman action and extradimensional incursion centuries ago? Or Stormwatch, which protected Earth from alien incursions for centuries? OK, you can say maybe Luthor didn't know about those...ancient history, secret organizations that may have been wiped out by time travel, etc. That doesn't make him look any smarter. And surely he knows of Vandal Savage, who was just in the Secret Society Of Super-Villains. And Madame Xanadu is still around, as is the Demon, and...

And what about the events of Superman Unchained? We learn that The Wraith came to Earth decades ago. Luthor worked with Sam Lane during the early years of the nu52--did he deceive Lex? And we thought he was supposed to be smart.

What about the Daemonites? Issues of Voodoo and Grifter established that they've here for awhile (until, like all Jim Lee projects, they died from creator and reader apathy). And Superman fought Helspont a couple of times, establishing his ancient history. And Lex is supposedly so obsessed with Superman that he follows his every move. How could he not know about this?

I'm sure there are plenty of more examples in nu52 titles that I haven't followed.

So, is Lex Luthor just being ignorant when he says that there was no metahuman violence or alien incursion until the Justice league showed up? Or is Geoff Johns just not paying attention to what happens in other comics? Or, does he just not care? In his zeal to make Luthor a badass and to pump up the bizarre idea that heroes are really bad for us and villains good, is Johns just going to ignore the history of his shiny new universe AND make Lex into a dolt?

And this is just one of the reasons why Forever Evil is, by far, the worst thing that Johns has ever written.