Lex Luther, Nobody Knows you and Nobody gives a Damn
The wolf-man or werewolf has changed recently, and slowly over time. Originating in the Greek legend of Lycaon, who along with his fifty impious sons entertained Zeus. They set before him a dish of human flesh. Zeus, in a rage, refused the dish and killed the king of Arcadia (Lycaon) and his sons by lightning... or maybe turned them into wolves.
Later in France there was a rise of Werewolf trials, akin to the Witch Trials, the most famous being that of the Gandillon family. Who scholars believe were cannibals. Though apparently there is little evidence to support that they associated abnormally with wolves in this endeavor.
But now in movies we find werewolves set against vampires, and with more powers than before, able to change without the moon, and at will. Now, more purely fictional, they appear changed, once the vicious translation of fears, today often a metaphor of environmentalism. It seems even our monsters are striving to move up in the world, grasping at the flailing tail end straws of the American dream. The only werewolf in Columbus, Ohio, (I don't think we are ready to be just Columbus yet, and being the capitol, that's a particularly nice thing.) stalked that particular night for food.
Bored, like a man who retires from competitive checkers and lonely like a single croaking frog in a big pond, Lex looked at his watch. He then headed out to find a late night eatery. The stars were visible but only out the driver side window. He traveled around Columbus, the 270 loop, in his just tuned Lincoln Cartier. He'd heard about this 'joint' around the Worthington area.
“Fitzie's,” Lex Luther, the criminal mastermind, mumbled to himself. “Why does it take me so long to get hungry? This isn't normal for a man my age,” he was in his sixties, “This isn't normal. Should I get this checked out?” Can a villain trust doctors? Sure, if they have the money—and he did.
“A billion dollars. I have a billion dollars. That's some dough. That's real money. That's a significant percentage of most nation's wealth. I have it... or at least I'm worth it.” His thoughts as if on a rubbery one way track bounced up and down but ever forward. Money, power, and Superman were always on his mind, so much so that when things like food invaded it confused him.
“What's the point!” He pulled off the highway, and found his way down to Shrock. What kept him up at night wasn't the food, it was a sense of isolation that only came at this peculiar hour.
Lex, of course, was never a super villain. He didn't have any magnificent lightning bolt, fire ball, or shrinking powers. He relied on wits. Even in his original incarnation, before he became an industrialist, he was at best a mad scientist, not on par with Magneto or Darkseid.
So, after years of relying on his wits he stumbled into the garment business and his favorite marketing technique, branding. Branding that didn't have to do with obvious logos plastered as gaudy advertisements across the breast or along the arm like too many of the mass produced fad-tastic garments of his boorish competition. (Some of which he'd swallowed, corporately speaking.) No, branding a sense of style. Branding a sense of stature. “You see, American's, everyone, wants to buy up.” Branding to make them feel luxurious. Branding that made you luxurious. That's where the profits were. At all costs his would be of style and high class. He was, after all, always a man of class... or at least always wanted to be. Still, his logos, even if reserved to the tag and the marquee could be seen all over the country but in particular his presence was felt in his home town of Columbus, Ohio, where he stumbled into my imagination.
He got out of the car and stepped inside the small caffé. “A diner... and suddenly I'm not hungry anymore.” His stiff gray hair shifted as he took off his proper fifty-something-trying-to-be-60-something hat. He was out of place, easily mistaken for ill at ease or forlorn.
“Can I help you, hun?”
“Coffee.” He gave her a stare, scanned her up and down, his nose twitching as though in need of an itch, but knew she didn't recognize him. How could it be that; he, the Machiavellian entrepreneur now remade as a philanthropist, a man with more money than Brad Pitt, a man with art centers, malls, streets, bearing his mark and name, wasn't recognized by... his people?
“I'll take a guess, black?”
“Sit where I like?” Lex countered.
She wagged her index finger up and down from the wrist. “You're gonna get along good.”
“Hmmm.” He took a chair at a table along the window and noticed it was cold. “It's not vanity that dogs me.” Though vanity did nip from issue to issue. “It's an issue of people should know first about politics, society, their city. Knowledge is power, and that's why it is diffused by the powers that be into these half-a-dolt icons. Know about them once you feel full of the hearty stuff.”
He gave the room a malevolent gaze. “The décor in this place, so mock fifties. Bland—but for the charming dirt stains that cling parasitically—the chairs aren't nice. You know, research shows this is important? In my stores, it's important there, you're cooking food. A large bastion of society has real phobias. Presentation and experience, the idea of good brings about good food.”
The waitress, her ratty blond hair tied back and up in bird's nest tangle, said, “It's cold over here by the window, hun. There's plenty room. You sure you don't want to sit at a table over there or by the booth? There's the bar too, if you want to see how good the coffee cooks you can see it swell from there.” She pointed to each place that might be better.
“Maybe the booth.” Lex got up with his coffee and sat down at the lone middle nook, facing away from the kitchen, towards the wall of Marilyn Monroe pin ups. “How tasteful.”
Her face, marketable pretty, but he'd been to Paris, and had always had more of a thing for Russian faces. He wasn't really into blonds. He sipped his coffee. “This may sound strange, but-”
“Go ahead,” a younger boot strapped kid answered. He was eating hash browns and a Fitzy Burger, which proudly proclaimed, 80% fresh Beef.
“First, the bathroom, and then I'm going to sit here and read, and then I'm going to want to eat.”
“I like the hash browns.” The kid took a forkful and chomped down hard. Hurting his tongue, but masking it with a quick turn to his girl.
“I can't eat here.” He wondered why all people loved to guess what question was coming up next, could he blame TV, it's attention killing pop up windows. Video games? Music with it's cacophony of distortion effects? His own stores, their lay out, the barrage of smiling faces repeating hello, how may I help you? “Do you know of any good place to go?” Lex asked.
***
Continued