Quote:
Originally Posted by Leo656
Ahh, the Ultra-Humanite. The original "mad scientist" of the DCU before Luthor ascended. That man's brain gets passed around like a bong at a frat party.  I always wonder if he just prefers to be a giant albino ape, because he's been transplanted into several other people and things, but he keeps resetting to Albino Ape Default. Why he'd want to do that after being in the body of actress Dolores Winters, I'll never know, because having boobs sounds pretty cool. But then I'm not an evil mad scientist with a giant ape fetish.
There's a longstanding rumor that Lex Luthor is only traditionally bald because an artist on the Superman books once upon a time got him mixed up with the original, human (and bald) version of the Ultra-Humanite. I don't know how true it is but it's a story I've heard often, and it kind of made sense. There's little to no in-story explanation as to why "Lex" suddenly went from having a loose mop of red hair to suddenly being bald sometime around 1941 or so; obviously many years later the editors added the "Earth 1" and "Earth 2" modifiers as a way of explaining those sorts of discrepancies, but that's an obvious retcon. At the time the stories were originally presented, "Lex" just had a totally different look one day and nobody knew why. So I can believe that it was a simple artist's mistake just as easily as anything else.
My favorite story featuring the Ultra-Humanite sadly isn't canon, but it is very good, good enough that it probably should be canon. That would be "The Golden Age", the Prestige format mini-series from the early 1990s. I'm a huge fan of that book. |
While I know all the above it never hurts to reread it. Imagine how one artist error cost Ultra Humanite his place!
I know of The Golden Age, thanks to the Silver Age maxi-series I recommended. However, I never read it. Can you give me more information about it? I might check it out.