May 5, 2006

He was the undisputed ruler of one world, convinced that the larger world outside his own immediate control was corrupt, lacking inspiring heroes and proper values. He acted boldly on the belief that through his own genius, combined with force, manipulation, and powerful weapons he had no hand in creating, he could make a difference—a positive difference, one he'd eventually be lauded for, petty carpers be damned.

To actuate his initially well-intentioned scheme, he launched an enormous, convoluted and confusing set of manipulations, tried to rid the world of magic, generated an interplanetary war, and built a giant cosmic tower capable of creating an endless array of alternate earths from scratch, powered by the energy forces of kidnapped Martians, Kryptonians, and random superbeings.

I am speaking, as the astute reader will have guessed, of President George W. Bush.

OK, only at the start there, kind of. Actually, I am speaking of Alexander Luthor of the former Earth-3 (as with many details in this article, honestly, if you have to ask, you don't really wanna know), whose master plan came to a failed end this week in the DC Comic book Infinite Crisis #7. 

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Brian Doherty is a senior editor of Reason and author of This Is Burning Man (Little, Brown).