Written by Michael Green
Art by John Paul Leon
Story originally told in:
Smallville: The Comic # 1
October 2002
Note: This story takes place before the season 1 finale.
Cut to Metropolis, inside a nightclub named ‘The Patron Saint’.
Metropolis. If you can’t find what you need in her steel towers and glass spires, it probably doesn’t exist. Maybe that’s why people keep asking me…
Lex Luthor is sitting at the bar, drinking a martini. Talking to him is a group of drunken guys, all chugging beers.
GUY # 1:: Why are you still hanging around in Smallville, Lex?
I get that a lot.
GUY # 1:: You’ve been away for months, and you can still get us past any velvet rope in town. You OWNED Metropolis.
LEX: Still do.
GUY # 2:: So why bother with that corncob factory? Don’t you miss the city?
Lex looks over at the dance floor, and eyes a pair of scantly clad girls dancing. One of them looks his way.
GUY # 2:: Y’know…museums. Culture...
Lex smirks.
LEX: Sure. Culture.
He takes another sip from his martini glass. A moment later, one of the guys puts his free arm around Lex’s shoulder.
GUY # 1:: You were unstoppable here. You could get away with anything.
LEX: Trust me, I didn’t ‘get away’ with anything. Excuse me…
He moves out from under the guy’s arm.
GUY # 1:: I get it…you’re still hiding out. Ticked off one too many people during the legendary ‘bad boy’ days.
GUY # 2:: Just can’t imagine you keeping a low profile, Lex. You don’t have it in you.
Lex just smiles, and takes another drink.
Why Smallville? It’s a fair question. And everyone imagines they know my answer. But like so many things in life, it’s never just one thing.
*****
Cut to six months earlier.
A helicopter lands on the roof of LuthorCorp Tower, Lex stepping out and approaching the person waiting for him.
That person is his father, Lionel Luthor.
Despite myself, I’ve learned a lot from my father. Like how to make an entrance.
LIONEL: Lex. You made it.
LEX: You sound surprised.
LIONEL: Only because of your special talent for disappointing me.
They talk into the building, through the glass doors with the LuthorCorp logo painted on them.
Lex has a smirk on his face, which Lionel immediately notices.
LIONEL: I seem to have amused you, Lex.
LEX: That’s the first time you’ve ever called me reliable.
*****
Cut to the inside of Lionel’s office. He’s sitting at his desk, while Lex gazes out the window.
LEX: So. To what do I owe the summons?
LIONEL: You’re familiar with sector B of your fertilizer plant?
Lex turns to him.
LEX: Of course. It’s my most productive unit.
LIONEL: It’s redundant. I want you to close it.
Lex narrows his eyes.
LEX: Slashing the jobs of hundreds of dedicated employees.
LIONEL: And…?
LEX: And…some might consider that a bad thing.
His father gets up from behind the desk and approaches him.
LIONEL: (sarcastically) Dear god, no. An unhappy town of cow-tippers. Jobs are being lost everywhere. Smallville isn’t immune to the vicissitudes of a changing economy.
LEX: You know damn well that I’ve made the plant profitable…sometimes I think you like to hurt people, just to stay in shape.
Lionel smiles.
LIONEL: We all need the exercise.
LEX: And one way or another, I’ll have to learn, won’t I?
Lex storms out, walking town the stairwell towards the elevator.
LIONEL: Don’t pout, Lex. It’s beneath you. Smallville is your training ground. It’s where you’re going to prove that you deserve to be a leader…and a Luthor. This reluctance of yours is precisely why I keep you there…to teach you to make difficult decisions.
My father thinks I’ve made my home in Smallville because he banished me. A lot of people do. Sometimes I bite my tongue so hard I can taste the iron in the blood.
*****
Cut to Smallville. Lex is driving his car through the town, causing various people to look up to see him driving by.
It would take my best driver over three hours to get from the city back to Smallville. I usually make it in two.
Smallville.
Who knew places like this till existed? Some nice people, too. They don’t have to make my kind of decisions.
He drives past the talon, where Chloe, Pete, and Lana are just exiting, coffee in hands.
PETE: What’s that? The third Porsche this week? Somebody please tell me why Lex doesn’t take his hot cars and drive far, far away?
CHLOE: Quick character study, genius: Lex spent his whole life as a bald bird in a gilded cage. If your whole life was jet-setting nannies and boarding-school bullies, you might have a thing for quaint retro-Rockwell Americana, too.
Pete smirks.
PETE: Or maybe he’s just afraid of his old man.
LANA: I don’t think so. There must be something about Smallville that brings him back.
Chloe rolls her eyes.
CHLOE: (sarcastically) Of course. He’s smitten with our one-screen multiplex and fine hardware-store section.
LANA: This town might not have an opera house…
PETE: …or a nightclub or a decent slice of pizza…
LANA: …but there are some things you can only find in Smallville. Things you can’t find anywhere else.
*****
Cut to the home-laboratory of Doctor Steven Hamilton, where the good doctor is hard at work analyzing a piece of meteor rock.
Lex walks in, causing him to look up from his work.
LEX: I see you haven’t taken my advice yet, Doctor Hamilton. You really should find yourself a lab that’s more presentable…
He notices various chunks of the rock scattered around the lab.
LEX: …and more sanitary. What do you do with all that money I keep sending you?
Hamilton gets up from his chair.
HAMILTON: You came at a good time…I can show you. I’m getting closer to understanding the underlying properties of the meteor rocks. Days like this make enduring Smallville almost worth it.
Using a large pair of tweezers, he places the green rock on a table in front of Lex.
LEX: You let yourself get run out of Metropolis University for pursuing your theories about this place. I assumed you liked it here.
HAMILTON: I hate living in Smallville as much as you do. But this is where our work is. We’re going to prove what the meteors can do to people.
‘Our work’. The good doctor thinks I’m here just for him and his rocks.
I let him.
Hamilton sighs.
HAMILTON: They’ll see. The meteors…they make people change into corrupted versions of themselves. Sometimes I think they’ve changed the whole town.
LEX: Not the whole town, doctor. Some things in Smallville are as pure as they come.
*****
Cut to the Kent farm, later that day.
Inside the barn, Clark Kent is hard at work. He lifts an entire tractor up over his shoulder, and places in down a few feet away.
CLARK: Nope. Not there either.
He bends down to pick it up again, but is stopped when he hears a knocking at the door.
LEX: Looking for something, Clark?
Lex walks in.
CLARK: Tractor keys. Lost them again. I could bathe this place in x-rays, and I’d still never find them.
Clark gets up and walks towards Lex.
LEX: I suspect x-rays are unnecessary…
He takes the keys off a peg in the wall and hands them to Clark.
CLARK: Thanks. How’d you know?
LEX: The Kents prefer the honesty of plain sight. You don’t like to hide things…must be nice.
They walk up the stairwell into Clark’s loft.
CLARK: You all right, Lex?
LEX: Me? Always.
Clark grins.
CLARK: Please. How good a friend would I be if I bought that?
LEX: Fair enough. I have a tough decision to make at the plant. Something my father wants me to do. He wants me to hurt people.
Clark looks into his telescope.
CLARK: Just to prove your power over them?
LEX: Or his power over me.
CLARK: I’m not worried. You always find a way to do what you want, Lex.
Lex smiles.
LEX: I hope that was a compliment…
CLARK: It was…because, luckily for the world, you always try to do the right thing.
Clark looks up from the telescope and towards Lex.
LEX: You really believe that…about me?
CLARK: Sure. Don’t you?
*****
Cut to nighttime, at Lex’s mansion. He’s sitting at his desk, reading the paper.
The headline reads ‘LuthorCorp Stands Behind Staff: headcount to hold’.
People ask me all the time, why defy my father’s wishes and stay in Smallville? Why keep living in this dusty, dead mansion? When just a breath away, Metropolis winks like a dancer…and follows me like the moon? The answer is so simple.
*****
Cut back to present day. Lex finishes his martini and walks away from the two drunken guys.
GUY # 1:: HEY! I don’t even get a ‘see you later’?
Lex turns and smiles.
LEX: Only if I thought I was coming back.
Then he leaves.
*****
Cut to the open road, as Lex’s car speeds towards Luthor mansion.
You see, Dr. Hamilton was right about one thing. People do change in Smallville.
But not always because of things that fell from the sky.