Summary
- Doom Patrol #5 introduces a new villain, Brian McClane, who is even worse than Lex Luthor and uses cruel experiments to create designer metahumans.
- Unlike Lex Luthor, McClane embraces the idea that catastrophe can make humanity better, making him a dangerous threat to the DC Universe.
- McClane’s greed and unethical exploits make him a character who is willing to do anything for money, posing a potential danger to both superheroes and society as a whole.
Warning! Spoilers for Unstoppable Doom Patrol #5 ahead!The Doom Patrol has discovered the one madman billionaire who’s somehow even worse than Superman’s greatest enemy. The Patrol’s newest villain is the one person in the DC Universe who makes Lex Luthor look good by comparison.
Since Superman debuted, he’s been repeatedly vexed by his longtime nemesis Lex Luthor. Lex is one of the most ruthless businesspeople in the DC Universe and has used his company LexCorp to aid his criminal endeavors. He might not have superpowers, but Lex is one of the most intelligent and resourceful people alive, making him a danger even to someone as powerful as the Man of Steel. Superman has stopped Lex’s most insidious plans, but the villain always comes back with another scheme to achieve godlike power or finally kill his most hated enemy.
The Doom Patrol Just Met a Sleazier Version of Lex Luthor
In Unstoppable Doom Patrol #5 by Dennis Culver and Chris Burnham, the World’s Strangest Heroes have come to the small town of New Poplar, Illinois. The town is actually a front for Metagen, the company that’s been experimenting on the world’s new metahumans that have emerged since Lazarus Planet. As Robotman and Elasti-Woman take on the robots posing as townspeople, Jane, in her Chief persona, Niles Caulder, and Degenerate meet Metagen’s CEO, Brian McClane. McClane dispatches Jane and Degenerate to talk with Niles Caulder. McClane reveals that he was inspired by Caulder’s Catastrophe Theory work and used it as the basis to create Metagen’s ultimate product: Designer metahumans. McClane shows off a prototype named Metawoman, whose abilities go haywire in the field and cause her to undergo a violent and painful transformation. McClane promises Metagene’s next attempts will be better and reveals the team has actually been interacting with a robot proxy.
Granted, it’s not like Lex Luthor never benefited from cruel and inhuman experiments before. Just last year, he killed Manchester Black to use the antihero’s powers to wipe the world’s memory of Clark Kent and Superman being the same person. And that’s only the tip of his numerous unethical exploits. Brian McClane and Lex Luthor are clearly cut from the same cloth: greedy ‘visionaries’ who think they can take humanity into a new era. But unlike Lex, McClane embraces an ideology that even the Doom Patrol’s former leader has disavowed: the idea that catastrophe can make humanity better.
DC’s Newest ‘Lex Luthor’ is a Danger to the Earth
The former chief of the Doom Patrol, Niles Caulder once believed in Catastrophe Theory, the idea that extreme trauma could unlock the powers of the metagene. But while Caulder eventually rejected this theory, McClane has embraced it wholeheartedly to help him build a company that has caused pain and torment to the numerous new metahumans living in the DC Universe today. Lex Luthor is no saint, but he tends to value science. McClane is simply exploiting a phenomenon to make him as much money as quickly as possible. Lex is bad enough, so a similar character with even worse standards could spell trouble for the DC Universe. Fans can see more of the lesser copy of Superman’s nemesis in Unstoppable Doom Patrol #5, on sale now.
