One of the best things about Superman is just how distinctive all his villains look, as each and every one of them has an unmistakable appearance. Bizarro is an inverted duplicate of Superman with gray skin and massive muscles, Doomsday is a spikey monstrosity, and Ultra-Man is a totalitarian version of the Kryptonian. However, almost everyone who heard of Superman would agree that Lex Luthor is one of Superman’s most recognizable adversaries.
Lex Luthor is often portrayed as the greatest bald-headed criminal mastermind of all time, and throughout different iterations of the comics, two things have remained constant: his hatred of Superman and his recognizable bald head. Except that the latter isn’t true, and Lex wasn’t always bald. The villain himself blames his lack of follicles on Superman, and many believe that the criminal mastermind would’ve chosen a different path in life had he retained his hair. But is that true? Does Lex Luthor have “follicle rage” because of Superman?
To really understand whether or not that’s true, we have to dive into Lex Luthor’s history both within the panels of comic book pages and beyond them. The real reason Lex Luthor is bald is simply because the artist that drew probably mixed him with another villain, thus omitting his hair. The original Lex Luthor appeared in Action Comics #23, and unlike his modern counterpart, he was actually depicted with a full head of hair and was only addressed by his last name, Luthor. Subsequent stories revealed his full name (Alexei) and established him as an evil genius.
Sometime later, Leo Nowak, the artist of the Superman comic strip in the newspaper, accidentally drew Luthor as a bald man. Nobody actually knows why Leo Nowak did that, and his reasons remain debatable among the fandom. Fans believe that he confused Luthor with Ultra-Humanite, a villain that was originally drawn as a bald man by Superman co-creator Joe Shuster. Others believe that Nowak confused one of Luthor’s bald henchmen for the evil genius himself.
Whatever the case may be, Shuster preferred bald villains, so he quickly approved of Nowak’s mistake, and following approval from Siegel (the other co-creator), the subsequent stories adopted the more striking appearance that became Luthor’s trademark. In-comics origin of Luthor’s bald head is then retconned in Action Comics #271, providing an explanation for Luthor’s lack of hair as well as his outright hatred for Superman. And no, his dense brain didn’t push the follicles out, and he doesn’t hate Superman because of Kal-El’s perfect hairline.
The story stated that Luthor, a brilliant scientist with a head full of hair, moved to Smallville, and when Clark Kent — then Superboy — went to meet the new Smallville resident, a Kryptonite meteor struck him. The meteor’s radiation would’ve killed him were it not for Lex. As a true Superboy fan, Lex used a nearby tractor to push the meteor away and save Superboy. Driven by a sense of gratitude, Clark helped Lex build a state-of-the-art lab and filled it with some rare and volatile chemicals that even Superboy couldn’t discern.
Some of Lex’s early scientific discoveries were quite amazing: he generated a new form of protoplasmic life and even came up with an antidote for Kryptonite. However, he knocked down the rare and volatile chemicals in his lab, causing a massive fire. Superboy saved him, but the chemical fumes from the fire caused all of Lex’s hair to fall out. Unfortunately, the fires and Superboy’s intervention destroyed the protoplasmic life, the antidote for Kryptonite poisoning, and Lex’s luscious follicles.
This prompted Luthor to blame Superboy and claim that the Kryptonian destroyed his work deliberately out of jealousy. One thing led to another, and the two ended up becoming enemies, with later stories hinting at the possibility that the hair loss drove Lex to become criminally insane. This story was, for a long time, accepted as canon, but later reboots of the DC Universe stated that Lex lost all his hair due to male pattern baldness, which he briefly alleviated when he created a clone for himself and gave it shoulder-length hair.
The fact that he added hair to his clone indicates that Lex has some personal issues with his self-image while also offering a glimpse into his psyche and why he really hates Superman. Despite his 12th-level intellect, which makes him the smartest person on the planet and quite possibly the entire DC Universe, Lex believes he’s humanity’s greatest mind and its rightful savior. He exhibits perfectionism and an obsessive drive for control, and his ambitions go beyond ordinary narcissism into megalomania, a delusional obsession with power and domination.
Thus, he hates Superman due to their ideological differences. The Man of Steel is everything Lex can’t control, can’t achieve, and can’t be. Superman’s existence challenges Lex’s identity, ideology, and ambition on every level, turning the Kryptonian into an irresistible and perpetual target for Lex’s hatred. Honestly, the very idea of Lex’s hatred for Superman stemming solely from jealousy and insecurity over his appearance is an insulting oversimplification of one of DC Comics’ most complex villains. Lex is much more vain than that.