Starkville’s House of El Podcast

I thought it might be fun to quickly spotlight a few characters of interest during the hiatus until “Disciple”. Here are some notable characters from film, TV, and comics. These are exclusive to everyone’s favorite villain Lex Luthor,  or in Smallville’s case people connected to his legacy since he’s DEAD. He is dead right?

Mercy Graves

Mercy Graves was  a character developed for Superman: The Animated Series to serve as Lex’s  personal assistant and body guard. Once a street thief who stole Lex’s briefcase right under his nose. She became employed  by the billionaire villain who liked her street savvy and ruthlessness. She claims that she is the only employee who may call him Lex and live to tell about it. She also believes that Lex vaules her life and sees her as more than just a hired bodyguard. Lex shows more than once in the various animated series that he would leave her for dead if it meant saving his own skin. Surprising behavior from Mr. Luthor, huh?    Only a few episodes show her as anything more than  a supporting character in the series and in the Justice League animated series. She first appeared in the comics in Detective Comics #735 and was alongside Lex with another bodyguard by the name Hope. The two were believed to be amazons like Wonder Woman from the mystical island, Themyscira, as they both are shown exchanging blows with Superman. In the animated movie Superman: Doomsday  Mercy is at Lex’s side and is asked to remove any trace of Lex being involved with releasing Doomsday. Once he figures out Doomsday kills Superman and there is no way to claim the credit, he kills Mercy.  She is still alive and well in the DCU, appearing briefly as a hero but quitting that because “she isn’t hero material”. I would say that Mercy is the fan favorite henchman because she has had the most character development of any of his henchmen. Which isn’t many.

Eve Tessmacher

Miss Tessmacher is a character that was developed for Superman the Movie, and she serves as Lex’s girlfriend throughout the storyline. When she sees that Lex is going to send a missile to her mothers home town she redeems herself. Lex uses a Kryptonite necklace to incapacitate Superman leaving him for dead in the bottom of a “swimming pool”. Miss Tessmacher dives to the bottom and takes the Krypto-necklace off Superman as long as he promises to save her mothers town.  The only other appearance of Eve Terssmacher is a cameo in Superman: Red Son.

Tess Mercer

Tess Mercer is a character created solely for Smallville. It is believed that she is a combination of both Miss Tessmacher and Mercy graves. Oliver Queen even has a nickname for her “Mercy” that he gave her when she nursed him back to health while stranded on a tropical island. This is an obvious nod to the Character of Mercy Graves along with the fact that Tess is prolific in hand to hand combat. Tess appeared in Season 8 as the person in charge of Lexcorp/LuthorCorp and made it her mission to find out where Lex disappeared to. As of late Tess has distanced herself from Lex while seemingly aligning herself with Major Zod. Her true motives are still unknown. Or are they?

Stuart Campbell

Stuart Campbell is a newer character who to the best of our knowledge has only worked for Tess. He is her resident “tech guy” who has gone toe to toe with Chloe Sullivan with his computer hacking skills. Ultimately Chloe was able to gather incriminating evidence on him and in turn Stuart became a mole inside Tess’s organization. He is very capable with cutting-edge technologies such as “Project Intercept” which is a memory altering system that also allows for the subjects memories to be viewed on a computer monitor. He was even able to allow Tess into Lois’s mind to see what Lois experienced in the future while gone for 3 weeks. When Tess told Stuart to erase her memory he refused, Tess then shot him. Chloe and Dr. Hamilton were able to get Stuart to the hospital in time to save his life. His status at this time is unknown.

Regan Matthews

Regan Matthews was a character that was there during the changing of the guard on Smallville. He first served under Lex, helping him investigate the Veritas society.  He seemed like a very capable right-hand man to Lex. Regan arranged a lot of the details that Lex would need to charter flights out of the country and later the expidition to the arctic when he went to confront the “traveler”. After Lex’s disappearance Regan was briefly in charge of Luthorcorp, until Tess Mercer showed up to take over the search for Lex in the arctic and subsequently Luthorcorp. Tess was busy discovering everything that Lex was involved with before his disappearance and when she came upon the “Prometheus” project Regan would not tell her any information. Their mutual dislike came to an end when Tess hit him over the head with a trophy and beat him to death in the Luthor mansion for not divulging the details about prometheus.

Otis

Otis deserves an honorable mention here simply because he is such a memorable character from the movies. Otis possesses no tangible skills worthy to Lex other than he is a gofer. He provides the comedy relief in the movie appearing as nothing more than a bumbling idiot.

Kitty Kowalski

Not much is known about Kitty other than what appeared in the movie Superman Returns. She is a “henchman” for Lex, and he uses her a s a diistraction for Superman while Lex attempts to steal a sizable Kryptonite rock from a museum in Metropolis. She is very much based off of the Miss Tessmacher character from the previous superman movies. She seems like she’s Lex’s girlfriend of sorts, but that is never made clear in the movie. Kitty was played by actress Parker Posey.

As you can tell from these charter bio’s, people who serve Lex aren’t often integral to his plans other than providing grunt work. If they don’t just disappear because they aren’t needed for the plot, they are often killed off. Just goes to show you that a man like Lex Luthor doesn’t need a handy sidekick, just a person to do the dirty work. .

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 11:54 am and is filed under Character History. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.