You’re reading The Complete Infinite Crisis, a Comprehensive and Encyclopedic look through the universe-changing superhero event published by DC from 2005 to 2006. Shelfdust are proud to provide a complete overview of the story, and everything that happens in it. We’ve had to get some experts in though – there’s so much going on that needs to be explained!

We’ve been following the various events of Lex Luthor’s presidency recently, as described by Tim Maytom. And that means, Imperiex Rex!! What the heck is an Imperiex? Cori McCreery, our hero, please explain this for us?

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I’m told that something called “Imperiex” attacked Earth whilst Lex Luthor was president. Who – or what – is Imperiex

Cori McCreery: So Imperiex is basically DC Galactus. In the long string of one company slightly copying the other for cosmic threats (see Thanos from Darkseid), this was Jeph Loeb trying to make a bigger and better cosmic threat, that even Darkseid would be scared of. Only Imperiex is the early 2000’s Nu Metal version of Galactus. Big G eats planets, Imperiex wipes out galaxies. And so he wound up targeting Eath as the focal point to demolish our galaxy. His first strike was Topeka, Kansas of all places, which sent shockwaves through the entire state, leaving Smallville devastated as well, so Superman took it a bit personally.

In order to be the hero, apparently Luthor…. formed an alliance with Darkseid? How the heck did that happen?

McCreery: At his core, this era of Lex Luthor was a ruthless business man first, and less of the mad scientist or pure super-villain we’ve seen in other eras (hey Geoff, I’ve got your next book, Three Luthors, call me). Parts of him were very much modeled after Donald Trump, including the cover of his “Unauthorized Biography”. So it’s really not much of a shock, that like Mr. Trump, he used some outside interference to ascent to the presidency, notably trading his daughter to Brainiac 13 for a permanent tech boost for Metropolis. This and bailing Gotham out after No Man’s Land gave him a platform of technological advancement and recovery that all but assured him the presidency.

And once he got it, he’d do anything to keep it, so when Imperiex devastated the country, he had to look to outside help again, and got Apokaliptian tech from Darkseid. This one was a little more open of an allegiance than the one with Brainiac, however, because the whole galaxy was at risk. Superman and other heroes knew that Darkseid was contributing to this effort, what they didn’t know, and what would eventually lead to Lex Luthor’s fall from grace as president, is that Lex kept some of the tech for his own uses.

How did they eventually stop Imperiex?

McCreery: Well they figured out that Imperiex was a being of pure energy, absorbed from all the galaxies they destroyed. The plan was that since energy cannot be either created or destroyed, and only redirected, they would crack open Imperiex’s hard candy shell and then use Boom Tubes to disperse that energy back to the galaxies it had been stolen from. The problem lied in that even his probes (small versions of him akin to Galactus’s heralds), were almost impossible to crack their armor like that. Superman had barely been able to do that.

Enter Strange Visitor, who was more powerful than she’d ever let on, and used her powers to crack the armor as planned. That was the end of Imperiex as a physical threat, but not the end of his threat as a whole, thanks to Brainiac and Warworld, who decided to absorb the energy instead of allowing it to be dispersed as planned.

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Thank you Cori! That sounds like possibly anything that anybody might want to ever know about Imperiex! Let’s put a big cross through THAT question mark. So next… okay, what’s the deal with Lois Lane and Lex Luthor? We’re going to need somebody to help us figure it out!

 

By day Cori McCreery is a mild-mannered assistant editor for WomenWriteAboutComics, and by night? She is SUPERGIRL! I think. Can’t confirm that. You can find her on Twitter here!