Luthor's minions, having kidnapped Lois instead of Clark out of sheer laziness, bring her back to Luthor's dirigible which is floating high in the stratosphere. Perhaps Luthor is used to such bungling, as he immediately takes Lois as an acceptable Clark substitute. However, he doesn't have time to question her about Clark's knowledge of his operations so he has her sent away.
By God, imagine if he had enough time to conduct three minutes of inductive reasoning! He'd realize the only guy who knows about him is the dude in the blue and red long undies who also looks exactly like Clark Kent. Good thing he's so busy sitting around...doing...all kinds of things. Like hey, check out that subtle Nazi iconography projected onto the back of his chair! He spends hours arranging for shit like that!Also, in case you didn't know it Luthor has a full head of beautiful red hair. Makes for a dashing figure, doesn't he?
Locked in a guarded room Lois immediately notices that her guard is not under Luthor's hypnotic influence. The very same hypnotic influence that hadn't been mentioned at all prior to this exact moment! Wow! Lois threatens to expose his lack of hypnosis to Luthor unless he delivers a letter to Clark Kent.
Normally in a situation like this the guard would be willing to help Lois because the only thing making him be evil in the first place was the hypnosis, but in this case he simply doesn't want Luthor to know his hypnosis doesn't work on him. He still wants to work for him though! So what, is he afraid of hurting Luthor's feelings? "Oh no sir, your hypnosis is the best! Why, I do believe I'm feeling more like a chicken as we speak!"
Of course, none of this is important as we never see this particular guard again once he's delivered the note.
Once that note is delivered Superman sets off for Luthor's airborne fortress. Now, we all know The Man of Steel can leap a tall building in a single bound but did anyone suspect he can leap straight into the stratosphere? Well he can, and he does! That's 6 miles at the least. What a badass.
Having jumped onto Luthor's dirigible Superman punches some guards, while Lois is menaced by some dude trying to extract info from her. Superman uses his "x-ray eyesight" (his WHAT!?) to find Lois' exact location and puts his fist through a wall and straight into the mean man's jaw. So, I guess he's got x-ray vision now. Huh.
Luthor then shows up as the big Asian face again and tells Superman to submit or he'll hurt Lois. Despite being there to protect her, Superman inexplicably acquiesces to these demands and allows himself and "the girl" to be brought before Luthor, where the evil leader reveals his plot to rule the planet: incite a world war and take over after every country is weakened.
Lex Luthor, please report to the burn ward.
Following this Superman allows himself to be chained to a wall and shot with a laser. Because he's an idiot.
So this laser see, it's slowly killing Superman. But too slowly for Luthor! So he just gives up and decides to point the laser somewhere else -- at a city! Superman can't allow this so he grabs the laser and tries to shoot Luthor with it, but instead he just kills a few of his henchmen. Luthor then shoots Superman with yet another laser which Superman announces is "sapping [his] strength!" Immediately after saying this he simply punches Luthor's laser, ending the threat.
This establishes two things: One, that Luthor has at least two lasers capable of destroying entire cities and thus has no real need for the roundabout world war domination plan and two, that Superman is stronger than a city.
Also, the laser's ray is specifically pointed out to be green. A green laser hurting Superman! And this is before Kryptonite was invented! That's kinda cool.
Seeing he's in a bit of a pickle Luthor offer Superman unlimited riches, as long as he doesn't harm him. Obviously our hero would never agree to this, and instead he beats up a few more guards and then punches the dirigible's engine causing the whole thing to come crashing down to Earth. I'd like to take this time to mention that there were a great number of people on this craft, and apparently all of them were under hypnosis. That's a whole lot of innocent casualties! Especially since Superman already had Luthor at his mercy. And yes, Luthor is assumed to have died in the crash.
Clark then speaks to the two warring factions once more, and is able to convince them that there was in fact a third party attempting to prolong the war using the crashed dirigible as evidence. That's just flawless! "There is a man trying to prolong the war for his own ends! Don't believe me? Well a blimp just crashed!" The war is thus ended.
Clark's editor is amazed by him nailing another scoop, and Lois thinks about how much she'd like to see Superman again, THE END.
Next time: Still more Luthor! B-b-but he's dead!?
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