Reminder: Lex Luthor was based off of Donald Trump

Picture Lex Luthor, the Superman villain, in your mind's eye.

You might be picturing the version from the latest DC movies played by Nicolas Holt. Push that out of your mind for a second, just picture Lex Luthor the character. If what you're picturing is something along the lines of a bald businessman in a sky-scraper with his hands behind his back, congrats: that version of the character was based on Donald J. Trump. Yes, really.

Pictured here, I swear to God, the actual cover of the Lex Luthor one shot, produced in 1989 and modelled after The Art of the Deal.

Let me elaborate. Because some of you might have already gotten out your history books and gone "hey, wait, Lex Luthor was invented in the 1940s!" And: yes. Correct. But he wasn't portrayed the way he is today.

When Lex was introduced, he wasn't a businessman. Despite being the most recurring Superman villain, he was just your basic mad scientist. He made high-tech Iron Man suits powered off of kryptonite so that he could punch Superman. Like, with his fists. He was your basic mad scientist. He wasn't even always portrayed as bald back then.

Then after forty years of that, around 1985, DC did a line-wide reset of all their stories to start fresh. They hired veteran writer John Byrne to write a landmark 12-issue miniseries called Man of Steel that started everything fresh. Everything got retooled, re-looked at. Superman's relationship with Batman? Different. The intentions of his Kryptonian parents? Different. At what age his powers developed? Different.

And his Lex Luthor? Different. See, John Byrne wrote from New York City, and like a lot of New Yorkers, he saw the writing on the wall. When he re-imagined the ultimate villain for Superman, he saw him as a real-estate guy who owned most of the Metropolis skyline. A cut-throat gangster mascarading as a businessman who put his name on every building and project. Someone who craved the rise to the highest power position imaginable, driven mad when Superman appears, an alien, and immediately has more power than he ever could. And, importantly: a man very upset that he's losing his hair, a physical sign of his mortality against this god-like man from another world.

The Lex Luthor that existed in comics since 1984 was based on Donald J. Trump.

When they had him appear in card games and his card extorted items from other players at gunpoint, what was that card called? The Art of the Deal. When they made a one-shot detailing his new biography, what did they model the cover off of? The Art of the Deal.

And what does he do in a companion story to that one-shot made that same year in Superman #9? He tortures an under-privileged woman by offering her $100,000 to sleep with him for a month, using his power and influence to make her question her self worth until she goes mad.

And a few years later, in 2000, they have Lex Luthor run for President in DC comics and win in a story that, at the time, I thought was outlandish. But now it's really, really not.

Picture Lex Luthor in your mind. If you're picturing a mad scientist, you're picturing a comic-book character made in the 1940s. If you're picturing a wealthy industrialist, what you're picturing was based on Donald J. Trump.

And he's by no means the only character. Biff Tannen from Back to the Future? Based on Trump, especially those sections in Part II when his hair is falling out and he's running a corrupt casino. Stump and Sling from Ninja Turtles, the greedy tree rotting in the center and the tree that prints money? Based on Trump and wrestling promoter Don King. Even goddamn Sesame Street had a character named Ronald Grump in 1988 that put his name on buildings and was grumpy all the time.

Why am I bringing this up? Why have I been so unable to get this off my mind that I needed to write about it? Mostly because I'm living in a time right now when a lot of people are saying "we couldn't have seen this coming." And... no, you could have. Writers did, hundreds of them. Not only could you have seen this coming, but writers tried to warn you over and over again, in every platform they could. Often in material aimed at children, just to get the message in as quickly as they could. And some people still didn't get it.

I think about what when I'm trying to write with a message. When I'm trying to do good with my pen. In some ways, being a writer can be like being Cassandra, cursed to know the future but have no one believe you.

But mostly I think about my introduction to Lex Luthor, about one key line that I think explains everything that's happening right now. That explains the entire life and psychology of the man who is, as of this writing, President of the United States. Ironically enough, it comes from Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, spoken by Dean Cain (I know). In the scene in the first episode, Clark is trying to continue Lois how evil this billionaire industrialist is, how he does these evil despicable crimes. And Lois wonders, as many have, why would he do these crimes if he's already the most powerful man in the world?

"That's what he enjoys most of all," Clark says. "Getting away with it."