This is an incredibly minor one, but until the day I die, you will never, ever convince me that Lex Luthor killed Dick with a cardioplegia pill in Forever Evil. Lex suffocated him.
As a quick catchup for those unaware of Forever Evil: the Crime Syndicate, an evil version of the Justice League from Earth 3, captures and tortures Dick for a while, as well as reveals his identity to the public.
This leads to a collaboration between the remaining heroes not in hiding (namely, Batman, with some allies like Catwoman accompanying him) and the villains of main Earth (namely, Lex Luthor, and his merry band of accomplices).
At the end, when Lex, Catwoman, and Batman are breaching the Crime Syndicate’s compound, they encounter Dick strapped to what is aptly named the Murder Machine, a bomb set to destruct unless Dick’s heart is stopped.
The story goes that Lex shoves a pill in Dick’s mouth that stops his heart, stopping the bomb, and then he revives Dick with an adrenaline shot after.
HOWEVER. This is where I beg to differ. See, the sequence of Dick being killed spans 6 pages, a full quarter of the comic issue.
And for the entire time, again spanning multiple minutes, Lex’s hand never leaves Dick’s mouth. He is, to the contrary, depicted as roughly shoving Dick’s mouth and nose shut, only letting off when Bruce goes to beat his ass.
This sticks out for a few reasons:
One, Dick said to Bruce to get out and save himself, and later on to just let him die. He wouldn’t have needed that much cajoling to swallow the murder pill, even if he didn’t know Lex planned to revive him. He would’ve swallowed it, and thus Lex wouldn’t have needed to keep his hand pressed on Dick’s face for that long, let alone that harshly. In fact, regardless of how easy it was to get Dick to consume it, Lex could have let go as soon as Dick swallowed, which would be before he died, because he would have needed to ingest the pill for it to kill him. Hence, Lex should have let go before Dick died.
Two, when Lex prepares to explain what he did, this is preceded by him thinking that he’ll need Bruce on his side for whatever comes next.
Thus brings the explanation of the pill. The pill sounds great from a tactical standpoint. Lex wasn’t trying to hurt Dick, it was just a plan. Bruce gets those, right? He’d sympathize. Except, for this kind of pill, it would have taken at least 15-30 minutes for whatever medication in it to digest and dissolve. Smothering, however, takes around 4-5 minutes to work in a healthy adult. If a person’s health were compromised, if breathing was already partially obstructed by, say, a restrictive machine, or damage to the airways and lungs…
2 minutes and 51 seconds seems pretty damn plausible to me.
But if he needs Bruce on his side, why wouldn’t Lex use an explanation that is more humane, less painful, less brutish? Something that sounds far more rational and logical and well-planned. “Making him flatline” is such a better sounding story than “killing him”. Why wouldn’t he contrive that?
Anyways, TL;DR: Lex suffocated Dick, and in order to maintain his control of the situation, told people it was a pill by pulling some random pills from his pocket as an excuse. Dick was smothered. I dunno what to tell you.
