I keep coming back to the bombing at the Capitol in BVS and how frighteningly well Lex Luthor thought out that plan.

First on the most basic level, there’s the fact that he actually pulled it off. He manipulated everyone - Wallace Keefe, Senator Finch, Superman himself - to be exactly where he wanted them. He snuck a bomb in past security and under Superman’s nose and detonated it. It all went off without a hitch.

Then there’s the impact on public opinion, which is also exactly what Lex wanted it to be. People blame Superman for not stopping it, not understanding how this seemingly omnipotent hero could fail to do so through anything but incompetence or malice. Lex uses the public’s very perception of Superman’s god-like status against him - because while the reality is that Clark is fallible and can make mistakes, people would rather believe the worst of him than admit that. It’s a long way to fall of that pedestal, and Lex knows exactly how to use that to his advantage.

But the master stroke in Lex’s evil scheme is how it affects Clark personally. It goes beyond just making him second-guess himself - though “I’m afraid I didn’t see it because I wasn’t looking” is a very haunting line, delivered with heartbreaking uncertainty. Superman didn’t have to be standing in the room when the bomb went off for that. 

But he was there, just a few feet from the bomb, engulfed by the same fireball that instantaneously killed everyone around him, yet unscathed by it. Clark is no stranger to surviver’s guilt, and the pain on his face as he stands amid the fiery wreckage suggests the reopening of that wound. All his abilities, and they did no one else any good, just left him standing alone in the ashes again.

Superman is the most powerful man in the world, and all he wants to do is use that power to help people - but Lex Luthor made him feel utterly powerless, entirely incapable of even that.

In one blow, Lex destroyed his political enemies, turned the tide of public opinion in his favor, and broke Superman’s spirit in a very personal way.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you supervillain.