While Batman: The Adventures Continue has Bruce Wayne and his nocturnal alter-ego squaring off against the machinations of Lex Luthor in the DC Animated Universe, it's hardly the first time DC's two genius billionaires have locked horns. One of Batman and Luthor's more infamous feuds arose from Lex's efforts to actually rescue Gotham City from total destruction after one of Batman's most famous storylines.

In Batman: No Man's Land, Gotham City was struck by a massive earthquake that left the city decimated. Given that Gotham had been a haven for crime for decades, the U.S. government blew up the bridges into town and declared Gotham a "no man's land." Those who didn't leave the city were left trapped in the chaos, where Gotham's various crimimals of Gotham set up their own petty kingdoms and battled for power and control while the G.C.P.D. and the Bat-family were left scrambling to pick up the pieces.

While Batman launched a campaign to win back the city one block at a time, it took almost everything Batman and his allies had to restore order in a city divided into warring fiefdoms by Gotham's criminal elite. Eventually, the Dark Knight realized that he'd be in a better position to help Gotham by leaving the city and arguing for its restoration on Capitol Hill. Despite his best efforts, Congress elected to continue Gotham's condemnation.

All seemed lost, but then Lex Luthor came to the rescue.

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Luthor succeeded where Bruce failed by defying the congressional edict and capitalizing on public opinion to rebuild Gotham. While Washington dithered, Luthor launched an ambitious campaign by having LexCorp arrive in Gotham City and establishing "Camp Lex" in the center of town to act as a base from which to rebuild Gotham. After considerable debate, Congress backed down, and an ambitious restoration project began which saw LexCorp, S.T.A.R. Labs, Wayne Enterprises and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started rebuilding Gotham from the ground up.

Although Lex's efforts to rebuild brought him an endless amount of goodwill in the press, Luthor's actions were entirely for his own benefit. Even though he rallied for Gotham's citizens to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and rebuild, he was secretly working to have the city's property records quietly destroyed so he could seize any land in the Gotham area that struck his fancy. Still, the rebuilding effort paid off with a sleeker Gotham City that mixed its signature old gothic designs with soaring glass skyscrapers, and Lex's efforts helped the city that was once derided as a sinkhole of corruption look toward a more prosperous future.

Naturally, none of this sat well with Bruce Wayne.

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By the time the restoration project was completed Luthor had amassed a staggering amount of good press, and he was even discussed as a potential recipient of the Nobel Prize. However, Lex had loftier ambitions in mind, and he parlayed the goodwill he'd earned restoring Gotham into a successful bid for the U.S. presidency in 2000.

President Lex Luthor turned out to be a capable statesman and even managed to work with Superman on several occasions, but it was only a matter of time before he reverted to old habits in the pages of Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness' Superman/Batman's "Public Enemies" storyline. Luthor declares Superman and Batman enemies of the state and wanted fugitives. After an extensive manhunt and a climactic battle, Luthor was taken down by the heroic duo and removed from the presidency in disgrace.

Even though Lex Luthor was traditionally a Superman villain, this sequence of events established that he was just as much of a threat to Batman. Moreover, Luthor posed a threat on fronts that both Bruce Wayne and Batman had to come to terms with. Since Gotham's reconstruction and Luthor's presidential term, Lex has continued to torment both of these heroes -- along with the rest of the DC Universe -- on a regular basis.

Next: Batman: How the Adventures Continue Sets Up DC's Next Big Mystery