Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #2 – “Child of Darkness, Child of Light” – Paul Levitz/Curt Swan, Keith Giffen/Larry Mahlstedt, Ernie Colon
This one starts with Darkseid taking a baby (one of a set of twins) and mutating it into a monster before sending it into the past. The story shifts to Rimbor, where Validus is on a rampage. He ends up in a cave containing a statue of Darkseid and runs into Ol-Vir, the renegade Daxamite who worships Darkseid and was a member of the Legion of Super-Villains for a while. Ol-Vir thinks Darkseid’s will brought Validus to him and wants to know what purpose his master has for the behemoth. Validus can’t talk, but he seems to be looking for something and Ol-Vir assumes it’ll help Darkseid,
so he’s eager to help. (It actually looks like Ol-Vir is slowly turning into stone through his Darkseid obsession.) The Legion are alerted to Validus’s presence on Rimbor and the local science Police tell them that someone’s been passing around tokens with Darkseid’s image on them. Ol-Vir is the one handing out the tokens, gathering worshippers (or victims) to his Darkseid cult. Some Legionnaires (Wildfire, Blok, Invisible Kid, and Magnetic Kid) bust in on the ceremony before anyone is hurt. Wildfire uses all his energy to blast Ol-Vir, but it doesn’t do much good. While the others are occupied with Validus, ol-Vir gets a 
vision from Darkseid (or so he claims) telling him Validus is the fulfillment of the curse Darkseid made after the Great Darkness Saga. Ol-Vir and Validus escape through a space warp and end up on Earth, where Validus busts into an apartment, but finds it empty. Ultra Boy, Phantom Girl, Element Lad, and Shvaughn Erin tackle Validus and rescue people from the smashed apartment complex. Ultra Boy realizes the apartment Validus busted into belongs to lightning lad and Saturn Girl, but they weren’t home. Validus heads for Legion headquarters, where Timber Wolf is on duty. Validus attacks
headquarters and ends up grabbing Timber Wolf, but instead of wasting him he just sets him down and takes something from the conference room. Ol-Vir and Validus head through another space warp and the Legionnaires realize Validus took the monitor board symbols for Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl. But those two Legionnaires are vacationing on Winath, Lightning Lad’s home planet, with their son Graym. Validus and Ol-Vir show up and Validus goes after Graym. Lightning Lad tries to hide him while Saturn Girl uses her powers to probe Validus’s mind. Validus knocks her aside and grabs Graym, 
prompting Lightning Lad to come after him, ready to kill to save his son. But Saturn Girl stops him, telling him her mind probe has revealed the truth … that Validus is their son too. Saturn Girl has figured out how Darkseid stole their child and mutated him, hoping they’d end up killing their own son. Darkseid appears and Saturn Girl begs him to return her son to normal … and he does, apparently pleased that she has acknowledged the power of his darkness. So, now Lightning lad and Saturn Girl have twins (as they should’ve had in the first place) and Ol-Vir is turned to dust by Darkseid and blown away.
Superman Annual #12 – “Luthor’s Ultra-Ego” – Cary Bates/Alex Saviuk/Pablo Marcos
This one starts with Superman and Lex Luthor beating the crap out of each other. Luthor’s battlesuit makes him powerful enough to be Superman’s equal (or pretty close), so Luthor ends up getting away. While Clark Kent heads back to Metropolis to do the evening news, Luthor retreats to his private island where his henchmen (including Wanda, the bubbly blonde who’s in love with him) ask him about his next plan. Elsewhere, an alien spacecraft crashes into the desert and an energy cloud emerges, heading north. Clark gets an alarm that someone has broken
into the Fortress of Solitude, so he makes an excuse and changes to Superman to check it out. He finds the alien entity has invaded his computers, pulling out all the info he has on Luthor. Superman wonders what Luthor could’ve done to bring this alien thing to Earth after him. On Luthor’s island, the alien entity follows his henchmen to his hideout and when Luthor sees it, he freaks out. He recognizes it as something called an electro-spine and says it was on Lexor when it was destroyed. The electro-spine carves through all of Luthor’s defenses and takes over his battlesuit, completely trashing his hideout 
before taking off. Luthor sends a telepathic message to Clark Kent telling him to get his friend Superman to meet Luthor at sunrise in the Rocky Mountains. Meanwhile, the electro-spine (still in the battlesuit) heads into orbit to assemble a space station. When Superman meets Luthor, they end up fighting (naturally), but Luthor finally gets Superman to listen as he tells the story of the electro-spine. Apparently it was part of the battlesuit, which Luthor found buried on Lexor. When he decoded its memory banks, he learned it was created by a scientist named Ukruh, who saw his planet becoming more and more warlike and
feared the destruction that would ensue. In Ukruh’s warped mind, it was better to wipe out the entire population in one shot, than let it be destroyed bit by bit over centuries. So he created the battlesuit and used the electro-spine to power it, wiping out the entire planet. Luthor thought the electro-spine was destroyed along with Lexor, but now it’s on Earth and its foray into Luthor’s lab (with all the advanced weaponry) has reactivated its original programming … so now it plans to wipe out everyone on Earth. Superman knows Luthor has no desire to rule a planet devoid of life, so he agrees to team up with him to 
fight the electro-spine. Luthor heads back to his lab to check something, leaving Superman to head into orbit to confront the electro-spine. The alien entity uses the battlesuit to attack Superman, converting some of the power into red sun energy, which takes away Superman’s powers. Luthor shows up to save him (with a boost of yellow sun energy) and the electro-spine not only destroys the satellite it was building, it self-destructs too. Luthor explains that he found a self-destruct circuit in the electro-spine that would only activate if the people it was about to destroy committed a deed so selfless that they convinced it they were redeemable. When Luthor saved his greatest enemy,
that triggered the electro-spine’s self-destruct (leaving the battlesuit intact) and saved humanity. Now that the threat is removed, Luthor reverts to form and attacks Superman by remotely controlling the battlesuit. Superman drags him around Earth’s orbit, but when they get back to their starting point, the battlesuit is gone. Superman takes Luthor to prison, swearing he’ll find the battlesuit and destroy it.