Superman: Birthright, a limited series written by Mark Waid in 2004, offers an alternate look at Luthor's history, including his youth in Smallville, and his first encounter with Superman. The story has similarities to the 2001 television series Smallville, which follows Clark Kent 's life as a teenager and into early adulthood. One plot element shared by the comic and the show is the problematic relationship between Lex and his father Lionel. Along with this, Birthright restores the Silver Age concept of Luthor befriending Clark Kent as a young man. The two find a kinship in both feeling like outsiders and sharing a wish to explore outer space and discover alien alife, despite one resenting humanity and the other hoping to understand and be accepted by it. Lex discovers kryptonite samples in Smallville and uses them as a power source for a machine he hopes will pierce space and time so he can communicate with Krypton. When Clark falls ill approaching the machine, Lex mistakes his reaction as doubt in the young scientist's ability and sanity. Feeling betrayed, Lex continues the experiment but an explosion erupts, the radiation blast causing his hair to fall out. Luthor leaves Metropolis and years later his scientific work, largely based on his ideas about alien life, results in a fortune he uses to create LexCorp. When Superman appears, Lex is angry that the powerful alien, the kind of companion he'd often hoped for, looks on him with disapproval and openly disrespects him in front of the media. For this and his interference with Luthor's criminal operations, the scientist businessman decides to humiliate and destroy the alien.