Hey, somebody else gets it. I never read a single Superman comic in which Lex cracked a joke, that I can remember. He was EVIL, period.
I never really saw Luthor as totally evil in the comics, but he wanted power, and he definitely wasn't a jokester, he was a hardass. Sort of like Victor Von Doom. Who they also screwed up royally in that garbage Fantastic Four movie by changing the character and his origin ENTIRELY.