Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor is a powerful and influential businessman, and owner of Lex Corp. Luthor is a member of the council of the Light, designated L-3.

Personality
Lex Luthor has a conniving and Machiavellian personality. He is calm, soft-spoken, and unfailingly polite, thus manipulating unwitting people into getting his way. His soft-spoken nature and charm places him in a positive light to the public.

Despite his resplendent appearance to the public, behind the scenes, his goals are almost always motivated by profit. This amoral desire to maximize profits has typically put him on the wrong side of superheroes.

Physical appearance
Lex Luthor is tall and appears to be in good shape, being moderately built. He is bald, and has green eyes and high cheekbones.

Early life
Luthor was the CEO of Lex Corp, a sizable conglomerate based in Metropolis. Behind the facade of honest business, Luthor also organized black market arms trades and other shady deals. He was the founder and first chairman of Cadmus, and initiated Project Match and Project Kr. To prevent another genetic failure like Match, Luthor gave his DNA to combine with Superman's for the Weapon of Project Kr.

Present
When Aqualad, Robin and Kid Flash broke into Cadmus, Mark Desmond requested an audience with the Light, and briefed them on the incident. He informed them that the three heroes had been apprehended and asked what to do with them. Luthor ordered him to clone them.

This plan ultimately came to naught, and the heroes broke out with Superboy, after terminating Desmond's regime. Luthor dismissed Vandal Savage's concerns about leaving Guardian in charge of Cadmus without the influence of the Genomorphs, claiming that they had subtler means of control. However, he expressed some apprehension with the Justice League employing youth to do their "dirty work".

Luthor was brought in as an independent arbitrator in the peace talks between North and South Rhelasia, but he was not impartial: together with Ra's al Ghul, he planned an intricate gambit that would reunite the two under the Light's "guidance". The League of Shadows would attack the summit, driving the two feuding leaders together. Red Arrow became an unwitting pawn in this game, as he was tracking the assassin Cheshire at the time. Luthor dragged him further into it and even offered to hire him, but Red Arrow refused.

After the summit was saved by Red Arrow, Aqualad and one precision shot from Luthor's driver and bodyguard Mercy, both Rhelasians signed the treaty and multiple Lex Corp contracts as well. The Light was quite pleased.

After the arrest of the Injustice League, Luthor was present with the other members of the Light to hear Vandal Savage's view of the Kobra Venom Plant test and the heroes believing they had exposed the Secret Society.

Lex Luthor was attending a video conference, along with the rest of the members of the Light, when the Riddler and Sportsmaster arrived with the regenerated remains of the echinoderm.

Lex Luthor contacted Superboy with an ultrasound frequency; because Superman was off-planet, Superboy would be the only one to hear. Luthor wanted to meet him in East Potomac Park.

Luthor told Superboy, how he, as new director of of Cadmus, had discovered there was another super-clone. This caused Superboy to investigate. However, Luthor full-well knew about "Match"; he simply lured Superboy back to Cadmus make him investigate missing genomorphs. In the process, he wanted to make Superboy dependent on him. He revealed that Project Kr worked with incomplete Kryptonian DNA, and the gaps were filled with human DNA. Special Shields could suppress these genes and give Superboy his full potential.

Superboy eventually found out he had been played, but Luthor still won it. He not only revealed that he himself was the donor of the DNA, he also confronted Superboy with the fact that Superman would never accept him with that pedigree. Superboy was about to assault Luthor when he managed to escape by speaking a code word, "Red Sun".

Background in other media

 * Lex Luthor is Superman's most prominent enemy. Originally he was created as a simple bald mad scientist, similar to Doctor Sivana and the Ultra-Humanite.  In the 1980s however, Luthor was re-imagined as a corrupt businessman whose hatred of Superman is more due to a xenophobic dislike of an alien being held in a higher regard than himself.
 * Young Justice marks Lex Luthor's fourteenth animated appearance. Previous portrayals of Luthor have included The New Adventures of Superman, Super Friends, the Ruby/Spears Superman animated series, the DCAU (Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited), Superman: Brainiac Attacks, Krypto the Superdog, The Batman, Superman: Doomsday, Justice League: New Frontier, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, All-Star Superman and Batman: Brave and the Bold.