How Rich is Lex Luthor?

For the first four decades that the character of Lex Luthor existed he was not rich at all but rather a mad-scientist type; in my mind I have an image of him wearing a white scientist's lab coat and pulling a lever from above but maybe it's a figment of my imagination. Throughout the 1960s Luthor was most often seen wearing gray work-clothes like on the above cover. In the 1970s there was a misguided thought to dress him up like a super-villain in a green and purple tin-can costume that still shows up from time to time (but you might notice I'm not showing it here).

In the 1980s it was writer Marv Wolfman who reinvented Luthor as a rich evil guy, and John Byrne built on that direction when he took over Superman in 1986. Forbes Magazine had a bit of fun a few years back rank-ordering fictional characters based on their level of wealth, and Lex Luthor made the list at #4. If you like you can read the full Forbes article, and down below is the Luthor entry.