I'd rather work with someone who makes good (or even bad) jokes about my code in reviews than a humorless bore who spends all their time policing everyone's appropriateness according to his own stodgy cultural standards.
Why not neither? Why not a person within the normal range of emotional intelligence, rather than either a humorless policer or an antagonistic smart person? Why are you defending his tone with such hostility?
The belief that one can or should judge another person (ie, on the normalness of their emotional intelligence) is quite boring, and is particularly annoying in coworkers. It is by definition fun to work with people who joke around, if one starts with thick skin, an open mind, and the confidence to occasionally be the butt of the joke.