Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 9752714" data-attributes="member: 86653">Just tore through Siegel and Shuster's Funnyman: The First Jewish Superhero, from the Creators of Superman. Got it yesterday. Took me 3.5 hours to read. It's a really short book. Quite interesting topic...too bad the book it barely connected to the title.So the young Jewish guys Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman and sold the rights to DC Comics for $150. DC proceeded to make fat millions off the character and screw Siegel and Shuster out of most, if not all of their royalties. After this debacle Siegel and Shuster also created Funnyman in the dying days of superhero comics. It flopped after 6 issues and, since the copyright wasn't renewed, Funnyman is now in the public domain. I came across the character during a deep dive on public-domain superheroes.The book is roughly divided into four parts. The first part is an exploration of Jewish humor. The second part is an exploration of the origins of Superman. The third part is a short bio on the trials and tribulations of Siegel and Shuster in their fight against DC Comics. The fourth part is a partial reprint of the public domain comics and a full synopsis of the comic books and comic strips that featured the character.Note the almost complete lack of the character in the title? I sure did. The book is basically the authors taking long articles they'd already written about Superman, his connection to Jewish history and masculinity, and bios of Siegel and Shuster...then throwing in a few odd sentences here and there connecting the preexisting article to the supposed topic of the book, Funnyman.The exploration of Jewish humor is the closest connection to Funnyman of the three text parts of the book. Funnyman is effectively a footnote in parts two and three. The summaries in part four are both incomplete and incorrect.Deeply interesting character and I'd love to read a book on the topic. But I read this instead.</blockquote>

Verification