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: 9754084" data-attributes="member: 86653">More on Funnyman. I tracked down the public-domain comics and read them. All six issues. Can't say I'm impressed. The character is fascinating. Great premise that I'd love to see someone revive, but the actual execution was not great. I think it just cements the idea that Siegel and Shuster were great idea men, but needed some editorial oversight. The big machine of DC Comics and the stable of other writers and artists certainly helped mold Superman into the household name he became. The Funnyman comics are supposed to be a superhero-comedy. But they were more like hollow gags in comic book form. There were no stories in those six issues longer than 6-8 pages. Several of them were single-page throw away gags. In all six issues there were maybe two moments where Funnyman was in anything approaching even faux danger. In the sense of most serial superhero comics where you know the MC will escape it's just a question of how. In Funnyman, the "danger" isn't given enough time to breathe. It mostly only lasts a panel or two at most. One panel of him getting into a tight spot then the next panel showing him getting out of it due to some amazing new invention that never appeared before nor would appear again. The rogues gallery consisted of two repeat villains who each showed up 2-3 times. Doc Gimmick who has the worst ideas for gadgets I've ever seen in comics. His "best" was a femme fatale robot with a giant hammer in her back. She'd drop a handkerchief and unsuspecting men would, of course, bend over to pick it up...at which point the hammer would drop, knock them out, and the goons waiting nearby would rob them. Slippery Slim was a jail breaker. He'd be in jail (without a stated reason why) then break out. At which point Funnyman would leap into action and catch him. Slim was effectively a physical twin of Funnyman, to the point that if Slim put on the Funnyman costume (which consists of clown clothes and a putty nose), those closest to the real Funnyman couldn't tell them apart. This has a lot of potential but was never used except for in one appearance for a few gags. The character of Funnyman is modeled after Danny Kaye in appearance and style in his secret identity, but as Funnyman he's a good-guy version of Joker...with the endless themed gadgets of Batman. There's been a few characters like that over the years, like Jack-in-the-Box from Astro City. But most of the clown characters are villains. I get the feeling that if there were some editorial oversight and a push to create a solid base for the character and slowly expand on that it would have done better. As it stands, it reads like Siegel and Shuster threw literally everything at the wall and, due to the weight of it all, nothing actually stuck. In six issues we're introduced to exactly three side characters that make more than one appearance each. I mentioned the rogues gallery above. In those six issues we also get an ever-expanding list of gadgets Funnyman invented, including an “AI” car that listens to verbal commands and has several typical spy-car gadgets, smoke screen, oil slick, etc; a similar almost sentient “AI” moped; water wings, hand buzzer, a raygun that shoots various beams; a Funnymanor with specialty rooms of traps; a smoke bomb hidden in his fake nose in case anyone tries to "unmask" him; on and on and on. It reads very much like the goal of the comics was not to present an interesting comic superhero, rather just fill pages with themed gags and hope it sold. It kinda makes sense given that in 1948 (when Funnyman was published), superhero comics were in decline. Why Siegel and Shuster tried to do a superhero then is a bit of a mystery. Except the notion that as the inventors of the comic book superhero they thought they could pull it off. Not so much. A retool and a reboot with a more fleshed out character instead of just endless gags would be really interesting, I think. Love the idea of the character, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.</blockquote>

Verification