[MarkWarner]

I think it fair to say that last week's book got a somewhat lukewarm response. This week's read has been suggested by another dark and mysterious reading group member. When this comic first hit the newsstands there must have been high expectations of a smash hit. But alas it appears that the creators of Superman were after all mere mortals.

So let's have a look at the Siegel's and Shuster's not quite as successful Funnyman https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=22954 The story we are concentrating on is the main one "The Teen-Age Terror".

Looks like it is 19 pages long, so I better quit typing this and start reading!

[paw broon]

Don't you think it's time we had a genuine, big time superhero?  And the one with the best costume - no arguments, please - is Black Terror.  So either his own title with early issues featuring some pretty average art but goo covers, but he still seems to have super strength, or an issue of America's Best and we get other superhero co-stars.  Failing that, wecan't help but be entertained by Fatman, the Human Flying Saucer ( Lightning Comics) 
Just a thought or two.

[MarkWarner]

Looks like everyone APART from the admins realize to message or email and keep the choices a surprise(and BTW you have mentioned two already penciled in ... blabbermouth)  lol (x 2)

[SuperScrounge]

Jerks in the Works - Cute text story

Funnyman (origin) - Famous comedian puts on a fake nose and no knows he's Funnyman... okayyyyy... On the other hand one does have to admire the brevity of the origin, poorly thought out publicity stunt goes right and a crimefighter is born. These days it would probably be dragged out in a six-issue miniseries with a tragic backstory and tons of navel gazing before he finally accepts his destiny and becomes Funnyman.

The Teen-age Terrors - Bouncing into the room and hiding under the table stretches credibility (even for a superhero comic), but aside from that it's not a bad story.

Funnyman, Comicman and Laffman - Funnyman gets imitators busting in on his gig aka Jerry Siegel goes meta and is commenting on all the Superman imitators that came along after him.

The Truant Toy - Poor June, her main (only?) client would rather fight crime than appear at paying gigs and then he wastes money on toys. I wonder if she ever considers dropping him and becoming manager to a sane performer? ;-)

[misappear]

When you

[paw broon]

Origin:-
"These days it would probably be dragged out in a six-issue miniseries with a tragic backstory and tons of navel gazing before he finally accepts his destiny and becomes Funnyman.".......SuperScrounge
Couldn't have put it better.  That's how I feel about many modern comics.
Thoroughly enjoyed this comic.  The cover is great fun.  And the first 2 splash pages gave me a nice warm feeling.  Particularly, the one for Teenage Terrors is really dynamic.  Isn't there a mistake with the theft of Mr. Sonota's ring?  It looks like the lad takes the ring from Sonota's right hand, when it was on his left.
I'm quite prepared to suspend disbelief and accept that Funnyman seems to be a super gymnast, have super-holding-your-breath-power and be as accurate a pitcher as Greg Maddux.  Once again, great fun.
Lots of slapstick and nonsense in the next story, in fact piles shoveled into so few pages.  Just a pity we don't see more of his rivals. 
Misappear, you lost me with the ref. to Jewishness in these stories. Probably my ignorance, but where is it and what?  There is a new play on in London about the trials and tribulations of a Yiddish theatre company in N.Y. in the '50's and it was reviewed on a R.4 arts show last week. I understand how that was apparent, because everything was done in Yiddish.  But here, it just seems like a highly amusing comedy superhero comic.  Would we recognise a comic by a Roman Catholic creator?  Interesting point and I'd like to read other opinions.

[misappear]

Paw,

I had the good fortune to grow up in a neighborhood adjacent to a mostly Jewish neighborhood.  Had you the experience, i think you would have felt the vibe of A Jewish appreciation of "funny" from the characters, their interactions, and the way the jokes and situations were delivered.  It's sort of like visiting Milwaukee, Wisconsin; you immediately pick up the underlying Eastern European cultural vibe from the people. 

It would take a bit of thought to quantify the Jewish vibe.  That's why i ordered up that book on Funnyman from Amazon.  It attempts to explain ( according to reviews) that feeling relative to Funnyman, and also looks at Jewish humor in general. 

Funnyman as a character approaches his situations with a mixture of sincerity and goofiness.  For example, in the last panel of the first story in issue 3, Funnyman is hugging June, giving her some explanation as to how he solved his alien invasion problem, he issues a totally understated reason to the reader via an aside, and gives the reader a knowing wink as he embraces the luscious June.  Amazing writer to reader communication. 

I must confess a loss for words to be able to describe clearly what I'm babbling on about. perhaps after I receive and digest the book on Funnyman, i can revisit this with a bit more eloquence?

--Dave

[MarkWarner]

We begin with a 2 page text story one on the ifc and the other on the ibc. A strange start, which was OK, but in hindsight doesn't fit in with the rest of the book.

Next, a two pager explains the origins of Funnyman. This all seems rather cliched, but I am willing to give it a go.

Well, that was a surprise. I really enjoyed the story MUCH better than I thought it was going to be. You can really see the Danny Kaye infuence, but it has even more of the feel of the later Gene Wilder.   

The next story Funnyman story is just three pages, but introduces us to Laffman and Comicman. I wonder it is an allusion to Superman clones? Or am I reading too much into it?

The last story is another Funnyman and again it hits the mark for me. Conclusion: That was (yet another) good surprise and I certainly would read more. If I was struggling with my allowance the relatively short time it took me to read this cover to cover would have been my biggest objection.

I have just had a look at comments before I posted and I see that the Superman imitators mentioned. Like Paw I am at a loss to see the Jewishness. I fully accept it is there, but I just don't see it. I'll need to digest what Dave has posted and would also make a request that after reading the book he has ordered,  gives the reading group an executive summary! 

[bowers]

I had never even heard of Funnyman before, but he had me at the double-sided suit and fake nose disguise! This guy , loud-mouthed, brash, athletic and quick-witted, reminded me somewhat of a burlesque comic from the late 30's or early forties. And the puns were so bad that they were good. I can see how the character never really caught on with the masses, but I have to say I really enjoyed this one. Cheers, Bowers

[narfstar]

I guess I am the lone critic on this one. The look of the character never appealed to me enough to make me read it before. Since I did read it now I do not feel the desire to read anymore. I just did not enjoy the story or the character. I did not find the gags funny or the story that good. Usually the worse the story the more I enjoy it. I guess this one is neither good enough or bad enough.

[crashryan]

Another reading assignment has come out before I could comment on this one. Part of the delay is because I can't decide whether I like Funnyman or not.

It proved impossible for me to read the book (and I read it several times) without getting caught up thinking, "This was Siegel and Shuster's shot at another 'Superman'!" I couldn't judge it objectively. My opinion was soured by the fact that Shuster doesn't seem to have done any of the art. In fact in all the issues of "Funnyman" only one story looks anything like Shuster. John Sikela's artwork is quite good (better than Shuster's, frankly) but he gets no credit. Obviously Siegel hoped that crediting the famous team would attract sales. But whom was he trying to fool? The readers or the publisher? Did Siegel's boss know a ghost drew the premiere issue? Very strange. Almost as strange as the "Joe Shuster and Ray Osrin" stories in Charlton comics.

Anyway the art was good and the character reasonably interesting but I felt the author spent too much time assuring us how funny the stories were. Reminded me of old-time movie trailers. When the trailer said "you'll roll on the floor laughing! You'll split your sides!" etc. you could be sure that when you saw the movie you would neither split nor roll.

A couple of things struck me as odd. The super-short origin story was efficient but it read like those recap dailies they used to put into newspaper strips to catch new readers up on the storyline. I also got a newspaper-strip vibe from the cliffhanger captions ("Has Funnyman gone off his bean? What kind of behavior is THIS?") and the reference to "the comic pages' new sensation." Was Funnyman originally designed for syndication? The last odd thing is the "imitators" story. Three pages long??!! There was no room for anything to happen beyond introducing the three characters. I was caught flatfooted when the story ended.

I don't know enough about the subject to judge the "Jewishness" of the humor, but my understanding of "Jewish humor" is that it is largely verbal, self-deprecating, situation-based. More stand-up than slapstick. Though he cracks jokes, Funnyman is more of a slapstick action character. Does it matter anyway?

One last quibble. Surely by 1948 they should have dumped that old-fashioned thought balloon style--(--"Sounds like curtains---"). It was jarring.

[Drahken]

Interestingly, I just came across a cracked article referencing funnyman: http://www.cracked.com/article_18596_the-6-saddest-attempts-to-follow-up-pop-culture-classics_p2.html

He made it to #1.

[narfstar]

Thanks Drahken

[paw broon]

Thanks Drahken.  I had a quick read but find I can't agree with it all.  I enjoyed the comic and it's so different from Superman.  Finding the first issue amusing, gives Funnyman another side as there is not much humour in early Superman.

[mr_goldenage]

Sorry... never liked Funnyman. Didn't like the concept.

RB

[Lorendiac]

Went back and caught up on this one a couple of nights ago. I'd heard of it before -- mainly from reading my copy of Gerard Jones's "Men of Tomorrow" -- but I hadn't realized it might have slipped into the public domain. (I probably assumed Siegel & Shuster would have made sure to renew the copyright registration when the time came -- 28 years later.)

It was reasonably entertaining, both in the writing and in the artwork, but I'm not too surprised that it failed to become the "next Superman" in terms of rapidly becoming a pop culture icon. For one thing, a similar character from another Golden Age publisher had already failed to make the big time . . .

When you