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vanmai yeu em on Thứ Sáu, 21 tháng 9, 2012
I wrote in Pappy's #798 my opinion of why Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman's creators, created Funnyman in the wake of being sacked by DC Comics, losing their most famous creation.
Funnyman wasn't funny — at least not as funny as the premise of the character made him out to be, a baggy-pants, old school shtick comedian with a secret identity:
Yuk, yuk.
Funnyman is an interesting failure, and also interesting as part of the still ongoing history of the world's most iconic superhero, and the tragic story of its creators.
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vanmai yeu em on Chủ Nhật, 29 tháng 8, 2010
Number 798
Born of a nightmare
Consider if Edgar Rice Burroughs had lost Tarzan to a huge corporation which made millions in profit from the character over the years, and fired Burroughs from writing his own creation. Think of Conan Doyle losing Sherlock Holmes in a similar fashion. Good thing those nightmare scenarios never happened.
Superman is an icon like those characters, yet the nightmare happened to creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. A few years after being bumped from Superman they came up with another character, Funnyman. I'm sure they knew all about the Superman lawsuit against Fawcett over Captain Marvel and their lawyers may have told them, "Make any new characters you create unlike Superman or DC will sue." Funnyman is about as un-Supermanlike as you can get.
OK, so Funnyman isn't so funny...more oddball than humorous. And if anyone other than Siegel and Shuster had come up with the character our expectations might not have been so high. But he's not all that bad, either. Unfortunately, he didn't get much time to prove anything one way or another. His self-titled comic was canceled after six issues.
The Grand Comics Database says this was drawn by Shuster, but it isn't. I don't know who drew it, but it wasn't Shuster. I like Queen Hotcha, and she's a hottie, but she's not a Joe Shuster hottie.
The story, inspired by Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is from Funnyman #4, 1948.
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vanmai yeu em on Chủ Nhật, 13 tháng 9, 2009
Number 592
"He counteracts our every murderous move with some new screwy gadget!"
Funnyman was a genuine attempt by Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster to create a new character they would wholly own, and that would be as successful as Superman. The tale of woe over ownership of Superman is a tragedy, told many times in many places, and you've got to admire them for even trying to recapture that magic with another feature.
Too bad it didn't work. In 1948 Funnyman lasted just six issues in his own magazine, and a short time in a daily comic strip distributed by Bell Syndicate. I'm sure the failure of Funnyman had the effect of further crushing Siegel and Shuster's spirits.
This 10-page story is from Funnyman #2, March, 1948, published by ME Comics.
I'm not sure who came up with the idea for a superhero in a clown suit, but despite his creators' credentials it seems like an idea that was doomed from the start. Even so, I like this story because in appearance it reminds me of Joe Shuster's vintage Superman artwork, and I like the gimmick of the Jet Jallopy.
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Shuster's ghost identified?
Although Funnyman is signed Siegel and Shuster it's known that Shuster used several artists, including Dick Ayers, to assist him. But at least they used his style.
In Pappy's #578 I wrote of Joe Shuster's ghost artist on strips signed by Shuster but looking nothing like his artwork. Just recently I was looking at a 1951 comic book story identified as being by Bill Molno, an artist whose name I had not previously heard. I instantly recognized this artist's "tell", which is a character with a Vandyck beard.
The top picture is from the 1951 strip, the bottom from the 1954 story in Strange Suspense Stories signed by Joe Shuster and Ray Osrin.
If the attribution on the 1951 comic is correct then the solution to the mystery of Shuster's ghost is comic book artist Bill Molno, a longtime Charlton staffer.
