Funnyman is a fictional comic book character whose adventures were published in 1948 by Magazine Enterprises.
Contents |
After leaving DC Comics and suing that company in a dispute over the rights to Superman, the character's co-creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, rejoined their former DC editor Vin Sullivan — who had bought their character and edited the earliest adventures — at his new company, Magazine Enterprises.
The duo's new creation, Funnyman, starred in a series that ran just six issues (cover-dated Jan.-Aug. 1948). The premiere issue was preceded the previous month by a black-and-white "ashcan" printing for copyright reasons.
A newspaper comic strip debuted in October 1948, but Funnyman also failed to find an audience in this format, and his strip was soon dropped.
Larry Davis is a red haired television comedian with mannerisms based on those of Danny Kaye. Larry's manager/agent June Farrell talks him into performing a superhero-like stunt in order to obtain publicity. This stunt goes wrong when Larry finds himself in a real crime scene. Larry stops this criminal, not knowing what he is doing is real until after the fact.
Discovering that he enjoys fighting crime, Larry begins a career as a costumed crime fighter under the alias Funnyman.