Bio: What would happen if The Joker were a hero? You'd probably get something close to Funnyman, a Danny Kaye-lookalike who used talents gained from a career in TV comedy to fight crime.
Notes: Funnyman was the last Siegel/Shuster creation, prior to the demise of the partnership in 1949. He briefly enjoyed a presence in both comics and newspaper syndication, but never really caught on. This was in part due to the fact that DC, then in litigation against the duo over rights to Superman, wouldn't even allow them to use the name Superman in the phrase "from the creators of Superman" after their initial attempt on issue #1 of the comic book. Thus, the comic and strip never got the natural "bounce" they might have gotten had the public understood who Siegel and Shuster were. Though just including their names today would undoubtedly be sufficient advertisement for comic fans today, in the 1940s the duo weren't household names.Despite his relative failure in the comic book marketplace, there was an attempt in the early 1990s to make a Funnyman film, spearheaded by actor Richard Belzer—a frequent guest star in various DC-related television projects.