The Unfunnies: The Rise of Shorty

Shorty is an odd character. Below you'll see his earliest incarnation (or at least the earliest that I've run into), a pocket-sized office boy. Later on he showed up as a sailor, a small-town teen and a salvage diver - basically he was around for as long as DC Comics was running allegedly-humorous strips in their magazines. No matter what happened, Shorty adapted to the times - it's possible, in fact, that I just figured out the secret origin of Oberon.

The weird thing about Shorty, at least in these early cartoons, is that he's funny, yet not funny. Here, read this:

See? Shorty is funny: he looks funny, he talks in an amusing manner ("Un-ungh! A century note!!"), he has a boos who is basically always acting in a slightly surreal way, he shoots little puffs of smoke out behind him while he walks... But when we get to the end, poof. No punchline, because of course Shorty is happy to have gotten a bunch of candy for free. I would, and I'm not a bizarre man/child/homunculus.

This one's from World's Finest Comics No. 25