Professor Phineas Potter was an eccentric yet good-natured scientist who became an acquaintence of fellow Smallville resident Superboy. The maternal uncle of Lana Lang, herself a childhood friend of Superboy and his alter ego Clark Kent. His counterpart was an aspiring yet vengeful cartoonist who first met his world's Superman and Lois Lane when first utilizing his invention under his criminal alias of Funny Face.
Potter would cause some complications in the life of Superman as he had when the hero was just a lad, although the two remained good friends. Phineas also began associating with reporters Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen of the Daily Planet. For the latter, Potter's various experiments caused a wide range of bodily transformations, including a serum Phineas developed that allowed Olsen's body to elongate as the Elastic Lad, as well as one that inflated his body into a "fat Jimmy" variation. However, the device that caused Jimmy the most grief was his normalizer ray, a device developed to humanize Bizarros. In this instance, it worked although the effects had an opposite effect on the young red-haired photo-journalist.
In fact, another scientist years earlier developed the original duplication ray that created an imperfect liveless version of Superboy. This clone tragically perished, only years later to be revived by Lex Luthor as an adult Bizarro Superman. Feeling himself alone as a freak on Earth-One, Bizarro journeyed to an abandoned world and used a duplicator ray to create a companion for himself in Bizarro Lois Lane, as well as several copies of both himself and Lois. Eventually, their existence came to the attention of Professor Potter, who after developing his normalizer ray had projected its beams upon a Jimmy Olsen wearing a bizarro mask as a practical joke to scare his scientific friend. Now, both physically and mentally, Jimmy became like his imperfect duplicate, a Bizarro! Now living in exile on Thrae, the Bizarro World, was their hope for him?
The Earth-Two Phineas Potter adopted the alias of Funny Face after failing to fullfill his first dream of being a successful cartoonist. As an inventor, however, he was highly successful... having developed a bio-ray that could bring to life characters from various comic strips. Such villains as the Martian villain Torgo, the gangster Machine-Gun Mike, the criminal cowboy Black Raider, the bald giant Torgo, and the sinister schemer known as the Viper. Also produced were various henchmen aiding these artificial life forms.
Eventually, with the aid of Lois Lane, the Earth-Two Superman vanquished Funny Face allied with his fictional foes' heroic adversary in Streak Dugan, Detective Craig, Solitary Rider, Prince Peril and Happy Daze. However, Funny Face still lived, and created a clone of Superman's Flying Tiger alias, who also was defeated. Although twice using his bio-ray on Lois to transform her into a lifeless illustration, each time Superman was able to revive her. Similarly, an imperfect Bizarro clone of Professor Potter was able to develop a reverse-normalizer ray, restoring Earth-One Jimmy to his human form!
On one occasion, Potter accidentally activated a transdimensional portal in the Justice League satellite, previously damaged and yet to be repaired, which had unleashed a creature from the limbo trans-dimensional realm of Limbo. Theorizing that a merged Superman of Earths One and Two could defeat this entity, he aided both Supermen in accomplishing this feat for a limited time, and in fact the two Supermen-in-one were able to vanquish the beast and thus save Earth-One. The Earth-Two Superman had initially traveled to Earth-One to recruit that world's Jimmy Olsen into returning to his world, where Olsen's older counterpart needed an organ transplant. A reformed Funny Face, now a physician, used his bio-ray to create a duplicate organ from Jimmy-One... to be transplanted into Olsen-Two.
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