“Martin Mull,” some viewers — ones who remember one of the great comic phenomena of the ’70s may wonder? “Didn’t he die?”

Yes. Yes he did. Back in 2024, by which time he was not so much “forgotten” as a pop culture figure, just one who “transitioned” into something beyond stand-up comedy, musical ditties and TV and film acting.

But he wanted to answer the question “Who is Martin Mull?” in the last years of his life, when the accomplished songwriter, actor and comic had become famous in the art world. Beloved comic Bob Saget idolized Mull, and was in the process of directing this documentary when he himself suddenly passed two years before Mull, in 2022.

One was widely mourned, thanks to his years playing a TV dad for generations. The other earned respectful obituaries that didn’t ripple very far in the culture, prompting “Didn’t he die?” queries when word that this doc was finished, years later.

But Mull was the droll, musically-inclined headliner playing big venues who paved the way for Steve Martin’s big breakout. He was a conceptual comic, not just sarcastic, but doing that “anti-comedy” shtick that Martin would take further.

Mull’s traveling show included a comfy living room with easy chair, coffee table and lamps and a band to back his singing and guitar playing, with both billed as Martin Mull & His Fabulous Furniture.

Start with a sight gag. Inject puns and silences that wrong-foot the audience, pop a few naughty musical ditties into the mix and you had yourself an act. It was something to see, man. And hear.

Steve Martin had “King Tut.” But the year before, Martin Mull had wicked wink bossa nova, “The Humming Song.”

Director Neil Berkely, with his sometime collaborator Oscar winning pop culture documentarian Morgan Neville producing, finished the film Saget started, a charming and sentimental look at a showbiz polymath’s career of always being “pretty good” at comedy, comic songwriting and comic acting, just always surpassed by others who followed or who broke through alongside him and then became pop culture icons.

But all his life, Mull described himself as an artist. “All the show business stuff,” he says in the documentary, “was just to support” his career as an artist.

He’d paint witty homages to Disney animation on animation cells, dabble in photo-realism, neo-realism, impressionism and collages. In a world where many a pop culture figure passes her or himself off as a painter, sculptor, collagist and the like — from Buddy Ebsen (Jed Clampett) to John Cougar Mellencamp — Mull actually had the training and the chops.

No less a collector than art connoisseur Martin was one of the first to start snatching up the works of the Rhode Island School of Design alumnus. And not just because they were friends who once toured as “Steve Martin-Mull” in a double-bill.

“Who is Martin Mull?” shares a lot in common with the many other recent docs about comedians. He wouldn’t talk about his unhappy childhood, but Saget and Berkely got relatives (including Mull’s second wife, Wendy) and old family friends to fill in the blanks, something Judd Apatow’s Norm Macdonald film failed to address.

Mull comes off as more modest about his gifts and work than Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy, also the subjects of recent documentaries.

And while comics are pretty much to a one testy (Seinfeld, Murphy), unhappy or somewhat troubled (Martin) or tragic (John Candy, Chris Farley), Mull seemed at peace with his Mr. Second Best, Mr. “White” Americana image. The native Ohioan even made such people the subject of his artwork, with “American Gothic” sneaking around the thematic backgrounds of much of his work.

The late Norman Lear and Fred Willard sit down with Mull to chat about their ground-breaking comedy series, “Fernwood 2 Night,” which Lear created and Mull and Willard starred in, a snarky small town cable access chat show sendup that predated Garry Shandling’s “Larry Sanders” take on that idea by by more than a decade.

“Who is Martin Mull?” comes along at the perfect moment to remember why we all should have taken more notice when this Boomer funnyman passed, and how funny he was.

You couldn’t listen to college radio in the ’70s and early ’80s without hearing his loony tunes, couldn’t channel surf by a chat show without seeing him on one — he guest-hosted “The Tonight Show” thirty times — or sending them all up with “Fernwood.”

And Mull, bless his heart, seemed as mystified as anybody else that the comic Christmas season ’85 bomb he and Madeline Kahn, Michael McKean, Lesley Anne Warren, Jane Wiedlen and Tim Curry starred in — “Clue” — became a cult favorite among the generation who grew up with it on TV or VHS tape. Modest to the end.

As “Who is Martin Mull?” finishes with a bittersweet musical flourish, it not only answers the questions implicit in its title, it becomes a sweet, self-deprecating and amusing template for such post-mortem appreciations of the funny women and men who light up the culture and eventually pass on.

Let’s hope the upcoming Richard Lewis doc, and every one that follows, takes that in.

Rating: TV-MA, profanity

Cast: Martin Mull, Steve Martin, Bob Saget, Wendy Mull, Tom Waits, Fred Willard, Anodea Judith, Patton Oswalt, David Alan Grier, Kerri Kenney, Penn Jillette, Eric Idle and Norman Lear

Credits: Directed by Bob Saget and Neil Berkley. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:34