Given his self-described status as "the palest man in showbiz," Jim Gaffigan is long overdue for his debut in the Great White North.

The standup comic -- seen these days as the unhappily married Andy in the acclaimed TBS sitcom My Boys -- has a running animated bit on Late Night With Conan O'Brien called Pale Force, in which he is drawn as a pale superhero who can blind villains with the glare of his skin. Conan is portrayed as his whiny 98-pound-weakling sidekick.

"In real life, Conan is a giant, which is what's so great about Pale Force," says Gaffigan, whose standup special Beyond The Pale debuts Saturday on the Comedy Network. "Physically, he's much larger and in better shape than me, and obviously more successful, but he's presented as a weakling."

The Pale Force bits feature a superhero society called The Legion Of Pale (whose ranks include Nicole Kidman, Larry Bird, The White Stripes, Ron Howard, Santa Claus and a polar bear), and a fellow paleface turned villain out of jealousy, Philip Seymour Hoffman. New episodes air monthly on Late Night, and weekly on Conan's website.

The bits developed out of Gaffigan's frequent visits to the show, two pale Irish guys cracking about who was whiter. "There are pockets of people who come to my shows because they're fans of Pale Force," Gaffigan says, "like the goth kids, and the observant orthodox Ashkenazis. There's almost a strange bonding there. Although there can't be any pride around it. The Germans kind of put the kibosh on that."

It's a steady gig, and it's O'Brien's current favourite schtick. "Right now people only know it if they watch Conan," Gaffigan says. But the hope is it could break out like another of O'Brien's, ahem, pet projects -- Triumph The Insult Dog. "Triumph is huge now," Gaffigan says. "I was on his show at the Vegas Comedy Festival."

The well-reviewed My Boys -- TBS' first original scripted show -- has turned into a cable hit. Sort of Friends meets Sex And The City (it airs in tandem with reruns of the latter), it follows a tomboyish female Chicago sportswriter named P.J. Franklin (Jordana Spiro) and her mainly male gang of friends, including her brother Andy (Gaffigan).

The unhappily-married Andy has a wife we never see -- until the last episode of this first season, when she'll turn out to be played by Gaffigan's real-life wife Jeanne Noth. "That's really cool. And the feedback to the show has been amazing. I've been on a couple of shows and this one's fun for me because I'm not playing a guy who's dumb or a loser. It's a different strain of the charactery guy I played when I was on Ed or That '70s Show."

My Boys cleared its first hurdle at least. Gaffigan and the rest of the cast return to L.A. in April to film another nine episodes.

Meanwhile, Gaffigan's touring career is booming. Beyond The Pale, taped at Chicago's Vic Theatre, introduced U.S. audience's to Gaffigan's self-deprecating style -- complete with his own "heckler," a disapproving woman's voice he adopts between bits to critique his act (which tends to be predominantly about food -- as per his routine about how the Food Network is actually porn if you watch it when you're hungry).

"It was a running monologue I came up with to keep the show fresh," he says. "It stems from my early days, back when I couldn't get into real comedy clubs, and I'd do voices of characters from the Lower East Side. And one was this lady who was really dissatisfied with everything.

"It kind of went against a commonly held rule that you don't criticize your own material onstage because it might be perceived as weakness and the audience might start agreeing with you.

"It's easier to criticize your own joke if you're Letterman. If people don't know who you are, it's kind of a strange tactic, really."