Superman 40s Cartoon

Well, I was wandering wally mart yesterday and in their $1 DVD section I found a cluster of old 40s superman serial cartoons. Being the superhero geek I am, I picked them up, and man they were a blast to watch. They were unintentionally funny (40s serious doesn't quite come across anymore I think) but it was great. A few things I noticed in watching tho:

1) Superman was raised in an orphangage! They don't show it but at the beginning of the first ep they mention he was raised in greenview orphanage.

2) While yes, he "jumps" not flies the line is pretty thin already. He jumps into space on one occasion and jumps halfway across the country in another. The only thing is he can't start going bnack up again in the air.

3) the change scenes are hilarious. He'll be standing in a crowded newsroom and shout "this looks like a job for Superman" switching to his superman voice halfway through and no one will even give him a sideways glance . He'll change anywhere.. stock rooms, phone booths, once even just on a stairwell that was kind of obscured. No matter where he changes a mysterious backlight appears that lets you see the change. What is glowing? My wife and I have a theory, but only Lois knows the answer.

4) Lois is the stupidest human alive. She does exactly the opposite of what an intelligent human would do in any givn situation. For example, a giant dinosaur is breaking free 5 feet in front of a phone booth. Intelligence says run away. Lois says use the phone booth.

5) Metropolis police are damn well armed. Within seconds of any caper in the city police are there with Tommy guns blasting away.

6) Metropolis is NYC, as mentioned in one of the eps.

7) Get into public works in Metropolis if you want to be rich. Seriously.

Well that's all I think think of ATM, but take a look at that section at Walmart if you get the chance and pick it up, its a lot of fun and well worth a buck.

Heh, sounds almost as bad as the old The Batman tape my Mom got me for my b-day (this past Thursday; my 28th). It was a collection of the first 7 of the 15 serials made in 1943, shown in movie theatres before the actual movie would show. Batman & Robin worked for Uncle Sam, and fought the forces of the insidious Japanese mastermind Dr. Tito Daka (played by J. Carrol Naish, an Irish-American actor best known for playing Latin, Arab, and East Indian characters). Daka has a radium-powered death ray that pulverizes walls, a classic alligator pit to dispose of enemies, and can turn men into electronic zombies who do his bidding and transmit video signals to Daka's lab! Batman has no Batmobile or Batplane, but there are bats in the Bat Cave... (And he rubber-stamped a black ink bat onto the foreheads of criminals he captured!)

Aside from Bruce Wayne/Batmand and @#$%& Grayson/Robin, the only other actual Batman character present was Alfred, played by William Austin. However, this is actually a reversal -- the character of Alfred appeared in this film serial first, and later appeared in the comics. But, the Alfred in the comics was drawn as very chubby and clean shaven, while William Austin wore a mustache and was slim. Soon after the release of the last of the serials, the comics character grew a mustache & went to a health spa where he lost weight. From then on, the comics Alfred has resembled the William Austin image.

I have a lot of those old Superman cartoons on the $1 DVDs, including the WW2 era cartoons that were hillarious and very un-PC. 8)

The quality of animation and composition in those cartoons dwarfs anything made during the 50's outside of Disney. Some of them had a very cinematic feel to them, especially the the cartoon titled "The 10th Hour" or some such thing, one of the WW2 era cartoons.

If there's a 99 cent store nearby, it's definately worth the effort to track down and buy the $1 superman cartoon DVDs. Expect to have to buy 4-6 of them to get all the cartoons in the series.

Actually, a fair number of those old cartoons are surprisingly entertaining after all these years.

And, yes, in the series Lois was a danger prone ditz with a major death wish and an arrogantly righteous mouth. How she ever survived long enough for Clarck Kent to move to Metropolis to save her on a regular basis is beyond me.

Truly. She must have been suicidal or something because damn that was stupid. Well, actually, weren't reporters commonly drug addicts at that time to keep up with the hours eneded to put out a paper? hmmm....


One thing I liked is that superman did get smacked around a little occasionally. He never got hurt, but they certainly kicked his earound a bit, and that was fun to watch.

This makes me wonder. Is there an "instant change" power anywhere in MSH?

michael


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3) the change scenes are hilarious. He'll be standing in a crowded newsroom and shout "this looks like a job for Superman" switching to his superman voice halfway through and no one will even give him a sideways glance . He'll change anywhere.. stock rooms, phone booths, once even just on a stairwell that was kind of obscured. No matter where he changes a mysterious backlight appears that lets you see the change. What is glowing? My wife and I have a theory, but only Lois knows the answer

That can be "alter ego" (the old version at least), though its more used to for Captain Marvel (DC) types than just custom changes.

I first saw some of the Fleischer Superman cartoons at the dealers' room of the 1974 World SF Con Washington DC. They were pretty addictive. And hard to find. I didn't see anything more of them until '78, when we had a few at the student cinema.
I am sooooooooooooooo glad the VHS/DVD age came along!

SamGoody/MusicLand/MediaPlay has a couple decent DVD collections in the "Under $14.99" section. They are definitely worth the money.

The pacing was very breakneck! They only had 7 minutes to tell a story and used every moment of it. (Would that modern comic book writers were as skilled!) Of course, with the minimal length, characterization is minimal. Dialogue too.

The BATMAN series are interesting as historical artifacts. Yes, the second did have some jingoist any-Japanese propaganda that comes across as pretty bizarre nowadays. But within the seting of WW2, it makes sense.

What DOESN'T make sense was Batman's disappearing cape (at least in the originals erial). Well, it does make sense if you break the frame and consider the actual filming. Seems the stuntman playing Batman couldn't manage the fight scenes wearng the cape. So.... every time there's a fight scene, Batman starts off with his cape but on the next shot, the cape is gone. When the fight is over, the cape reappears.

If anyone has a chance to see the SUPERMAN serial, there is an even worse bit of inanity. The filmmakers kept with Superman's then-current limitation of leaping 1/4 mile and higher than a skyscraper. They chose to depict Superman by an animated dot! The effect was Superman turns into a flea!

A little while later, along comes the classy CAPTAIN MARVEL serial, complete with nicely done flying sequences. DC rethought Superman and upgraded him to full flying powers.








Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2005 10:26PM by DavidEMartin.

Did anyone ever catch the Stan Lee remake of superman? I think their was only one issue but I must say that jumping the 1/4 of mile was kept. No heat vision though, although he could exhale with hurrican force winds if remeber correctly. Not the best work I've seen by Mr. Lee but worth the read if you can find it.
~drake