They ruined him! They ruined my boy! How could they ruin him?
*grunt*
Every day I wake up and I wish you were dead!
They ruined my boy.
I mean, look at this. Does this look like Jimmy Olsen to you? Huh?
I mean, not my Jimmy Olsen, alright?
How could they take my precious, sweet boy and make him a bad photographer?
That's like his- that's one of his big things!
Real worked up about this. Look what they made him do. All right, he's out here. He's taking photos
He brings him back to the daily planet. Why are they blurry Jimmy? They're not out of focus
There's just there's too much motion blur. Why do you have your shutter speed set so slow?
It's the middle of the day and you're outside. What do you have your camera set to aperture priority mode like an amateur?
To be completely honest, I think my adventures of Superman the new cartoon that came out is it slaps
I think it's fantastic actually. It's just that you know YouTube videos that like praise media don't really get a lot of attention
so I had to like
critique something and like build up the build up the drama build up the
Drama I know how to use a camera, but if you haven't seen the show
I highly recommend it and I just want to like gush about it for a couple minutes if that's okay with you
This is not really a video with an overall like
Point or message other than like I think this show is cute and great and I like it if there is a message to this
video, I would say it's the importance of being earnest. I saw it recently. It's
really good. Anyway, if you don't know what I'm talking about, a brand new
streaming service popped up called Max. Interesting. They released the first two
episodes of My Adventures with Superman. It follows like a young Clark Kent as
he's trying to figure out who he is. In fact, that's sort of like the big
question of the series so far. Like he just keeps repeating over and over again
and like, who am I?
Which I think is an interesting question to follow
because we as an audience don't even have all the answers
just yet for the show.
We're seeing all this Kryptonian stuff
from Clark's perspective.
Krypton speaks a different language
than the technology doesn't translate.
So we don't know what they're saying.
It sort of feels threatening.
It's a little scary.
We get glimpses of like what could happen,
which is fun because I feel like everyone on the earth,
on the planet, on the daily planet,
I feel like everyone knows Superman's whole origin story.
So it's fun to see a cartoon, a new Superman story,
trying to spin it as if it's something very mysterious.
And they're doing a good job of it,
because even though I feel like I know a lot
about Superman's origin,
but the show is making me go like, "Do I though?"
Anyway, I feel like a lot of Superman media
over the last couple of decades has been,
I don't know, it's sort of like winks and nods
at the source material while trying to be self-aware enough
to not fully devote itself
to the original Superman comics.
It sort of became like a meme at some point
that like Superman's the big blue boy scout
and how can you make any interesting story
about someone who's good?
Yes, is that weird?
That feels weird to me,
that we reached that conclusion at some point along the way.
And I don't just mean like the movies.
I think it's really easy to poke fun at
like the recent movies with Superman
and just how many iterations there are
of like stories about Superman analogs
that aren't really Superman,
but are like, "Oh, what if Superman was evil?"
Sort of like people trying to take this character
reinvent Superman in like a different, like darker, meaner, broodier sort of way. Invincible
comes to mind, the boys, they're like, you know, all the dark evil Superman characters. We're
swimming in them. So it's just, it's really refreshing when a show comes along that is
unapologetically sincere and earnest and doesn't try and make fun of the fact that Superman is just
like a good guy. Literally right out of the gate. Like the first thing we see Clark doing is saving
a cat from a tree, which is so cliche, but it works with Superman because he is a cliche.
Like I know people would roll their eyes at that. I'm sure people who don't like the show
did roll their eyes at it, but I really liked it because it's like, if it was anybody else,
yeah, but it's Superman. That's what he does. I feel myself getting like angry about how much
I like this show. I'll try to tone it down a little bit. When he's fighting like the big bad villain at the end of episode 2,
she's like, "Why don't you die already?" or just like, "Kill me and get it over with."
So it's like you're in this world, this world of Metropolis where clearly people are gonna kill each other.
They want to fight, kill Superman. Superman, they want to expect Superman to kill them. They don't even know Superman just showed up.
They're like, "This guy's gonna kill me." But no, he says, "I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to help you."
It's so small. It doesn't feel like I'm asking that much.
It doesn't feel like any of us have been asking that much from Warner Brothers and DC and
Max, the guy who owns the app now, Max, the Max app.
We're not asking much of you, Max. When we ask for like a Superman, that's just
nice and kind and wants to help people. I've always said this, my favorite part of any superhero
media, especially movies and TV shows, is when they take the time out to show you the heroes actually helping
people. I feel like at the start of like the MCU, for example, there was a focus on this. Like I remember the first Avengers
movie had a lot of sections in the big final battle where they showed off the heroes actually helping civilians. That sort of like
dissipated. Like once the Russos sort of stepped into the picture, they're just like, "Oh, people just want to watch heroes and villains fight.
People don't even exist in this universe anymore. It's just heroes and villains fighting. There are no people. There are no humans on Earth.
It's just heroes and villains fighting. They don't show heroes saving people. That's what their job is, right?
Superheroes were never created to fight super villains. When you trace back Superman, the first Superman comic books,
he was not immediately fighting super villains. Super villains came around because they needed a bigger threat to the hero,
but Superman's like first things that he was doing was just saving people from other...
from criminals. Batman as well. Batman was just like saving people from criminals. It was never
superhero versus supervillain at the start. It was just heroes helping everyday people. And it feels
like we've sort of lost sight of that in a lot of more modern comic book superhero media. It's so
nice to see this show not only focus on just this one little line of Superman going up to a
super villain and saying, "I don't even want to hurt you." So, he's like turning the script again
on this. He's like, "There are super villains immediately in this universe, but Superman is
not even there to hurt the super villains. He wants to help the super villains." Because he's
Superman. He goes a step further than everyone else. Everyone else, yeah, they would save the
civilians if the Russos would let us see that, you know? And like, obviously, at the end of
the second episode, there's a fantastic little mini thing where Superman looks around at all
of the destruction that he caused during this big first fight that he got in and he decides to like,
he just decides to use his powers to clean it up because he can. He's strong and he's fast and he
can do it. It takes like four seconds for him and he does it without it being asked. He just looks
around and goes, "Oh, whoops. I'll fix that." I just like Superman when he's a nice person.
You know what I mean? That's sort of his thing. It's good that we've gotten back to the roots of
it. Even outside of personality, even outside of Clark and Superman's personality, it's nice to
to see the writers of this show embracing parts of Superman's iconography, his history,
his lore, and doing it in a way that, again, is not poking fun at or winking at the audience
to be like, "We know this is silly, but we're going to do it."
For example, my favorite, favorite, favorite moment.
When Clark finally gets the Superman costume, it doesn't have the red trunks.
That was sort of a letdown because I did make a video a couple years ago, sort of like praising the red trunks.
Thought Slime made a video recently about how important the red trunks are.
People like the red trunks. I wasn't a fan of them growing up, but I like really appreciate them now for what they represent.
Just to sort of reiterate some of my thoughts from that video, if you don't want to watch it, it was a really long video from a while ago.
I wouldn't watch my videos. Maybe I'd watch this one.
Keep watching this one. I need the watch time and the AdSense, please. Thank you.
Basically, I think that Superman's red trunks are sort of goofy, but Superman himself is supposed to be disarming.
He's not supposed to show up and you think, "This guy's going to kill me."
You're supposed to see him and feel like, sort of at ease, because this is a guy who is
dressed in a way that maybe isn't the coolest, but he's owning it. He's rocking it. He's confident in it.
It sort of like radiates off of him in a way that's like, "Oh, this guy is
not really a threat. He's the opposite. He's a hero and he's here to save me and that's great.
And I think that's what the sort of trunks represent for Superman. So to have a moment in this show
where Superman comes out, he's in full costume for the first time and he doesn't have the red trunks, a little disappointing.
Then the show takes time, specifically to have Ma Kent
sew up the red trunks and have Clark put them on simply because
She thinks it looks better. No other attention added to it other than like, yeah, that's...
It's pretty good.
And there's no jokes about it. If you can believe this, not a single person
jokes that their underwear, that like Superman's wearing underwear on the outside of his pants. Can you believe
that there would be a scenario
where the writers wouldn't take the laziest route when talking about
Superman's costume, but instead embrace it earnestly and sincerely. I just I love that.
And then in that same moment, Clark is worried that people were gonna see through, you know,
all he had was glasses on. It's that classic, you know, "Oh, if he takes off his glasses,
suddenly people don't recognize him." But they even address that in the show as well. And they
don't. They don't spend a lot of time on it because they don't need to. It's literally just Clark
asking, "Hey, are you sure people aren't gonna recognize me?" And then his parents, his own
parents are like, "I barely recognize you and I raised you. That's literally all you need." I can
buy into that. I've always bought into the, you know, Superman not being recognized. I mean,
I've said this a million times before, but Superman doesn't wear a mask, so there's no
reason why people would think that he has a secret identity as a human. To them, his identity is out
in the open, so no one would be looking for like, "But who could Superman really be?" If you were
Superman, you would just be Superman all the time. No one would think that he has a secret
identity. No one's looking at Clark like, "Could he be Superman?" Of course not.
Superman's Superman. Why would he be Clark? Doesn't make sense. I get, I'm like
getting worked up about like how much I like the show because I'm like, I feel
like I'm like arguing to defend it from people that I don't know exist. Do people
hate this show? Because I love it. Just embracing the pure earnestness of
Superman. He's just like a really nice guy who wants to help people. I mean, that
was the other thing too. Like the reason he decides to be Superman, he sees all
this bad stuff going down, all the story that they're chasing, and he wants to
help, but he doesn't want to give away his identity necessarily. So he concocts
this scheme of like, "Well, if I become this superhero that people already say
that I am, Superman, then I can help people out in the open and not have to
hide it." I'm hearing myself talk right now, and it feels so silly to me that I
I am just describing the character of Superman and then being like,
"The show did it!"
They just did Superman and it's wild to me that that excites me. I feel like we just have not had good, accurate,
wholesome Superman representation in media in a while. I know people like the the Clark and Lois show,
the whatever one is out right now. I haven't seen it, but I'm sure it's good.
I think this sort of thing even works better in a cartoon.
Potentially, I think Superman might work better
in a cartoon overall than live action
because of that embrace of the earnestness.
I think a cartoon is allowed to be a little bit goofier
and sillier without having to like wink at the audience
to be like, "We know, we know that it's goofy.
Are my winks good?
I don't even know what I'm doing.
I'm just like raising my eyebrow and like blinking."
Like the cartoon is just like, this is Superman.
We finally did it.
A couple other things I really like.
I really like the trios dynamic, Clark, Lois and Jimmy.
I think it's great.
The chemistry between Lois and Clark right now is great.
I love the fact that Lois likes Clark immediately,
like before Superman even comes into the picture.
I like that the show set it up
that the reason she likes Clark
is specifically because the first time they met,
They were in that like bodega and the owner is just like praising him and talking about how nice he is, how good he is, and how like gracious and everything.
Like he's just a good person and like that's the reason why Lois starts to even like him or notice him in any capacity.
I think that's fantastic.
Like yeah, obviously he's a hunk, but that's not really the reason that she likes him.
That's, and that's a bonus, but that's not the reason.
I made fun of Jimmy earlier, but I do like this version of Jimmy.
I like that he's sort of a conspiracy theorist that really does fit Jimmy Olsen to me.
A lot of the conspiracies that he's like coming up with are referencing like old Silver Age Jimmy Olsen comics,
which I think is a really fun way for the writers of the show to be like, "We know these characters.
Just so you know, we understand these characters."
Because they make so many Silver Age comic references.
This show feels like if it was in comic book form, it would fit like between the gold and silver age
where like at least so far like the threats at play feel a little bit more a little bigger than
like a goofier like Jimmy Olsen silver age. But it is still very fun and having Jimmy Olsen there
and having those comedic moments there, it just makes the world feel a little bit brighter.
I like that there's this recurring gag of Lois Clark and Jimmy just not respecting Perry White's
space in his like office at all. Like they just have these like conversations and like heart to
heart talks and Perry's like, "Guys, this is my office. Can you leave now?" I just think it's
funny. I like that Superman's dad is alive. That's a little one, but it's nice, you know?
And maybe he'll die in an episode in the future and that'll be sad, but we get to be sad together
because we get, because we, because he's alive now and we, and I like him. Please don't die.
Deathstroke is in the show. He's hot. He's voiced by Chris Parnell.
I have some beef with Chris Parnell. Not Chris Parnell specifically,
but just society's treatment of Chris Parnell, I guess.
Because we're always talking about how Hollywood has so many Chris's.
We've got Chris Pine and Chris Pratt and Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans.
No one's talking about Chris Parnell.
I would replace Chris Pratt with Chris Parnell any day.
Justice for Parnes, man.
I'm a little hesitant to get excited about who it seems like they're teasing as the big bad of the season.
Or the entity, I guess, that they're teasing as the big bad.
But we'll see how it goes.
Like, that specific plot point hasn't hooked me to be like, "Ooh, gotta see what happens next," you know?
I won't do a spoiler here, even though I've spoiled, like, pretty much everything else about the show.
I just like this show a lot, and I wanna know what you're thinking.
Do you like this show? Are you gonna watch it? Have you watched it? Are you gonna continue to watch it?
Can we watch it together?
It's just interesting to me to see a take on Superman that like feels so fresh and so new when it's-- it shouldn't be.
It is-- it is just like the-- it is-- it's just Superman.
It's how Superman should be.
It is brilliant.
Like my brilliant idea to sit down right now so my raw power can leave my legs and shoot straight to my brain.
But I do have another idea that's brilliant.
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(beep)
All right, that's going to do it for me.
I just wanted to make this video
because the last time I reviewed a new HBO cartoon,
it was Velma and it was not good.
So I'm glad that HBO or sorry, Max.
I'm glad that Max is still able to make good cartoons.
Really wish they'd make a good Scooby-Doo one though.
That'd be great for me.
All right, bye.