Last year I started doing videos about some of my favorite Batman stories, and versions of Batman,
and creators that have worked on Batman, and after I’d done a few of those I started getting comments
from folks saying “Hey, why don’t you do something like this for Superman? You like Superman!”
So, here I am doing that thing! Because I do like Superman.
And what’s not to like? Not only is Superman one of the most recognizable
and influential characters in the history of popular fiction, not only are there decades
of classic comic book stories written and drawn by some of the most talented artists
in the history of that industry, but there are so many great adaptations in other media.
Think of all the actors who have played Superman in live action TV shows and movies. We Superman
fans have really been spoiled, because there have been so very, very — not you — very,
very-very, very, very, very, very many awesome live-action Supermans — get out of it — no! No!
My subject in this video is an adaptation — not a live action one,
but an animated one. Since I began the Best Batman Ever series by talking about my personal
favorite version of Batman — the late-70s run in Detective Comics by Steve Englehart
and Marshall Rogers — I figured I’d begin this series
by talking about my personal favorite version of Superman, which would be: this guy.
The shirt was probably a give-away, huh? Along with the video title.
And thumbnail. Nevertheless, yes, of all the many varied and wonderful interpretations of
Superman to grace pages, speakers, and screens since the character debuted in 1938, my favorite
is the one seen in the animated shorts produced by Fleischer Studios.
Founded by brothers Dave and Max Fleischer in 1929, Fleischer Studios was best known as the
production company behind Betty Boop and Popeye, and a critically and commercially
successful feature length adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels — until 1941, that is,
when the studio was hired by Paramount Pictures to produce a series of shorts based on Superman.
The Fleischers and their animators were already busy working on their second feature film,
Mr. Bug Goes to Town — so busy, in fact, that they were reluctant to accept the Superman project.
In order to avoid offending Paramount, the Fleischers offered to produce the Superman shorts
for $100,000 per episode — four times the budget of one of their Popeye cartoons — hoping Paramount
would pass the project on to another, more affordable production company. Instead,
Paramount counter-offered with $50,000 per episode, which was still twice the
budget of a Popeye cartoon and by far the biggest payday the Fleischers had ever had.
So, they took the job.
The first Fleischer Studios Superman short, titled simply “Superman,” also referred to
unofficially as “The Mad Scientist,” debuted in movie theaters in September
of 1941. You will rarely if ever see a better, clearer, more succinct introduction of a character
and demonstration of why that character is worth watching, than this ten minute short.
We get a brief prologue that breezes through the origin story and quickly explains the
premise — he’s the last survivor of a doomed alien planet, he has incredible powers, he has
a secret identity where he works for a newspaper, and he fights for truth and justice: Superman!
Then, we move right into the story of the episode: a mad scientist has written to the Daily Planet,
threatening to attack the city with a death ray. Lois Lane, intrepid reporter that she is,
blows off Clark Kent and flies to the scientist’s island headquarters — Lois can pilot a plane,
because she’s a badass. Though, not too much of a badass — the mad scientist captures her
and ties her to a chair, then uses his death ray to destroy a bridge.
Clark sees this and is like, “Welp! That’s my cue!” He steps into a storage room a
few feet away from the busy newsroom, and steps out as Superman a few seconds later,
totally escaping the attention of the many professional journalists in the room — well,
I guess they’re distracted by the whole death ray thing.
Superman saves the Daily Planet building from being toppled by the death ray,
punches the death ray all the way back to its source on the island, ties the barrel in a knot,
destroying the death ray, unties Lois, snatches the escaping mad scientist up by the collar,
and flies them both to safety, stopping to toss the mad scientist into a jail cell,
where he will presumably be held pending a fair trial before a jury of his peers.
There’s a really quick denouement where Perry White congratulates Lois on getting the scoop,
Lois says it was all thanks to Superman, and we pan over to Clark at his desk,
who turns to camera for a wink and a smile — and that’s it! A perfect little Superman story.
And when I say “perfect,” I’m not just speaking casually — the first Fleischer Brothers Superman
short is perfect, and if it’s not, it’s damn close to it. The writing is tight and efficient,
the action sequences are imaginative and exciting — Superman punches a death-ray to death,
for god’s sake — the music is rousing and memorable, the voice acting is top notch — Bud
Collyer and Joan Alexander voice Superman and Lois Lane, respectively, roles they also played on the
radio — and the animation is absolutely gorgeous, some of the best work of its kind produced during
its era, or any era, and it still holds up today as a stunning technical and artistic achievement.
And it’s only the first one. In the year that followed, Fleischer Studios released
eight more Superman shorts, each of them a fun and exciting sci-fi action/adventure
story brought to brilliant animated life. The Fleischers pit their Superman against a jewel
thief who employs an army of giant robots, a dinosaur recently thawed from the arctic ice,
a team of daring criminals who attack using a bullet-shaped flying car,
a comet drawn to Earth by a magnetic telescope, an erupting volcano, and more.
My personal favorite of the first nine shorts is “Billion Dollar Limited,” which sees Superman
intervening in the attempted hijacking of a train carrying a billion dollars in gold to the United
States Mint. After thwarting the hijackers, Superman has to pull the train the rest of
the way to its destination himself. The action sequences, particularly Superman’s saving of the
train after it falls into a canyon, are thrilling and, as with all of the Fleischers’s stuff,
gorgeously animated, with such attention to detail — I love Superman’s body language here,
the way he stiffens as he stops the train when it finally arrives at the mint.
“Billion Dollar Limited” combines two of my favorite things: Superman, and trains.
I’m not complicated.
Unfortunately, due to a combination of personal issues and financial troubles — that second
feature film, Mr. Bug Goes to Town, was such a bomb that Paramount didn’t release another
animated feature for over thirty years — Dave and Max Fleischer both resigned
from the studio that bore their name before they finished all the Superman shorts they’d
been contracted to produce. The remains of their production company was reorganized by Paramount
into Famous Studios, and another eight shorts were produced under that banner.
The Famous shorts are considered part of the Fleischer series, and the transition
is pretty seamless — the style and technical quality are maintained from the original nine
produced under the supervision of the Fleischers — but there is a noticeable, and regrettable,
shift in terms of content.
While the original nine were all fairly lighthearted action/adventure stories,
several of the Famous shorts are overt war propaganda — this was 1942, remember.
There is no better — or worse — example of this than the first Superman short
released under the Famous Studios banner: . . . this one. I don’t even wanna say it.
What really sucks is that, in some ways, this is actually a really good short.
The climax, which sees Superman having to safely land a massive bomber in the middle of the city,
is one of the definitive set pieces of the entire series, actually, one specifically
referenced during the outstanding airplane rescue sequence in Superman Returns. But, to get to that,
you have to sit through a lot of . . . other stuff.
Another short, “Eleventh Hour,” has Superman in Japan committing acts
of sabotage to aid the Allied war effort, and another, “Jungle Drums,” has Superman
taking on Nazis who operate from a secret outpost in Africa — so, there’s that, too.
That one also features a cameo from Hitler himself, who appears dejected after Superman
and Lois’s intervention in his schemes leads to the destruction of a bunch of Nazi U-boats.
Honestly, if it was just Superman beating the shit out of Nazis and ruining Hitler’s day,
I’d be totally fine with that. But, the depiction of Africans as rubber-limbed,
savage shadow creatures only too happy to burn Lois Lane alive,
who freeze in superstitious terror at the sight of Superman? That, not so much.
Happily, the Famous shorts are not all xenophobic caricatures. In fact, one of them — “The
Underground World” — is among my favorites of the entire series. Superman, Lois, and Dr. Henderson,
the son of an explorer who disappeared years ago, explore a vast subterranean cavern which,
they discover, is inhabited by hawk people — no, not those — different
hawk people. It’s basically an Edgar Rice Burroughs story, with Superman. It’s great.
So overall, the Fleischer shorts are technically superb and beautifully
written — the occasional outbreak of repugnant yet sadly period-appropriate racism aside.
But what really makes them my favorite version of Superman is, well, their version of Superman.
In fact, because I first watched them at such a young age — I think I was probably about
five when my grandparents got me a VHS tape with a bunch of them — and because they’re so damn good,
the Fleischer shorts probably had a lot to do with determining my
taste as far as Superman, and Superman stories, are concerned.
The Fleischer shorts only deal with Krypton briefly — we see it explode in the first short,
and it’s mentioned in the opening narration of the subsequent episodes,
but that’s it — and to this day, I don’t give a shit about Krypton,
I consider it backstory that doesn’t warrant further exploration.
Superman’s powers are the basic set: he can fly (the Fleischer cartoons, along with the radio
show, actually helped to solidify that as one of his powers — before this, in the comics he was
literally leaping tall buildings in a single bound, not flying), he’s strong, he’s fast,
he’s bulletproof, he’s got X-ray vision. And that’s a lot of power, sure, but he’s not
nearly as godlike in the Fleischer shorts as he would be in the comics in another decade or so.
The Fleischer Superman is fast — faster than a speeding bullet,
we’re told — but we don’t see him zipping back and forth like a lightning bolt.
He’s tough, but not so tough he can’t be knocked out by a heavy enough blow.
He’s strong, but that strength has limitations — we see him straining and struggling
when he’s holding up a building or trying to stop a plane from crashing into the city.
In other words, he’s strong enough to be Superman, but not so strong that he can’t
be threatened or even temporarily stymied by the villains or obstacles he’s facing.
That, plus the fact that he’s not weighed down by decades of accumulated lore and backstory,
gives the Fleischer Superman a simple, pure quality that I find incredibly appealing.
Of course, I enjoy other versions of Superman that aren’t so simple — I adore the zany,
delightfully convoluted comics of the Silver Age, and the version played by George Reeves
on TV whose powers include the basic set I just described plus whatever the plot
for that episode demands and Christopher Reeve’s definitive big screen Superman,
who can fly fast enough to turn back time, and take the S off his chest and throw
it at people — a devastating attack that makes no sense, and I love it.
But, I also love meat and potatoes. And that’s how I think of the Fleischer Superman: meat
and potatoes. Clark Kent, Lois Lane, some shit goes down, Lois is usually
in the middle of it somehow, Clark changes into Superman, saves the day. What more do you need?
The first Fleischer Superman cartoon premiered in 1941, that’s only three years
after Superman’s introduction in Action Comics. The character was still practically brand new.
I daresay many if not most of the people who watched those shorts in theaters back then were
encountering him for the first time. Maybe they’d heard of Superman, but they’d never read a comic,
or listened to an episode of the radio show (which had begun the year before). And then, there he was
on the big screen, in living color, flying headlong into danger,
protecting the city from destruction, fighting for truth and justice.
The quintessential Superman — a version of the character which, decades later, would still be
watched, and studied, and celebrated. Not just any Superman — the best Superman ever.