Superman

This is the best Superman cartoon ever made. It beats out all those other cartoons featuring Superman in every way. The animation is superb, not as good as Batman: The Animated series mind you, but still very good. The stories are also very good. It is filled with excitement and drama, and even a little humor. This series is great.

There was a cartoon Superman series in the early 1940's which is in a class of it's own. However, since then there have been a few Superman cartoons and then there was Superman on the Superfriends show. This was indeed Superman's best cartoon. Excluding the 1940's series, the other Superman cartoons look dated and cheezy if you were to watch them now. The same can be said for the Batman cartoons. This Superman series is brilliant, on par with Batman:The Animated Series.

How did people make this series work? Simple. They did exactly what they did with Batman:The Animated Series and did it with this cartoon. Superman is an intelligent cartoon for adults and children with great plots, humour and plenty of action. Let's not forget artistic license either-don't you just love Superman's big jaw and Clark's big jaw as well (big giveaway there to anyone wanting to find out Supe's secret identity). It has been ten years since Batman:The Animated Series made it's debut and it has not aged at all; the same can be said for Superman.

I strongly recommend this movie and also, the Batman/Superman team up movie from 1998. Absolute magic!

If it wasn't for the success of Batman the animated series, it is likely that this series wouldn't have been made. It is a great series. The material from this series is taken largely from the comics and "Lois and Clark". It is undoubtedly along with Batman one of the finest adaptions ever done of these characters for television or the movies. It is far easier to make the characters believable animated than it is to do live action. While not nearly as good as the Batman material I personally lean towards Supes everytime. It is fine action adventure in the truest sense of the word. Excellent drama. Lots of fun to be had here.

So far for the most part any movie featuring the man of steel have missed the mark. If one were to gather their knowledge of Superman from these movies they will deduce that Superman's main villains were Lex Luther, Zod, Nuclear Man and Richard Pryor. One also gets the sense that he is kind of a dweeb and the type of guy who when he gets a female pregnant he bolts the planet. Well this animated series was great as it featured a vast assortment of villains, great voice work by Tim Daly, and had interesting stories. I enjoyed watching this incarnation of Superman as he was actually Superman without being indestructible unbeatable man like he has been portrayed at times. So what you are not going to see in this film is a lot of time spent back in Smallville growing up, a crusade to stop nuclear missiles, strange comedy, and yet another scheme by Lex involving real estate. No here you will see him lose a good friend to the cold Darkseid, help the Green Lantern take on the villainous Sinistro, and battle schemes by Lex involving him creating a cyborg man with kryptonite in his chest named Metallo. So suffice to say this series was a lot of fun and a lot better than nearly everything in the movies. The best thing the movies did was introducing Zod.

...and also in one of the best adaptations of Superman, either in film or television. Maybe I'm biased, as I've always liked Superman and also that this was one of my favourite shows when I was a kid, but I still love this show. The animation is very handsome and detailed, with intriguing character designs(Clark/Superman's big jaw is quite unique). Perhaps it is not as atmospheric as Batman: The Animated Series, but that is enough of that still. The music is also wonderful, the incidental music has a hauntingly rousing undercurrent and the intro is very cool. The writing is tense and intelligent with nicely judged bits of humour as well, while the story lines are always compelling with a dark atmosphere without it being overly so. The characters are wonderful, Superman is a charismatic hero, Supergirl is a great addition, Lois avoids being stereotypical and Lex Luthor and Braniac are great villains. The voice acting is superb, Tim Daly is on par with George Newbern and voices with authority and intensity of lines. Dana Delaney is spot on as Lois, while Clancy Brown's Lex Luthor is wonderfully calculating and Corey Burton brings the right amount of menace to Braniac. All in all, the best cartoon of the Man of Steel. 10/10 Bethany Cox