Superman: El Científico Loco

Sixty one years have elapsed since this first Superman cartoon was shown and it still remains as timeless as ever.

I had first seen this decades back (not in 1941 because it would be a good several years until I was born) and recently I picked up a copy from a car boot sale. I watched it and enjoyed it throughly.

The story is perfectly simple. A mad scientist has some kind of ray aimed at Metropolis and he also kidnaps Lois Lane. Superman of course comes to the rescue. There is no complex plot, just plenty of action.

Lois and Clark are not quite equals in this adventure. Nowadays in the Superman comics I think Lois and Clark are married but Lois sort of looked down on Clark in these adventures-she doesn't even let him come out on assignment with her.

Another thing I liked was the way Clark changed into Superman. He would always say, "This is a job for Superman," before heading into a storeroom and changing. Magic!

For fans of Superman (particularly younger fans), I recommend they check this out if they can get a copy.

This is the first of a series of Superman shorts done by the Fleischer Studios and the only one of the series nominated for an Oscar. The animation style is different and recognizable as Fleischer work and the cartoons hold up reasonably well, but there's nothing terrifically remarkable or special about this particular cartoon. Worth watching.

This is the first of what would turn out to be 17 Superman cartoons produced by the Fleischer brothers for Paramount Studios. This cartoon was released on September 26, 1941. The plot is as follows: An evil mad scientist threatens to attack the city at midnight. Lois Lane hops in her airplane and flies to the scientists hide out. The scientist captures her, and then procedes to attack Gotham. Blowing up a bridge, and attempting to topple the Empire State Building, until Superman arrives and saves the day.

The New York Times said of this cartoon " {this cartoon} is among the brothers' less successful efforts. The Fleischers show so little aptitude for -or interest in-realistic animation styles. Superman and Lois Lane are at their most wooden. So is the story's villain, a mad scientist. But the scientist's raven is wildly alive, like any real Fleischer creation, and the film sneaks in as many raven's-eye glimpses as possible. Heroic human figures have little to do with the grim, witty hallmarks of the Fleischers' imagination."

I must disagree with the Times' opinion. If one was to look at Superman comic strips from this point of time, one would see that the Superman of the comic books and the Superman of the cartoons, looks essentially the same. Yes, the raven is the most "cartoon" like character in the cartoon, but the film is still enjoyable, and is a snapshot of what cartoons were like right before the start of WWII.

I have no idea why Superman's logo looks the way it does, (probably something to do with one of Joe Shuster's original drawings) but this is still excellent. There is very little dialogue in these films, and the little dialogue that is played is almost inaudible. These shorts are more for the action fan. In the beginning, Superman can only leap (leap tall buildings in a single bound as it were) but before long, the narrator reveals that flight is also one of his attributes (soar higher than any plane!). During the course of these film-noir cartoons, we see Superman battle robot jewel thieves, a dinosaur, the Japanese, and even some Nazis (Hitler himself appeared at the end of that episode)! This probably might not appeal to fans of the modern day Superman, because the guy we see here is the tough, take no prisoners hero of the golden age. Nevertheless, a great series of cartoons, and as a Superman fan, I must say, I enjoyed them.

Several months after Captain Marvel was the first comic book superhero depicted on the silver screen, Superman became the second but the first to be animated as opposed to the live action of the previous one. The voices of the leading character and female co-star Lois Lane were the same from the radio series that had already started beforehand: Bud Collyer and Joan Alexander. Collyer, especially, established how different the personalities of Clark and Supes could be by simply changing his voice when he changed to his costume. The story, about a mad scientist bent on destroying the world, is a bit cliché for today but the Max and Dave Fleischer animation is still impressive even now with the way the thing can build excitement especially when The Man of Steel tries to punch that disintegrating ray back to its source. So on that note, this first epi of the Superman cartoon series was off to a good start. P.S. You know this was an early version of Jerome Siegel & Joe Shuster's creation when Supes' origin tale says he was raised in an orphanage instead of the farm of Jonathan and Martha Kent!