I have to follow a cartoon for my History of Animation class and then write about it. So I thought I'd post all of my entrys here too. I picked the 1940's "Superman". But I may do some extra cartoons as well.




SUPERMAN (1941 – 1943)

Episode Title: “Superman” (pilot)

Episode #: 1

Original Date: 9/26/41

In the June, 1938 copy of “Action Comics”, published by DC Comics, the world was first introduced to Superman. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, Superman quickly became at big hit in the US. So big that Paramount Pictures soon obtained the rights to create Superman cartoon shorts for the movie theaters. Paramount went to the talented team of Max and Dave Fleischer to make the Superman toons.

The first pilot cost $50,000 to make with the remaining 16 shorts with a budget of 30,000. When it was all done, all 17 combined cost $530,000 to make. But the Superman shorts where very luxurious for the time as they where lucky enough to have pencil tests (most of the time did not) and they had access to a special effects department that had originally been created for the animated film “Gulliver’s Travels” As a result, they were the most elaborate and sophisticated cartoons made at the time and much of them still hold up today.
In the first episode, a narrator gives a very brief background on how Superman came to be. The show first starts with the now famous opening lines: “Look, up in the sky. It’s a bird, it’s a plane… Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, it’s SUPERMAN!” These lines, now a large part of Superman lore, where actually first introduced by the Fleischer’s for these cartoons. After the opening and the background, we go into our story.

An evil mad scientist has created a death ray that will destroy the city. Naturally, Perry White at the Daily Planet (it was not called this yet) went to go send Clark Kent out to do the story, but as is normal, Lois Lane rushed out and went off to the mad scientist first to get the scoop first. Lois arrives only to instantly be kidnapped by the villain and forced to watch his death ray in action. His ransom demands have not been met and he is now ready to use his ray gun.
He soon destroys the local freeway bridge, sending many cars and pedestrians in to the river below. But as he strikes the city, so Clark, a.k.a. Superman, is alerted to the trouble and quickly changes to his Superman suit. Superman then rushes off and fights the death ray. But the scientist soon realizes that Superman is defeating his ray gun, so he ups the amps on it and sends Superman hurling to the ground! Superman soon recovers and then starts back up again toward the mouth of the gun, where he finally catches up to and twists the top of the gun into a pretzel. The power from the gun overloads and destroys the scientist lab, but not before Superman grabs Lois and the scientist and leads them to safety. He throws the scientist in jail and Lois then gets the front page of the newspaper the next day. And the story fades out.

The style and settings of the story are very 1940’s. There is a lot of shading and the characters’ are very life-like in some ways. At some points, the joints in the characters are very life-like, but then in some points they are rubber band-ish. There is not much in the way of color in this first one, as in lush colors, but rather a lot of blacks, grays, browns, and colors like that. The most colorful part of the show is the Superman suit itself.

The story line is also very 1940’s. The villain is an evil scientist bent on ruling the world, or at least the city. He is very one-dimensional and does not even get a name. He is just “the mad scientist”. Lois Lane is in this a woman of the 40’s, except she has a lot more spunk than other women of the time. But, still, she easily ends up captured by the villain and is forced to wait for Superman to save her. In a lot of more modern Superman stories, Lois saves Superman a few times, just to show the difference. Superman himself is also a rather one-dimensional character here, as both Superman and Clark Kent. He is very reserved as Clark Kent and then becomes Superman as soon as trouble happens. There is not much more to his character than that here, a big difference from the Superman of today.

There is also not much talking and the little bit of dialogue is very simple. All of the characters’ are displayed in a realistic manor for the time period, all except for the scientist buzzer side kick, who is rather cartoon like in his appearance and mannerisms.
Over all, it is a far cry form the Superman the world is used to today, but it is still fun to watch and historically a major milestone in animation history.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Complete Superman Collection. Dir. Dave Fleischer. Bosko Video, 1991.