Superman in the 1940's
Oct. 23rd, 2013 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kybearfuzzLast night, I was struggling to find something to watch on TV. Odd, I know, considering there are a lot of new shows out that are good. I still have yet to watch "Marvel's Agents of Shield," but I have them recorded and just had not had a chance to sit down and go through them. So I settled on last week's episode of "The Walking Dead," which was awesome, followed by a spin through Netflix.
Netflix recently added a "Superman" cartoon series to the line-up. These are the Fleischer Studio Superman cartoons from the 1940's. I adore them. For its time, the animation is IMPRESSIVE, with the action moving so smoothly and the artwork being almost flawless. I imagine at the time, it garnered a lot of "oooh's" and "aaah's." They were very expensive to make, at $10K to $30K each in 1940. I watched several of them last night, as they are relatively short.
Some of them are politically themed, especially with WWII going on, with Superman fighting the Nazis and the Japanese. And Superman in the earlier cartoons could only leap from building to building at the time, just like in the comics. The cartoons actually are the ones that got Superman flying, according to the Wikipedia article, because the animated leaping looked a little silly.
All of these cartoons are in the public domain now. If you want to watch them, I'm sure a Google search will find online downloads (and I think even the Wikipedia entry has links for that).
Netflix recently added a "Superman" cartoon series to the line-up. These are the Fleischer Studio Superman cartoons from the 1940's. I adore them. For its time, the animation is IMPRESSIVE, with the action moving so smoothly and the artwork being almost flawless. I imagine at the time, it garnered a lot of "oooh's" and "aaah's." They were very expensive to make, at $10K to $30K each in 1940. I watched several of them last night, as they are relatively short.
Some of them are politically themed, especially with WWII going on, with Superman fighting the Nazis and the Japanese. And Superman in the earlier cartoons could only leap from building to building at the time, just like in the comics. The cartoons actually are the ones that got Superman flying, according to the Wikipedia article, because the animated leaping looked a little silly.
All of these cartoons are in the public domain now. If you want to watch them, I'm sure a Google search will find online downloads (and I think even the Wikipedia entry has links for that).
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Date: 2013-10-23 01:10 pm (UTC)Reminds me of the Superman convention I attended back in Cleveland in the 80's. There were a series of conventions going on-Star Trek, Superman, D & D. A Nerd Trifecta! We went to the first two. The Superman convention had a fund raising thing to build a statue of Superman,, which I think they finally built, but not downtown-I think it's at the airport. Anyways, the thing that I recall is that they had one of the costumes that George Reeves wore in the serial version. It was shades of brown. At first I thought-"Gee, they used crappy dyes back then", but the display noted that the costume was originally done in shades of brown. The blue and red costume didn't look right in B & W, and so they went with shades of brown, which worked better.
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Date: 2013-10-23 01:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-24 02:59 pm (UTC)