Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Can you imagine, as great as those old cartoons are, how great it would have been if they made 1 or 2 concerning Jor-EL & Krypton?? It would be silly to say it would have been nice to have had a Kandor episode, it didnt come out for almost 20 years later. But an episode involving Jor-EL sending Kal-EL to earth on those Fleschier cartoons, that would be priceless.
    I have read a review comparing these cartoons to the films of William Cameron Menzies. This, I believe, was right on the mark. The world of these cartoons is much like the movie 'Invaders from Mars' (A Classic). Of all the stuff spawned by superman comics, these cartoons were at the very top. You know, I had never even seen an episode till the mid 1980s, & it was like seeing a golden age comic brought to life! It almost seemed like Simon & Shuster were working on them. Imagine A Fleischer Bros Batman cartoon from 1939! With the long ears, coming out only at night (no Robin). Or even a golden age Fleschier Sub-Marinor vs Human Torch, 1939. Imagine Discovering them now just as I discovered the 'Supermans' in the 80s, after having read Comics since the mid 60s! That was my sensation when I 1st saw the Supermans!
  For some reason, the shows from then, even the cheap stuff, I like better than a lot of stuff today ( Except for 'The Incredibles', it was a masterpiece, for me the best comic-movie yet, the 'Citizen Kane' of comic book films!).By 'cheap stuff, I mean the great 'Batman' or 'Flash Gordin' serials. WHY DONT THEY SHOW THEM ON TURNER NETWORK???They are great! Funny as hell!
oh well, thanks for your time anyone who reads this

I like them too, part of the reason is because they genuinely reflect the times, and because Superman was exciting and very new, and this comes through...

As far as the "Jimmy Olsen Fan Club", its just a mark of a certain number of posts, I think you already moved past it...

They are truly great, especially when you consider all the work was hand done - no computers.  I just can't picture all of them ever making it on Network television, about half of the episodes contain material that isn't very PC by today's standards.

They're great, but I have a question about them. I have the 'Superman vs. Nature and War" and "Superman vs. the Monsters & Villians" 2-disc set of these cartoons. The quality is not the best. Of the new collections, have any been restored to a very high quality?

No, but WB announce that they will in fact finally give the Fleschier and Famous Studios Superman cartoons a proper release with remastered transfers and extras.

Click on the little max fleischer Superman icon on the very bottom of this page to see the best version of the 'toons.  Fully restored.  From one of the 71 customer reviews:

:s:

Consensus seems to be the Bosko sets are the best.  But there's some speculation that the brief snippets seen in the new "Look Up In the Sky" documentary reflect Warner's restoration efforts on the cartoons.  If true, their upcoming set will be the brightest, most colorful and crisp versions I've ever seen.

I'm with you on wishing for a Fleischer Batman series.  I thought about it often when watching the Superman shorts.  To some extent, B:TAS captured the look and feel of Fleisher (they set out to anyway), but a Golden Age Batman would have been phenomnal.

For a hint of how it might have gone, check out the "Billion Dollar Limited" short.  The bad guys pull cowls over their heads (looking a lot like bat-cowls without the ears) and convert their car into something not unlike the 40's Batmobile, complete with dorsal fin!  It's pretty cool.

There is only one improvement that Warner could do to the Fliescher Superman cartoons that would make me buy their version:

Letterbox

I have tyhe Bosko DVD of those episodes and I can tell that they need to be letterboxed.

Actually, I'm virtually certain the cartoons -- being made in 1940 to 42 or so -- were originally produced in the 3:4 ratio, so "letterboxing" them would actually remove a lot of information from the picture.

The "square" look is true to the original.

Nightwing's right.

Although composed in the 1:33 aspect ratio, the toons lose something off the edges on a TV. Slight Window boxing to preserve the original apect would be ideal (if you watch TCM, you know what Im talkin about)but it's not likely.

Nightwing is right, they are in their correct ratio, they just need to be cleaned up that's all.

I've watched them on my computer using mplayer classic, a great player that seems to understand intuitively what sort of format any media should be played in, and it puts them in a box; it often does the same for any film made before 1950 or so.

For what it's worth, the Digital Bits site has reviews up of several collections, including the Bosko (which again gets top marks, at least of what's out so far):

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviews3/spinsheet062006.html

Scroll down below the "Look Up In The Sky" review (well, unless you wanna read that, too!).

I've noticed in some sets his belt is black and in other sets it looks like it was purposely recolored to red or yellow. Is this true or was there simply an inconsistancy in the animation itself?

I own the Bosko collection, and it's first-rate...  well ahead of the cheapo collection I'd initially picked up out of a bargain bin somewhere.