MAX FLEISCHER’S SUPERMAN (1941-1943)
Label: WBHE
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 146 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.37:1)
Cast: Clayton “Bud” Collyer, Joan Alexander, Jackson Beck, Jack Mercer, Grant Richards, Julian Noa, Lee Royce, Max Smith, Sam Parker, Carl Meyer
Superman made his comic book debut in 1938, appearing in Action Comics #1, and just a few years later Max Fleischer gave the world Supe's own animated adventures, producing seventeen theatrical animated shorts that appeared in theaters September 1941 to July 1943. These fantastic Fleischer/Famous Studios produced toons not only looked amazing with it's bold Art Deco design and visually stunning set pieces, but it also added quite a few of Superman’s patented catchphrases and abilities to the pantheon. It's this animated entries that established the faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall building in a single bounds, and the ability to fly - that all started here, not the comic.
For the animated series popular radio actor Clayton “Bud” Collyer and Joan Alexander reprised their roles from The Adventures of Superman radio show for the Fleischer/Famous Studios animated shorts as Superman/ Clark Kent and Lois Lane. I remember first seeing these on as a kid in the mid 80's, having picked them up at a yard sale along with a box of comics I convinced by pops to buy me (thanks pops, miss you). The qualify of those tapes was pretty dismal but the stunning animation stood out, quickly becoming one of my favorite animated series of all time - even still to this day over 80 years after they were first made. Some of the later episodes are straight-up WWII propaganda pieces with Superman aiding the American war effort by sabotaging the Japanese and foiling Nazi plots, which is just something that was done in this era, even Disney and Looney Toons were supporting the war effort with their own propaganda toons. Problematic portrayals of foreigners aside, this animated series is the stuff superhero dreams are made of. I cannot imagine how it felt seeing these on a theater screen as a kid back then (heck, as an adult!) and how it would have made me feel. Probably much the same way that the Donner flick made me feel I guess, I was running around the yard with a sheet tied around my neck trying to get off the ground for weeks after seeing it!
It should be noted that these toons are featured on the new Superman 5-film 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray set, but there's a rub, they're on the Blu-ray discs, which are recycled from the previous Superman Blu-ray set - they have not been cleaned-up or remastered, so if you want these remastered episodes you have to purchase this stand alone release. That in and of itself is not horrible, but the new scans while improved in certain areas aren't all that they could have been.
Epodes and Premier Dates:
1. Superman (Mad Scientist) (9/26/1941)
2, The Mechanical Monsters (11/28/1941)
3. Billion Dollar Limited (1/9/1942)
4. Arctic Giant (2/27/1942)
5. The Bulleteers (3/27/1942)
6. The Magnetic Telescope (4/24/1942)
7. Electric Earthquake (5/15/1942)
8. Volcano (7/10/1942)
9. Terror on the Midway (8/28/1942)
10. The Japoteurs (9/18/1942)
11. Showdown – 10/16/1942
12. The Eleventh Hour (11/20/1942)
13. Destruction, Inc. (12/25/1942)
14. The Mummy Strikes (2/19/1943)
15. Jungle Drums (3/26/1943)
16. Underground World (6/18/1943)
17. Secret Agent (7/30/1943)
Audio/Video: All 17 episodes of Max Fleischer's Superman arrives on Blu-ray in 1080p HD sourced from a new "Warner Bros. Discovery’s advanced remastering process began with a 4K, 16-bit scan of Fleischer’s original 35mm successive exposure negative. Staying true to the original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.37-to-1, the highest quality raw image was then scanned and then entered into the recombine process – utilizing special proprietary software to merge the successive exposure Technicolor negatives into a single RGB color image". Well, that restoration summary reads great, and it looks... decent, but it certainly doesn't live up to the high expectations I think most of us had imagined. The good news first, they've cleaned-up the nicks, scratches and instabilities that plagued previous SD versions of the famous toons: the colors are solid and are well-saturated, having never looked so stable, and the black levels are quite nice. The bad news, it's been DNR'd pretty dang thoroughly, the film grain is nearly non-existent and the image loses most of it's inherent animation textures and subtle shading variations, which is a terrible shame. This should have been an outstanding presentation given the new 4K scan from original elements, but instead it's only so-so mediocre, and this series deserves so much more than just better than the DVD. See the over 100 screenshots at the bottom of the review, plus a couple of comparison shots.
Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 dual-mono with optional English subtitles. The tracks are uncompressed and sound great, while there's a bit of age-related hiss and vintage boxiness to it, but that's to be expected from an 80 year-old cartoon. The orchestral score credited to Sammy Timberg, Winston Sharples, and Lou Fleischer comes through a bit sharp, but still sounding terrific. I know there have been some issues with audio hiccups on past releases, and I am not familiar enough to know the ins and out of those issues, but I did notice that the "truthjustice" issue with the opening narration of the first episode is still there, so I know that has not been fixed.
We get a mix of new and legacy extras for the series official Blu-ray debut, archival stuff come by way of the 13-min First Flight which originally appeared on the 2011 Superman Motion Picture Anthology Blu-ray, while 14-min The Man, the Myth, Superman first debuted on the 2009 Max Fleischer’s Superman DVD release. New to this edition is the 13-min Speeding Toward Tomorrow which features director Matt Peters, producer Jim Krieg (Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham), and supervising producer Rick Morales talking about how prescient this series was, and how good-looking and influential it has been - so much so that there's talk of replicating the look of it for a new project only to find out that it's just not possible, which is a testament to old school animation and how ground breaking the Academy Award nominated series was, in addition to how it heavily influenced Batman: The Animated Series. The single-disc release arrives in a eco-case with 2-sided non-reversible sleeve of artwork. The inside cover features an episode and special features guide.
Special Features-
- NEW! Superman: Speeding Toward Tomorrow (13 min 20 sec)
- First Flight: The Fleischer Superman Series – The Origins and Influence of This Groundbreaking Cartoon Series (12 min 55 sec)
- The Man, the Myth, Superman: Exploring the Tradition of Superman Heroes on the Page and Screen (13 min 37 sec)
This release has been a big deal for fans since it was announced, this is a beloved series, and while it's arguably the best the series has looked on home video thus far, it is clearly not he best it could and should have looked IMO.
Screenshots from the 2023 Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Blu-ray:
Top: DVD
Bottom: Remastered Blu-ray (2023)
